User:Paul August/Hypsipyle

Hypsipyle

To Do

• Look at Page, Denys, Select Papyri, Volume III: Poetry. Translated by Denys L. Page. Loeb Classical Library 360. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941. pp. 76ff.
• Links to Bravo III pages
• Look at Fletcher p. 135ff.
• Celery vs Parsley

• LSJ s.v. σέλι_νον
• Bravo III
• Hard, p. 318
• Frazer's note

• Daughter of Myrina

• Callimachus fr. 284
• Brill's New Pauley s.v. Myrina
• Grimal
• Scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes 1.601
• Parada, s.v. Hypsipyle: Parents given as: "Thoas 3 ∞"
• Bravo III, p. 114

Argonautica 1.601

• Section on Iconography, see Frazer's note to Ap. 3.6.4
• Parada
• Brill's New Pauly
• Loeb search
• LIMC
• Copyedit article, check cites.

New text

Sources

Ancient

Aeschylus

The Libation Bearers

631-638

Chorus

Indeed the Lemnian¹ holds first place among evils in story: it has long been told with groans as an abominable calamity. Men compare each new horror to Lemnian troubles; and because of a woeful deed abhorred by the gods a race has disappeared, cast out in infamy from among mortals. [635] For no man reveres what is hated by the gods. Is there one of these tales I have gathered that I do not justly cite?

¹ The women of Lemnos, jealous of Thracian slaves, killed their husbands, so that when the Argonauts visited the island they found no men.

Apollonius of Rhodes

Argonautica

1.609-630 [Seaton translation on Internet archive: 1.609-626]

There [on Lemnos], all at once, the whole male population had been ruthlessly slain by the heinous actions of the women in the previous year. For the men had come to loathe their legitimate wives and rejected them, whereas they maintained a violent passion for the captive women whom they themselves brought back when pillaging Thrace on the opposite shore. For the terrible wrath of Cypris [Aphrodite] was afflicting them, because they had for a long time deprived her of honors. O wretched women, sad victims of insatiable jealousy! Not only did they kill their own husbands along with the women for making love, but the entire race of men as well, to avoid paying any retribution later for the atrocious murder. Alone of all the women, Hypsipyle saved her aged father Thoas, who in fact was ruling over the people. She set him to drift on the sea in a hollow chest, in the hope that he might escape. And fishermen pulled him ashore at what was formerly the island of Oenoe, but later called Sicinus, from that Sicinus whom the water nymph Oenoe bore after making love to Thoas. But as for the women, they all found cattle-herding, donning bronze armor, and plowing fields of wheat to be easier than Athena’s labors, with which they had always before been occupied.

1.630–639

And yet, for all that, often indeed did they scan the broad sea with their eyes in terrible fear for when the Thracians would come. And so, when they saw the Argo being rowed near their island, they immediately, one and all, put on their armor for war and poured forth from the gates of Myrine onto the shore like Thyiades who eat raw flesh, for they undoubtedly thought that the Thracians were coming. And with them Thoas’ daughter Hypsipyle put on her father’s armor. In helpless distress they streamed forth in silence, such was the fear looming over them.

1.650–651

On that occasion, he [Aethalides] persuaded Hypsipyle to receive the travelers for the night,

1.653–668

The Lemnian women came from throughout the city and sat in the assembly, for Hypsipyle herself had given the order. And once they had all gathered in one large group, she immediately spoke in their midst and exhorted them:

"My friends, come, let us give these men gifts to their liking, such things as men ought to take with them on a ship, provisions and sweet wine, so that they might forever remain outside our walls, lest out of need they may come among us and get to know us all too accurately, and an evil report may travel far and wide. For we have done a terrible deed, and it will not be at all heart-cheering to them either, if they were to learn of it. Such, then, is the plan before us now, but if any of you can devise a better proposal, let her rise, because it was also for this reason that I summoned you here."

Thus she spoke and sat down on her father’s seat of stone.

1.668–698

But then her dear nurse Polyxo rose up, tottering on feet shriveled with age and leaning on a cane, but she was very eager to speak. And near her sat four unwed virgins crowned with white hair. She stood in the middle of the assembly, and with difficulty raised her neck slightly from her stooped back and spoke thus:

"Let us send gifts to the strangers, just as Hypsipyle herself wishes, for it is better to give them. But as for you all, what plan do you have to sustain your livelihood if a Thracian army invades, or some other enemy force, as often happens among men, just as now this group has unexpectedly come? Even if one of the blessed gods were to avert this threat, countless other woes worse than war remain in the future. When in fact the older women die and you younger ones reach horrible old age without children, how will you survive then, poor things? Will your oxen yoke themselves all on their own in the deep fields and pull the earth-cutting plow through the fallow, and as soon as summer ends will they harvest the grain? Truly in my case, even though the Fates of Death have until now shuddered at the sight of me, I suspect that already within the coming year I will be clothed in earth and will have received my due share of burial honors, in the manner that is fitting, before facing that disaster. But I urge the younger women to consider this well, for now in fact before your feet lies an effective means of escape, if you entrust the strangers with the care of your homes and all your possessions and your glorious city."

Thus she spoke, and the assembly place was filled with clamor, for her speech pleased them.

1.698–707

Immediately after her, Hypsipyle rose again and spoke the following words in reply:

"If then everyone approves of this proposal, at once I shall even send a messenger to the ship."

She spoke and addressed Iphinoe, who was nearby:

"Please go, Iphinoe, and entreat that man, whoever it is that leads the expedition, to come to my palace so that I may tell him a decision of the people that will please his heart; and as for the men themselves, invite them, if they wish, to enter the land and city confidently as friends."

1.717–720

Thus she [Iphinoe to the Argonauts] spoke, and her auspicious proposal pleased them all. They supposed that because Thoas had died, Hypsipyle, his only child, was ruling.

1.793–835

[Hypsipyle addressing Jason in her palace:]

"Stranger, why do you all remain camped as you are so long outside our towers? For the city is not inhabited by men, but they have emigrated and plow the wheat-bearing fields of the Thracian mainland. I shall give a true account of our entire plight, so that you yourselves may also know it well. While my father Thoas ruled the citizens, people from our land used to go and raid from their ships the dwellings of those who inhabited Thrace opposite us, and they would bring vast amounts of booty here, along with captive girls. But the plan of that destructive goddess Cypris was being fulfilled, for she cast into the men a heart-destroying obsession, for they came to loathe their lawful wives and, giving in to their folly, expelled them from their homes, while they slept with the women captured by their spears, the cruel men! Truly, for a long time we endured it, hoping that at some point they would at last change their minds again, but the evil affliction ever progressed and became twice as bad. Legitimate children were shown no respect in their homes, while a brood of bastards was emerging. Unmarried girls, and widowed mothers too, wandered just as they were, neglected, through the city. Nor did a father have the slightest concern for his daughter, even if he saw her being murdered before his eyes at the hands of her savage stepmother. Nor did sons, as before, protect their mother from disgraceful insults, nor did brothers have any concern in their hearts for a sister. But only the captive girls mattered in their homes, in choruses, in the agora, and in feasts, until some god cast overpowering courage into us, to receive them no longer within the towers when they returned from the Thracians, so that they would either regain a sense of what is right or would depart, captives and all, and go somewhere else. But they then demanded to have all the male children who remained in the city and went back to the snowy plowland of Thrace, where they dwell to this day. Therefore, all of you stay and reside with us; and if you yourself should wish to live here and would find it agreeable, then truly you would have my father Thoas' position of honor. Nor do I think you will find fault with our land, for it has deeper soil than all the other islands that lie in the Aegean sea. So come now, go to your ship and tell your comrades what I have said and do not continue to remain outside the city."

She spoke, glossing over what act of murder had been carried out against the men;

1.849–850

And the women led the men to their homes to host them—easily, because Cypris had aroused sweet desire in them

1.853–877

Then Jason set off for Hypsipyle’s royal palace, while the others went wherever each chanced to go, except for Heracles, for he was left behind by the ship of his own accord along with a few chosen comrades. ... Heracles gathered his comrades apart from the women and reproached them ... Thus he upbraided the crew, and no one dared to raise his eyes to meet his or to reply, but they hastened, just as they were, from the assembly and prepared to depart.

1.888–898

"Go, and may the gods bring you back again with your comrades safe and sound, bearing the golden fleece to your king, just as you wish and desire. This island and my father’s scepter will be waiting, if at any time in the future, after returning home, you wish to come back here. You could easily gather for yourself a vast number of people from other cities. But no, you will not come to have this desire, nor do I myself foresee such an outcome. Promise to remember Hypsipyle, both when far away and when already back home. But leave me a word of instruction, which I shall gladly carry out, if in fact the gods grant that I give birth."

1.899–910

In turn, Jason answered her admiringly:

"Hypsipyle, may all those things thus prove propitious with the help of the blessed gods, but concerning me have greater confidence, for it is sufficient for me to dwell in my homeland by the grace of Pelias—may the gods only deliver me from my trials. But if I am not destined to return to the land of Hellas after my distant voyage, and if you bear a male child, send him when grown to Pelasgian Iolcus to relieve the grief of my father and mother—if at that point he finds them still alive—and to insure that beyond the reach of that king they may be cared for at the hearth of their own home."

2.30–32

Then the son of Tyndareus³ laid aside his closely-woven, delicate robe, which one of the Lemnian women had given him as his guest-present.

³ Polydeuces

3.1204–1206

a dark robe, which Lemnian Hypsipyle had previously given him as a memento of their fervent¹⁰¹ lovemaking.

¹⁰¹ Or frequent

4.423–427 [Seaton translation on Internet archive: 4.423–427]

a sacred robe of Hypsipyle, a purple one, which the divine Graces themselves had made for Dionysus on sea-girt Dia. He gave it to his son Thoas thereafter, who in turn left it to Hypsipyle, who gave it among many other treasures to Jason

Apollodorus

1.9.14

Pheres, son of Cretheus, founded Pherae in Thessaly and begat Admetus and Lycurgus. Lycurgus took up his abode at Nemea, and having married Eurydice, or, as some say, Amphithea, he begat Opheltes, afterwards called Archemorus.¹

¹ See below, Apollod. 3.6.4.

1.9.17

These with Jason as admiral put to sea and touched at Lemnos.¹ At that time it chanced that Lemnos was bereft of men and ruled over by a queen, Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, the reason of which was as follows. The Lemnian women did not honor Aphrodite, and she visited them with a noisome smell; therefore their spouses took captive women from the neighboring country of Thrace and bedded with them. Thus dishonored, the Lemnian women murdered their fathers and husbands, but Hypsipyle alone saved her father Thoas by hiding him. So having put in to Lemnos, at that time ruled by women, the Argonauts had intercourse with the women, and Hypsipyle bedded with Jason and bore sons, Euneus and Nebrophonus.

