River-god of Arcadia, born to Oceanus and Tethys — father of Metope, who married Asopus and bore the Asopid nymphs including Aegina; not to be confused with Ladon the serpent who guarded the golden apples (`ladon`).1
Hesiod names Ladon among the eddying rivers Tethys bore to Ocean — set beside Peneus, Sangarius, and Parthenius in the catalogue of the world's streams. This is the Arcadian river, distinct from the name Apollonius later gives the apple-guarding serpent.2
Apollodorus makes Ladon the father of Metope, who married the river Asopus and bore two sons and twenty daughters; of the daughters Aegina was carried off by Zeus, making Ladon grandfather of Aeacus and ancestor of the great Aeacid house.3
Pausanias knew the Ladon of the living landscape. The river rises in springs within the territory of Cleitor and flows through Leucasium and Mesoboa to the sanctuary of Eleusinian Demeter; Thelpusa, forty stades away, was named after Thelpusa, a nymph who was a daughter of Ladon.4
A second Arcadian tale on the same stream: Pausanias reports that poets sang Apollo's love for a maiden Daphne, daughter of Ladon — a huntress on this river, not the Thessalian laurel-nymph of Peneus whom Ovid made Phoebus' first love.5
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