Aërope
Aërope (Ancient Greek: Ἀερόπη) was a name attributed to two distinct figures in Greek mythology.
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[edit] Wife of Atreus
Aërope was a daughter of Catreus, king of Crete, and granddaughter of Minos.[1] Her father, who had received an oracle that he should lose his life by one of his children, gave her and her sister, Clymene, to Nauplius, who was to sell them in a foreign land. Another sister, Apemosyne, and her brother, Althaemenes, who had heard of the oracle, had left Crete and gone to Rhodes. Aërope was given by Nauplius in marriage to either Atreus or Pleisthenes, the son of Atreus, and became the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaus.[2][3][4] According to the version where Agamemnon and Menelaus's father was Pleisthenes, after the death of Pleisthenes, Aërope married Atreus, and her two sons, who were educated by Atreus, were generally believed to be his sons. Aërope, however, was unfaithful to Atreus, being seduced by Thyestes.[5][6][7][8][9] Aërope helped Thyestes to obtain the lamb with golden fleece which belonged to her husband Atreus; possession of the lamb earned Thyestes the kingdom of Mycenae[10].
[edit] Lover of Ares
The other Aërope was a daughter of Cepheus of Arcadia. She was loved by Ares and had by him a son Aëropus, but herself died in labor. By the will of Ares, Aërope's dead body was still able to produce an abundance of breastmilk to feed the newborn Aëropus. From that circumstance, Ares was surnamed Aphneios ("abundant"), and was honored under that surname with a sanctuary on Mount Cresius[11].
[edit] References
- ^ Schmitz, Leonhard (1867), "Aerope", in Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1, pp. 36, http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/0045.html
- ^ Bibliotheca 3. 2. § 1, &c.
- ^ Servius on Aeneid, 1. 458.
- ^ Dictys Cretensis 1. 1.
- ^ Euripides, Orestes 5, &c.
- ^ Euripides, Helen 397.
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 87.
- ^ Scholia on Homer. Iliad. 2. 249.
- ^ Servius, on Aeneid 9. 262.
- ^ Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Epitome of Book 4, 2. 10
- ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, 8. 44. 7 - 8
[edit] Sources
- This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).
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