¹ As to the visit of the Argonauts to Lemnos, see Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.607ff.; Orphica, Argonautica 473ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il. vii.468; Valerius Flaccus, Argon. ii.77ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 15. As to the massacre of the men of Lemnos by the women, see further Hdt. 6.138; Apostolius, Cent. x.65; Zenobius, Cent. iv.91; Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.609, 615. The visit of the Argonauts to Lemnos was the theme of plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 79, 215ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, ii.51ff. The Lemnian traditions have been interpreted as evidence of a former custom of gynocracy, or the rule of men by women, in the island. See J. J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht （Stuttgart, 1861）, pp. 84ff. Every year the island of Lemnos was purified from the guilt of the massacre and sacrifices were offered to the dead. The ceremonies lasted nine days, during which all fires were extinguished in the island, and a new fire was brought by ship from Delos. If the vessel arrived before the sacrifices to the dead had been offered, it might not put in to shore or anchor, but had to cruise in the offing till they were completed. See Philostratus, Her. xx.24.

3.6.4

Having come to Nemea, of which Lycurgus was king, they sought for water; and Hypsipyle showed them the way to a spring, leaving behind an infant boy Opheltes, whom she nursed, a child of Eurydice and Lycurgus.¹ For the Lemnian women, afterwards learning that Thoas had been saved alive,² put him to death and sold Hypsipyle into slavery; wherefore she served in the house of Lycurgus as a purchased bondwoman. But while she showed the spring, the abandoned boy was killed by a serpent. When Adrastus and his party appeared on the scene, they slew the serpent and buried the boy; but Amphiaraus told them that the sign foreboded the future, and they called the boy Archemorus.³ They celebrated the Nemean games in his honor; and Adrastus won the horse race, Eteoclus the footrace, Tydeus the boxing match, Amphiaraus the leaping and quoit-throwing match, Laodocus the javelin-throwing match, Polynices the wrestling match, and Parthenopaeus the archery match.

¹ As to the meeting of the Seven Champions with Hypsipyle at Nemea, the death of Opheltes, and the institution of the Nemean games, see Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. pp. 424ff. ed. Boeckh; Bacch. 8.10ff. [9], ed. Jebb; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii.34, p. 29, ed. Potter, with the Scholiast; Hyginus, Fab. 74, 273; Statius, Theb. iv.646-vi.; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.717; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode. vol. i. p. 123 （Second Vatican Mythographer 141）. The institution of the Nemean games in honour of Opheltes or Archemorus was noticed by Aeschylus in a lost play. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), p. 49. The judges at the Nemean games wore dark-coloured robes in mourning, it is said, for Opheltes （Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. p. 425, ed. Boeckh）; and the crown of parsley bestowed on the victor is reported to have been chosen for the same sad reason （Serv. Verg. Ecl. 6.68）. However, according to another account, the crowns at Nemea were originally made of olive, but the material was changed to parsley after the disasters of the Persian war （Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. p. 425）. The grave of Opheltes was at Nemea, enclosed by a stone wall; and there were altars within the enclosure （Paus. 2.15.3）. Euripides wrote a tragedy Hypsipyle, of which many fragments have recently been discovered in Egyptian papyri. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 594ff.; A. S. Hunt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Papyracea nuper reperta （Oxford, no date, no pagination）. In one of these fragments (col. iv.27ff.) it is said that Lycurgus was chosen from all Asopia to be the warder （Κληδοῦχος） of the local Zeus. There were officials bearing the same title （κλειδοῦχοι） at Olympia （Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum 1021, vol. ii. p. 168） in Delos （Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, vol. i. p. 252, No. 170）, and in the worship of Aesculapius at Athens （E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, Part ii. p. 410, No. 157）. The duty from which they took their title was to keep the keys of the temple. A fine relief in the Palazzo Spada at Rome represents the serpent coiled round the dead body of the child Opheltes and attacked by two of the heroes, while in the background Hypsipyle is seen retreating, with her hands held up in horror and her pitcher lying at her feet. See W. H. Roscher, Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i.473; Baumeister, Denkmaler des klassichen Altertums, i.113, fig. 119. The death of Opheltes or Archemorus is also the subject of a fine vase-painting, which shows the dead boy lying on a bier and attended by two women, one of whom is about to crown him with a wreath of myrtle, while the other holds an umbrella over his head to prevent, it has been suggested, the sun's rays from being defiled by falling on a corpse. Amongst the figures in the painting, which are identified by inscriptions, is seen the mother Eurydice standing in her palace between the suppliant Hypsipyle on one side and the dignified Amphiaraus on the other. See E. Gerhard, “Archemoros,” Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Berlin, 1866- 1868) i.5ff., with Abbildungen, taf. i.; K. Friederichs, Praxiteles und die Niobegruppe （Leipzig, 1855）, pp. 123ff.; Baumeister, op. cit. i.114, fig. 120.

² See above, Apollod. 1.9.17.

³ That is, “beginner of doom”; hence “ominous,” “foreboding.” The name is so interpreted by Bacch. 8.14, ed. Jebb, σᾶμα μέλλοντος φόνου）, by the Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. pp. 424ff. ed. Boeckh, and by Lactantius Placidus in his commentary on Statius, Theb. iv 717.

Aristophanes

Lemnian Women

Callimachus

fr. 384.21–26 Pfeiffer

he (hurried to Nemea) and swiftly he added more celery from the Argolid^c to that he had gained from Pirene, so that the people of Alexandria and those living on the banks of the river Cinypse may learn that Sosibios received two crowns near-by the two sons—the brother of Learchus and the child that the woman of Myrina suckled^f

^c The prize at the Nemean games was also a celery wreath.

^f The “brother of Learchus” was Melicertes, in whose honour the Isthmian games are said to have been established. The “child that the woman of Myrina suckled” is Opheltes-Archemoros, who was commemorated by the games of Nemea. He was the foster-child of Hypsipyle, daughter of Myrina, after whom the town Myrina of Lemnos was named.

Bravo III, p. 114

Kallimachos calls Opheltes "the one placed under the milk of Myrina," an allusion both to Hypsipyle's role as wet nurse and to her place of origin, Myrina being a city of Lemnos.⁸³ Given that Kallimachos contradicts Euripides regarding the name of Opheltes' father in the ode for Berenike, it is noteworthy that here he does allude to Hypsipyle; this may lend credence to the idea that her role in the myth was not Euripides' invention and has some older authority.

⁸³ So Pfeiffer, ad loc.

Euripides

Hypsipyle

test. iiia (Hypothesis) [= P. Oxy. 2455 frs. 14–15, 3652 cols. i and ii.1-15]

Hypsipyle, which begins: ‘(Dionysus), who with (thyrsuses) and fawnskins . . . ’; the plot (is as follows) . . . (about fourteen lines largely lost, perhaps including . . . Amphiaraus . . . arriving . . .) . . . (Hypsipyle) showed (them) the spring . . . (torn asunder by?) a [line 20] serpent . . . the sons born . . . arrived (in the) vicinity in search of their mother, and having lodged with Lycurgus’ wife wanted to compete in the boy’s funeral games; and she having received the [line 25] aforesaid youths as guests approved them, but (planned) to kill their mother (as) having killed (her) son on purpose. . But when Amphiaraus . . . (she?) thanked him . . . (several lines lost) . . . [line 30] the(ir?) mother . . . they found . . . (several lines lost) . . .

test. iv [= Greek Anthology 3.10 = Palatine Anthology 3.10]

On the west side (i.e. of the monument at Cyzicus to Apollonis, mother of Attalus and Eumenes of Pergamum), at the beginning of the tenth plaque are carved Eunoos and Thoas, the sons of Hypsipyle, making themselves known to their mother and displaying the golden vine which was their family’s emblem, and rescuing her from the vengeance of Eurydice prompted by the death of Archemorus.

(Inscription:) ‘Reveal, Thoas, this plant of Dionysus; thus you will rescue your mother from death, the slave Hypsipyle, who endured Eurydice’s wrath when the serpent, offspring of the earth, killed helpless Archemorus. And you too go on your way, leaving Asopia’s rich land to bring your mother to holy Lemnos.’¹

¹ Much of the detail here may well be Euripidean, although in the play Eurydice probably forgave Hypsipyle before she and her sons recognized each other (see Introduction above).

test. va

Vatican Mythographer 2.141 (p. 123 Bode); similarly Lactantius Placidus on Statius, 4.740

Amongst the competitors at these games were Hypsipyle’s two sons, whom she had borne to Jason and left in Lemnos when she fled. They too had gone in search of their mother, and now were victorious in the foot-race. The herald proclaimed their names, and that they were the sons of Jason and Hypsipyle, and so their mother recognized them. Once they had recognized her, they obtained the king’s agreement and soon took her back to Lemnos.¹

¹ The recognition process described here may be Euripidean, although the involvement of the king is doubtful.

fr. 752a

<Hypsipyle>

. . . Staphylos . . . Peparethos . . . of these . . . seasons . . . Hera(’s?) . . . Dionysus . . . a third . . . ::Dionysus . . . Chios . . .5 (one line) . . . [line 5]

Lemnos . . . and I . . .¹ [line 10]

¹ Hypsipyle probably listed four sons of Dionysus (F 752) and Ariadne (cf. Apollodorus, Epit. 1.9): Staphylos (personification of the grape-bunch), Peparethos (identified with the wine-producing island of that name, now Skopelos), Oenopion (‘Son of Wine-face’, often associated with Chios), and Thoas (Hypsipyle’s father, ruler of Lemnos). Alternatively, Peparethos was named as Staphylos’ island (cf. Diodorus 5.79).

fr. 752c [= fr. 764 Nauck]

<Thoas>

(to Euneos as they enter) Look—run your eyes up towards the sky, and take a look at the painted reliefs on the pediment.¹

¹ The brothers admire the decoration of the temple of Zeus as they arrive in Nemea (cf. Iphigenia in Tauris 67ff., Ion 184ff., Helen 68ff.).

fr. 752d

<Hypsipyle>

(to the baby Opheltes as she opens the door to the strangers) . . . will come . . . toys which (will) calm your mind from crying. (to Euneos and Thoas)Was it you, young men, who knocked at the door? (noticing their looks) O happy the mother that bore you, whoever she was!¹ Why have you come to this house, and what do you want from it?

¹ Dramatic irony, as Hypsipyle unknowingly refers to herself.

Thoas

We need to be given shelter in the house, woman, if we may, (to stay) one night. We have what we need and will be (no) trouble to this (household); you for your part will stay just as you are.²

² A less obvious dramatic irony: the twins will in fact rescue Hypsipyle from her servitude.

fr. 752h.1–14

...

