The line of Tethys and Okeanos (Part 2)

[Part one can be found here, in multiple parts because these people couldn't stop having kids.  6000 children? Who the hell does that?]

These are the lines of their eldest sons (listed in order of age of the son):

Neilos, took as his wife the younger Kallirhoe (again, when you have 3000 daughters some names get reused), and together they produced the daughters: Memphis, Ankhinoe, Euryrhoe, Europe, Anippe, Khione, Kaliadne, and Polyxo.

Memphis married Epaphos, son of Zeus and Io, and together they founded Memphis, the city named after her.  Their daughter Libya would mate with Poseidon to produce the twins Belus and Agenor as well as Lelex.  Belus would become ruler of Egypt. Agenor departed to Phoenicia and became king there. Lelex became king of Laconia.

Ankhinoe married Belus.  She bore him the sons Aigyptos and Danaus [perhaps also Kepheus and Phineus, ask me later.]

Euryrhoe married Aigyptos, one of his many wives.  Together the wives bore him fifty sons, whom he commanded to marry the fifty daughters of Danaus.  When the marriages were at last seen through Danaus ordered his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding night.  49 followed through.  Euryrhoe and Aigytos's surviving son, was Lynceus.  Lynceus and his non-murderous wife Hypermnestra would eventually bring forth the line of Argive kings.

Europe married Danaus, one of his many wives.  Together the wives bore him fifty daughters.  When Aigyptos ordered that they be married to his fifty sons the family fled to Argos, but when Aigyptos followed with his sons Danaus, not wanting to draw the Argives into a war, relented and allowed his daughters to be married to Aigyptos' sons.  But he secretly ordered that each kill her husband on his wedding night.

Hypermnestra, honored by her husband Lynceus who did not try to force himself upon her, relented and did not kill her husband.  Together they brought forth the line of Argive kings.

Anippe and Poseidon had a son, Busiris, an unjust kind of Eygpt whom Herakles slew.

Khione was raped by a peasant and, at the command of Zeus, brought to the skys and from her snows fell upon the ground.

Kaliadne was one of the wives of Aigyptos, she bore him twelve sons: Eurylokhos, Phantes, Peristhenes, Hermos, Dryas, Potamon, Kisseus, Lixos, Imbros, Bromios, Polyktor, and Khthonios.  They were killed by their wives, the twelve daughters of Polyxo.

Polyxo was one of the wives of Danaus, she bore him twelve daughters: Autonoe, Theano, Elektra, Kleopatra, Eurydike, Glaukippe, Antheleia, Kleodore, Euippe, Erato, Stygne, and Bryke.  They killed their husbands as commanded, the twelve sons of Kaliadne.

-

Alpheios fell in love, or at least lust, with Artemis.  When he realized that she had no interest in him and he could not persuade her to change her mind, his mind turned to darker methods of slaking his lust.  He hoped to ambush her at a nightlong revel she was holding with her attendant nymphs at Letrini.  Artemis, foreseeing such problems, smeared her face, and the faces of her attendants, with mud.  Alpheios couldn't tell which one was Artemis and left without carrying out his attempt.  This earned Artemis the nickname Alpheian in the region.

Next he took an interest in a local nymph named Arethousa, but she rejected his advances and swam across the ocean to Ortygia.  When he followed she transformed herself into a spring, which bears her name and was sacred to the colony of Syrakousa.

Some say that he found a way to run his river under the sea to Ortygia where his waters mingled with Arethousa, but in truth he stopped trying to force himself on a mate, Arethousa was able to return to her life as a Nymph, now of the spring she created, and for a long time Alpheios was alone.

Eventually he met a woman who was actually interested in him.  Telegone, the only child of Pharis, founder of Pharae, himself the child of Hermes and Phylodameia, daughter of Danaus.

Telegone bore sons Ortilokhos and Phegeos, and daughters Danais, Myrtoessa.

Orthilokhos had a son named Diokles who in turn had three children, a daughter Antikleia and twin sons Krethon and Orsilokhos.  Aeneas killed Krethon and Orsilokhos in the Trojan War.

Phegeos who purified Alcmaeon of the murder of his mother and then allowed Alcmaeon to marry his daughter Arsinoe.  And so forth.

Danais was mistress of Pelops, son of Tantalos, and bore to him Khrysippos, whom Pelops is said to have loved more than his legitimate sons.  Though a bastard Khrysippos was brought up in the house of Pelops, and there engendered the jealousy of his half brothers Thyestes and Atreus and fear in their mother, Pelops's wife, Hippodameia because she believed that he could challenge her own sons for the throne when Pelops died.

Laïus the Theban, Khrysippos' tutor, fell into something -love or lust, but who can say- with the youth and abducted him so they could live together elsewhere.  Thyestes and Atreus might have seen this as an ideal opportunity to rid themselves of their half brother, but instead they did their family duty, arrested Laïus, and returned Khrysippos.

By this time Laïus' original emotion, whatever it had been, had turned to actual love, of a more familial nature, and for this reason Pelops pardoned him.

Freshly returned from saving their half brother, Hippodameia ordered Thyestes and Atreus to murder him.  They tried to carry out their mother's orders by pushing him into a well, but when he climbed back out they decided that they didn't have it in them to kill Khrysippos.

Then their mother filled them with horrible tales of Laïus in preparation for her own attempt at the deed.  While all were sleeping she ran Khyrsippos through with Laïus' sword, fatally wounding him.  The wound, though mortal, did not bring immediate death, and Khyrsippos was able to cling to life long enough to reveal his true killer to his half brothers.  Hippodameia was banished.

Myrtoessa had no children.

-

Deep-eddying Eridanos had several daughters, the Naides Hesperiai, who mourned at the burial of their cousin Phaethon, son of Helios and their aunt the younger Klymene.  He had been allowed to steer the sun across the sky, but failed in controlling it and, eventually, had to be struck down by Zeus to stop the world from being burned.

Phaethon landed in Eridanos, his uncle, who caught the dead boy gently and delivered him to burial with all due honors.  The Hesperiai buried Phaethon, and engraved on his tomb, "Great was his fall, yet did he greatly dare," and then wept.

They wept for days.

Klymene eventually found her son's tomb, with her nieces still weeping around it.  She joined them in their tears.  For four more days and nights they cried, until one noticed her feet had taken root.  Klymene tried to free them, but it was impossible, for they had become trees, weeping tears of resin (not sap) which hardened into amber.

