An Arcadian mountain nymph of Cyllene whom Apollodorus names as the consort of Pelasgus and, in one reckoning, the mother of Lycaon — not to be confused with Cyllen, the male eponym of the same peak, son of Elatus.1
At the root of the Arcadian royal house Apollodorus sets a fork in maternity. Pelasgus — whom some made a son of Zeus and Niobe, and Hesiod a son of the soil — begat Lycaon either by Meliboea, daughter of Ocean, or, as others said, by a nymph named Cyllene. In this telling the wolf-king's blood runs from a mountain spirit rather than from the world-river's daughter.2⚖
The name binds her to the highest Arcadian summit. Mount Cyllene is where the Pleiades were born, where Maia bore Hermes in a cave, and where Pausanias later saw the ruined temple of Cyllenian Hermes — yet the male eponym Cyllen, son of Elatus, also claims the naming of the peak. The atlas keeps them apart: `cyllene-oread` for the feminine nymph of Pelasgus' line, `cyllen` for the Elatid hero who gave the mountain and the god his surname.3
Later genealogists sometimes call Cyllene a Naiad rather than a mountain nymph when they list the mothers of Lycaon's fifty sons — Cleitor among them — but Apollodorus' own wording at the stemma's head is simply "a nymph Cyllene," and the mountain's fame makes the Oread reading the natural one for her place in the highland.4
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story