Listed 15 sub titles with search on: Mythology for wider area of: "ISTHMIA Village LOUTRAKI-PERACHORA" .
ISTHMIA (Ancient sanctuary) LOUTRAKI-PERACHORA
Ino; Daughter of Cadmus, second wife of Athamas, leaps with her son Melicertes into sea, becomes a sea-goddess called Leucothea.
Melicertes; Son of Athamas and Ino, leaps into sea, landed by a dolphin, his name changed to Palaemon as a seagod.
Ino. The daughter of Cadmus, and wife of Athamas. Being followed by the latter after he had been seized with madness, she fled to the cliff Moluris, between Megara and Corinth, and there threw herself into the sea with her infant son Melicertes. At the isthmus, however, mother and child were carried ashore by a dolphin, and, from that time forward, were honoured as marine divinities along the shores of the Mediterranean, especially on the coast of Megara and at the Isthmus of Corinth. Ino was worshipped at Leucothea, and Melicertes as Palaemon. They were regarded as divinities who aided men in peril on the sea. As early as Homer, we have Ino mentioned as rescuing Odysseus from danger by throwing him her veil ( Od.v. 333-353). Among the Romans Ino was identified with Matuta
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Melicertes, (Melikertes). In Greek mythology the son of Athamas and Ino, and changed after his death by drowning into the marine deity Palaemon, while his mother became Leucothea. His name (=Melkart), however, shows him to have been originally a Phoenician god. Like Ino-Leucothea, he was worshipped on all the coast of the Mediterranean, especially on that of Megara and at the Isthmus of Corinth, where he was so closely connected with the cult of Poseidon that the Isthmian Games, originally instituted in honour of this god, came to be looked upon as the funeral games of Melicertes. The Romans regarded him as a beneficent god of the sea, and identified him with Portunus, the god of harbours.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Perseus Project Index. Total results on 18/7/2001: 148 for Ino, 31 for leucothea, 5 for Leukothea, 27 for Melicertes, 4 for Melikertes, 48 for Palaemon,
Ibycus. A Greek lyric and erotic poet of Rhegium in Lower Italy, who flourished about B.C. 530. Like Anacreon, he led a roving life, and spent much of his time at the court of Polycrates of Samos. According to his epitaph, he died in his native town; but according to the legend made familiar by Schiller's poem, he was slain on a journey to Corinth, and his murderers were discovered by means of a flock of cranes, which, as he died, he had invoked as his avengers. The story goes that, after his murder, when the Corinthians were gathered in the theatre, the cranes appeared; whereupon one of the assassins who was present cried out, "See the avengers of Ibycus!" thus giving a clue to their detection. Hence arose the expression used of the cranes, Ibukou geranoi. His poems, which were collected into seven books, survive in scanty fragments only. They dealt partly with mythological themes in the metres of Stesichorus and partly with love-songs in the spirit of Aeolic lyric poetry, full of glowing passion and sensibility. It was mainly to the latter that he owed his fame.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
...Heracles accomplished no brilliant feat in the war with Augeas. For the sons
of Actor were in the prime of courageous manhood, and always put to flight the
allies under Heracles, until the Corinthians proclaimed the Isthmian truce, and
the sons of Actor came as envoys to the meeting. Heracles set an ambush for then,
at Cleonae and murdered them. As the murderer was unknown, Moline, more than any
of the other children, devoted herself to detecting him. When she discovered him,
the Eleans demanded satisfaction for the crime from the Argives, for at the time
Heracles had his home at Tiryns. When the Argives refused them satisfaction, the
Eleans as an alternative pressed the Corinthians entirely to exclude the Argive
people from the Isthmian games. When they failed in this also, Moline is said
to have laid curses on her countrymen, should they refuse to boycott the Isthmian
festival. The curses of Moline are respected right down to the present day, and
no athlete of Elis is wont to compete in the Isthmian games. There are two other
accounts, differing from the one that I have given. According to one of them Cypselus,
the tyrant of Corinth, dedicated to Zeus a golden image at Olympia. As Cypselus
died before inscribing his own name on the offering, the Corinthians asked of
the Eleans leave to inscribe the name of Corinth on it, but were refused. Wroth
with the Eleans, they proclaimed that they must keep away from the Isthmian games.
But how could the Corinthians themselves take part in the Olympic games if the
Eleans against their will were shut out by the Corinthians from the Isthmian games?
The other account is this. Prolaus, a distinguished Elean, had two sons, Philanthus
and Lampus, by his wife Lysippe. These two came to the Isthmian games to compete
in the boys' pancratium, and one of them intended to wrestle. Before they entered
the ring they were strangled or done to death in some other way by their fellow
competitors. Hence the curses of Lysippe on the Eleans, should they not voluntarily
keep away from the Isthmian games. But this story too proves on examination to
be silly. For Timon, a man of Elis, won victories in the pentathlum at the Greek
games, and at Olympia there is even a statue of him, with an elegiac inscription
giving the crowns he won and also the reason why he secured no Isthmian victory.
The inscription sets forth the reason thus:--
But from going to the land of Sisyphus he was hindered by a quarrel
About the baleful death of the Molionids.
