Son of Cretheus and Tyro and a chariot-fighting brother of Aeson and Pheres, Amythaon settled at Pylus and, by Idomene, fathered the seers Melampus and Bias — the spring from which the prophetic Melampodid line flows.1
Amythaon first appears among the Cretheid sons in Homer's underworld catalogue of women. Queenly Tyro, having borne Pelias and Neleus to Poseidon, bears to her husband Cretheus three sons who fought from chariots — Aeson, Pheres, and Amythaon. He stands here as the youngest-named of the three legitimate Aeolid brothers, distinguished only by that warrior's epithet.2
Apollodorus grounds the same pedigree in place and posterity. Cretheus founded Iolcus and married Tyro, and of her had Aeson, Amythaon, and Pheres; but where his brothers hold the Thessalian cities, Amythaon dwelt in Pylus and married Idomene, and there were born to him two sons, Bias and Melampus. From this match the great seer-house descends, for Melampus the diviner is his son and 'son of Amythaon' becomes the prophet's standing patronymic.3
Even within Apollodorus the name of Amythaon's wife's father wavers. Introducing the marriage he calls Idomene the daughter of Pheres; yet when he returns to the line to tell how Melampus, son of Amythaon by Idomene, cured the maddened daughters of Proetus for a third part of the kingdom, he names her instead the daughter of Abas. The lawful Pylian wife keeps her own name across the two passages while her paternity does not. The cure her son works for Proetus knits Amythaon's house into the kings of Argos.4
Pausanias gives Amythaon a place in the early history of Olympia. When the sons of Pelops were scattered out of Elis, Amythaon the son of Cretheus — cousin of Endymion on his father's side, since Aethlius too was reckoned a son of Aeolus — held the Olympian games, and after him Pelias and Neleus held them in common. Elsewhere the same author traces the sons forward: Melampus is honoured with a sanctuary at Aegosthena, and the river Bias in Messenia takes its name from Bias the son of Amythaon.5
Ovid remembers Amythaon only through his more famous son and the marvel he wrought. By the spring whose waters since hold a hatred of wine, the natives say, it was the famed son of Amythaon who, by charms and herbs, delivered the stricken daughters of Proetus from their madness and cast the remnants of his healing craft into the water.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
