A lovely nymph of Aonia whom the river Cephisus entwined in his winding stream; she bore Narcissus, already surpassingly beautiful at birth, and asked Tiresias whether the boy would live to old age.1
Ovid makes her the first to test Tiresias' fateful prophecies. The caerulean nymph Liriope came with her son, fifteen years old and already a wonder to the nymphs, whom she had borne where the green merge of Cephissus' stream meets the land — the mighty river-god whom she declared the father of her boy. She implored the seer to say whether Narcissus would reach old age; he answered that he would, if he never recognized himself.2
Her story lives on the Metamorphoses shelf as `narcissus-echo`, where pride and Nemesis' answer prove the prophecy; Hyginus and Pausanias name only the river Cephisus as Narcissus' father, but Ovid gives the mother her name and her place beside the Boeotian water.3
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story