A Laconian prince beloved of Apollo and killed by the god's own discus; from his blood sprang the flower that bears his name, and at Amyclae he was honoured as a hero beside the altar of the god who loved him.1
Pausanias makes him the youngest and most beautiful of the sons of Amyclas, the king who built the Laconian town of Amyclae. He died before his father, and his tomb lay at Amyclae below the image of Apollo. Hyginus, by contrast, lists him among the handsome boys whom Apollo loved and names his father Oebalus — so the prince's father shifts with the teller, Amyclas in the one line, Oebalus in the other.2
Apollodorus sets the death plainly: Hyacinthus was beloved of Apollo and killed by him involuntarily with the cast of a quoit, the god's own discus the unwilling instrument of his beloved's end.3
Ovid tells the death in full. Phoebus and the boy were vying at the discus when the god's heavy cast rebounded from the hard earth and struck Hyacinthus in the face; the god, paler than his dying favourite, could not stay his parting soul with any healing herb. As the blood ran into the grass he turned it to a flower more brilliant than Tyrian dye, and on its petals he inscribed his own grief, the letters AI AI, while Sparta kept his fame and yearly feast.4
Pausanias keeps only the local memory of the death and refuses to vouch for it. The West Wind, how Apollo unintentionally killed Hyacinthus, and the story of the flower are, he says, legends we must be content with, although perhaps they are not true history.5
At Amyclae the dead prince became a hero. His grave was set within the pedestal-altar beneath the great Apollo, and at the festival of the Hyacinthia offerings were devoted to him as to a hero, through a bronze door, before the sacrifice to the god himself. The altar's reliefs showed him and his sister Polyboea, who died a maiden, being carried up to heaven by the gods; the statue rendered him bearded, while the painter Nicias gave him the very prime of youthful beauty, hinting at the love Apollo bore him.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