(Amphiaraus approaches by a side-entrance)

<Chorus>

O Zeus, possessor of this Nemean grove, what business brings these newcomers I see close by, distinctively dressed in Dorian clothing, and coming towards this house through the lonely grove?

...

fr. 752h.26–32

Hypsipyle

These are known as the wealthy halls of Lycurgus, who was chosen from all of Asopia to be the temple-keeper of our local Zeus.

Amphiaraus

(I would like to ask) to take some running water in pitchers, so we may pour a (proper) libation to the gods. The30 trickles of stagnant water are not clear, and are being all churned up by our numerous host.

fr. 753

<Hypsipyle>

I’ll show the Argives Achelous’ stream.¹

¹ The great river Achelous could be regarded as the source or parent of minor rivers and springs throughout Greece.

fr. 753d

Part of a lyric exchange between Hypsipyle (returning from the spring without the baby) and the Chorus, vv. 1–9 very damaged but including 4 O me! from Hypsipyle, then:

fr. 754

Probably from the same sung dialogue:

<hypsipyle>

. . . †picking† one quarry of flowers after another with joyful spirit, his child’s mind unsatisfied.

fr. 754a

Spoken dialogue later in the same scene:

<Hypsipyle?>

. . . a spring (is shaded?) . . . a serpent living by it . . . staring fiercely . . . shaking its helm, (in fear?) of which . . . shepherds . . . (text uncertain)¹ . . . . . . to do . . . and . . .

¹ Wilamowitz noted that the text might yield either ‘when silently’ or ‘(it) approaches)’, either presumably referring to the serpent.

fr. 757

...

<Eurydice>

Why do you seize on words so cleverly (and) . . . spin them out at length (when you have killed) Opheltes, (the joy) of my eyes? . . . and do not remind me (of my troubles?)1 . . . for me and my son whom (you have killed).

<Hypsipyle>

Do you (then) mean to kill me thus in anger, mistress, before you have properly learned the truth of this matter? You are silent, and give me no reply? O, how I suffer! I do not greatly complain that I must die, but if I wrongly seem to have killed the child, my nursling, whom I fed and cherished in my arms in every way except that I did not bear him—and he was a great blessing to me. O prow †and water whitening from the brine† of Argo! O my two sons, I face a terrible death! O seer, son of Oicles, I am about to die: defend me, come, don’t see me die so shamefully accused, for I die because of you! Come—you know what I have done, and she would accept you as the truest witness of my misfortune. (to Eurydice’s servants, despairing)

Take me, then; I see no friend nearby to save me. My deference, it seems, was wasted.

(Amphiaraus re-enters from the direction of the spring)

Amphiaraus

Wait, you who are sending this woman to be slaughtered, mistress of this house—for your dignified bearing shows me you are of free birth.

Hypsipyle

(kneeling before him)

O, by your knees—I fall as your suppliant, Amphiaraus—and by your chin and the skill you have from Apollo; for you have come just in time for me in my troubles. Save me, for I am to die because of my service to you. I am facing death, you see me bound at your knees, who went with you strangers then and assisted you. You will act righteously since you are righteous; but if you forsake me, you will bring reproach on the people of Argos and of Greece. Come, you who perceive events for the Danaans through (pure) burnt offerings, (tell) her what happened to her son. You (know) since you were there, yet she claims I plotted against her family and killed her boy on purpose.

Amphiaraus

I have come well acquainted with and had guessed your situation and what you would suffer because of the child’s death. I am here now to defend you in your misfortune, relying not on force but on piety. ...

...

Amphiaraus

...

But it is our inevitable lot to harvest life like a fruitful crop, for one of us to live, one not: why should we lament these things, which by our very nature we must endure? ... For he will be famous . . . and . . . a contest for him . . . giv(ing?) crowns . . . he will be envied . . . in this . . . will be remembered . . . was given the name . . . in the grove of Nemea . . . For she is blameless . . . For with good . . . (for you?) . . . will make you and your son . . .

Eurydice

My son, the . . . for you . . . less than . . . We should look at the natures of the good and the bad, and at their actions and their ways of life, putting much trust in those who are temperate, and not consorting at all with the unrighteous.

fr. 759a

58–110 (Collard and Cropp, pp. 310–317)

... then from the reunion celebration of Hypsipyle, Euneos, Thoas (mute) and Amphiaraus:

<Hypsipyle>

(singing joyfully) . . . (our fortune?) has driven (me) and my sons along a single path, this way and that, swerving us now towards fear, now towards gladness, but in time has shone out bright and fair.

Amphiaraus

(speaking) Lady, you now have the favour that I owed you. As you were generous to me when I made my request, so I have repaid you generously concerning your two sons. Keep yourself safe, now—and you two protect your mother; and prosper, while we, as we set out to do, will lead our army on and come to Thebes.

(Amphiaraus departs)

Hypsipyle

(speaking)

Good fortune to you, for you are worthy of it, stranger.

Euneos

(speaking)

Good fortune indeed—but as for you, poor mother, how greedily some god has fed on your misfortunes!

Hypsipyle

(singing her replies)

Alas, the flight that I fled, my son—if you only knew it—from sea-girt Lemnos, because I did not cut off my father’s grey head!¹

¹ See Introduction above on the Lemnian massacre and Hypsipyle’s role in it.

Euneos

Did they really order you to kill your father?

Hypsipyle

I am gripped by fear of those evil events—O my son, like Gorgons they slew their husbands in their beds!

Euneos

And you—how did you steal away and so escape death?

Hypsipyle

I came to the deep-resounding shore and the swelling sea, the lonely refuge of birds.

Euneos

And how did you come here from there, what transport did you use?

Hypsipyle

Seafarers, rowing, took me on a foreign voyage to Nauplion harbour and sold me into slavery—O my son—in this land, ship-borne, a pitiful piece of merchandise.

Euneos

Alas for your hardships—

Hypsipyle

Don’t grieve at what turned out well! But how were you and your brother raised, my son, and in whose care? Tell, tell this to your mother, O my son!

Euneos

Argo took us to the Colchians’ city.

Hypsipyle

Yes, just lately weaned as you were from my breast!

Euneos

And when my father Jason died, mother . . .

Hypsipyle

Alas, you tell me of evils and bring tears to my eyes, my son.

Euneos

. . . Orpheus took us to the region of Thrace.

Hypsipyle

What service was he doing for your hapless father? Tell me, my son!

Euneos

He taught me the music of the Asian lyre, and trained my brother in Ares’ martial arms.³

³ The politically fundamental functions of music and warfare are divided between the twins, as between Amphion and Zethus in Antiope (especially F 223.86–95). For Euneos’ connection with music at Athens see Introduction above.

Hypsipyle

And how did you travel across the Aegean to Lemnos’ shore?

Euneos

Thoas your father conveyed †the children of two†.⁴

⁴ Restoration uncertain: ‘the twin sons’ or ‘his son’s sons’, Wecklein; ‘your two sons’, Collard.

Hypsipyle

Is he really safe, then?

Euneos

Yes, through Bacchus’ contriving.

Hypsipyle

. . . (of/from?) hardships . . . expectation of life . . . brought (his?) son for your mother . . . (to/for?) me.

Euneos

. . . Thoas’(?) wine-dark grape-bunch.⁵

⁵ Possibly a gold ornament used as a recognition token (see Introduction above).

First Vatican Mythographer

130 Pepin, p. 62

The Story of the Lemnian Women and Hypsipyle.

Although the Lemnian women paid a tenth part of their produce to all the gods each year, they decided that Venus alone must be passed over. In anger, the goddess let loose a goatish stench upon them. Their husbands cursed their wives and left Lemnos out of loathing for them. The husbands went to the men of Thrace and took their daughters for themselves in marriage. When this became known to the women of Lemnos, they swore an oath against the whole race of men. Venus urged them on, and they killed all the men when they returned from Thrace. Among these women only Hypsipyle aided her father Thoas. She not only spared him, but even followed him as he fled to the seashore. Then Liber appeared to Thoas and guided him by a prosperous sea voyage to the island of Chion. Later, the Argonauts came to Lemnos, and the Lemnian women received them with hospitality and had intercourse with them. Hypsipyle had two sons by Jason: Euneus and Thoas. Although the Argonauts were detained for many days, they departed after Hercules chided them. Moreover, after the Lemnian women learned that Hypsipyle had saved her father, they tried to kill her. As she fled, she was captured by robbers and carried off to Nemea. She was sold into servitude to Lycurgus, the king of that territory.

196 Pepin, p. 83

The Story of the Sons of Jason and Hypsipyle, and Phaeton.

The Jasonids were the sons of Jason and Hypsipyle. One of them had a maternal name, Thoas, because his mother was the daughter of Thoas; the other son was called Euneus, after his father the sailor, since ‘‘good’’ in Greek is eu and ‘‘ship’’ is neus . Euneus means ‘‘sailing well,’’ as it were. Also, Phaeton, or Thion, was the son of Liber. He ruled on the island of Chios and was the father of King Thoas. Hypsipyle, the daughter of Thoas, was the only one to save her father when a conspiracy was formed against all the men. Her great-grandfather Liber protected her.

Greek Anthology

3.10 [= Palatine Anthology 3.10 = Euripides Hypsiple test. iv]

On the western side on the first part of the tenth tablet are carved Eunous and Thoas, the children of Hypsipyle, being recognized by their mother. They are showing her the golden vine that was the token of their birth and saving her from her punishment at the hands of Eurydice for the death of Archemorus.

Thoas, show her this, Bacchus’ plant, for you will save from death your mother, the slave Hypsipyle. She had endured the wrath of Eurydice since the earth-born snake slew feeble Archemorus. And you go too, Eunous, and leave the fields of Asopis, to take your mother to most holy Lemnos.

Herodotus

6.138.4

Thereupon the Pelasgians resolved to kill the sons of the Attic women; they did this, and then killed the boys' mothers also. From this deed and the earlier one which was done by the women when they killed their own husbands who were Thoas' companions, a “Lemnian crime” has been a proverb in Hellas for any deed of cruelty.

Homer

Iliad

7.467–469

And ships full many were at hand from Lemnos, bearing wine, sent forth by Jason's son, Euneus, whom Hypsipyle bare to Jason, shepherd of the host. [470]

14.230

and so [Hera] came to Lemnos, the city of godlike Thoas.

21.40–41

For that time had he sold him into well-built Lemnos, bearing him thither on his ships, and the son of Jason had given a price for him;

23.740–749

[740] Then the son of Peleus straightway set forth other prizes for fleetness of foot: a mixingbowl of silver, richly wrought; six measures it held, and in beauty it was far the goodliest in all the earth, seeing that Sidonians, well skilled in deft handiwork, had wrought it cunningly, and men of the Phoenicians brought it over the murky deep, and landed it in harbour, [745] and gave it as a gift to Thoas; and as a ransom for Lycaon, son of Priam, Jason's son Euneos gave it to the warrior Patroclus. This bowl did Achilles set forth as a prize in honourof his comrade, even for him whoso should prove fleetest in speed of foot. [750]

Hyginus

Fabulae

15

The Women of Lemnos The women on the island of Lemnos ... ... [Hypsipyle] was sold into the service of King Lucurgus.* [See below: Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 189] ...

