In Greek mythology, Chione is a mortal woman, the daughter of Boreas, god of the north wind, and Orithyia, an Athenian princess and daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens. Her single myth tells how she lay with the sea-god Poseidon and bore him a son, Eumolpus, then cast the infant into the sea out of fear of her father's wrath. Eumolpus is rescued and raised by Poseidon, later becoming a foundational figure of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Chione (daughter of Boreas)" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Etymology
The girl's name Χιόνη is derived from the ancient Greek word for snow, χιών (khiṓn), a fitting name for the daughter of the cold, northern wind. The word descends from the Indo-European root *ǵʰéyōm, meaning 'snow,' and is cognate with the words χεῖμα (kheîma, meaning snow) and χειμών (kheimṓn, meaning winter).
II.Family
Chione was born to Boreas, the god of the north wind, and the Athenian princess Orithyia, a daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens. She was thus the sister of Cleopatra (wife of Phineus, king of Thrace) and of the Argonauts Calaïs and Zetes.
III.Mythology
Chione's only myth relates how she became the mother of Poseidon's son Eumolpus, whom she then threw into the ocean for fear of her father's reaction. Eumolpus, however, is rescued and raised by Poseidon.
IV.Interpretation
Eumolpus was seen as the first hierophant and the ancestor of the Eleusinian clan. In that light, the myth of Chione casting him into the sea has been read as an allegory of hieronymy, a ritual in which the hierophant consigned their previous name to the sea.
Although the two figures are generally treated as distinct, Renaud Gagné has proposed that this Chione is meant to be the same as Chione, the mother of Boreas's three Hyperborean sons (otherwise named as the daughter of Arcturus).