King of Megara, born to Pandion during his exile and so brother to Aegeus, Pallas, and Lycus, the sons who divided the Athenian power among them. In his hair grew a single purple lock on which his life depended — pulled out by his own daughter Scylla for love of his besieger Minos.1
While Pandion was in exile at Megara, sons were born to him there — Aegeus, Pallas, Nisus, and Lycus — who after his death marched on Athens, expelled the Metionids, and divided the government in four, though Aegeus held the whole power.2
Master of the sea, Minos came with a fleet against Athens and captured Megara, then ruled by king Nisus son of Pandion; Megareus, son of Hippomenes, came from Onchestus to Nisus' aid and was slain. But Nisus perished through his own daughter's treachery: a purple hair grew on the middle of his head, and an oracle ran that when it was pulled out he should die. His daughter Scylla, fallen in love with Minos, pulled out the hair — and when Minos had made himself master of Megara, he tied the girl by the feet to the stern of his ship and drowned her.3
Ovid sets the siege beneath the walls of Alcathous, where the lock of purple hair gave Nisus' throne its proven protection. Watching from the tower where Apollo once laid his lyre, Scylla burned for Minos; she sheared the fatal lock from her sleeping father and carried it to the Cretan camp. Spurned for the deed, she clung to the departing ship — and Nisus, in the moment of his fall, was changed into a tawny-winged sea-eagle that stooped at her with hooked beak; she let go in terror, lifted into the air, and herself became the bird Ciris, named for the lock she had cut.4
Hyginus reckons the parentage otherwise, calling Nisus a son of Mars, or as others say of Deion, king of the Megarians. The oracle here promised him rule for as long as he kept the lock; at Venus' prompting Scylla cut it from her sleeping father and so Nisus was conquered by Minos, who then refused to carry off so foul a criminal to holy Crete. Cast aside, Scylla pursued the ship, and Nisus pursuing his daughter was turned into a halliaetos — a sea-eagle — while Scylla became the fish called ciris, which the bird still dives upon whenever he sees it swimming. In a separate catalogue Hyginus instead lists Nisus among those who, losing the fatal lock, took their own lives.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
