DARDANUS
Dardanos (Δάρδανος)
hover to halt the heavens · click a star to travel
THE STORY
When Aeneas faces Achilles, he recites the lineage: at the first Zeus the cloud-gatherer begat Dardanus, who founded Dardania while sacred Ilios did not yet stand in the plain, its people still dwelling on the slopes of many-fountained Ida. Through his son Erichthonius and grandson Tros the line branches into the houses of Priam and of Anchises. In the same battle Poseidon spares Aeneas so that the race of Dardanus — whom Zeus loved above all the children born to him from mortal women — should not perish without seed. 1
Apollodorus makes him one of two sons borne to Zeus by Electra, daughter of Atlas. When his brother Iasion was struck by a thunderbolt for attempting Demeter, the grieving Dardanus left Samothrace for the opposite mainland, where King Teucer, son of the river Scamander and the nymph Idaea, welcomed him with a share of the land and his daughter Batia. He built the city Dardanus, and after Teucer's death named the whole country Dardania. Of his sons, Ilus died childless and Erichthonius succeeded to the kingdom. 2
Hyginus enters Dardanus in his catalogues as a son of Jove by Electra, daughter of Atlas, and as the founder of Dardania. He also preserves a star myth: of the seven Pleiades, Electra is said no longer to appear among her sisters out of grief at the death of Dardanus and the loss of Troy. 3
Pausanias records that among the spoils of Troy, Eurypylus the son of Euaemon received a chest holding an image of Dionysus, said to be the work of Hephaestus and a gift from Zeus to Dardanus — a relic tying the founder's divine favor to the city's fall. 4