This extract is from: Pausanias. Description of Greece (ed. W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., & H.A. Ormerod, 1918). Cited Oct 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
ISTHMUS KORINTHOS (Isthmus) LOUTRAKI-PERACHORA
At the beginning of the Isthmus is the place where the brigand Sinis used to take hold of pine trees and draw them down. All those whom he overcame in fight he used to tie to the trees, and then allow them to swing up again. Thereupon each of the pines used to drag to itself the bound man, and as the bond gave way in neither direction but was stretched equally in both, he was torn in two. This was the way in which Sinis himself was slain by Theseus. For Theseus rid of evildoers the road from Troezen to Athens, killing those whom I have enumerated and, in sacred Epidaurus, Periphetes, thought to be the son of Hephaestus, who used to fight with a bronze club.(Paus. 2.1.4)
This extract is from: Pausanias. Description of Greece (ed. W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., & H.A. Ormerod, 1918). Cited Oct 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
(Sinis) or Sinnis (Sinnis). Son of Polypemon, Pemon, or Poseidon,
by Sylea, the daughter of Corinthus. He was a robber, who frequented the Isthmus
of Corinth, and killed the travellers whom he captured by fastening them to the
top of a fir-tree, which he bent, and then let spring up again. He himself was
killed in this manner by Theseus.
(pituokamptes, "pine-bender"). A name applied to the
robber Sinis, who killed travellers by tying them between two pine-trees bent
down so as nearly to meet, and then allowed to spring apart (Pausan. ii. 1, 3).
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Second, he (Theseus) killed Sinis, son of Polypemon and Sylea, daughter of Corinthus. This
Sinis was surnamed the Pine-bender; for inhabiting the Isthmus of Corinth he used
to force the passersby to keep bending pine trees; but they were too weak to do
so, and being tossed up by the trees they perished miserably. In that way also
Theseus killed Sinis.
Commentary: The ancients are not agreed as to the exact mode in which the ruffian
Sinis despatched his victims. According to Diodorus, Pausanias, and the Scholiast
on Pindar he bent two pine-trees to the ground, tied the extremities of his victim
to both trees, and then let the trees go, which, springing up and separating,
tore the wretch's body in two. This atrocious form of murder was at a later time
actually employed by the emperor Aurelian in a military execution. A Ruthenian
pirate, named Botho, is said to have put men to death in similar fashion. According
to Hyginus, Sinis, with the help of his victim, dragged down a pine-tree to the
earth; then, when the man was struggling to keep the tree down, Sinis released
it, and in the rebound the man was tossed up into the air and killed by falling
heavily to the ground. Apollodorus seems to have contemplated a similar mode of
death, except that he does not mention the cooperation of Sinis in bending the
tree to the earth. According to the Parian Chronicle it was not on his journey
from Troezen to Athens that Theseus killed Sinis, but at a later time, after he
had come to the throne and united the whole of Attica under a single government;
he then returned to the Isthmus of Corinth, killed Sinis, and celebrated the Isthmian
games. This tradition seems to imply that Theseus held the games as a funeral
honour paid to the dead man, or more probably as an expiation to appease the angry
ghost of his victim. This implication is confirmed by the Scholiast on Pindar,
who says that according to some people Theseus held the Isthmian games in honour
of Sinis, whom he had killed. Plutarch tells us (Plut. Thes. 8.2) that when Theseus
had killed Sinis, the daughter of the dead man, by name Perigune, fled and hid
herself in a bed of asparagus; that she bore a son Melanippus to Theseus, and
that Melanippus had a son Ioxus, whose descendants, the Ioxids, both men and women,
revered and honoured asparagus and would not burn it, because asparagus had once
sheltered their ancestress. This hereditary respect shown by all the members of
a family or clan for a particular species of plant is reminiscent of totemism,
though it is not necessarily a proof of it.
This extract is from: Apollodorus, Library and Epitome (ed. Sir James George Frazer, 1921). Cited Oct 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
On the Isthmus, too, he slew Sinis the Pine-bender in the very manner in which many men had been destroyed by himself, and he did this without practice or even acquaintance with the monster's device, but showing that valor is superior to all device and practice. Now Sinis had a very beautiful and stately daughter, named Perigune. This daughter took to flight when her father was killed, and Theseus went about in search of her. But she had gone off into a place which abounded greatly in shrubs and rushes and wild asparagus, and with exceeding innocence and childish simplicity was supplicating these plants, as if they understood her, and vowing that if they would hide and save her, she would never trample them down nor burn them. When, however, Theseus called upon her and gave her a pledge that he would treat her honorably and do her no wrong, she came forth, and after consorting with Theseus, bore him Melanippus, and afterwards lived with Deioneus, son of Eurytus the Oechalian, to whom Theseus gave her. From Melanippus the son of Theseus, Ioxus was born, who took part with Ornytus in leading a colony into Caria whence it is ancestral usage with the Ioxids, men and women, not to burn either the asparagus-thorn or the rush, but to revere and honor them.
This extract is from: Plutarch's Lives (ed. Bernadotte Perrin, 1914). Cited Oct 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
A legend of the Corinthians about their land is not peculiar to them, for I believe that the Athenians were the first to relate a similar story to glorify Attica. The Corinthians say that Poseidon had a dispute with Helius (Sun ) about the land, and that Briareos arbitrated between them, assigning to Poseidon the Isthmus and the parts adjoining, and giving to Helius the height above the city. Ever since, they say, the Isthmus has belonged to Poseidon.
This extract is from: Pausanias. Description of Greece (ed. W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., & H.A. Ormerod, 1918). Cited Oct 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
Isthmius (Isthmios), i. e. the god worshipped on the Isthmus (of Corinth), a surname of Poseidon, in honour of whom the Isthmian games were celebrated. (Paus. ii. 9. Β 6 )
Alcyoneus. A giant, who kept possession of the Isthmus of Corinth at the time when Heracles drove away the oxen of Geryon. The giant attacked him, crushed twelve waggons and twenty-four of the men of Heracles with a huge block of stone. Heracles himself warded off the stone with his club and slew Alcyoneus. The block, with which the giant had attempted the life of Heracles, was shewn on the Isthmus down to a very late period. (Pind. Nem. iv. 44, with the Schol.) In another passage (Isth. vi. 45, &c.) Pindar calls Alcyoneus a Thracian shepherd, and places the struggle with him in the Phlegraean plains.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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