Echemus

A son of Aeropus and grandson of Cepheus, succeeded Lycurgus as king of Arcadia.1 He was married to Timandra, a daughter of Tyndareus and Leda.2 In his reign the Dorians invaded the Peloponnese, and Echemus succeeded in slaying, in single combat, Hyllus, the son of Heracles.3 The fight was believed to have occurred on the frontier, between Corinth and Megara, and in the latter place Hyllus was buried.4

After the fall of Hyllus the Heraclidae were obliged to promise not to repeat their attempts upon the Peloponnese within the next fifty or hundred years, and the Tegeatans were honored with the privilege of commanding one wing of the Peloponnesian army, whenever the inhabitants of the peninsula undertook an expedition against a foreign enemy.5

The fight of Echemus and Hyllus was represented on the tomb of Echemus at Tegea.6 According to Stephanus of Byzantium7 Echemus accompanied the Dioscuri in their expedition to Attica, whereas Plutarch8 calls the Arcadian companions of the Dioscuri Echedemus and Marathus.

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References

Notes

  1. Pausanias. Description of Greece viii, 4. 7.
  2. Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library iii, 10.6.
  3. Pausanias. Description of Greece viii, 5.1, 45.2; Scholiast on Pindar's Olympian Odes x, 79.
  4. Pausanias. Description of Greece i, 41.3, 44.14.
  5. Herodotus. Histories ix, 26; Diodorus Siculus, iv, 58.
  6. Pausanias. Description of Greece viii, 53.5.
  7. s.v. Ἐκαδήμεια.
  8. Theseus, 32.

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.