A daughter of Leucippus and, with her sister Hilaeira, one of the Leucippides; carried off from Messene by the Dioscuri and wedded, she bore Mnesileus to Pollux.1
Phoebe sprang from the line of Aeolus through her father Leucippus. Apollodorus makes Leucippus a son of Perieres, son of Aeolus, and of Gorgophone daughter of Perseus, set beside his brothers Aphareus, Tyndareus and Icarius; he also reports a rival pedigree, on the word of Stesichorus, that makes Perieres son of Cynortes rather than of Aeolus, but in either line Leucippus fathers the maidens later called the Leucippides.2
Wishing to marry the daughters of Leucippus, the Dioscuri carried them off from Messene and wedded them; and Pollux had Mnesileus by Phoebe, while Castor had Anogon by Hilaeira. So Apollodorus binds the abducted bride to the immortal twin and gives her a son.3
Hyginus tells the same theft as the seed of a war. Phoebe and Hilaeira, daughters of Leucippus, had been promised as brides to Idas and Lynceus, the sons of Aphareus of Messene — Phoebe a priestess of Minerva and Hilaeira of Diana. Inflamed with love, Castor and Pollux carried the maidens off, and the cheated Apharetids took up arms to win them back, beginning the quarrel in which the cousins destroyed one another.4
Phoebe lived on in Argive and Laconian cult. At Argos Pausanias saw a temple of the Dioscuri whose ebony images showed the twins, their sons Anaxis and Mnasinous, and with them the mothers Hilaeira and Phoebe; and at Sparta a sanctuary of Hilaeira and Phoebe whose priestesses, themselves named Leucippides, were young maidens. There he notes that the poet of the Cypria called the two daughters not of Leucippus but of Apollo.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