[Grant:] WOMEN OF LEMNOS: On the island of Lemnos the women for several years did not make offerings to Venus, and because of her anger their husbands married Thracian wives and scorned their former ones. But the Lemnian women (all except Hypsipyle), instigated by the same Venus, conspired to kill the whole tribe of men who were there. Hypsipyle secretly put her father Thoas on board a ship which a storm carried to the island Taurica. In the meantime, the Argonauts, sailing along, came to Lemnos. When Iphinoe, guardian of the harbour, saw them, she announced their coming to Hypsipyle the queen, to whom Polyxo, by virtue of her middle age, gave advice that she should put them under obligation to the gods of hospitality and invite them to a friendly reception. Hypsipyle bore sons to Jason, Euneus and Deipylus. Delayed many days there, they were chided by Hercules, and departed. Now when the Lemnian women learned that Hypsipyle ahd saved her father, they tried to kill her. She fled, but pirates captured her, took her to Thebes, and sold her as a slave to King Lycus. [Smith and Trzaskoma: Lycurgus.*] The Lemnian women gave the names of the Argonauts to the children they had conceived by them.

74

Hypsipyle The seven generals were on their way to attack Thebes when they came to Nemea, where Hypsipyle, Thoas' daughter, was enslaved to King Lycurgus,* [See below: Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 189] whose son Archemorus (or Ophites) she was nursing. She had received an oracle that warned her not to put the boy down on the earth before he could walk. So the seven generals who were goimg to Thebes came to Hypsipyle in search of water and asked her to show them where they could find some. Afraid to put the boy down on the earth, she placed him instead in a deep patch of parsley that sat next to the spring. While she was drawing the water for them, the serpent that was guarding the spring devoured the boy. Adrastus and the others killed the serpent, appealed to Lycurgus on Hypsipyle's behaf, and established funeral games in the boy's honor. These games still occur every fourth year, and the winners receive a crown of parsley.

[Grant:] The seven chieftains on their way to attack Thebes came to Nemea, where Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, as a slave, was caring for the boy Archemorus or Ophites, son of King Lycus. He had been warned by an oracle not to put the child on the ground until he could walk. When the seven leaders who were going to Thebes came to Hypsipyle in their search for water, and asked her to show them some, she, fearing to put the boy on the ground, . . . [found] some very thick parsley near the spring, and placed the child in it. But while she was giving them water, a dragon, guardian of the spring, devoured the child. Adrastus and the others killed the dragon, and interceded for Hypsipyle to Lycus, and established funeral games in honour of the boy. They take place every fifth year, and the victors receive a wreath of parsley.

120

[Grant:] IPHIGENIA: When the Furies were pursuing Orestes, he went to Delphi to inquire when his sufferings would end. The reply was that he should go to the lad of Taurica to King Thoas, father of Hypsipyle,

254

[Grant:] THOSE WHO WERE EXCEPTIONALLY DUTIFUL: Antigone, daughter of Oidipus, gave burial to her brother, Polynices. Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, was dutiful toward her brother Orestes. ... Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, to her father, for whom she gave her life.

Ovid

Heroides

6.1–16

VI

Hypsipyle to Jason

You are said to have touched the shores of Thessaly with safe-returning keel, rich in the fleece of the golden ram. I speak you well for your safety—so far as you give me chance; yet of this very thing I should have been informed by message of your own. For the winds might have failed you, even though you longed to see me, and kept you from returning by way of the realms I pledged you;a but a letter is written, howe’er adverse the wind. Hypsipyle deserved the sending of a greeting.

Why was it rumour brought me tidings of you, rather than lines from your hand?—tidings that the bulls sacred to Mars had received the curving yoke; that at the scattering of the seed there sprang forth the harvest of men, who for their doom had no need of your right arm; that the spoil of the ram, the deep-gold fleece the unsleeping dragon guarded, had nevertheless been stolen away by your bold hand. Could I say to those who are slow to credit these reports, “He has written me this with his own hand,” oh, how proud should I be!

6.53

the women of Lemnos know—yea, even too well—how to vanquish men.^b

^b The women of Lemnos had once slain all the men in the island as a measure of revenge against their husbands, who had taken Thracian women in their stead.

6.56–64

Here twice the summer fled for you, here twice the winter. It was the third harvest when you were compelled to set sail, and accompanied these lies with lying tears: “I am sundered from thee, Hypsipyle; but so the fates grant me return, thine own I leave thee now, and thine own will I ever be. What lieth heavy in thy bosom from me—may it come to live, and may we both share in its parentage!”

Thus did you speak; and with tears streaming down your false face I remember you could say no more.

6.114–115

If noble blood and generous lineage move you—lo, I am known as daughter of Minoan Thoas! Bacchus was my grandsire;

6.119–128

And now, too, I have brought forth; rejoice for us both, Jason! Sweet was the burden that I bore—its author had made it so. I am happy in the number, too, for by Lucina’s kindly favour I have brought forth twin offspring, a pledge for each of us.^a If you ask whom they resemble, I answer, yourself is seen in them. The ways of deceit they know not; for the rest, they are like their father. I almost gave them to be carried to you, their mother’s ambassadors; but thought of the cruel stepdame turned me back from the path I would have trod. ’Twas Medea I feared. Medea is more than a stepdame; the hands of Medea are fitted for any crime.

^a Nebrophonus and Euneus, according to Apollodorus; according to Hyginus, Euneus and Deiphilus.

6.143

my twin babes

6.151–164

But if in any way great Jupiter the just attends from on high to my prayers, may the woman who intrudes upon my marriage-bed suffer the woes in which Hypsipyle groans, and feel the lot she herself now brings on me; and as I am now left alone, wife and mother of two babes, so may she one day, bereft of as many babes, lose husband too! Nor may she long keep her ill-gotten gains, but leave them in worse hap—let her be an exile, and seek a refuge through the entire world! A bitter sister to her brother, a bitter daughter to her wretched sire, may she be as bitter to her children, and as bitter to her husband! When she shall have no hope more of refuge by the sea or by the land, let her make trial of the air; let her wander, destitute, bereft of hope, stained red with the blood of her murders! This fate do I, the daughter of Thoas, cheated of my wedded state, in prayer call down upon you. Live on, a wife and husband, accursed in your bed!

Ibis

481–483

Nor mayst thou be more lightly stung by poisoned snake than the daughter-in-law of old Oeager and Calliope: or than Hypsipyle’s babe,

Pindar

Olympian 4.18–23

Perseverance is what puts men to the test, and what saved the son of Clymenus [20] from the contempt of the Lemnian women. He won the foot race in bronze armor, and said to Hypsipyle as he went to take the garland

Pythian 4.251–254

And they reached the expanses of Ocean, and the Red Sea, and the race of the Lemnian women, who killed their husbands. There they displayed their prowess of limbs in athletic contests with a cloak for a prize, and they went to bed with the women.

Propertius

Elegies

1.15.17–20

Not thus, as the winds hurried the son of Aeson away, stood Hypsipyle full of foreboding in the empty bedchamber: Hypsipyle never knew another love after that, once she had melted in welcome to her Haemonian guest.

Second Vatican Mythographer

141 Bode [= Euripides, Hypsipyle test. va = 164 Pepin, pp. 166–167]

• Pepin, pp. 166–167

164. On Venus.

After the Sun detected the adultery of Venus and Mars, Vulcan bound both of them in bed with very fine chains on the island of Lemnos where he lived. Although the women there paid a tenth part of their produce to all the gods each year, they said that Venus alone should be passed over. In honor of Vulcan they condemned her for her adultery. In anger, Venus let loose a goatish stench upon them. Their husbands cursed them and abandoned Lemnos out of loathing for their wives. They went to the Thracians and took their daughters for themselves in marriage. When this became known to the women of Lemnos, they all swore an oath against the whole race of men. Venus urged them on, and they killed all the men when they returned from Thrace. Among them only Hypsipyle had mercy on Thoas, her father. Not only did she spare him, but even followed him as he fled to the seashore. Then Liber, who was actually his father, appeared to Thoas and guided him to the island of Chion by a prosperous voyage. When the Argonauts came to Lemnos, the Lemnian women received them with hospitality and had intercourse with them. Hypsipyle had two sons by Jason: Euneus and Thoas. Although the [p. 167] Argonauts were detained there for many days, they departed after Hercules chided them. After the Lemnian women learned that Hypsipyle had saved her father, they tried to kill her. As she was fleeing, she was captured by robbers and carried off to Nemea. There she was sold into servitude to Lycurgus, the king of that region. In his service, she nursed his son Opheltes, later called Archemorus. The boy was killed by a serpent. Angered by this loss of his child, King Lycurgus wanted to exercise the right of ownership over Hypsipyle and to sacrifice her in honor of his son. He was prevented by the Greeks to whom she showed a spring when they were thirsty, while in the meantime the boy perished. Also, the Greeks had received an oracular response that they would not reach Thebes unless the shades of Archemorus were placated. For this reason they established funeral games. Jason’s two sons by Hypsipyle were present at these games. She had left them on Lemnos when she fled, and they were now seeking their mother. They prevailed in running races, and when the herald announced their names as sons of Jason and Hypsipyle, their mother knew them. After they recognized her and persuaded the king, they soon took her back to Lemnos.

Scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica

1.601

Simonides

fr. 547 PMG = Schol. Pindar Pythian 4.451

Simonides too tells that the Argonauts competed¹ with a garment as the prize.

¹ In an athletic contest on Lemnos.

Statius

Thebaid

4.727–729

Great glory awaits the Nymph when every other year the games at which Achaea’s leaders sweat and the festival of death shall renew the memory of sad Hypsipyle and sacred Opheltes.

4.730–745

Therefore no longer do they have strength to carry hot shields or the tight fabric of corselets; so harsh thirst parches them. Not only are their mouths and constricted throats burnt up, an inner force convulses them. ... Adrastus sends scouts this way and that; are the Licymnian meres still there, does any of Amymone’s water survive? All stagnate, drained by hidden fires, nor is there hope of a watery sky. They might as well scour yellow Libya and the sandy deserts of Africa and Syene that no cloud ever shades.

4.746–752

At last as they wander in the forest (so Euhius himself had planned it) suddenly they see Hypsipyle, fair in her sadness. Opheltes, not hers but the ill-starred child of Inachian Lycurgus, hangs at her breast, her hair is dishevelled, her clothing poor; yet on her face are marks of royalty, her dignity shows, not sunk in her misfortune.

