Agrius was a son of Porthaon and a brother of Oeneus, lord of Calydon, and so one of the Aetolian forebears Diomedes reckons in his line.1
When Diomedes recites his lineage before the walls of Troy, he reaches back to Portheus, who begot three peerless sons dwelling in Pleuron and steep Calydon: Agrius, Melas, and the horseman Oeneus. So Homer fixes Agrius as a son of the house and brother of the king from whom Diomedes is descended.2
Apollodorus widens the household: Porthaon and Euryte, daughter of Hippodamas, had as sons Oeneus, Agrius, Alcathous, Melas, and Leucopeus, and a daughter Sterope. Agrius thus stands among the brothers of Calydon, beneath Oeneus the king.3
In Apollodorus the crime is the sons' doing, not the father's: the sons of Agrius — Thersites, Onchestus, Prothous, Celeutor, Lycopeus, and Melanippus — wrested the kingdom from Oeneus and gave it to their father, and beyond that they imprisoned the old man and tormented him in his own lifetime. Pausanias tells the same in brief: Oeneus, king in Aetolia, was driven from his throne by the sons of Agrius and took refuge with Diomedes at Argos.4
Hyginus shifts the guilt onto Agrius himself: seeing his brother Oeneus bereft of children and in want, Agrius drove him from his kingdom and took it over for his own. In this telling the usurper is the brother in person, not the brood of sons.5
Restoration comes from across the sea. In Apollodorus, Diomedes returns and slays the sons of Agrius — all but Onchestus and Thersites, who escaped — gives Calydon to Oeneus' son-in-law Andraemon, and the fugitives later kill the old king at the Arcadian hearth of Telephus. Hyginus closes the account differently: Agrius, son of Parthaon, cast out of his kingdom by Diomedes, took his own life.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