-

Strymon first mated with a muse [legend says Euterpe or Kalliope, I'll decide which later] and they produced Rhesus who was murdered at Troy before he could join the battle.  He married the nymph Neaira, and they had two daughters Euadne and Tereine.

Euadne married Argos, son of Niobe, the first mortal woman with whom Zeus slept. [Which means I may have to reconsider order] They produced Ekbasos, Peiras, Epidauros, and Kriasos.

Tereine mated with Ares to produce Thrassa, who married the Thracian king Hipponous.  Their daughter, Polyphonte, scorned the arts of Aphrodite and instead went into the woods to join the huntress Artemis.  Now, Aphrodite cannot ruin the lives of all who scorn her arts, but a semi-divine mortal running with her adoptive half-sister who also scorns her arts? That is an inviting and achievable target.

So Aphrodite made Polyphonte fall in love with a bear.  No doubt Aphrodite expected Polyphonte to be torn apart by the bear but Artemis was able to make the bear be gentle with her, though Artemis was still disgusted with the act.

When she discovered Polyphonte was pregnant she bade her return to her father's house and there Polyphonte gave birth to half bear twins, Agrios and Oreios, as terrible as Artemis feared they would be.  Though, had the inhuman children not been again banished, perhaps they would have grown up better.

As it was they became cannibals, if a half human feeding on humans can be said to be a cannibal, and Zeus sent Hermes to punish the terrible two.  Zeus had given Hermes wide latitude to punish them in whatever means he saw fit, and Hermes thought decapitation, coupled with cutting off their hands, appropriate.

Ares, however, was mindful of his great grand children, or at least their well-being if not their practices, and when Artemis learned that Polyphonte, a victim in all this, was to be punished too she assisted Ares in heading off Hermes' judgement.

Polyphonte became a small owl, which is heard by night.  Agrios an eagle owl, a bird that is a premonition of good for all who see it.  Oreios, the more detestable of the pair, was turned into a vulture.

Hermes' punishment had been intended for the whole family, including a nameless female slave who had been forced to serve Agrios and Oreios as they feasted on human flesh around her.  So she too was changed into a bird to save her from Hermes' punishment.  As she felt the change begin to come upon her she alone spoke up, and she prayed that she not become a bird evil to mankind.

All three gods, Hermes, Artemis, and Ares, heard her prayer.  This slave who had never been gifted with so much as a name was granted her wish by the gods.  She became a woodpecker, a bird of good omen for one going hunting or to a feast.

-

Maiandros had at least two daughters and a son [ask me about the others later, this is taking forever] Samia, Kyanee, and Kalamos.

Samia took as her husband Ancaeus, son of Astypalaea and Poseidon, and had as children Perilaus, Enudus, Samus, Alitherses and a daughter Parthenope.  Parthenope then had a son, Lycomedes, by Apollo.

Kyanee married Miletos, founder of Miletus, and they had a son and a daughter.  Twins.  Their names were Kaunos and Byblis.  This turned out to be a bit of a problem because the two fell in love with each other.  Not being gods, but instead mortal, this kind of incestuous relationship was a very much not good thing.  Kaunos ran away to stop himself from doing something everyone might regret.  Byblis followed.

Eventually exhaustion overtook Byblis and in that state of mind she was able to see clearly what she had wanted, what she would have done, and the wrongness of it all.  She decided to kill herself before she returned to her original thinking.  She would have done so had not the local nymphs taken pity on her and made her one of their own.  Though immortal, she has never in her long life taken a mate.

Kaunos eventually ran all the way to Lycia where he met and married the Nereid Pronoe [hey, one of them does have a story, too bad the only translation is French] who then bore Aegialus.  After Kaunos' death Aegialus gathered all the people from the skattered settlements into a city which he named Kanos, after his father.

Kalamos and Karpos, the son of Zephyrus and Chloris, had a swimming contest in Maiandros himself.  Both youths and closest of friends. Karpos drowned just before he would have won, an evil wind blowing a wave to his mouth just as he took a breath.  Kalamos blamed himself, for he had been letting his friend wind and, if he'd not done so, Karpos might have lived in Kalamos' place.

Time, it is said, heals all wounds, but not for Kalamos.  He could not endure life as a human any longer and so he was transformed into reeds, while Karpos became fruit of the earth.

-

Istros of the beautiful waters had a daughter Peuke, who in turn had a son Peucon.

-

Phasis' daughter Asterodeia bore Apsyrtos to Aeetes before he married Idyia, daughter of Tethys and Okeanos.

-

Rhesos didn't have kids.

-

Silver-swirling Akheloios was the father of the Seirenes by multiple mothers.  Melpomene, one of the Muses and thus daughter of Mnemosyne and Zeus, was one of them.  Sterope, daughter of the Argonaut Porthaon, was another.  Terpsikhore, another Muse, was the third.  Between them they bore the Seirenes: Thelxiope, charming voice, Thelxinoe, charming-the-mind, Thelxiepeia, creatively charming, Molpe, song, Peisinoe, affecting-the-mind, Aglaophonos, splendid sounding, Aglaope, splendid voice, Parthenope, maiden voice, Ligeia, clear-toned, Leukosia, white-substance.

Together they sing songs so beautiful and so personalized that those hearing them want to do nothing but continue listening.  They abandon their ships at the waters edge, leaving them to become rotting hulls, they forget their homes and families, and become devoted solely to hearing what comes next.  The next verse, the next line, the next word, the next syllable.

So entranced are they that they don't care about anything the the wondrous song they are hearing, not eating, not drinking, not sleeping, not moving.  And so they sit, on the ground of the Seirenes' island, amoung the bodies and bones of those who have come before them, and waste away.  And die.

Some would have you believe that ships crashed against the rocks, it's not that that never happened, it's not that no one ever jumped overboard, but the truth is that most of those killed by the Seirenes didn't drown.  They died on dry land.

They simply stopped caring about anything other than the song.  A mortal body can last but so long when it is not cared for.

Returning to the river, Alkmaon needed to be purified again, and was sent to Akheloios to have it done.  This once again got Alkmaon a wife out of the deal, this time one of Akheloios' non-Seiren daughters.  Specifically Kallirhoe (named for her aunt.)

It was at around this time Kallirhoe learned of the gifts Alkmaon had given to his earlier wife, and she thought they were pretty nice so she decided to she wanted them.  Alkmaon got them, by lying.  As soon as the lie was discovered the brothers of the earlier wife were sent to kill him, which they did.

