A daughter of Leucippus and sister of the Leucippides, Arsinoe lay with Apollo and bore Asclepius — though both authors who name her record the rival claim that the healer was instead the son of Coronis of Thessaly.1
Besides his daughters Hilaeira and Phoebe, whom the Dioscuri carried off and married, Leucippus begat Arsinoe; with her Apollo had intercourse, and she bore Asclepius. Yet, Apollodorus adds at once, some affirm that Asclepius was not the son of Arsinoe daughter of Leucippus, but of Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas in Thessaly.2
Pausanias judges the Arsinoe parentage the account farthest from the truth; still he reports that when Apollophanes the Arcadian asked at Delphi whether Asclepius was the son of Arsinoe and therefore a Messenian, the Pythian priestess answered that he was born to bestow great joy upon mortals.3
The Messenians held the claim fast. At Leuctra — a name they derived from Leucippus son of Perieres — they honoured Asclepius above all the gods as son of Arsinoe; at Messene a fountain bore her name, fed from the spring Clepsydra, and Omphalion painted Leucippus, Hilaeira, Phoebe, and Arsinoe together with the Asclepius they reckoned her son. On this reckoning they argued that the sons of Asclepius who went to Troy, Machaon and Podaleirius, were Messenians too.4
At Sparta her memory was kept apart from the dispute over Asclepius: beside the Hellenium stood a sanctuary of Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus and sister of the wives of Castor and Polydeuces.5
⁂
the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story