Having now gone through the family of Deucalion, we have next to speak of that of
Inachus.
Ocean and Tethys had a son Inachus, after whom a river in Argos is called Inachus.1 He and Melia, daughter of Ocean, had sons, Phoroneus, and
Aegialeus. Aegialeus having died childless, the whole country was called Aegialia; and
Phoroneus, reigning over the whole land afterwards named Peloponnese, begat Apis and Niobe by a nymph Teledice. Apis converted his
power into a tyranny and named the Peloponnese
after himself Apia; but being a stern tyrant he
was conspired against and slain by Thelxion and Telchis. He left no child, and being
deemed a god was called Sarapis.2 But Niobe had by Zeus ( and she was the
first mortal woman with whom Zeus cohabited) a son
Argus, and also, so says Acusilaus, a son Pelasgus, after whom
the inhabitants of the Peloponnese were called
Pelasgians. However, Hesiod says that Pelasgus was a son of the soil.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
1 As to Inachus and his descendants, see Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 177 (who follows Apollodorus); Paus. 2.15.5; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 932; Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.22. According to Apion, the flight of the Israelites from Egypt took place during the reign of Inachus at Argos. See Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii, x.10.10ff. On the subject of Phoroneus there was an ancient epic Phoronis, of which a few verses have survived. See Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, pp. 209ff.
2 Apollodorus identifies the Argive Apis with the Egyptian bull Apis, who was in turn identified with Serapis (Sarapis). As to the Egyptian Apis, see Hdt. 2.153 (with Wiedemann's note), iii.27, 28. As to Apia as a name for Peloponnese or Argos, see Aesch. Supp. 260ff.; Paus. 2.5.7; Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.22; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 177; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Ἀπία.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.