At around this point Arsinoe, daughter of one of the sons of Alpheios and Telegone, was sold into slavery by her brothers because she was kind of pissed off at them killing her husband, even if he did lie to get back gifts he had earlier given her.  And, Kallirhoe prayed to Zeus that her children would become adults immediately so they could avenge their father.  Zeus answered the prayer and Amphoterus and Acarnan set off to do just that.

Now enters the story one Agapenor, hero of the Trojan War, one of the warriors who had been inside the horse.  Having been shipwrecked he'd founded a new city Paphos and was in the market for a female slave. Arsinoe's brothers were there to sell her to Agapenor and that is where Amphoterus and Acarnan caught up to them.

Arsinoe took this opportunity to exit the entire mess, her brothers were murdered in vengeance.  Amphoterus and Acarnan took their mission to avenge their father back to the source and killed Phegeus, who gave the order, and his wife, for some reason or other.  Following this there was a prolonged period of running away.  Very fast.

Eventually they got around to telling their mother that the deed had been done, and then took the gifts that set the whole thing off to Delphi, for that was what Alkmaon had claimed he was going to do with them in the first place.

Returning to the River, Perimede had Hippodamas and Orestes by him.

He also wasn't entirely straight as he and Kephisos, another river who was quite male, produced Kastalia, the nymph of the spring at Delphi.

Finally his daughter Peirene is the nymph of the freshwater spring at Korinth.  Peirene was originally an nameless wandering Nymph, but she came across a spring that had no nymph at Korinth, she took her name from the spring, Peirene.  The name came from a mortal woman who created it with her tears (until tears were all that was left of her) when Artemis accidentally killed one of her sons.  But the name has a stranger history than that.  The mortal Peirene was a daughter of Oebalus and Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus and, some say, the first woman to have two husbands.  Though Peirene was the daugther of Oebalus, Gorgophone named her after her first husband Perieres,

It was this strange name that Peirene became nymph of the freshwater spring at Korinth.  It was by her waters, while Pegasos was drinking at them, that Bellerophon captured and tamed Pegasos.

-

Nessos [I'm just going to stick an "or" in here until I can get it sorted] either had no kids or perhaps had a daughter Thronia who by Posidon had a son Abderos after whom a town is named.

-

Rhodios had no kids.

-

Haliakmon had no kids.

-

Heptaporos [I'm just going to stick an "or" in here until I can get it sorted] either had no kids or perhaps had a daughter Methone who by Pieros fathered Oiagis, King of Thrace.

-

Grenikos fathered Alexirhoe, who was loved by Priam, king of Troy and bore him Aisakos, one of two sons Priam had by that name.  Either Priam liked the name, or he was unoriginal.  Grenikos also fathered Pegasis who bore Atymnios to Emathion, son of Priam.

-

One of Aisepos' daughters, the fountain nymph Abarbaree, lay with Boukolion, eldest son of Laomedon.  Now Boukolion was born to an unwed mother and so tended flock by trade.  While shepherding he met Abarbarea and the two lay in love.  She bore him twins: Aisepos, named for her father, and and Pedasos.

The two fought for Troy in The War, and were slain by Euryalos.

-

Godlike Simoeis had a daughter Astyokhe who took as her husband Erikhthonios, son of Teucer and Batia, and their child Tros, renamed the kingdom after himself, calling it Troy.

He married Kallirrhoe daughter of Scamander and they had four children.  Kleopatra, their only daughter, Ilus, Assarakos, and Ganymede.

Zeus was so taken with the beauty of the boy Ganymede that Zeus appointed him cupbearer of the gods on Olympos.

Ilus went on to found the city Ilium, one day to be know as Troy.  (It was part of the kingdom and all that.) He had two wives, both of whom claim credit for his successor Laomedon.  His other children inspired no such rival tales.  They were his daughters Themiste and Telecleia.

Assarakos took as his wife another daughter of Simoeis, Hieromneme, and they had a son Kapys who by his wife Themiste, daughter of Ilus, had a son Anchises, mortal lover of Aphrodite

-

Peneios married the nymph Kreusa and they had Hypseus, Stilbe, Daphne, Menippe, and Orseis.

Hypseus became the king of the proud Lapithai.

Stilbe with Apollo bore Lapithes and Kentauros.

Apollo wanted Daphne as well, but Daphne did not want him.  Actually, that's getting ahead of myself a bit. Daphne didn't want any man, and there aren't a lot of patrons for such women, especially if you're not interested in going to war and Athene is probably the least woman-like goddess in the pantheon for myriad reasons, many of which can probably be attributed to being stuck inside of Zeus' head for a while on her journey out of his body.

Anyway, most women/demi-gods/whatever who aren't into standard Greek sexuality tend to take a sort of Artemis way out of things.  So this is what Daphne did.  She kept only the company of women and lived as a hunter.  Artemis took notice and blessed her with the ability to shoot straight.  Not shoot very well; shoot straight.  Perfectly, impossibly, straight.

That is in no way important to the story, but as gifts go it's pretty nifty.

It came to pass that Daphne and her company of hunters were passing through Elis and there crossed paths with Leukippos, the son of Oinomaus (prince of Pisa).  Leukippos is said to have fallen in love with her, but how much love there could be when Daphne was avoiding interaction with men as much as possible is sort of subject to debate.

What is true is that he wanted to be with her and was willing to change his entire life to do it.  It was the custom in those times for boys and young men to grow their hair long, dedicating the uncut locks to the local river god.  Leukippos was growing his hair long for Alpheios.  He braided it the style of women, he bought women's clothes, and he left his male life behind.

He introduced himself as his father's daughter, and asked to join Daphne on her hunt.  He was allowed to do so and as time went on the two did become close and the feeling between them could truly be described as love.

Indeed they had become inseparable, Daphne would scarcely let him leave her sight, and they had many warm embraces.

Exactly what would have happened had the relationship played out is impossible to say, because it never got the chance.

Apollo did something very, very stupid.

Seeing the younger Eros, Aphrodite's son, he took a single look at the winged god's bow and laughed.  Then he boasted.  He spoke of how his aim was true, and how his arrows wounded.  He spoke of the damage he could do to beast and man, of a battle recently won.  And he told Eros to lay down his bow because only he was worthy of being a god with a bow.  (Had his sister been listening she doubtless would have shot him in the back of the head there and then.)

