Canobus

Or Canopus (Κάνωπος), according to Grecian story, the helmsman of Menelaus, who on his return from Troy died in Egypt, in consequence of the bite of a snake, and was buried by Menelaus on the site of the town of Canobus, which derived its name from him.

According to some accounts, Canobus was worshiped in Egypt as a divine being, and was represented in the shape of a jar with small feet, a thin neck, a swollen body, and a round back.1 The identification of an Egyptian divinity with the Greek hero Canobus is of course a mere fiction, and was looked upon in this light even by some of the ancients themselves.2

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References

Notes

  1. Epiphanius. Ancoratus, 108; Rufinus. Historia Ecclesiastica, ii, 26; Suidas, s.v. Κάνωπος.
  2. Aristides. Egyptian Oration. Vol. 2, p. 359 ff. ed. Jebb.

Sources

  • Aelian. Varia Historia xv, 13; Scholiast on Aelian.
  • Amm. Marcell. xxii, 16.
  • Conon. Narratives, 8.
  • Dionysius Periegetes, 13.
  • Nicander. Theriaca, 309 ff.
  • Servius on Virgil's Georgics iv, 287.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.
  • Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v.
  • Strabo. Geography xvii, p. 801.
  • Tacitus. Annals, ii, 60.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.