Dryops

A son of the river god Spercheus by the Danaid Polydora,1 or of Peneus by Polydora,2 or, according to others, a son of Lycaon (probably a mistake for Apollo) by Dia, the daughter of Lycaon, who concealed her new-born infant in a hollow oak tree (δρῦς).3

The Asinaeans in Messenia worshiped him as their ancestral hero, and as a son of Apollo, and celebrated a festival in honor of him every other year. His heroum there was adorned with a very archaic statue of the hero.4 He had been king of the Dryopes, who derived their name from him, and were believed to have occupied the country from the valley of the Spercheus and Thermopylae, as far as Mount Parnassus.5

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References

Notes

  1. Antoninus Liberalis, 32.
  2. Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, i, 1212.
  3. Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, i, 1283; Tzetzes on Lycophron, 480.
  4. Pausanias. Description of Greece iv, 34.6.
  5. Antoninus Liberalis, 4; Homer. Hymns, vi, 34.

Source

  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

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