While he was the younger Eros, and while his form still resembled that of a boy, save for the wings, he was a much older god than Apollo and understood his own power far better than Apollo did.  He quickly said that his arrows could bring down Apollo, and fired one straight into him.  No wound was produced, what was produced was a lust that could only be quenched by Daphne.

At first Apollo tried to fight Eros' power over him, that lasted about thirty seconds.  Then he tried to channel it into more rational means.  He thought about what needed to be done to get her and the first thing was to get the person she was already in love with out of the way.

So he instilled the group of huntresses with a desire to bathe and swim.  The nearest spot was on the banks of Ladon, Daphne's uncle.

Leukippos was very uneasy the entire way there, trying to find some way out of what was coming, but he saw none, and as the rest of the party stripped to bathe they started to notice that Leukippos wasn't joining them.  At first there was curiosity and teasing, but the more he avoided revealing the truth, the more they wanted to know what was being hidden under those clothes, and finally some were torn from him.

First there was a moment of shock.  Then a mad scramble for weapons.  Everyone in motion except Daphne and Leukippos.  She simply stared.  He hung his head.  He made no attempt to run.  It wouldn't have mattered and he didn't care.

As Apollo had hoped, many spears were thrown but then, by the will of gods other than Apollo (and the younger Eros for that matter) Leukippos disappeared spears passed through empty space where he had been, and landed harmlessly on and in the ground.

And it was at about this point that Apollo lost control of the fire the younger Eros had lit inside him.  He rushed toward Daphne and words didn't even need to be exchanged.  She saw the look in his eyes and swam across the river as fast as she could.  As she pulled herself up on the opposite bank, she stole a look back and saw Apollo not far behind.

She quickly considered her situation and found it hopeless.  Her bow, her knife, her spear all lay on the far shore.  As did her clothes.  She couldn't hope to outrun Apollo, and she had nothing in the way of resources, though divine herself, she couldn't fight him off while he was armed and she was naked.

So she ran anyway, and said a prayer as she did: That she not be taken by Apollo.  Just as he grabbed her and stopped her motion, the prayer was answered.

Her sank into the earth, lengthening as they did, her toes grew long and thick and branched out beneath her, her skin grew tough, her body reshaped itself, he legs joining together as one, parts growing, parts shrinking. The bark that her skin had become sprouted new branches, and where first just the hair on her head had been turning green and widening into a flat glossy green lance, now all of her branches did, especially her arms.

Apollo was confused when his lips touched bark, but still in raging lust he didn't want to leave her, and so he made a crown of leaves.  To this day the laurel leaf is associated with Apollo, and the Greeks know the bay laurel as Daphne.

But this story has been told a thousand times.  And one question always seems to linger.  What the hell happened to Leukippos?

It says quite clearly in texts dating back more than two thousand years that he disappeared, and that was quoting earlier texts now lost to us.  It says it was by the will of the gods.  Which gods? Certainly not Apollo.  Nor Eros, who had prepared a second arrow (gold for love, lead for the opposite) but in truth never needed to use it.

And what did he do after that? The gods don't just pluck someone out of certain death to then have them do nothing.

Kalliope, a little help here?

In a barren stretch of land that might as well be the middle of nowhere thought it was far enough from anywhere important that it's distance had never been measured, Leukippos awoke with an aching body and a mind that felt like it was on fire.  At first he didn't remember who he was, or was it she? The second felt more natural these days.

Memories came back that definitely tended toward he, but she decided she was going with she, even as the memory of betrayal in the various huntresses faces returned when they saw his body.

She gathered her clothes, quite torn, as well as she could, tying knots here or there to try to make them cover the disagreement between "he" and "she" and when she finally decided that half naked was as good as she could hope for, slowly unsteadily got to her feet.

She tried to get her bearings, but failed.

"Well, that went well," came a sarcastic voice from behind her.  She spun to see a woman she'd never seen before.  A strange glow about her.  Impossible.

Just as her mind was beginning to process what that meant: Goddess, another voice, "What the... the... eleleu eleleu just happened?" Again behind her, though this time more off to the left than straight behind.  Another woman she had never seen before.

Also glowing.  Also a goddess.  A bow, a quiver, arrows tipped with silver points.  Artemis.

"I do believe-"

"Oimoi," she said, why did they always have to appear behind her.  A man.  With wings.  Also glowing.  Also armed.  Big bow, probably doesn't like being interrupted.

"that we all tried to move the mortal out of the way at the same time," he continued without any indication of annoyance.  Perhaps he didn't mind being interrupted.

"In different directions," the first goddess said, a sort of glee in her voice.

"What are you even doing here?" Artemis asked.

"Mostly I was messing with Apollo, but don't think that screwing around with your namesake," the first goddess gestured to the male god, "wasn't an incentive too."

There was a pause.  Then the same goddess asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I happen to like Daphne and she would have felt bad if he died right in front of her."

Leukippos weakly said, "She."

"That's an understa-" the male god began.  Then he quickly asked.  "What was that?"

Leukippos looked at the ground as she answered, "I'm 'she', not 'he'."

"Well that simplifies things," Artemis said.

"Disharmony between body and mind," the first goddess said. "I love it."

"You would," the male god said.

All the spinning to look at the divinities speaking was making Leukippos so dizy she was worried she'd collapse to the ground, and she still had no idea where she was or who these divinities were.  Two thirds of them at least.

"Only when she acts on it, if she just went on pretending everything was fine there'd be no me in it."

That made so much sense.  So very much.  If by so much one meant none at all.  Leukippos wanted to scream, and decided, 'Where am I?' was a better question then, 'Who are you?' but when she asked it wasn't a scream, it was a soft, meek, question.  "Where am I?" in the broken voice of one who has just lost the love of her life, left with nothing but looks of shock and betrayal and more than a few deadly weapons hurled, and is no surrounded by ones who could destroy with no effort at all.

"That's not important, what is important is what to do with you now," Artemis said.

So much spinning they were blurring together and the ground was becoming dangerously unstable: wobbling this way and that.  "Who are you?"

"Well," the first goddess said, "I'm Eris.  He's the reason you fell in love with-"

The male god interrupted, "I had no more part in that than you had in making Apollo mouth off to-"

"Oh I know, it's wonderful when it happens on it's own isn't it? It's you, but it's you without effort.  It's like a perfect moment."

The male god made a low guttural sound, almost a growl.  Then he turned to Leukippos, "I'm Eros."

"Hence the golden wings," Eris said at the same time the second goddess said, "The Elder, not to be confused with Aphrodite's kid."

