Proitos and Acrisios divide the Argolid

¹Lynceus became king of Argos after Danaos, and had a son,

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Abas, by Hypermnestra; and Abas had twin sons, Acrisios and Proitos, by Aglaia, daughter of Mantineus. The twins quarrelled with one another even while they were still in the womb, and when they grew up, they went to war over the kingdom. (It was during this war that they became the first inventors of shields.) Acrisios gained the upper hand and drove Proitos from Argos. Arriving in Lycia at the court of Iobates, or according to some, of Amphianax, Proitos married the king’s daughter, whom Homer calls Anteia,* and the tragic poets, Stheneboia. His father-in-law, with a Lycian army, restored Proitos to his own land, and he took possession of Tiryns, which was fortified for him by the Cyclopes.* The brothers divided the whole of the Argolid between them, and made it their home, Acrisios ruling in Argos, and Proitos in Tiryns.

Bias, Melampous, and the daughters of Proitos

²By Eurydice, daughter of Lacedaimon, Acrisios had a daughter, Danae, and Proitos had three daughters, Lysippe, Iphinoe, and Iphianassa, by Stheneboia. When the daughters of Proitos were fully grown, they went mad, because, according to Hesiod, they refused to accept the rites of Dionysos, or, according to Acousilaos, because they had disparaged the wooden image of Hera.* In their madness, they wandered through the whole of the Argolid, and then, after passing through Arcadia and the Peloponnese, rushed through the desert in a state of complete abandon. Melampous, the son of Amythaon and Eidomene, daughter of Abas, who was a diviner and the first man to discover that illnesses could be cured by drugs and purifications, promised to cure the girls if he was given a third of the kingdom in return. When Proitos refused to hand them over for treatment at such a high price, not only did the girls’ madness grow worse, but the other women* went mad also; for they too deserted their houses, destroyed their own children, and wandered into the wilderness. The calamity had developed to such an extreme that Proitos now offered to pay the demanded fee; but Melampous would promise to undertake the cure only if his brother Bias received a share of the land equal to his own. Fearing that if the cure were delayed, a still greater fee would be demanded of him, Proitos agreed to the cure on these terms.* So Melampous took the most vigorous of the young men, and with loud cries and ecstatic dancing, they chased the women out of the mountains and into Sicyon. During the pursuit, the eldest of Proitos’ daughters, Iphinoe, met her death; but the other two were duly purified, and recovered their reason. Proitos gave his daughters in marriage to Melampous and Bias, and later became the father of a son, Megapenthes.

Excursus: the story of Bellerophon

¹Bellerophon, the son of Glaucos and grandson of Sisyphos,

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had accidentally killed his brother* Deliades (or according to some, Peiren, or according to others, Alcimenes) and came to Proitos to be purified.* Stheneboia fell in love with him,* and sent word to him proposing an assignation; but when he refused, she told Proitos that Bellerophon had been sending her messages in the hope of seducing her. Proitos believed her, and gave Bellerophon a letter to deliver to Iobates,* which con tained a message that he should put Bellerophon to death; so when Iobates had read it, he told him to kill the Chimaera, believing that he would be destroyed by the monster. For it was no easy prey for a multitude of men, let alone for one, seeing that it was a single creature which yet had the power of three, having the foreparts of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and a third head in the middle*—a goat’s head, through which it breathed fire. The beast was devastating the land and destroying the cattle. It is said, furthermore, that this Chimaera was reared by Amisodaros,* as Homer has stated also, and was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna, as Hesiod records.*

²So Bellerophon climbed on to his winged horse, Pegasos,* the offspring of Medusa and Poseidon, and soaring high into the air, killed the Chimaera by shooting arrows at it from above. After his battle with the Chimaera, Iobates told him to fight against the Solymoi,* and when he had fulfilled that task also, ordered him to attack the Amazons. When he had killed these also, Iobates picked out the Lycians who were thought to excel at the time in youthful vigour,* and told them to mount an ambush and kill him. But when Bellerophon had killed all of these in addition, Iobates, marvelling at his strength, showed him the letter and urged him to remain at his court; and he gave him his daughter, Philonoe, in marriage, and left him the kingdom when he died.

Danae and the birth of Perseus

¹When Acrisios consulted the oracle about the birth of male

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children, the god replied that his daughter would give birth to a son who would kill him. For fear of this, Acrisios built a bronze chamber beneath the ground and kept Danae guarded within it. She was seduced none the less, some say by Proitos* (so giving rise to the quarrel between the brothers), while according to others, Zeus had intercourse with her by transforming himself into a shower of gold and pouring through the roof into Danae’s lap. Later, when Acrisios learned* that a child, Perseus, had been born to her, he refused to believe that she had been seduced by Zeus, and put his daughter into a chest along with her child, and threw it into the sea. The chest was cast ashore at Seriphos, where Dictys recovered it, and raised the child.

Perseus fetches the Gorgon’s head

²Polydectes, the brother of Dictys,* who was king of Seriphos at the time, fell in love with Danae; and when he was unable to achieve his desire now that Perseus was a grown man, he summoned his friends together, with Perseus amongst them, and claimed that he was gathering contributions for a marriage-offering* to enable him to marry Hippodameia, the daughter of Oinomaos. When Perseus declared that he would not deny him even the Gorgon’s head, Polydectes demanded horses from all the others, but did not take the horses of Perseus* and ordered him to fetch the Gorgon’s head.

Guided by Hermes and Athene, he went to see the daughters of Phorcos:* Enyo, Pephredo, and Deino. Daughters of Phorcos by Ceto, they were sisters of the Gorgons, and had been old women from the time of their birth. The three of them had only a single eye and a single tooth, which they exchanged in turn between themselves. Perseus gained possession of the eye and tooth, and when they asked him to give them back, he said that he would surrender them if they showed him the way to the nymphs. These nymphs had in their possession some winged sandals,* and the kihisis, which is said to have been a kind of wallet, † They also had the cap [of Hades*]. When the daughters of Phorcos had told him the way, he returned the eye and tooth to them, and visited the nymphs and obtained what he desired. He slung the kihisisaround his neck, tied the sandals to his ankles, and placed the cap on his head; as long as he wore it, he could see whomever he wished while remaining invisible to others. After he had received in addition an adamantine sickle from Hermes, he flew to the Ocean, and when he arrived there, he caught the Gorgons asleep.

Their names were Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa. Only Medusa was mortal, and for that reason it was her head that Perseus was sent to fetch. The Gorgons had heads with scaly serpents coiled around them, and large tusks like those of swine, and hands of bronze, and wings of gold which gave them the power of flight; and they turned all who beheld them to stone. So Perseus stood over them as they slept, and while Athene guided his hand, he turned aside, and looking into a bronze shield in which he could see the reflection of the Gorgon, he cut off her head. As her head was severed, Pegasos, the winged horse, and Chrysaor, the father of Geryon, sprang from the Gorgon’s body. (She had conceived them previously by Poseidon.*) ³So Perseus placed Medusa’s head in the wallet, and as he was making his way back, the Gorgons started from their sleep and tried to pursue him, but they were unable to see him because of the cap, which hid him from their view.