In Greek mythology, Melampus was a legendary soothsayer and healer, originally of Pylos, who came to rule at Argos. He was the son of Amythaon, and his descendants formed the prophetic House of Amythaon (the Melampodids). According to Herodotus he introduced the worship of Dionysus to the Greeks and drew his seeric powers from Egypt, and he was famed for the ability to understand the languages of animals. A body of pseudepigraphal divination writings circulated under his name in Classical times.
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I.Homer
Homer's Odyssey contains a digression about Theoclymenus, who is described as a prophet sprung from the line of seers descended from Melampus. The passage sketches the conflict between Melampus and Neleus at Pylos, Melampus's exile from his homeland, and his servitude to Phylacus in pursuit of the hand of Pero.
In Homer's telling Melampus suffers a supernatural affliction and recovers from it, contrives the theft of cattle, and at last comes to rule at Argos, where he marries and founds a dynasty of seers.
II.Later myths
More embellished accounts tell how Melampus cured a king's son by communicating with vultures, who revealed that a hamadryad had cursed the boy after he was frightened by a bloody knife. The cure required boiling the knife and having the prince drink the resulting water.
The best-known story concerns the daughters of Proetus (or, in some versions, all the women of Argos), who were driven mad by Dionysus. Melampus undertook to heal them, leading the afflicted women to a sanctuary of Artemis at Lusi, but he negotiated a steep fee: a third of the kingdom for himself and a further third for his brother Bias.
A piece of folklore explains the origin of his gift. As a boy Melampus protected a brood of snakes — sparing them from being killed, or burying their dead mother — and in gratitude the snakes licked his ears, granting him the understanding of animal speech.
The house of Melampus is said to have produced three kings ruling at Argos simultaneously, each from a separate bloodline. His son Mantius succeeded him, and his lineage continued down to Alcmaeon and Amphilochus, who fought at Troy.
Late in life Melampus was kidnapped and held captive. Overhearing termites in the woodwork declare that they would gnaw through his ceiling by morning, he demanded to be moved to another room. When the ceiling duly collapsed, his captors freed him, convinced he was under divine protection.
Melampus also figures in the tale of King Midas. After Apollo gave Midas the ears of a donkey for judging a musical contest unfairly, the king's barber, unable to keep the secret, whispered it into a hole in the ground. Reeds grew from the spot and murmured the secret onward; the birds learned it and carried it to Melampus, who spread the knowledge throughout the land.
III.Melampus' alleged writings
Three works survive under the name of Melampus: a treatise on divination by twitches of the muscles (Peri Palmon Mantike), which exists in several recensions; a work on divination by moles on the body (Peri Elaion tou somatos); and an astrological lunarium.
The treatise on muscle twitches is dedicated to a King Ptolemy, most likely Ptolemy Philadelphus, though the attribution is probably spurious. A further treatise on the laws of symmetry, predating the first century BC and cited by Vitruvius, is now lost.
IV.Melampodia
A poem called the Melampodia, attributed in antiquity to Hesiod, survives only in fragmentary quotations. The scholar Walter Burkert characterized any reconstruction of the work as most uncertain, though I. Löffler attempted such a reconstruction in 1963.