Procrustes

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Theseus and Procrustes, Attic red-figure neck amphora , 470 - 460V. BC , State Collections of Antiquities (Inv. 2325)

Procrustes ( Greek  Προκρούστης "outreach") was a giant from Greek mythology , nickname of Polypemon or Damascus, an Attic robber in the vicinity of Eleusis and son of Poseidon .

In his world history, the ancient Greek historian Diodorus (1st century BC) reports the following about the monster and highwayman Procrustes:

Procrustes offered travelers a bed, but in some legends he also forced hikers to lie down on a bed. If they were too big for the bed, he would chop off their feet or excess limbs; if they were too small, he hammered and stretched the limbs apart by stretching them on an anvil .

Procrustes was slain by Theseus on his journey to Athens as the last of the villains on Cephisus .

The story of Procrustes gained further folkloric spread as a narrative motif in later periods. B. in appearance in the Babylonian Talmud , where Eliezer of Damascus , the house slave of Abraham, an encounter with Procrustes is attributed (Tractate Sanhedrin 109a).

A Procrustal bed or bed of the Procrustus is literally a form or a scheme into which something is forced that actually doesn't fit there.

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literature

Web links

Commons : Prokrustes  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Procrustes bed  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. ^ Brockhaus / Wahrig, German Dictionary, Stuttgart 1983; Duden, The large dictionary of the German language, Mannheim / Vienna / Zurich 1980 and the dictionary of contemporary German, Berlin 1974, each under "Procrustes bed"