"I'm Artemis, by the way."

"I'd actually guessed that," Leukippos admitted, now looking at the ground again, when surrounded by gods she should know her place, "It's the other two I..." a place that probably didn't involve calling them 'the other two'.  "What do you want with me?"

"Well," Artemis said, "Once we turn your body female I don't see any reason why we can't put you right back where we found you."

"Uh..." Eris started.  "You do realize that Daphne's been turned into a tree."

"What!" Leukippos shouted.

"That's not good," Eros said.

"Relax." Eris said.  "It's just her body.  She was a nymph anyway, why not be a tree?"

"Because trees can't hunt." Artemis said.

"Or love." Eros said.

"Who says trees can't love?" Eris asked.

"You know exactly what I meant."

"Yes.  But I'm not going to let you get off without saying it."

"The two should have sex."

Eris turned her attention to Leukippos, "He's talking about your sex life right in front of you, how does that make you feel?"

"Stop trying to ... to ... to be you.  This is a serious problem," Artemis said.

"If a spirit isn't enough for you we can always make her a second body, the first humans were made out of clay or some such," Eris said.

"Prometheus is still chained to a rock," Artemis said.

"Yeah, I should do something about that."

"Zeus would kill you."

"I mean I should get someone else to do something about it."

"Can we stick to the matter at hand," Eros asked in a way that was more of an order.

"How did she become a tree?" Leukippos asked, trying to make sense of the strange conversation happening around her.

"It's a long and boring story," Eris said.

"Not that long," Artemis said.

"You're the one that didn't know it happened."

"We haven't been here for that long."

"Fine," Eris said angrily.  "Apollo wanted your girlfriend, she didn't want him, she prayed he wouldn't get her, someone or other turned her into a tree by way of answering that prayer." She turned to Artemis, "Happy?" she snapped.

"Delighted."

"Oh, the me in you is strong."

"It's about time you're on the receiving end for a change."

"You have no idea what I've been through."

"The point!" Eros interrupted.

"We can make Daphne a new body and she can live a human life with her lover, all is well." Eris said.  "Or we could take Daphne's soul and lover here down to Taratros and they could spend eternity together there, all is well.  Just promise me I get to tell Apollo that his would-be love is living happily ever after with someone else."

"You do realize that the only people who actually like Tartaros are your blood relatives," Artemis said.

"Hades doesn't seem to mind."

"Ok, your family and my weird uncle."

"The point?" Eros asked.

"The point is that it's not exactly a noted social venue," Artimis said.  "Only Eris could see that as happily ever after.  I didn't save Leukippos just to send her to the afterlife while still alive."

"Neither did I."

"Then we make her a new body," Eris said.

"Why can't you just turn her back?" Leukippos asked.

"That's like asking why there can only be twelve thrones on Olympos."

"It's magic woven deeply into the world from ages long ago," Artemis explained.

"Otherwise known as stupid rules put in place by stupid gods but so powerful that overturning them would do more harm than good," Eris said.

"For once we agree."

"We do?" Eris couldn't hide the shock in her voice, and didn't think to try.

"So we make Daphne a new body," Eros said.

"Then we transfer the soul."

"But that would have the side effect of making her mortal," Artemis said.

"Leukippos already is.  So what? Their lives end and they come to Tartaros like everyone else," Eris said.  "It's a long way off." She turned to Leukippos, "And don't worry about it.  My whole family lives there, it's a fine place."

There was a pause.

"I'll go to Prometheus," Eris said.

"He'll trust you?" Eros asked.

"He an I can stir up trouble like no one else.  We're close."

"Fine.  I'll distract Zeus," Artemis said.

"No," Eros said, "I can do a better job of it.  You should look after Daphne and this one."

"It's agreed then?" Artemis asked?

The other two gods nodded, and then disappeared.

Artemis approached Leukippos, "Let's get your body into better shape, and get you some better clothes." She placed her right hand on Leukippos shoulder, and her left hand on her hip.

The changes were gradual, and Leukippos had no real sense of what they were coming to.  Then Artemis smiled.  "Come with me." She grabbed hold of Leukippos.  A blur of colors and shapes, then they were at a pond, it's water perfectly.

Artemis gestured for the young woman to look at her reflection.  The face was the same, but not the same.  Small changed in almost imperceptible ways made it more feminine, the way her body moved as she bent forward to look at the reflection was different too.  The sensations on her chest stood out, of course, but so too did the change in her center of balance.

She almost regretted that Artemis had replaced her torn clothes with garments perfect as if freshly made.  She wanted to see what her body actually looked like.

"Bathe," Artemis commanded.

And suddenly she was much less concerned about what her body looked like beneath her clothes, and much more concerned with modesty.  "What?"

"Bathe.  It's what made things go wrong in the first place, let's see how it would work now."

Leukippos looked around, the small pond was empty except for them.  There was no one to see her but the goddess.

She took a moment.  Took a deep breath.  Took another moment.  And then did as commanded.  She was clearly female in body now.  But that wasn't all that worried her.  She looked up at the goddess, standing on the shore, and asked, "What if she doesn't forgive me?"

"For what?"

"For lying to her about... who I was, what I was.  What if she doesn't love me anymore?"

"What if Metis claws her way out of Zeus, bears a son, and we have to deal with a new ruler of the universe? What if Eris betrays us all and we're imprisoned like the Titans who sided with Khronos?"

Later, Leukippos, fully clothed and cleaner than before, and Artemis came to the first bay laurel in existence.  Artemis placed a hand on it and spoke, "From one granddaughter of a Titan to another, the person I bring with me is a woman, and she's very sorry for any deceit she may have used in the past and any pain she may have caused.

"The two of you will be together again.  I'm working with gods older than my father, and we have a plan."

Menippe's son Phrastor became king of the Tyrrhenians in Italy.

Orseis married Hellen, the only [or is it eldest? need to dig deeper on two other names] son of Deukalion and Pyrrha, the two survivors from the third age of humanity.  Every mortal not descended from those two descends from the stones that became men and women after being thrown by them as the rest of humanity had been wiped out by flood.

Orseis and Hellen ended up ruling most of Greece.

-

Hermos had a daughter Moria. [And possibly Neaira, the nymph not the human prostitute, as well.  But for now I'm really trying to get this finished.  Been working on it for four days now.]

