Scamandros (river god)
Skamandros ( Greek Σκάμανδρος ) is the god of the river Skamandros in Greek mythology . He was, according to Hesiod one of the river gods that Oceanus with Tethys fathered. Rhoio , Teukros and Kallirrhoë are named as his children .
Trojan myths
According to Homer's Iliad , the river god was only called Scamandros among the people, but Xanthos among the Olympic gods . In Troy , on the bank of the river, he enjoyed divine worship and had his own priest named Dolopion ; bulls were sacrificed to him and live horses were thrown into his whirlpool. With Idaia , a nymph of the Ida Mountains , he became the father of Teukros, the first Trojan king. Skamandros' daughter Kallirrhoë married Tros , who is considered the ancestor of the Trojans . The future military leader Hector also called his son Astyanax by the name Skamandrios.
During the siege , the god assisted the Trojans. One of the warnings had already sounded in advance that Rhesos should not water his horses on that river if the Achaeans wanted to remain victorious. When Achilles later raged among the defenders of the city in his floods, Skamandros gave Asteropaios , the leader of the Paionians , new courage; But he appeared to Achilles in human form and ordered him to leave the river bed. At first he obeyed; but when he soon jumped back into the water, the god chased the hero out into the flat terrain and pursued him. Poseidon and Athene jumped in Achilles, whereupon Skamandros called his brother Simoeis for help. Only Hephaestus , sent by Hera , was able to stop the river god with his fire.
In Plutarch is a daughter of Scamander called Glaukia talk. She was pregnant by Deimachos ; when he fell before Troy, she sought protection from Heracles . The hero brought her to Boeotia , where she gave birth to a son. She named him after his grandfather: Skamandros . When the grandson later ruled Elean , the river Inachus was renamed Skamandros in his honor.
Deviating genealogies
In contrast to the genealogy given by Hesiod, Scamandros appears in Homer as the son of Zeus .
In another version, Skamandros was originally a king of Crete . Because of a famine, he left the island with a large part of his people. Apollo had prophesied to him that he should settle where he would be besieged by "natives" at night. In Phrygia the emigrants discovered one morning that at night mice had eaten the bowstrings and the leather gear of the weapons. Scamandros saw the prophecy fulfilled and they made their home at the foot of the Ida. In a later battle against the neighboring Bebryker , the king fell into the Xanthos River and disappeared. The Cretans named the water afterwards Skamandros . The son of their leader, Teukros, in turn became king of these lands. In this context, it is interesting that the central massif of Crete is also called the Ida Mountains .
Strabo mentions the same legend about the founding of the place Hamaxitos, today's Babakale , in the extreme southwest of the Troas by the Teukrers (instead of "natives" he speaks of "earth-born"). In this he sees the reason for the depiction of a mouse at the foot of the statue of Apollon Smintheus created by Skopas in his temple in nearby Chryse .
In Pseudo-Plutarch, on the other hand, one can read that Scamandros is said to have been a son of Demodike and Korybas . During the Rhea mystery celebrations , he saw the face of the goddess, got mad and threw himself into the Xanthos. A later legend follows on from this: Since then a plant with trembling berries has grown on the Skamandros River; whoever carries it with them is not afraid of any divine appearances.
literature
- Emil Wörner : Scamander B . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 4, Leipzig 1915, Sp. 980-987 ( digitized version ).
- Hans von Geisau : Scamandros. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 5, Stuttgart 1975, Col. 221.
Web links
- Scamandros in the Theoi Project (English)