Minyas (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Minyas (Greek: Μινύας) was the founder of Orchomenus, Boetia^[1]. As the ancestor of the Minyans, a number of Boeotian genealogies lead back to him, according to the classicist H.J. Rose. Accounts vary as to his own parentage: one source states that he was thought to be the son of Orchomenus and Hermippe, his real father being Poseidon^[2]; in another account he is called son of Poseidon and Callirhoe^[3]; yet others variously give his father as Chryses (son of Poseidon and Chrysogeneia, daughter of Almus)^[4], Ares, Aleus or Eteoclus^[5].

Minyas was married to either Euryanassa, Euryale, Tritogeneia (daughter of Aeolus), Clytodora, or Phanosyra (daughter of Paeon). Of them either Euryanassa or Clytodora bore him a daughter Clymene (also called Periclymene^[6], mother of Iphiclus and Alcimede by Phylacus or Cephalus). Clytodora is also given as the mother by Minyas of Presbon and Eteoclymene, and Phanosyra of Orchomenus, Diochthondes, and Athamas.^[2] Minyas' other children include Cyparissus, the founder of Anticyra^[7], and three daughters known as the Minyades.^[8][9][10]

According to Apollonius Rhodius^[11] and Pausanias ^[12] he was the first king ever to have made a treasury, of which the ruins were still extant in Pausanias' times.

References

1. ^ Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 3. 1093 ff
2. ^ ^{a b} Scholia on Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 1. 230
3. ^ Tzetzes on Lycophron, 875
4. ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 36. 4; in scholia on Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 3. 1094, Minyas himself is the son of Poseidon and "Chrysogone", daughter of Almus.
5. ^ Scholia on Pindar, Isthmian Ode 1. 79
6. ^ Hyginus Fabulae 14
7. ^ Scholia on Homer, Iliad, 2. 159; on Odyssey, 11. 362
8. ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4. 1 - 168
9. ^ Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses, 10
10. ^ Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 38
11. ^ Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 1.229
12. ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, 9.38.2

See also

• Minyans
• Boeotia
• Graiki
• Graia
• Persephione
• Chloris

Sources

• Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, v. 2, page 1092
• Thirlwall, Connop (1895). A History of Greece. Original from the University of Virginia: Longmans. p. 92.