A son of Endymion who, convicted of an unintentional killing, fled the Peloponnese into the land across the Corinthian gulf, which took its name from him as Aetolia.1
Aetolus was a son of Endymion, the sleeper beloved of the Moon. Apollodorus names his mother only as a Naiad nymph, or, as some say, Iphianassa, while Pausanias reports that the accounts of Endymion's wife differ but all agree he begat Paeon, Epeius, Aetolus, and a daughter Eurycyda.2⚖
Pausanias tells that Endymion set his sons to run a race at Olympia for the throne; Epeius won and became king, and the people were named Epeans after him. Paeon, vexed at his defeat, went into the farthest exile, naming Paeonia beyond the Axius after himself, but Aetolus remained at home, and when Epeius died he came to the throne after him.3
In Pausanias' telling Aetolus' reign ended in blood: the children of Apis tried and convicted him of unintentional homicide, for he had run over and killed Apis, son of Jason from Pallantium in Arcadia, with his chariot at the games held in honor of Azan. So he was made to flee from the Peloponnese.4
Apollodorus gives the killing differently — that Aetolus slew Apis, son of Phoroneus — and follows the exile further: he fled to the country of the Curetes, where he killed his very hosts, Dorus, Laodocus, and Polypoetes, the sons of Phthia and Apollo, and called the land Aetolia after himself.5
By Pronoe, daughter of Phorbus, Aetolus fathered Pleuron and Calydon, after whom the cities of Aetolia were named, so that the founder's line ran on into the Calydonian house.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
