An Arcadian of the house of Tegea, son of Lycurgus and brother of Ancaeus, Epochus, and Amphidamas, who fathered Atalanta by Clymene daughter of Minyas and exposed his infant daughter because he wanted male children.1
Iasus belongs to the inner branches of the Lycaonid line of Arcadia. Apollodorus sets him among his brothers: Lycurgus, son of Aleus, had sons Ancaeus, Epochus, Amphidamas, and Iasus, by Cleophyle or Eurynome — the mother left open between two names. His brother Amphidamas is father of Melanion, who returns at the close of his daughter's story as her suitor.2
His marriage and his one famous act stand in a single sentence. Iasus had a daughter Atalanta by Clymene, daughter of Minyas — a wholly separate figure from the Oceanid of the same name. The child was a girl, and Iasus had wanted sons; so he exposed her. A she-bear came often and gave her suck, until hunters found the infant and reared her among themselves. Out of that cruelty the huntress of Arcadia was made.3
Hyginus carries the same Arcadian house into the next generation, naming Atalanta's father in the Latin form, Iasius. When Atalanta in turn cast out her own newborn on Mount Parthenios, the boy was named Parthenopaeus from the mountain; Hyginus twins this exposure with that of Auge's son on the very same height, setting the two Arcadian families side by side, and he is plain that Parthenopaeus is Atalanta's son.4
Iasus is the seed of a dispute, for his fatherhood is the first thing the other poets deny. Apollodorus reports it himself: Hesiod and some others have said that Atalanta was not a daughter of Iasus but of Schoeneus; and Euripides says she was a daughter of Maenalus, and that her husband was not Melanion but Hippomenes. So the Arcadian Iasus and the Boeotian Schoeneus contend for the same daughter, and Melanion with Hippomenes for the same wife.5
Ovid tells the whole foot-race under the rival line, calling Atalanta Schoeneus' daughter and her victor-husband Hippomenes son of Megareus, who won by Venus' three golden apples — corroborating from the non-Arcadian side both the Schoeneus paternity and the Hippomenes marriage that Iasus' tradition rejects.6
The dispute runs down one further rung, to Iasus' grandson. By Melanion, or Ares, Atalanta had a son Parthenopaeus, who went to the war against Thebes; Apollodorus elsewhere too names Melanion his father, as does Pausanias. Hyginus instead gives the boy to Meleager. The mother holds firm across every variant; only the father shifts between Melanion, Ares, and Meleager, and the Arcadian who began it all had wanted no daughter at all.7
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
