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Ixion

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For the trans-Neptunian object, see 28978 Ixion. For other uses, see Ixion (disambiguation).

The Fall of Ixion by Cornelis van Haarlem

In Greek mythology, Ixion (/ɪkˈsaɪən/ ik-SY-ən; Greek: Ἰξίων) was king of the Lapiths, the most ancient tribe of Thessaly.[1]

Family

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Ixion was the son of Perimele,[2] and either Ares, or Leonteus,[3] or Antion, or the notorious evildoer Phlegyas (whose name connotes "fiery").[4] Ixion had a son named Pirithous[5][6] Pirithous may have possibly instead been his stepson, if Zeus were Pirithous's father, as Zeus claims to his wife Hera in Iliad 14.[7]

Background

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Ixion married Dia,[8] a daughter of Deioneus,[9][10] and promised his father-in-law a valuable present. However, he did not pay the bride price, so Deioneus stole some of Ixion's horses in retaliation. Ixion concealed his resentment and invited his father-in-law to a feast at Larissa. When Deioneus arrived, Ixion pushed him into a bed of burning coals and wood. These circumstances are secondary to the fact of Ixion's primordial act of murder of a kinsman and a guest. The crime could be accounted for quite differently: in the Greek Anthology,[11] among a collection of inscriptions from a temple in Cyzicus, is an epigrammatic description of Ixion slaying Phorbas and Polymelos, who had slain his mother, Megara.[12]

Defiled by his act, Ixion went mad; the neighboring princes were so offended by his act of treachery and violation of xenia that they refused to perform the rituals that would cleanse Ixion of his guilt (see catharsis). Thereafter, Ixion lived as an outlaw and was shunned. By killing his father-in-law, Ixion was reckoned the first man guilty of kin-slaying in Greek mythology.

This act alone would warrant Ixion a terrible punishment, but Zeus took pity on Ixion and brought him to Olympus and introduced him at the table of the gods. Instead of being grateful, Ixion grew lustful for Hera,[13][14] Zeus's wife, a further violation of guest–host relations and an act of hubris against the king of the gods. Zeus found out about his intentions and made a cloud in the shape of Hera, which became known as Nephele (from nephos "cloud") and tricked Ixion into coupling with it. From the union of Ixion and the false-Hera cloud came Imbros[15] or Centauros,[16] who mated with the Magnesian mares on Mount Pelion, Pindar told,[17] engendering the race of Centaurs, who are called the Ixionidae from their descent.

Ixion was expelled from Olympus and blasted with a thunderbolt. Zeus ordered Hermes to bind Ixion to a winged fiery wheel that was always spinning. Therefore, Ixion was bound to a burning solar wheel for all eternity, at first spinning across the heavens,[18] but in later myth transferred to Tartarus.[19][20]

Some versions of the myth portray Ixion as being trapped in Hades after his death.[21]

Only when Orpheus played his lyre during his trip to the Underworld to rescue Eurydice did it stop for a while.

Analysis

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Robert L. Fowler observes that "The details are very odd, the narrative motivation creaks at every juncture ... the myth smacks of aetiology."[22] He notes that Martin Nilsson suggested[23] an origin in rain-making magic, with which he concurs: "In Ixion's case the necessary warning about the conduct of magic has taken the form of blasphemous and dangerous conduct on the part of the first officiant."

In the fifth century, Pindar's Second Pythian Ode (c. 476–468 BC) expands on the example of Ixion, applicable to Hiero I of Syracuse, the tyrant of whom the poet sings. Aeschylus, Euripides and Timasitheos each wrote a tragedy of Ixion though none of these accounts have survived.

Ixion was a figure also known to the Etruscans; he is depicted in an engraving on the back of the mirror, bound to an eight-spoked, winged wheel c. 460–450 BC, now in the collection of the British Museum.[24] Whether the Etruscans shared the Ixion figure with Hellenes from early times or whether Ixion figured among those Greek myths that were adapted at later dates to fit the Etruscan world-view is unknown.

See also

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Citations and footnotes

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  1. ^ Virgil, Aeneid 6.601
  2. ^ Diodorus Siculus, 4.69.3
  3. ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 62
  4. ^ Strabo, 9, p. 442
  5. ^ Peirithoös also slew a kinsman, which occasioned his own wandering in search of catharsis.
  6. ^ Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 4.63.1; Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.210; Apollodorus, 1.8.2; Hyginus, Fabulae 14.2, 79 & 257
  7. ^ "come, let us turn to lovemaking. For never did such desire for goddess or woman ever flood over me, taming the heart in my breast, not even when I loved Ixion's wife, who bore Peirithoös, the gods' equal in counsel ..." Even more tactless, Zeus goes on to tell Hera of several more of his conquests. Iliad 14.
  8. ^ Dia "is only another name for Hebe, the daughter of Hera, and indeed was probably the name for Hera herself, as 'she who belongs to Zeus' or 'the Heavenly one'". Kerenyi (1951), p. 159
  9. ^ Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 4.69.3 (English) Greek
  10. ^ The name is frequently misspelled as 'Deinoneus'. Bloch, R. (2006). "Deion(eus)(2)". Brill's New Pauly Online (reference). Brill. doi:10.1163/1574-9347.
  11. ^ The Greek Anthology 3.12 (Greek text)
  12. ^ Lit. the "great one". The more familiar Megara, the wife of Heracles, is a different character.
  13. ^ He was already wedded to her double, Dia.
  14. ^ Lucian, Dialogi Deorum 9
  15. ^ Tzetzes, Chiliades 9.20 lines 464, 469 & 477
  16. ^ Apollodorus, Epitome 1.20
  17. ^ Pindar, Pythian Ode 2
  18. ^ The meticulous Pindar mentions the feathers.
  19. ^ Virgil, Georgics 3.39 & 4.486; Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.461–465 & 10.42
  20. ^ Kerenyi (1951), p. 160.
  21. ^ The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Vol. 2A. United States: Pearson Education. 2006. p. 731. ISBN 0-321-33394-2.
  22. ^ Fowler, "The myth of Kephalos as aition of rain-magic (Pherekydes FrGHist 3F34)", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 97 (1993:29–42).
  23. ^ Nilsson, The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (1931) p. 135 note 19.
  24. ^ BM GR 1900.6–11.3; C. Lochin (1990) Ixion in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae.

Sources

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