Moria's mother was Omphale, before Omphale married Herakles of course.  One day Moria's half brother, Heralkes son Tylos (some call him Tylon because they clearly don't understand the Greek laguague well enough to understand that if Omphale bore "Tylon" then his name is Tylos because "Tylon" is the accusasitive of "Tylos") was walking by the by Moria's father Hermos.

This in itself is not unusual or unfortunate, a young man walking by a river is a perfectly fine thing to do, but it so happened at that a great serpent -coiling, venomous, and murderous- happened to be in about the same place at about the same time.

This serpent, who had no name, had accumulated quite a history by this point.  He ate shepherds and wayfarers, wild beasts, and even trees.  The only ones who saw him and lived to tell about it were those who, from a distance, saw him eat man or beast whole, watching in horror as the prey disappeared into his gaping jaws.

But for Tylos he had a different purpose, for he did not eat the young man.  Instead he seemed to be having simple fun.  Tylos' hand brushed against him, unknowing.  He showed himself to Tylos, relishing in the fear produced.  Spread his hood wide until it filled the youth's vision.  Then darted between his legs so that Tylos could feel the thing that would be his death press across his thighs and groin.  Before Tylos could vault one of his legs over the beast and try to run the serpent circled round his abdomen, then his chest.

It didn't suffocate him, but only left enough room for short shallow breaths.  Finally it brought its head before the youth, and then looked him in the eyes.  For a moment they looked at each other: the Tylos full of fear, terror appropriate to his situation; the serpent full of malevolence.

Then the serpent struck.

This is when Moria came to the scene, far enough away to be safe, close enough to see the venomous fangs first sink into her brother's flesh.

Tylos let out half a gasp, his lungs to constricted by the serpent's coils to let out a full one.  Moria didn't make a sound, so shocked was she at the sight that she had stopped breathing.

Tylos' body might not have realized it yet, but he was dead already.  The message simply had to be sent through his veins from the bite to the rest of his body.

Unfortunately, that wasn't enough for the serpent who uncoiled himself from the youth simply so he could bite him in more places, eventually leaving a badly mutilated, scarcely recognizable, corpse.

Moria remembered to breathe, and cried out for her brother.  The serpent noticed her.  Knowing better to attack her next to her mighty father Hermos, the serpent with drew, allowing her to rush to her brother's body and weep over it.

But the serpent didn't retreat from sight.  He simply backed off far enough for Moria to advance.  He watched all, savoring every tear.  He took perverse joy in every drop that fell on the corpse, so recently a living body, from the nymph's eyes.

Then Moria looked up at the serpent, her brother's killer.

If the serpent had known what she would do next it would have run.  Well... slithered.  Very fast.

Moria ran away, which the serpent had forseen, but not from fear or grief.  She ran to pray for vengeance for she knew that she couldn't slay the serpent herself.  It was not exceptionally large in height or width -it could fit between a person's legs, if only just- but in length it was about seven furlongs, six chains, two rods, and one foot (understand that this is an approximate figure, translated from the Greek, not an exact measurement.  In the Greek a single word denotes a unit of length about seven furlongs, six chains, two rods, and one foot long, so it is an easy figure to round to.  The serpent may have been somewhat longer or shorter.)

She came to a sacred space and falling to her knees grabbed an outcropping of rock as if it were Gaia's knees, and she a suppliant, and prayed that her brother be avenged.

And now to her came Damasen, a giant born of Gaia alone in the manner that the first giants had been born by Ouranos' blood: fully grown and fully armed.  He had been trained by Eris.  He was the nearest child Gaia could send and also one who could do what Moria wanted done, both what she prayed for and what she wanted most.

Moria showed Damasen the disfigured body of her brother, reeking of innards and venom, and the serpent, still watching the body, still sneering inasmuch as a serpent can sneer.

Damasen took up the challenge, ripping a tree from the ground to be used as a club.  The serpent, understanding what was happening, quickly coiled itself around the giant's legs, hoping to bring him down.

This he succeeded in doing.  By the time the giant actually hit the ground, sending out a tremor felt for miles around, the serpent was coiled around much of the rest of his body as well.

Their struggles on the ground sent out aftershocks, and eventually the serpent raised it's head above the giant's, it's gaping maw a cavern of teeth, poison dripping from it's fangs and hideous breath so foul it discolored the air.

The muscles of the serpent's neck prepared for the final strike.

And so Damasen made his move at that moment, for there wouldn't be another.  The tree he had grabbed, which the serpent had forgotten, struck the serpent at the base of the skull, where it met the spine.  Taking advantage of the serpent's stunned state, Damasen dropped the tree and pushed the serpents coils off his body, then his legs. Grabbing the tree, he got to his feet.  He struck the serpent in the head with the tree.  Again.  Again.  Again, again, again.  Again.

Until the serpent breathed no more.

Moria looked on the serpent's body, her prayer answered, and felt none of the peace she had sought.  Her soul still cried out at the death of her brother.  His dying breaths, not even full gasps, still echoed in her ears.  The vengeance had made her feel no better than she had felt before it was carried out.

She hung her head and started walking toward her brother's body, perhaps a proper burial would quiet her heart and her soul, but Damasen bade her wait.

A second serpent, a female serpent, the first serpent's mate, appeared.  First she went to her mate.  Embracing his body as only a serpent can, and then she moved her undulating coils along a nearby cliff-side full of flowers and herbs, and from it plucked a special flower.

In her jaws she brought the flower, with teeth never meant for carrying, -carefully- to her mate, and tilted her entire head to get the nectar to drip from it.  When a single drop landed in the first serpent's nostril a change began.

Slow at first.  Small movements.  Twitches.  Then more along the lines of shivers.  Movements that involved more and more of the serpents body.  Finally the entire serpent's body moved in a wave.  There was a sharp intake of breath, and the serpent was alive again.

It made a low hiss, then it and its mate disappeared into the hole that was the entrance to their home.

The flower, lay forgotten, where the female serpent had spat it out once its work had begun.

Now Damasen turned away and left without a word.

For a moment, but just a moment, Moria stood stunned.  Then she ran to the flower, looked at it closely to see if there was any nectar left in it, and, seeing that there was, raced with it to her brother.

The wait was agonizing as the drop of nectar slowly slid down the flower, and finally dropped into her brother's nostril.  It was through the nostril that life was first breathed into humankind, and when the nectar finally did make contact she could feel the life return to him.

Wounds began to heal, slowly at first, muscles began to twitch, and as the healing progressed, Moria watching it through her brother's torn and bitten clothes, the nymph began to feel the pain inside her ease.

