Son of Zeus by the nymph Aegina, daughter of the river Asopus, and king of the island that bears his mother's name; reckoned the most pious of men, he won the people Zeus raised for him, fathered Peleus, Telamon, and Phocus, and after death keeps the keys of Hades.1
Zeus carried off Aegina, one of the twenty daughters of the river Asopus, and conveyed her to the island then named Oenone, but afterward called Aegina after her; there he lay with her and begot a son, Aeacus. Because Aeacus was alone upon the island, Zeus made its ants into men for him. Aeacus married Endeis, daughter of Sciron, who bore him Peleus and Telamon, and afterward he lay with Psamathe, daughter of Nereus, who turned herself into a seal to escape his embrace, and begot Phocus.2
Hesiod records the divine match among the daughters of Nereus: Psamathe the fair goddess was loved by Aeacus through golden Aphrodite and bore Phocus.3
Apollodorus calls Aeacus the most pious of men. When Greece suffered barrenness on account of the pollution Pelops had wrought in slaying Stymphalus, the oracles declared the land would be freed if Aeacus prayed on its behalf; he offered the prayers and Greece was delivered from the dearth. Even after his death he is honored in the house of Pluto and keeps the keys of Hades. His piety did not spare his house: when Phocus excelled at athletics, Peleus and Telamon plotted against him, and the lot falling to Telamon, he killed his brother with a quoit cast at his head and helped Peleus hide the body in a wood; the murder discovered, Aeacus drove both sons as fugitives from Aegina.4
Pausanias gathers the Aeginetan traditions. Zeus brought Aegina to the uninhabited island and changed its name from Oenone to Aegina; when Aeacus grew up and asked the god for settlers, Zeus raised the inhabitants out of the earth. The Aeginetans could name no king of the island but Aeacus. When a drought afflicted all Greece and no rain fell beyond the Isthmus or in the Peloponnese, the Pythia answered that Zeus would heed no one but Aeacus; so envoys came from each city, and by sacrifice and prayer to Zeus Panhellenios he brought down the rain. Within his marble shrine, where reliefs show those very envoys, stand ancient olive trees and a low altar that is held, as a holy secret, to be also the tomb of Aeacus. They say too that he ringed the island with sunken reefs of set purpose, fearing raids by sea. When Telamon, exiled for Phocus' death, sent a herald denying the plot, Aeacus would not let him land but bade him plead from shipboard or from a mole raised in the sea; condemned, Telamon sailed away to Salamis.5
Ovid tells how the island was peopled after a calamity: a pestilence sent upon Aegina emptied the land, until Aeacus dreamed of an ancient oak whose ants dropped to the ground in troops and rose up as men, and waking found the vision true — a multitude hailing him as king, whom he named Myrmidons.6
Hyginus gives a different cause for the island's peopling: jealous Juno sent a serpent that poisoned the water and killed all who drank, and Aeacus, his people lost, begged Jupiter as he watched the ants for men; Jupiter changed the ants into men called Myrmidones, after the Greek word for ant.7
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