4.775–789

The Lemnian answers, her face downcast: ‘How should I be a goddess for you, even though my origin be of heaven? Would that I had not transcended mortality by my sorrows! You see the bereaved foster mother of a child entrusted to my care. But heaven knows whether mine have bosom and breast—and yet I had a kingdom and a mighty father. But why do I talk and keep the weary from the waves they crave? Come with me now, let us see whether Langia keeps her perennial waters in their channel. Always she is wont to run, under the path of the raging Crab and though the hackle of the Icarian star 101 be blazing.’ The poor babe clings to her; and lest she be too slow a guide to the Pelasgi, alas, she places him on the ground nearby (so the Parcae ordained), and when he will not be put aside, consoles his sweet tears with bunches of flowers and loving murmurs: ...

5.1–27

Thirst quenched by the river, ...come tell us, as we briskly leave your waters, what is your home and country, under what stars you draw your breath. And say, who is that father? For the gods are not far from you, though Fortune has deserted, high blood is in your aspect, awe breathes in your afflicted face.’

5.28–39

The Lemnian [Hypsipyle] sighs, stays awhile in modest tears, then makes reply: 'Ruler, you bid me freshen monstrous wounds—Furies and Lemnos and weapons brought into narrow beds and men fought down with swords of shame. Ah, to my heart the crime returns, the cold Fury. Alas for them on whom was brought this madness! Ah night! Ah father! For I am she, captains, lest perchance you be ashamed of your kindly hostess, she who alone snatched her parent away and hid him. Why do I weave a long preamble to a tale of woe? And arms summon you and the great enterprise you have at heart. This much it is enough to tell: I am Hypsipyle, child of famous Thoas; a captive, I bear the thraldom of your Lycurgus.'

5.49ff.

She [Hypsipyle] begins: ‘Aegean Nereus surrounds the isle of Lemnos, ...

5.218–246

I shall not now set forth the deaths of the crowd, cruel though they were, but I recall bereavements in my own family. I saw you fall, blond Cydon, and you, Crenaeus, with your untouched locks flowing down your neck; you were my foster brothers, my father’s sons on the side. You too, strong Gyas, my betrothed whom I feared, 14 I saw fall by the stroke of bloody Myrmidone, and how his barbarous mother stabbed Epopeus as he played among the chaplets and couches. Lycaste weeps disarmed over her brother of equal age, Cydimus, watching the face alas so like her own upon his doomed body, and the bloom on his cheek and the locks she had herself twined with gold, when their savage mother, who had already slain her husband, takes stand beside her, urging her with threats and putting the sword in her hands. Like a wild beast that under a gentle master has lost the habit of fury and is slow to show fight, refusing to resume its old ways despite goads and many a lash, so she falls upon him as he lies and collapsing receives his streaming blood in her bosom and presses her torn hair into the fresh wounds.

But when I saw Alcimede carrying her father’s severed but still murmuring head and a sword in need of blood, 15 my hair stood stiff and a cruel shudder pierced my vitals. To me he seemed my Thoas and the fell hand seemed mine. Forthwith I hie me distraught to my father’s chamber. He was long awake to be sure (what sleep for him that has great charge?), asking himself (though our house lay far back from the city) what the noises, what the sounds in the night, why clamourous the quiet. To him as he trembled I reveal the crime in sequence, what the grief, whence the bold spirit: “They are mad, no force can keep them off. Follow this way, unfortunate. They press, they will be on you if you tarry, and mayhap you will fall with [cont.]

5.265–266

Then for the first time Thyoneus [Dionysus] revealed himself to us in our trepidation, bringing last-minute aid to his son Thoas,

5.271–273

[Dionysus:] "My son, while I was permitted by the Fates to keep Lemnos for you powerful and feared even by foreign peoples, ...

5.278–284

Hasten your flight both, and do you, maiden, my worthy offspring, guide your father by the way where the arms of the double wall go down to the sea. At that gate where you think all is silence stands baleful Venus and girt with sword encourages the mad-women (whence the goddess’ violence, whence this Martian heart?). Entrust your father to the broad deep. I shall take over your cares."

5.287–334

Then to the gods of the sea and the Winds ... I entrust my father hidden in curved timber. ... the herd goes maimed, its pride departed; the very land, the very rivers, and the mute trees 26 bemoan the slain king.

5.335–453

But see! Dividing the waters with her brazen prow comes the pine of Pelion [the Argo], guest at large of the virgin sea. ... Then come feasts and happy sleep and nights of rest; confessing, they pleased, not, I think, without the will of the High Ones.

5.454–467

Mayhap, captains, you would care to know my own transgression; Fate may be its excuse. I swear by the ashes and Furies of my kin, it was not by my will or guilt that I kindled stranger torches (the gods care and know), though Jason had charm to capture young maidens. Bloody Phasis has its own laws; other are the loves you Colchians engender.

And now the stars, shedding their chill, grow warm with the long sunshine and the rapid year turns back. Now comes new progeny and births to answer prayer. Lemnos is loud with unhoped-for children. I too with the rest bring forth twins, memorials of a forced bed though they be, and made a mother by my ungentle guest I revive their grand­sire’s name.⁴¹ What fortune befell them after I left I may not know. Full four times five years are they growing up, if only the Fates allow and Lycaste raised them as I asked.

⁴¹ One of them was called Thoas.

5.471–474

The Minyae long to go and Jason calls on his comrades—the brute; would that he had sailed straight past my shores in the first place, uncaring for his children and pledged word!

5.486–488

Rumour comes to the harbour, telling that Thoas has crossed the deep and reigns in his brother’s ⁴⁵ Chios, that I am innocent, that the burning pyre was empty.

⁴⁵ His name was Oenopion, also son of Bacchus and Ariadne. He ruled Chios; sometimes regarded as founder of the city.

5.493–498

' ... Terrified at such words (a cruel punishment approaches and my royalty is no help) alone I [Hypsipyle] follow the winding shore in secret and leave the accursed city by the known path of my father’s flight. But Euhan did not meet me a second time. A band of pirates landing at the spot snatched me away (I made no sound 47 ) and took me to your country as a slave.'

5.499–504

So the Lemnian exile told her tale anew to the Lernaean kings, solacing her losses with lengthy plaint, oblivious (so the gods would have it) of her absent charge. He sinks his heavy eyes and drooping head on the lush ground and wearied with length of childish doings glides into sleep. His hand stays clutching the grass.

5.505–533

Meanwhile an earthborn serpent arises in the meadow, holy horror of the Achaean wood, dragging his huge form in a loose slide and leaving it behind him. A livid fire is in his eyes, a green foam of swelling venom in his mouth. Threefold his tongue flickers, triple are the rows of his curving fangs, and the cruel splendour on his gilded brow stands forth. The husbandmen called him sacred to the Inachian Thunderer, who had care of the place and poor men’s offerings on woodland altars. Now gliding in a wavy circle he surrounds the god’s shrine, now he scrapes the ... The grasses fall where he brings his face, smitten by his hot breath, the plain dies at his hiss: large as the Serpent that divides the heavens on from the Arctic Wains and passes out to the South Winds and an alien hemisphere; or as he that moved the horns of sacred Parnassus as he twined them with his coils until you pierced him, Delian, and he bore an arrow forest with a hundred wounds.

5.534–540

What god’s allotting, little one, gave you the burden of so great a fate? By this enemy do you lie low scarcely at life’s first threshold? Or was it to make you die sacred through the ages henceforth to the peoples of Greece, worthy of so grand a tomb? Grazed by the lash of the tail tip, you perish, child, and the snake knows not of it. Sleep fled your limbs straightway and your eyes opened only to death.

5.541–554

But when from your shocked lips 50 a dying wail passed out upon the air and the plaint hushed broken like the unfinished utterances of a dream, Hypsipyle heard. In deathly fear she hurries faint knees that will not run easily. Now certain of disaster by her mind’s augury and scattering her gaze in all directions, she ranges the ground in search, vainly crying over and over words familiar to the babe. Nowhere is he, and the meadow has lost the recent tracks. The sluggish enemy lies gathered in a green round, filling broad acres even so, his neck exposed aslant on his belly. The wretched woman shuddered at the sight and with scream upon scream stirred the forest to its depth;

5.605–634

She took the torn limbs to her bosom, poor soul, and twined them in her hair. At last her voice was loosed to find a passage for her sorrow and her moans dissolved into words: ‘Sweet semblance of the children who have forsaken me, Archemorus, 57 solace of my lost estate and country, pride of my servitude, what guilty gods took your life, my joy, whom but now in parting I left at play, crushing the grasses as you hastened in your forward crawl? Ah, where is your starry face? Where your words unfinished in constricted sounds, and laughs and gurgles that only I could understand? How often would I talk to you of Lemnos and the Argo and lull you to sleep with my long tale of woe! So I would console my sorrow and give the little one a mother’s breasts. Now in my bereavement the milky flow comes to me in vain, dropping hapless into your wounds. I recognize the gods. Ah dire presages of my slumber, terrors of the night, and Venus, who never in the darkness appeared to my startled eyes save to my cost! What gods do I accuse? ’Twas I myself—I am to die, so why fear to confess?—who exposed you to the Fates. What madness drew my mind? Could such forgetfulness of such a charge take [p. 316] hold of me? As in my vanity I rehearsed the story of my country and the tale of my renown (such sense of duty, such fidelity!), I paid you, Lemnos, the crime I owed. Where is the deadly snake? Bring me, chieftains, if you have any gratitude for my grievous service, any favour for my words; or slay me yourselves with the sword so that I may not see my sad masters again and bereaved Eurydice, a thing of hate—though my love and grief yield not to hers. Shall I bear this melancholy burden to pour into his mother’s lap? What earth should first sink me in profoundest dark?’

5.638–644

And now a sudden report that ran through the dwelling of Lycurgus as he was at sacrifice filled himself and his house with tears—himself as he approached from the top of Perseus’ mountain where he had offered portions to the unfriendly Thunderer, shaking his head as he returned from the angry entrails. Here he was keeping himself, taking no part in the Argive war; not that he lacked courage, but temple and altars held him back.

5.653–679

But great-hearted Lycurgus’ love for his son is up and doing. It takes strength from calamity; a father’s furious anger sucks back his tears, and with long strides he despatches the fields that stay him, shouting ‘And where is she to whom spilt blood of mine is a trifle or a pleasure? Does she live? Take her, thrust her, comrades, bring her quickly. I shall make her forget all her rigmarole of Lemnos, and her father, and the lie of race divine that she is so proud of.’ Snatching up a sword and advancing, he was about to deal death in his rage, when the hero son of Oeneus went into action, ... Keep it, and let the victory of the Greeks find you still at the graveside bewailing this fatality.'

