Brother of Tyndareus and father, by the Naiad nymph Periboea, of five sons and the daughter Penelope, whom Odysseus married — the link by which the wandering hero's house weds into the royal line of Lacedaemon.1
Whose son Icarius was is one of the disputed forks of the Spartan house. In one telling he and his brother Tyndareus are sons of Oebalus by the Naiad nymph Batia — Oebalus descending from Cynortes through Perieres — so that Icarius stands at the Lacedaemonian end of the line. By this reckoning he is brother to Tyndareus and to Hippocoon.2
A rival tradition makes Perieres himself the father. Apollodorus reports that Perieres, having taken Messene, wed Gorgophone the daughter of Perseus and begot Aphareus, Leucippus, Tyndareus, and Icarius — but adds in the same breath that many deny Perieres was a son of Aeolus, holding him rather a son of Cynortas, son of Amyclas. So even the trunk of the descent is contested.3
His fortunes turn on his brothers' quarrel. With the help of his twelve sons, Hippocoon drove Icarius and Tyndareus out of Lacedaemon, and the exiles fled to Thestius and fought at his side in his war with his neighbours. Only when Heracles had slain Hippocoon and his sons did the brothers return, and Tyndareus succeed to the kingdom — Icarius restored to Sparta in his brother's shadow.4
By the Naiad nymph Periboea he had five sons — Thoas, Damasippus, Imeusimus, Aletes, and Perileos — and the daughter Penelope, whom Odysseus married. Through that one marriage his blood enters the Odyssey, for the long-suffering queen who outwaits the suitors is named through the whole poem only by her father: she is forever the daughter of Icarius.5
Homer keeps Icarius offstage but never lets his name lapse. Telemachus reckons it a hard thing to send his mother back and repay a great bride-price to Icarius, for from her father's hand he would suffer for it; and another daughter of Icarius, Iphthime, is named as the wife of Eumelus whose home was in Pherae — a second line out of the same house.6
Apollodorus reports a variant ending in which Odysseus, believing Penelope had been seduced by Antinous, sent her back to Icarius — so that the father who gave her in marriage receives her again in disgrace, a fate Homer never tells beside the faithful reunion at the immovable bed.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
