Sostratos (mythology)

Sostratos or Polystratos ( ancient Greek Σώστρατος Sṓstratos ) is a lover of Heracles in Greek mythology . He is only mentioned in Pausanias . According to this, his grave was near Dyme , a town in Achaia . According to the local legend, Herakles himself erected it and sacrificed his hair there. Pausanias saw a stele with the image of Heracles on the burial mound of Sostratos and reports that the locals make sacrifices to Sostratos.

He is probably identical with Polystratos, one of the most beautiful youths mentioned in a grave epigram . Highly revered by Herakles, he fell in battle with the Molionids in the war with the Eleans . He was mourned by the hero who sacrificed his hair in the epigram as a sign of his loss. But Polystratos found a magnificent grave in Dyme , the inscription in Catalectic , Trochaic tetrameters ends .

source

• Pausanias 7.17.8
• Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 11, 1261

literature

• Otto Höfer : Sostratos 1 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 4, Leipzig 1915, column 1236 ( digitized version ).
• Otto Höfer : Polystratos 1 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 3.2, Leipzig 1909, Col. 2717 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Athanasios Rizakis: Achaïe III. Les inscriptions des cités achéennes. Epigraphie et histoire (= Meletemata. Volume 55). Center de Recherches de l'Antiquité Grecque et Romaine, Fondation Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, Athens 2008, pp. 81–83 No. 22 ( online ).