Younger son of Aphareus and Arene of Messene, and brother of Idas. He was famed for sight so keen he could see even things hidden underground, served among the Argonauts and the Calydonian hunters, and fell at last to the spear of Polydeuces in the cattle-feud that wiped out the male line of Aphareus.1
Apollodorus traces his line through the Spartan-Messenian house: Perieres, son of Cynortes, married Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, and she bore Aphareus among others; Aphareus by Arene, daughter of Oebalus, had Lynceus, Idas, and Pisus, though many held that Idas was rather a son of Poseidon. Lynceus, he records, so excelled in sharpness of sight that he could see even things underground. Pausanias makes him the younger of the two brothers and the less mighty, and reports the marvel of his eyes on Pindar's authority — that he saw clean through the trunk of an oak — while noting that no child of his was ever known.2
His gift of sight made him a watchman of the Argo. Apollonius brings the brothers down from Arene to join the ship, both exulting in their strength, and credits Lynceus with eyes so keen — if the tale be true — that he could direct his gaze even beneath the earth; later, when the crew search the Libyan sands for the vanished Heracles, it is Lynceus who is sent to cast his piercing eyes into the distance. Hyginus likewise stations him as the lookout at the prow for his sharp sight, though he records a dissenting report that Lynceus in fact saw nothing by night.3
He is counted, too, in the rolls of the great heroic musters. Ovid lists him among those who ringed the Calydonian boar — 'Lynceus and swift Idas, the offspring of Aphareus' — and Apollodorus names the brothers in both the boar-hunt catalogue and the catalogue of the Argonauts.4
The brothers' ruin grew out of their kinship with their cousins, though the ancient accounts differ on its root. Hyginus tells that Idas and Lynceus were betrothed to Phoebe and Hilaira, the daughters of Leucippus, when Castor and Pollux, inflamed with love, carried the maidens off — the seed of the deadly quarrel. Apollodorus instead sets the strife over plunder: the Dioscuri drove off cattle from Arcadia together with Idas and Lynceus and let Idas divide the spoil; he cunningly devoured his own and his brother's share first and made off with the whole herd to Messene. When the Dioscuri came to take it back and lay in ambush, it was Lynceus' keen eyes that betrayed them — he spied Castor hidden and pointed him out to Idas, who killed him. Pollux gave chase and slew Lynceus with a cast of his spear, then was felled by a stone Idas hurled; Zeus blasted Idas with a thunderbolt and bore Pollux up to heaven.5
Pausanias gives the feud's reckoning and its civic aftermath. After the fight over the cattle between the sons of Aphareus and their cousins the Dioscuri — Lynceus slain by Polydeuces and Idas struck down by the lightning — the house of Aphareus was left bereft of every male heir, and the kingdom of Messenia passed to Nestor son of Neleus. As proof that the brothers were not buried at Sparta, Pausanias points to a trophy on the Course there, raised, men said, by Polydeuces to mark his victory over Lynceus.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