5.710–730

Which of the High Ones solaced her calamity, balancing her tears with an answer to her great prayer, and brought back unlooked-for joy to sad Hypsipyle? You it was, Euhan, founder of the family, who had brought the two youths 67 from Lemnos’ shore to Nemea, preparing a wondrous destiny. Their mother was the reason for their journey and the hospitable dwelling of Lycurgus had given them entry, when the report reached the king of his offspring piteously killed. So they are there as his companions and (oh chance and men’s minds blind to the future!) support the king. But as soon as Lemnos and Thoas’ name come to their ears, they rush through weapons and hands and, both weeping, tear their mother apart with greedy embraces, taking her to their bosoms in turn. She stays fixed like a stony rock, her eyes unmoving, not daring to trust the gods she has experienced. But when she sees their faces and the signs of Argo on the swords Jason had left behind and Jason’s name inwoven on their shoulders, her sorrows left her, and overcome by so great a boon she collapsed, her eyes bedewed with other tears. Signs too were manifest in heaven, cries of tumultuous joy and the drums and cymbals of the god crashed through the resonant air.

5.733

‘Hear, ruler of Nemea

6.1–5

Rumour travels at large gliding through the Danaan cities with report that the sons of Inachus are founding rites for a new tomb and games to boot, in which martial valour will sweat in preparation for war and set itself alight, a festival according to Greek custom.

6.340–345

And see, the young sons of Jason, new glory of their mother Hypsipyle, come to a chariot on which both rode: Thoas—family name from his grandfather—and Euneos, called from Argo’s omen. Twins, they had everything the same: face, chariot, horses, dress, nor less concord in their prayers; each wishes to win or to be outrun only by his brother.

Valerius Flaccus

Argonautica

2.77–81

Eagerly the rowers smote the sea and made the prow’s point quiver with their speed, until Lemnos, Vulcan’s home, rose above the crest of the waves, Lemnos, for whose many sufferings thou mournedst, Lord of Fire; not the frenzy and guilt of the women can drive thee from the land, and it is still sweet to think upon its former service.

2.98–107

But there [Lemnos] Venus’ altar stands ever cold, since the day when the goddess trembled before her husband’s righteous anger, while Mars lay bound in the noiseless-woven fetters. For this cause she is plotting evil and scheming destruction for guilty Lemnos like some Fury; ...And now the day had come which saw the rout of the Thracians in battle.¹

¹ The story was that the Lemnian men who had been fighting on the mainland against the Thracians came back with concubines and would have nothing to do with their own wives, who thereupon murdered them—a simpler version of the Agamemnon applied to a whole community; in Valerius the fury of the women first arises from a suspicion and rumour that such is the case, though in 344–5 it is implied that the suspicion was not groundless. Another difference is that the disaster is plotted by Venus as a punishment for Vulcan’s detection of her intrigue with Mars, while in Statius, who here follows Apollonius, the goddess is taking vengeance for neglect of her worship.

2.242–259

But now what words can I bring worthy of thy high courage, Hypsipyle, thou the glory, the single honour of thy country’s fall? Thy story told in my song no ages shall make forgotten, so but the Latian annals still mark the centuries, and the homes from Ilium founded and the palace of our mighty empire. Daughters and the wives of sons, all beneath one impulse had joined the throng, and now the whole island was ablaze with widespread deeds of horror. But good Hypsipyle, sword in hand, cries: [249] “Straightway flee the city, father, ... Up and flee! Up and be swift to profit by my doubting spirit, and do thou (O have pity!), not I, grasp the sword!” Then she supported his limbs, and covering his head brought him swiftly in silence to Bacchus’ shrine, ... Then in the still shrine she placed him trembling, below the feet and the right hand of the god; gathered beneath the folds of the sacred robe no eye might see him;

2.265–280

she arrays her father in garlands, with the tresses of a youth and the robes of Lyaeus, and causes him to stand in a chariot, while around him she places the cymbals and drums, and the caskets, full of mysterious awe. She herself twined the Bacchanal ivy about her bosom and her limbs, and brandished a vine-leaved wand that smote the air; looking back to see that her father in his robes should grasp the leaf-decked reins, that the horns should stand out from the snow-white coif, and that a sacred goblet should bring Bacchus before men’s eyes. Next with a harsh grating she thrust back the strong doors and moved onward through the city as she cried aloud: “I pray thee, Bacchus, quit thy bloodstained dwelling-place; let the sea cleanse thee of the pollution of death, and let me bring thy snakes again to thy temple when they are purified.” Thus she went safe through the terrors about her path, for the god himself made her to be feared, and consciously she glowed with breathless inspiration. So now she hid the old man far from the cruel city in the silent forest;

2.280–300

yet by day and by night fear troubles her, and the secret of her bold deed, and Erinys, cheated of her victim. No more she dares to join the dances of her companions (once only can the mock rites deceive), nor to visit in secret the glen that hides her father, while she must seek escape for him, poor wretch, by other means. She beheld a ship outworn with the toils of the savage sea, long since offered up to Thetis and to Glaucus, which passing time had scorched with its suns and the moon with her hoarfrosts had worn. Hither with all speed through the darkness and silence of midnight she haled her father from the woods, and thus in sorrow spake: "What a land, my father, what homes lately so prosperous, dost thou leave, spoiled of their manhood! Oh horrible pollution! Oh the ruin wrought in one bitter night! How can I trust thee to so frail a ship, father dear? How can I keep thee here amid these great dangers? Alas, I am paying at length for my crime of cunning! Hear my prayer, goddess, thou who now drivest thy slumbrous car across the ocean. I ask no subject peoples for my father, no bounteous land, no throne; only grant that he go forth from his home and country. When shall I be borne through the midst of the city, happy that my father’s life was saved? When shall I see tears and lamentations in this land?"

2.300–303

[Hypsipyle] finished; [Thoas] in fear escapes in the oarless ship afar, and reaches the dwelling of the Tauri and Diana’s savage shrine. Here didst thou, goddess, put a sword in his hand, and didst appoint him warden of thy cheerless altar;

2.306–310

[Hypsipyle] betook her to the citadel, whither an unkempt throng of women had gathered together. With harsh clamour they sat them down where fathers and sons had sat before, and amid the buildings of the empty city they make new laws: on Hypsipyle they bestow the throne and sceptre of her father as by right, and a daughter’s love has its fit reward.

2.311–328

Lo! afar off they [the Lemnian women] descry warriors making towards Lemnos with sturdy strokes of the oar; the queen starts in sudden alarm, and calls councillors about her. No reckless rage lacked they to bring arms or fling brands upon the foe, had not Vulcan quelled the savage passions of Venus’ stirring. Then too Polyxo, the priestess beloved of Phoebus (of uncertain race and country, she declares that thou, O mighty Tethys and the ever-changing Proteus steered their course thither from the Pharian caves, drawn by a team of seals across the waters; oft-times she hides in the depths and, tarrying awhile, rises again as one reporting words she had heard beneath the waters): “Let us yield them the harbour,” she cries. “Oh trust me, it is destiny brings this ship, and the god that favours Lemnos has guided the Minyae hither across the sea; freely doth Venus herself grant us to mate with them, while our wombs have strength and our years are not past child-bearing.” Her words find favour, and Iphinoe bears the entreaty shoreward to the Greeks; and they shrink not at the guilty people nor at the traces of yesterday’s crime, for Cythera’s queen banishes all fear of the island.

2.351–356

But most of all Hypsipyle marvels at the prince’s fortunes, and asks him what destiny it is that draws him, what power of his king that constrains, and whence comes the great Haemonian ship; she hangs upon his words, his only, and slowly gathers in the sweet flame, no longer unyielding to wedlock or unkind to passion’s return, and the god himself grants a respite and a time for love.

2.400–425

Even Hypsipyle too, when she descried the sudden going to and fro along the beach, and the heroes departing utterly from Lemnos, groaned aloud and thus plaintively accosted Jason: "So quickly, at the first clear sky, dost thou resolve to unfurl thy sails, O dearer to me than mine own father? But now have the angry seas sunk to rest. In this manner would thy ship be fleeing from the harbour, had the fierce Pleiads held thee prisoner on Thrace’s hostile coast. Is it then to the sky and to the waves that hindered thy course that we owed thy tarrying?” Weeping she spoke, and brought forth a gift that should abide with her loved prince, a tunic of woven handiwork. Therein she had painted with her needle the rites that told of her father’s rescue and the holy car; there stand in fear the savage throng and make way for him; all round sways the wild forest, woven in green; her father in dread seeks refuge in the midmost shade. This part showed the rape on leafy Ida and the famed flight of the boy; presently he was standing joyfully at the table in heaven, nay, even Jove’s armour-bearer himself quaffs the beguiling draught from the Phrygian's ministering hand. Next she bears the sword of Thoas, with its renowned emblem: “Take it," she said, "that I may be by thy side in wartime and in the dust where the battle is thickest, the flaming gift of Aetna's god that my father bore; worthy to be worn now along with thine own arms. Go now, go, but forget not the land that first folded you to its peaceful bosom; and from Colchis' conquered shores bring back hither thy sails, I pray thee, by this Jason whom thou leavest in my womb." So spake she, and sank upon the neck of her Haemonian husband.

Modern

Bravo III

p. 101

p. 102

p. 103

p. 104

p. 105

p. 106

p. 107

The play is the earliest attestation of several other figures in the Opheltes legend, most prominently Hypsipyle, the former queen of Lemnso, who comes to be a slave in Nemea.³⁷ There she serves as nurse in the household of Lykourgos. Details about him emerge from ann exchange between Hypsipyle and Amphiaraos in an early scene (F 752h.24-28 = T 10):

..

(Amph.) To which man of the land of Philous is this house

With flocks of sheep reckoned to belong, O Stranger?

(Hyps.) The prosperous halls of Lykourgos are these called,

Who by selection from all Asopia

Is priest of the local Zeus.

³⁸ ...

p. 108

p. 109

p. 110

p. 111

p. 112

p. 113

p. 114

Kallimachos calls Opheltes "the one placed under the milk of Myrina," an allusion both to Hypsipyle's role as wet nurse and to her place of origin, Myrina being a city of Lemnos.⁸³ Given that Kallimachos contradicts Euripides regarding the name of Opheltes' father in the ode for Berenike, it is noteworthy that here he does allude to Hypsipyle; this may lend credence to the idea that her role in the myth was not Euripides' invention and has some older authority.

⁸³ So Pfeiffer, ad loc.

p. 115

p. 152

Brill's New Pauly

s.v. Myrina

[1] Amazon

Amazon (Dionysius Chalcidensis FHG 4 F 2), daughter of Cretheus, wife of Thoas (schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1,601); eponym of the city of the same name (M. [3]) on Lemnos (Hecataeus FGrH 1 F 138c).