It was when he had his sharp intake of breath, his eyes snapping open, that she was finally at peace, but she could find no words, cradling her brother in her arms, watching him newly returned from death seem as healthy as he had ever been, the moment seemed to profound for words.

It was Tylos who broke the silence.

What he said was not profound, he simply asked why he felt like he had water up his nose.  Moria laughed and hugged him tightly.

And the two spent the rest of the day happily talking together.  The flower remained on the ground, where Moria had set it down.

-

Strongly flowing Kaikos contrary to popular, and somewhat disturbing belief.  Did not have any children.  He is not his own grandfather.  Not only does that make no sense, it isn't attested anywhere.  The belief seems to have materialized out of thin air so seriously stop it.  Sometimes rivers are celebate, it happens.  There's nothing wrong with that.  Lay off.

Besides, if he did have a daughter named after his sister who then had sex with Hermes to produce a child named after him who then jumped into a river that had two names already as a means of suicide to escape reprisal for doing something extremely stupid only to have that river take on his name as a result of the suicide and in so doing create not a river newly name Kaikos but instead the original Kaikos in a kind of predestination paradox of time-loopiness don't you thing someone would have written that down before the age of the internet? I mean, seriously, don't you?

There is nothing, anywhere, that says Kaikos had kids.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  Some people don't have kids.  If he'd wanted kids and couldn't have them, that would be a problem, but lay of with the paradox making screwiness in an attempt to force Kaikos into some "Rivers must have kids" paradigm.  He is not his own grandfather, he did not give birth to his own mother, he didn't do any of that crap.

Let Kaikos be.

-

Great Sangarios had several daughters.  Those most remembered tended to have somewhat bizare stories.

Nana, for example.  Nana's story starts with someone other than Nana.

You see Zeus, it seems, ejaculated in his sleep and somehow this made it onto the ground.  This is odd as generally Zeus sleeps in a bed.  In fact, when he's not in the bed of someone he's not supposed to be in bed with, he's generally in a bed on Olympus.  But regardless, in his sleep Zeus managed to get some of his seed on the ground.

The ground, of course, is Gaia, and she was thus impregnated.  The child that was brought forth was a hermaphroditic god named Agdistis.  The gods, prudish as they were at the time, were rather weirded out by this and, violent as they were at the time, decided that the solution was to simply pick a gender and remove the other parts.  The gender that they picked was apparently female as the discarded part was most definitely male.

No one stopped to ask how Agdistis felt about all this.

From the removed portion grew and almond tree.  But, based on what it had come from, it was apparently a magical phallic almond tree.

It is at this point that Nana gets to enter her own story, for one day she sat under the magical phallic almond tree, which looked like any other almond tree, and an almond fell on her.  And being the almond of a magical phallic almond tree, it impregnated her.  (And magically disappeared, but that part is hardly important.)

Nana gave the child up for adoption in the traditional way that gods do these things.  She abandoned it and waited for an animal to pick up the slack.  Unlike most stories of this nature the animal in question was male. A he-goat that apparently had the desire to raise a child alone.

Which he did.

The boy, Attis, had a beauty that was more than human and Agdistis fell in love with him.

At this point the story becomes stranger still because when he was fully grown Attis was sent by relatives -who should be either goats, almond trees, or rivers- to marry the daughter of the king of Pessinus.  One wonders how the goat-almond-river coellition managed to set that up given that Attis had been abandoned in the wilderness and had been raised by a single father who happened to be a goat.  No record of the negotiations survives, but royal marriages tend to involve some.  (Or epic quests.)

Unfortunately when Agdistis showed up to the wedding Attis took leave of his senses and castrated himself (does anyone else feel like there's a lot of castration in this story?) the king did the same thing.  Agdistis felt really bad about the whole thing and got Zeus to make Attis not suffer from the general entropy that tends to afflict mortal bodies.  No word if anyone involved in the story actually lived though.  One would like to assume that someone showed up and said, "Too many body parts being lost here; Everybody heal."

At the very least, Attis is worshiped as a god.

Another of the daughters of the river was Nikaia [and possibly also Alke, having trouble seeing where the source is getting that from] Nikaia's story involves the difficulties of one who chooses to forgo sex.  First she had to kill someone who was trying to rape her in the usual style of the gods (chase after victim until you catch them) then she was shunned because killing people is bad.  Then a friend of the one she killed caused another god to fall in love with her and at this point... oh where do we start?

Turning water into wine isn't always a good thing.  The god of wine, the one made to fall in not-really-love-but-it-still-gets-called-that with her found that if you have a total lack of respect for things like consent control, and, you know, consciousness it can be a lot easier to rape someone after you get them really intoxicated or perhaps even passed out.

Which is what he did to Nikaia.

We know of at least one suicide attempt on her part, it didn't work.  We also know that her experience didn't exactly make her compassionate to people who suffered the same fate at the hands of the god of wine.  Instead it resulted in a reaction more along the lines of, "Did you not see what happened to me?! How can you possibly have let this happen knowing what happened before?!" When a more reasonable reaction might have been realizing that it's impossible to be completely safe and offering compassion to the victim.

And, in the end, she ended up having to raise not just the children resulting from her own rape, but also a child resulting from the same god raping another.

And that, unfortunately, is the story of Nikaia.

Oh, and Nikaia's mother? Agdistis, who had taken on a new name because Agdistis didn't really sound feminine enough for her after Agdistis got used to being a her.  (Agdistis was not one of the gods gifted with shape-shifting on the level of, say, Zeus.) Agdistis was named Kebele when she mothered Nikaia.

The last daughter of Sangarios we'll be talking about today also has a sad story.  Sagaritis, for that was her name, was what we might call a dryad today.  A Nymph whose life is tied to a tree.  And one day she met a nice young man who liked her and who she liked.  They had completely consensual sex which was doubtless very nice, and it all seems like a nice story until you find out that the young man had taken an oath.

The oath shouldn't have harmed her in any way for the oath that the boy, Attis (a different Attis), swore should have affected only himself.  A goddess asked him to remain a boy forever, using as her definition of boy "virgin", and be guardian of her shrine.  He said that if he ever violated her wish, let that one he did it with be his last.  So when the young man that the boy had become violated that oath he likely expected any penalty to fall on him.

Perhaps he thought he would be killed, perhaps he thought he would be in for a lifetime of monogamy, perhaps he thought he would suffer the other Attis' fate.  What he could not have forseen was what would happen to Sagaritis, who had sworn no oath.

