A king of Laconia, son of Amyclas, who held the throne between his house's founders and the line that led to Tyndareus and the Dioscuri; the sources disagree whether his son was Perieres or Oebalus.1
In Apollodorus' Laconian stemma, Amyclas and Diomede, daughter of Lapithus, had two sons, Cynortes and Hyacinth — the boy beloved of Apollo and killed by him involuntarily with the cast of a quoit. Cynortes, the surviving brother, carried the line forward.2
Pausanias records the same descent and the order of the Spartan succession: on the death of Amyclas the empire passed first to Aigalus, the eldest of his sons, and after Aigalus died it came to Cynortas, who had a son Oebalus. He adds that the grave of Cynortas son of Amyclas stood in Sparta beside the tomb of Castor.3
Apollodorus instead makes Perieres the son of Cynortes: as Stesichorus says, Cynortes had a son Perieres, who married Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus. Elsewhere he notes that, against the tradition calling Perieres a son of Aeolus, many say he was the son of Cynortas, son of Amyclas. And in a third reckoning the line is threaded out a further step — Cynortes begat Perieres, Perieres begat Oebalus, and Oebalus begat Tyndareus, Hippocoon, and Icarius by the Naiad Batia — so that by either route the throne descends to the father of the Dioscuri.4
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