A figure at the root of the Laconian house, son of Lelex the earth-born by the Naiad Cleocharia; through his daughter Sparta, wedded to Lacedaemon, the Spartan royal line descends from him.1
Apollodorus sets Eurotas in the Laconian stemma: Lacedaemon and Sparta, daughter of Eurotas, had a son Amyclas and a daughter Eurydice; and Eurotas himself he names a son of Lelex, a son of the soil, by a Naiad nymph, Cleocharia. So in this telling Eurotas is the autochthon's own child, and his daughter's marriage to Lacedaemon weds the river-line to the line of Zeus and the Pleiad Taygete.2
Pausanias counts a generation more. Lelex, an aboriginal, was the first king of the land, after whom the people were called Leleges; Lelex had a son Myles and a younger Polycaon; and on the death of Myles his son Eurotas succeeded to the throne. By this account Eurotas is Lelex's grandson, not his son — a quiet quarrel with Apollodorus over how many kings stand between the earth-born founder and the river that bears his name.3
His one remembered deed is the making of the river. Pausanias tells how Eurotas led down to the sea by means of a trench the stagnant water lying on the plain, and when it had drained away and what was left formed a flowing stream, he named that river the Eurotas after himself. Then Lacedaemon, son of Taygete and (so report says) of Zeus, wedded Sparta the daughter of Eurotas, and coming to the throne renamed the land and its people after himself and founded the city he called after his wife.4
The Laconians made other daughters of the river-king as well. On the way down from Sparta to Amyclae, Pausanias passed a stream called Tiasa, and reports that the people held Tiasa to be a daughter of Eurotas; beside it stood a sanctuary of the Graces, Phaenna and Cleta, which they said Lacedaemon founded and named.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
