Manto

A daughter of the Theban soothsayer Tiresias. She herself was a prophetess, first of the Ismenian Apollo at Thebes, where monuments of her existed,1 and subsequently of the Delphian and Clarian Apollo. After the taking of Thebes by the Epigoni, she, with other captives, was dedicated to Apollo at Delphi. The god sent the captives to Asia, where they founded the sanctuary of Apollo not far from the place where afterwards the town of Colophon was built. Rhacius, a Cretan, who had settled there before, married Manto, and be came by her the father of Mopsus.

According to Euripides, she had previously become the mother of Amphilochus and Tisiphone, by Alcmaeon, the leader of the Epigoni.2 Being a prophetess of Apollo, she is also called Daphne, i.e. the laurel virgin.3

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References

Notes

  1. Pausanias. Description of Greece ix, 10.3.
  2. Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library iii, 7.7.
  3. Diodorus Siculus. Historical Library iv, 66; comp. Athenaeus, vii, p. 298.

Sources

  • Pausanias. Description of Greece vii, 3.1; ix, 33.1.
  • Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library iii, 7.4.
  • Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, i, 908.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.
  • Strabo. Geography ix, p. 443.

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