Iamus

A son of Apollo and Evadne, was initiated in the art of prophecy by his father, and was regarded as the ancestor of the famous family of seers, the Iamidae at Olympia.1

His story is related by Pindar thus: Pitana, the mother of Evadne, sent her newly-born child to the Arcadian Aepytus at Phaesana on the Alpheus. There Evadne became by Apollo the mother of a boy, who, when his mother for shame deserted him, was fed with honey by two serpents. As he was found lying amid violets, he was called by his mother Iamus. Aepytus, who consulted the Delphic oracle about the child, received for answer, that the boy would be a celebrated prophet, and the ancestor of a great family of prophets. When Iamus had grown up, he descended by night into the waters of the river Alpheus, and invoked Poseidon and Apollo, that they might reveal to him his destination. Apollo commanded him to follow his voice, and led him to Olympia, where he gave him the power to understand and explain the voices of birds, and to foretell the future from the sacrifices burning on the altars of Zeus, so soon as Heracles should have founded the Olympic games.2

❧

References

Notes

  1. Pausanias. Description of Greece vi, 2.3; Pindar. Olympian Odes vi, 43; Cicero. De Divinatione i, 41.
  2. Pindar. Olympian Odes vi, 28 ff.

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.