Käppel, Lutz (Kiel)

Collard and Cropp

p. 251

Hypsipyle was one of Euripides’ latest and most elaborate tragedies. Its heroine was the daughter of Thoas, a son of the god Dionysus and king of the island of Lemnos. As a young woman she had borne twin sons to Jason during the Argonauts’ visit to Lemnos, but Jason took these sons with him to Colchis and Hypsipyle later had to flee the island after refusing to kill her father when the other women of Lemnos massacred their menfolk. Seized by marauders, she was sold as a slave to Lycurgus, priest at the rural sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea, and later became nurse to Opheltes, son of Lycurgus and his wife Eurydice. Meanwhile Jason died, probably at Colchis, and left his sons to be raised by his comrade Orpheus in Thrace. They were eventually reunited there with their grandfather, returned with him to Lemnos, and set out to find their mother. In the play, they reach Nemea just as the army of the Seven is passing by on its march to Thebes, and Hypsipyle admits them to the house without recognizing them. She also agrees to guide the Argive seer Amphiaraus to a spring where he can find fresh water for a sacrifice, but at the spring she negligently allows the infant Opheltes to be killed by a serpent. His mother wishes to punish Hypsipyle with death, but Amphiaraus persuades Eurydice to accept the boy’s fate, interpreting it as a portent for the Seven and advising that a funeral should be celebrated with games; these will be perpetuated as the Nemean Games and the boy remembered in cult as Archemorus, ‘First to die’ (see F 757.908–18 with note 4). Hypsipyle’s sons compete in the games, a recognition is effected, and thus redeemed she returns with them to Lemnos at the end of the play.

Hypsipyle’s involvement in the events at Nemea seems to have been invented by Euripides, for earlier sources connect her only with events on Lemnos (especially Homer, [cont.]

p. 252

Iliad 7.468–9; Pindar Olympians 4.19–23, cf. Pythians 4.252–8), while early accounts of the origin of the Nemean Games feature only the death of Opheltes/Archemorus and Amphiaraus’ settlement (Bacchylides 9.10–17, Simonides F 553 PMG, Pindar, Nemeans 8.51, 10.28); in these accounts the woman responsible for the boy’s death is either his own mother or an anonymous nurse. Euripides’ adaptation of the story may have been intended in part to associate Athens indirectly with the institution of the Nemean Games, for Lemnos was an Athenian dependency and Hypsipyle’s son Euneos was regarded as the founder of the Athenian priestly family of the Euneidae: cf. Robert (1909), Burkert (1994), Cropp (2003).

P. Oxy. 852 (see Note on the text below) provides substantial parts of the first half of the play, which begins with Hypsipyle telling her personal history in a prologue speech (F 752, 752a–b). As she re-enters the house Euneos and Thoas arrive seeking a night’s shelter (F 752c); she responds to their knock, bringing the baby with her, and persuades them the accept the house's hospitality even thought the priest is away from home (F 752d-e). They presumably enter the house, and Hypsipyle remains singing to the baby as the Chorus of friendly local women arrives with news that the Seven and their army have reached Nemea (F 752f); the parados sequence is a lyric exchange, the women trying to interest Hypsipyle in these current events, she dwelling on her unhappiness (F 752g, 752h.1-9; cf. Electra 167-212). ...

p. 253

How the recognition between mother and sons came about is unclear; some later accounts mention a continuing threat to Hypsipyle from Eurydice or from Lycurgus on his return, or even from her own unrecognized sons, but this is difficult to accommodate in the play after Amphiaraus’ seemingly decisive intervention, nor is there any hint of it in Amphiaraus’ parting words (F 759a.1584–6). Probably the focus was on the games, the recognition process, and the redemption of Hypsipyle from slavery. The games will have been reported by a messenger, and the twins’ identity may have been revealed when they were proclaimed by name as sons of Jason and Hypsipyle after winning the [p. 254] foot-race (see test. va below with note). A gold ornament in the shape of a vine or grape-bunch probably served as a proof of their identity (see test. iv below with note).

Fletcher

p. 150

p. 151

Gantz

p. 345

The Women of Lemnos

First in the list of adventures of the Argonautai is, in almost all accounts, their putting-in at Lemnos. where they find that the women of the island have killed all the men except one. We have seen that the Iliad knows of the visit, since Eunos of Lemnos is in that poem a son borne to Jason by Hypsipyle, the leader of the women (Il. 7.467–71). Two plays in what I'm assuming to have been Aischylos' Argo tetralogy were entitled Hypsipyle and Lemniai (or Lemnioi) and must have dealt with the events in question, but nothing survives beyond the fact that in Hypsipyle the title figure and the other women refuse to allow the crew to land until they have promised themselves in sexual union (p. 352 R, apub Σ AR 1.769). In the Chooephoroi we find simply a reference to the Lemnian horror as something known and loathed by all, and this, following the examples of Skylla and Althaia in the same ode, is surely the same deed familiar elsewhere (Cho 631-36). Pindar in Pythian 4 treats the matter briefly but explicitly: the Lemnian women are "husband-slayers"; Iason and his men arrive, engage in atheletic contests (so also in Ol. 4), and share the women's beds (Py 4-251-54). Herodotus claims that they killed all the men previously on the island, including Hypsipyle's father Thoas (6.138.4). Of the plays by Sophokles (Lemniai) and Euripides (Hypsipyle) dramatizing this material or referring back to it nothing useful remains (save that there was a battle with the Argonautai in th Sophoklean version (p. 337 R]), and we must wait for Apollonios to get an account of the murders. As he tells the story, the Lemnian women have long failed to pay appropriate honors to Aphrodite, and she therefore causes their husbands to spurn them and prefer instead Thracian women whom they have captured on raids .... (AR 1.609-26). The Lemnian women retaliate by slaying their husbands and the concubines, and then in fear of retribution all the other men on the island as well; only Thoas, father of Hypsipyle, is spared, because his daughter puts him in a chest and sends it forth into the sea. Apollodorus tells the same story, [ApB 1.9.17). Others authors agree, and presumably this was the tradition known in earlier times. One interesting touch in Apollonios is that Hypsipyle glosses over the full truth of the [cont.]

p. 346

matter, telling Iason, that the menfolk have all been exiled to Thrace; the deception is never discovered. Conceivably, this device had already been used by Aischylos and/or Sophokles, in which case the revelation of the actual chain of events might have prompted the Argo's departure. Without something like this it is hard to see how either play could have generated much drama.

We have already seen that in Pindar the Argonautai engage in athletic contests on the island, apparently with garments woven by the women as prizes; Erginos wins the footrace (OL 4.19-27; Py 4.253). Pindar alludes to these games as something familiar, and a scholion on the question of the prizes may indicate that they were recounted by Simonides (547 PMG). Pindar does not, however, say why such games should be held (other than to show off the heroes), and they do not appear in the poems of either Apollnios or Valerius, nor in Apollodoros. The scholia to Pindar offer two possibilities found supposedly in sources, one that the games were to honor the deceased Lemnian males, the other that they honored Hypipyle's father Thoas (Σ Py 4.450a). Obviously the first of these will not square with Apollonios, although the second might. How long the Argonautai were thought to remain on Lemnos is also unclear. In Apollonios the women wish to make them permanent husbands, and accept their departure (spurred on by Herakles) only with reluctance (AR 1.861-98). ... In any event, the union of Iason and Hypsipyle produces at least one child Euneos, and usually a second, who is variously Thoas (Euripides, see below), or Nebrophonos (ApB 1.9.17), or Deipylos (Fab 15). Hypsipyle's own adventures after fleeing Lemnos (her saving her father having been discovered) and being captured by pirates form the basis of Euripides' typically melodramatic play bearing her name as title; we will return to her fate in chapter 14, when we consider the expedition of the Seven against Thebes.

p. 511

The loss of Aischylos' play is the greater because Euripides in his patially preserved Hypsipyle offers us quite a different mother for the same child, one Eurydike, wife of Lykourgos, a priest of Nemean Zeus; Hypsipyle, the former paramour of Iason, is involved because she has become the childs nurse, after being exiled from Lemnos and captured by pirates. The child here has as his given name Opheltes, to be changed to Archemoros in the course of the story. As the action of the play opens Amphiaros and his companions are on their way north to Thebes, and encounter Hypsipyle while searching for water with which to perform a sacrifice.⁴⁴ She takes the seer to a spring quarded by a serpent, and there the serpent somehow manages to kill the child. Eurydike is naturally bent on revenge, but Amphiaros persuades her that what has happened was destined: the child will be called Archemoros, as signalling the begining of the expedition's doom, and games will be established. Eurydike yields to this explanation, and for the remainder of the play—Hypsipyle's recognition of her sons, who have come to find her– need not concern us here. Apollodorus (ApB 3.6.4), Hyginus (Fab 74, with a prophecy that the child is not to be put down until he can walk), and the Nemean Odes hypothesis all provide a similar account of Archemoros' parentage and death. The hypothesis' one other significant variation lies in the presenting a third set of parents, Euphetes and Kreousa. That Aischylos told this same story of Lemnian nurse and snake in his Nemea with merely a different name for the mother (and the father) is possible, but I doubt it: surely neither Aischylos nor anyone else would have named such a play after the child's mother if the plot focused on the misfortunes of the nurse who failed to guard her charge. We must allow, I think, that Aischylos' version may well not have included Hypsipyle at all.

⁴⁴ (p. 834) The bulk of our information about this play derives from the text of a papyrus first published in 1908 and hence not included in Nauk. See Bonds's edition of all this material, with commentary (Oxford 1963).

Grimal

s.v. Hypsipyle

(Ὑψιπύλη) The daughter of THOAS and Myrina, and through her father the grandchild of Dionysus and ARIADNE. Through her mother she was the descended from Cretheus, and so from Aeolus. (table 8 and 21). Thoas was a king of Lemnos. When the women of the island neglected the cult of Aphrodite, the goddess punished them by making them all smell horrible. Consequently, their husbands rejected them, seeking replacements among captives and foreigners. In revenge the the women of Lemnos massacred all the men. Hypsipyle could not bring herself to kill her father, however, and on the night of the massacre, she hid him in a chest (in another version she dressed him in the regalia of the statue of Dionysus and took him down to the sea the next morning, as if he were the god and she was going to purify him after the murders in the night). She launched him out to sea in this makeshift vessel and as a result THOAS was saved. Because she was the daughter of the old king, Hypsipyle was chosen queen by the women of Lemnos. This was at the time when the Argonauts arrived at Lemnos. According to some authors the Argonauts were given a friendly welcome; according to others, the women put up armed resistance to the landing. They softened, however, and in this way Hypsipyle became Jason's mistress. Then she gave funeral games in honour of Thoas (who was officially dead) and all the massacred men of Lemnos. Hypsipyle had two sons by Jason: EUNEUS, who is mentioned in the Iliad and a second son, sometimes called Nebrophonus (or Hephronius) and sometime Thoas like his grandfather (Table 21).

