Son of Arcas by the Dryad nymph Erato and brother of Apheidas and Elatus; when Arcas divided Arcadia he received the third that was named Azania after him, fathered Cleitor, and at his death was honoured with the first athletic contests held in Greece.1
Pausanias relates that the wife of Arcas was no mortal woman but a Dryad nymph whom they called Erato, and by her Arcas had three sons, Azan, Apheidas and Elatus, besides an earlier illegitimate son, Autolaus. Azan thus stands at the head of the second generation of the Arcadian house.2
When his sons grew up, Arcas divided the land into three parts, and one district was named Azania after Azan; from Azania, it was said, came the colonists who settled about the Phrygian cave called Steunos and the river Pencalas. To Apheidas fell Tegea and the land about it, while Elatus received Mount Cyllene, so that Azan's portion gave its name to a whole quarter of Arcadia. Pausanias adds that Azan had a son, Cleitor, who came to be the most powerful of the Arcadian kings and founded the city Cleitor, which he named after himself.3
On the death of Azan, Pausanias says, athletic contests were held for the first time in Greece; horse-races at least were certainly run, though he will not speak positively about the other events. Elsewhere he gives an independent notice of these same funeral games: Apis, son of Jason of Pallantium in Arcadia, was run over and killed there by the chariot of Aetolus. Among the Tegean votive offerings dedicated at Delphi, the statues of Callisto, of Arcas who gave Arcadia its name, and of Arcas' sons Elatus, Apheidas and Azan stood together, the figure of Azan being the work of the Arcadian sculptor Samolas.4
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