When Dionysus came to Attica in the time of Pandion, Icarius received the god, learned viticulture from a vine-branch, and shared wine with shepherds — who, thinking themselves bewitched, killed him; his daughter Erigone found the body with the dog Maera and hanged herself, and the Athenians later honoured both in rites and among the stars.1
Apollodorus sets the episode in Pandion's Athens: Demeter was welcomed at Eleusis by Celeus, and Dionysus by Icarius, who received from him a branch of a vine and learned the process of making wine. Wishing to bestow the god's boons on men, Icarius went to some shepherds; they tasted the drink and quaffed it copiously without water, imagined they were bewitched, and killed him — though by day they understood and buried him.2
Hyginus tells how Father Liber, visiting men to demonstrate the sweetness of his fruit, came to the hospitality of Icarius and Erigone, gave them a skin full of wine, and bade them spread its use abroad. Icarius loaded a wagon and, with Erigone and the dog Maera, showed Attic shepherds what wine could do; when the shepherds, drunk, thought he had given them bad medicine, they beat him to death with clubs.3
After Erigone hanged herself over her father's body, Hyginus says the Athenians were punished until Apollo declared they had neglected the deaths of Icarius and Erigone; they avenged the shepherds and instituted the swinging festival in Erigone's honour, with grape-harvest libations to both. By the gods' will Icarius was placed among the stars as Arcturus — or, in the Astronomica, as Bootes — and Maera as Canicula.4
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story