Husband of Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus, and son of Lucifer the Morning Star. The pair perished for their pride — he calling his wife Hera and she her husband Zeus — until Zeus turned them into birds, her a kingfisher and him a gannet, the two seabirds that bear their names.1
Apollodorus binds Ceyx to the Aeolid house by marriage: Alcyone, one of the five daughters of Aeolus by Enarete, was wedded by Ceyx, son of Lucifer the Morning Star. Their ruin was their arrogance. He named his wife Hera and she named her husband Zeus, claiming the titles of the highest gods, and for that pride Zeus changed them into birds — making her a kingfisher (alkyon) and him a gannet (kex), so that the names of the two seabirds preserve the punished pair.2
Ovid tells the same marriage transfigured into a tale of love and grief, with no hubris in it. Ceyx reigned over Trachis without force or slaughter, the radiance of his father Lucifer in his countenance, and into his land came the exiled Peleus, guilty of his brother Phocus' blood, whom the king received. Troubled by his own brother's fate and by ill omens, Ceyx resolved to sail and consult the oracle of the Clarian god; Alcyone, dreading the sea, begged him not to go, but he would not be turned.3
The ship was caught in a great storm and broken, and as the waters closed over him Ceyx thought of nothing but Halcyone, her name the last upon his lips, glad only that she was safe at home. At Juno's bidding Iris went to the house of Sleep, and a dream in the king's drowned likeness stood over Alcyone and told her he was dead. At dawn she went to the shore, saw his body borne in on the waves, and in her anguish was changed into a bird; the pity of the gods made Ceyx one also, and as halcyons the lovers were joined again, nesting upon the calm winter sea.4
Hyginus gives a third turn of the same story. Ceyx, son of Hesperus — also called Lucifer — and Philonis, perished in a shipwreck, and his wife Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus and Aegiale, for love of him threw herself into the sea. The gods in pity changed them both into the birds called halcyons, which nest and rear their young upon the sea for seven days of winter, when the waters lie still — the 'halcyon days' that sailors name after them.5
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