Later, after the Argonauts had left, the women of Lemnos discoved that their queen had spared her father, and they wanted to kill her becasue of this act of treachery, as it seemd to them, but Hypsipyle fled during thr night and was kidnapped by pirates who sold her as a slave to Lycurgus, the king of the Spartans. She was ordered by him to look after his son, the young Opheltes. The Seven Chiefs passed through and ask her where they could get a drink of water. For a moment she abandoned her guardianship of the child, who was suffocated by an enormous serpent (See ARCHEMORUS and AMPHIARAUS), In his anger Lycurgus wanted to put Hypsipyle to death. In the meantime Hypsipyle's two sons Euneus and Thoas arrived, both trying to find their mother. Amphiaraus, one of the seven, regocnized them because of the goldvine branch which the young men were wearing, which had been given by Dionysus to Thoas, their grandfaher. Further, Amphiaraus appeased Lycurgus' wife Eurydice and obtained her agreement for Hypsipyle to return to Lemnos with her sons. This theme was used by Euripides in his tragedy of Hypsipyle, part of which is lost. As an explanation for how Hypsipyle came to be separated from her children, Euripides suppossed that they had sailed off with the Argonauts when their father had departed, a year after they were born (they were twins). Subsequently they had been taken to Thrace by Orpheus, who had brought them up. It was there that they found their grandfather, Thoas. These romantic stories obviously are not part of the early legend but are literary inventions of secondary origin.

Hard

p. 318

The death of Opheltes and the embassy of Tydeus

As Adrastos and his army were marching toward the Isthmus they passed through Nemea in the northern Argolid, where they became involved in a strange incident that led to the founding of the Nemean Games. The city was ruled at that time by Lykourgos, son of Pheres, an immigrant from Thessaly (see p. 426), who had appointed HYPSIPYLE, the former queen of Lemnos, to act as nursemaid to his infant son OPHELTES. As we will see, the Lemnian women had onspired together to kill all their menfolk, but Hypsipyle had broken the agreement by sparing her aged father Thoas (see p. 384); and when the other women had discovered this, they sold her into slavery. Or in another version, she had escaped abroad after her action had been discovered, but had then been captured by pirates who had sold her to Lykourgos.¹³⁹ Adrastos and his companions now encountered her in Nemea and asked her to show them the way to a spring, for they were thirsty after their long journey (or else needed water for a sacrifice). So she placed the infant Opheltes on a bed of parsley and led them to water. Although an oracle had warned that Opheltes should never be placed on the ground until he coulf walk, she thought that he would be safe because he would not actually be in contact with the ground. On returning from the spring, however, she found that the child had been killed by a snake. Adrastos and his followers killed the snake, and interceded with Lykourgos on Hypsipyle's behalf; and they then gave little Opheltes a magnificent funeral, renaming him Archemoros (Beginning of Doom) becaus Amphiaros declared that his death was an evil sign that indicated that many members of the army would lose their lives in the forthcoming conflict. They also held funeral games in honour of the dead child, so founding the Nemean Games, at which the judges wore dark clothing as a sign of mourning and the victors were awarded a crown of wild parsley. As for Hypsipyle, she was finally rescued from her captivity by Euneos and Thoas, the sons whom she had borne to Jason.¹⁴⁰

p. 384

[The Argonauts came] to the island of Lemnos, where they made their longest halt. There were no men on the islnd at the time because all had been killed by the women. One woman alone had broken the agreement, HYPSIPYLE, the daughter of the king and present Queen of the island, who had saved her aged father Thoas by secretly sending him out to sea in a chest (or putting him on a ship, or hiding him away in the palace). ... Jason stayed at the palace with Hypsipyle, who bore him two sons, Thoas (or Nebrophonos) and Euneos.

Lloyd-Jones

p. 204

ΛΗΜΝΙΑΙ Α΄ and Β΄

There were two versions of this play, or, less probably, two separate plays on the same theme. The play appears to have described the landing of the Argonauts on Lemnos while the island was ruled by the women, who had killed all the men; the story is told by Apollonius of Rhodes, 1, 609 f. The women had offended Aphrodite, who punished them by making them smell unpleasant, so that their husbands deserted them in favour of Thracian concubines.

p. 205

The women then murdered all the men except the king, Thoas, whom his daughter Hypsipyle, who now reigned as queen, secretly smuggled out. The women at first resisted the landing of the Argonauts, but later joined them in a "love-in." Hypsipyle had two sons by Jason. The subject had featured in an Aeschylean trilogy; and the later adventures of the queen were described by Euripides in his Hypsipyle, of which we have considerable fragments.

Oxford Classical Dictionary

s.v. Adrastus

...On the march to Thebes the army halted at Nemea, and there were shown the way to water by Hypsipyle (q.v.). While she was thus engaged her charge, the baby Archemorus, was killed by a serpent; Amphiaraus secured her pardon and the Nemaean Games were founded in memory of the infant (see especially Eur. Hypsipyle, ed. G. W. Bond 1963).

s.v. Hypsipyle

The women of Lemnos having neglected the rites of Aphrodite, the goddess plagued them with a foul odor. Their husbands left them in disgust and took to themselves concubines from Thrace; whereat the women planned to murder all the males on the island. The massacre was sucessful; but Hypsipyle. daughter of King Thoas the son of Dionysus, hid her father and managed to convey him out of the country. She governed Lemnos and received the Argonauts (q.v.) when they came. She and her women now mated with the them (nothing more is heard of Aphrodite's curse), and Hypsipyle had two sons by (see EUNEOS) by Jason. Some time after their departure she was captured by pirates and sold to Lycurgus king of Nemea, whose wife employed her as nurse to her child Opheltes or Archemorus. For the sequel, see ADRASTUS.

Parada

s.v. Hypsipyle

s.v. Thoas 3

Smith

s.v. Jason

s.v. Thoas 2

A son of Dionysus and Ariadne. (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. 3.997; Stat. Theb. 4.769.) He was king of Lemnos and married to Myrina, by whom he became the father of Hypsipyle and Sicinus. (Hom. Il. 14.230; Diod. 5.79; Schol. ad Apollon. 1.601; Hygin. Fab. 15, 120 ; Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 1374.) When the Lemnian women all the men in the island, Hypsipyle saved her father Thoas, and concealed him. (Apollod. 1.9.17.) Afterwards, however, he was discovered by the other women, and killed (Apollod. 3.6.4), or he escaped to Tauris (Hygin. Fab. 15), or to the island of Oenoe near Euboea, which was henceforth called Sicinus. (Schol. ad Apollon. 1.624.)

Smith and Trzaskoma

p. 189

15. King Lycurgus, We hesitantly have restored Lycurgus for Lycus in the belief that it is an error of transmission and not a mistake on the part of Hyginus (See Lact. Plac. ad Stat. Theb. 5.29 [noted in Marshall] and esp. First Vatican Mythographer 2.31).

Sommerstein

p. 126

ΛΗΜΝΙΑΙ (LEMNIAN WOMEN)

"The Lemnian crime", the murder by the women of Lemnos of their husbands, was proverbially the acme and paradigm of human wickedness (Libation-Bearers 631–7; Herodotus 6.138.4). Since Aeschylus’ Hypsipyle (q.v.) presented the aftermath of this crime, with the Argonauts arriving at an island with no surviving male inhabitants, it is reasonable to suppose that Lemnian Women preceded it in a trilogy and dramatized the crime itself.

pp. 154–155

NEMEA

Unless this play took its title from the town of Nemea or from the Nemean Games (which would be very abnormal, either for a tragedy or for a satyr-drama), the title must refer to the only known mythical character of that name, and probably to the only story about her that is attested (by an introductory scholium to Pindar’s Nemeans), namely that she was the mother of the child Archemorus who was killed by a snake at Philus while the expedition of the Seven against Thebes was passing through the town, and in whose memory their leader, Adrastus, founded the Nemean Games. If so, the play will have corresponded [p. 155] in subject to Euripides’ late play Hypsipyle, where, however, the boy’s original name is Opheltes (he is renamed Archemorus after his death) and his mother’s Eurydice (Hypsipyle, in exile from Lemnos, being his nurse). There is, however, no reason to believe that Hypsipyle figured in Aeschylus’ play. No quotations survive.

p. 250

ΥΨΙΠΥΛΗ (HYPSIPYLE)

Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, was the leader of the women of Lemnos when they killed all the men on the island (see introductory note to Lemnian Women). Our only information about the play, apart from two single-word quotations, comes from a scholium to Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.769–773. In Aeschylus’ play, according to this scholium, when the Argonauts were caught in a storm off Lemnos and hoping to come in and land there, the Lemnian women "came against them in arms" and refused to let them put in unless they swore to have intercourse with the women as soon as they landed.

Tripp

s.v. Hypsipyle

A queen of Lemnos. When the women of Lemnos killed all the men on the island, Hypsipyle saved her father, King Thoas, by hiding him and either putting him in onto a boat or setting him adrift in a chest, which reached the island of Oenoë. The ARGONAUTS [C] came to Lemnos and were entertained by the women. Hypsipyle bore two sons by Jason, Euneüs and either Nebrophonus or Deïpylus. Later her subjects learned that she had saved Thoas. Some say they sold her into slavery, others that, in escaping from the women, she was captured by pirates, who sold her. She was bought by Lycurgus or Lycus, king of Nemea, as a nurse for his son, Opheltes. While she was showing a spring to the SEVEN AGAINST THEBES [C], the child was killed by a snake, but the Seven interceded for her with the king. Hyginus records that Hypsipyle gave her life for her father, but the event to which he alludes is not known. [Apollonius Rhodius, 1.609-909; Apollodorus 1.9.17, 3.6.4; Hyginus Fabulae, 15, 254; Homer, Iliad, 7.469.]

s.v. Opheltes

A son of Lucurgus, king of Nemea, and Amphithea or Eurydice. According to Hyginus, Lycurgus (or Lycus) was warned by an oracle not to set Opheltes on the ground until he could walk. Therefore, Opheltes' nurse Hypsipyle, laid him on a thick bed of parsley while she was showing the SEVEN AGAINST THEBES [C] the way to a spring. In spite of this precaution the child was killed by a snake that guarded the spring. The Seven buried the child under the name of Archemorus (Beginning of Doom), for the seer Amphiaraüs said that his death meant just that for them. Adrastus interceded for Hypsipyle with the king and founded the Nemean games in the child's honor. [Hyginus., Fabulae 74.]