And it is Sagaritis' story we're telling.

The goddess ordered her tree chopped down, and so she proved mortal as any human.  She died with the tree.

[And this is a reminder to myself that his sister has been split into several people one of whom is uselessly attributed as his daughter for no reason so I've got to add to the first bit that Okyrhoe seems to have a) had a habit of naming sons after her brothers, and b) was the father of Hippasus by Hippomedon.]

-

Ladon had several daughers including Metope, Thelpousa, Syrinx, and Karmenta.

Metope married Aspos, a river, and with him had two sons, Ismenos and Pelasgos, and twenty daughters, Aigina, Salamis, Ismene, Thebe, Korkyra, Plataia, Tanagra, Thespeia, Kleone, Harpine, Thespia, Euboia, Sinope, Peirene, Asopis, Ornia, Khalkis, Pelege, Metopa, Pelasga.  (For those who don't know Greek, yes ei and i are very different sounds, the two didn't get confused much.  Faked being confused about who was being spoken to in order to try to get out of doing chores: yes.  Actually getting confused: no.)

And, honestly, at this point, I'm just going to say that other than the fact Zeus kidnapped Aigina, that list is enough for now.  Because he had multiple daughters and if I'm going to track down the linages of twenty two names I may well never get to the rest.  So, moving on we have Thelpousa.

Which, random interjection here, if there's a "U" in a Greek word there's a fair bet you're looking at a dipthong there because on it's own the letter in question gets translated as a "Y".  So Thelpousa instead of Thelpoysa because dipthong, Harpy instead of Harpu because no dipthong.  Anyway, Thelpousa.

She was so cool she had a town named after her.  Isn't that a lovely story? Yeah, I'm pretty burnt out at the moment.

Syrinx, oh, Syrinx.  So, here's how it is.  You know how sometimes someone really wants to have sex with you and you don't want to have sex with them but they turn out to be a god who's half goat and is significantly more powerful than you and doesn't care about consent so you run away but you reach a river that happens to be your father and realize that at this point you're kind of sort of screwed over because for some reason you can't keep up the fleeing thing (maybe you're exhausted, maybe half goats swim really fast, maybe though you're born of water you can't swim) and then you have to ponder what to do, but ponder it fast because he's on his way?

I don't either.  I think I lost it at "someone really wants to have sex with you" but you may have lost it somewhere else, like the person being a half goat god or thinking a river is a boundary rather than an opportunity to try to out swim the person.

But here's the thing, Syrinx knew exactly how that felt because she found herself in precisely that situation, and her culture was even more fine with rape than our own.  And Pan was closing in.

So she asked her sisters, all of them that were withing hearing range, to help.  To do anything.

When gods are in a hurry and they need to think of something, they tend to think of shape-shifting Don't ask me why, they just do.  Now if I had been one of the sisters there present, and I honestly couldn't think of a better solution than changing Syrinx into something, I think I would have suggested changing her into a bull shark because they can live in fresh water and then she could have either out swum Pan or ripped him apart in a fight.

But I wasn't there and the best the assembled nymphs could come up with on such short notice (and it was short) was to turn Syrinx into reeds.

As evidence of how short the notice was, Pan reached out to grab a nymph and ended up with reeds in his hand.  Pan didn't actually realize what he had, he assumed that Syrinx had gotten away somehow.  He looked around for a while, but couldn't find her, and so decided to do something with those reeds.  He made a flute out of them.

Ladon's daughter Karmenta invented the Latin alphabet and her son by Hermes, Euandros, built a city on the banks of the Tiber in Italy, bringing with him the alphabet his mother had created and the knowledge of the ways of the gods that comes from having an Olympian for a father and the grandaghter of a still-in-power Titan for a mother.  Eventually, Rome would be built on the same site as Euandros' city.

-

Parthenios all that is known is that one of his daughters was the mother of Agamestor's son Kleitos.

-

Euenos is another with no stories of his children.  A mortal who shares his name has some, or rather one told in some varying ways, but the river himself not so much.

-

Ardeskos is either childless, or his kids kept their heads down well enough to stay out of the storyteller's arena.

-

Holy Skamandros married a nymph named Idaia and they had a son named Teukros and daughters named Kallirhoe (after Skamandros' sister), Strymo, Rhoeo and Glaukia.

Teukros became king of the entire area and the people were known as Teukrians as a result.

Kallirhoe married Tros, who had renamed the region Troy, and they had four children: Kleopatra, Ilus, Assarakos, and Ganymede.  This might sound familiar because Tros was of the line of another River.

Ganymede was such a nice looking boy that Zeus took him to Olympus to be eyecandy.  (There's art all over the place about the taking of Ganymede, known as "The Rape of Ganymede" because until relatively recently the word Rape had a completely different meaning.)

Ilus went on to found the city Ilium, which became the principle Trojan city and is known as Troy today.  He had two wives and three kids between them.  The kids were Laomedon, Themiste and Telecleia.

Assarakos was ancestor to Anchises whose child by Aphrodite, Aeneas would go on to found the Roman race (but not the city of Rome.)

Strymo married Laomedon (two paragraphs up) though she wasn't the only one.  Rhoeo did as well, as did Plakia daughter of Oteros and Leucippe.  The royal family had five sons Tithonos, Lampos, Klytios, Hiketaon, and Podarkes, and daughters Hesione, Killa, and Astyokhe.

Tithonus was the son of Strymo and would become beloved by Eos.  Podarkes was the son of Leucippe.

Tithonus was away when Herakles made war on Troy (note that it was just a Trojan war, not the Trojan War.) Podarkes was the only son to survive, because Herakles promised to Hiketaon (whom he gave away as a prize) a gift of whatever she wanted, and she chose her brother, not yet dead.  He was renamed Priam, after the word meaning "to buy" for all that remained of his life had been bought from Herakles by Priam's sister Hiketaon.  Priam would go on to rule Troy.

As for Glaukia, while Herakles was making that war on Troy, one of his companions, Deimakhos, fell in love with her, and she with him.  He died in the war, but she was already pregnant by that time.  She sought refuge with Herakles and he handed her off to Deimakhos' father.  Her son she named Skamandros, for her own father.  He married a woman named Akidusa, and they had three daughters.

[And that's just the first born rivers.  Imagine if I did all of the damned things.]

[Also, I utterly failed at NaNo about five hours ago, so expect things to get back to a more usual schedule around here.]

-

[Rewriting Greek Myth Index]