Ischys, a son of Elatus of the Arcadian house, is remembered for a single fatal act: he took to his bed Coronis, who was already pregnant by Apollo, and for the affront he was destroyed.1
Pausanias places Ischys among the five sons of Elatus — Aepytus, Pereus, Cyllen, Ischys, and Stymphalus — set in the Arcadian line descending from Arcas: Azan begetting Cleitor, Apheidas begetting Aleus, and Elatus this brood of sons, of whom Cyllen and Stymphalus left their names to a mountain and a spring while Ischys left only the story of his death.2
Apollodorus, telling the same affair, anchors Ischys elsewhere: he calls him not a son of Elatus but the brother of Caeneus. In his account Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas, though loved by Apollo and at once consorted with by him, against her father's judgment preferred and cohabited with Ischys; Apollo cursed the raven that brought the tidings, turning it black instead of white, and killed Coronis, and as she burned he snatched the babe from the pyre and carried it to Chiron.3
The accounts agree that Ischys was slain for the offence but disagree on the hand that struck him. Hyginus' Fabulae has Apollo set a crow to guard the pregnant Coronis; when Ischys son of Elatus lay with her, he was killed by the thunderbolt of Zeus, while Apollo struck the pregnant Coronis dead, took Asclepius from her womb, and turned the white guardian crow black. His Astronomica gives the rival version: there the crow reports the deed, Apollo blackens it, and Apollo himself transfixes Ischys with his arrows.4
Pausanias preserves yet another shape of the death he assigns to Ischys son of Elatus: Coronis, pregnant with Asclepius, had intercourse with him, and it was Artemis who killed her to punish the insult done to Apollo, while Hermes — not Apollo — snatched the child from the flames when the pyre was already lit.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
