Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Phoroneus.
The gallery
Phoroneus, or Legislation
Andrea Pisano and Nino Pisano, 1348–1350
Hexagonal marble relief from the south face of Giotto's Campanile in Florence: Phoroneus personifies Legislation among the liberal arts and human inventions. Medieval Florence casts the Argive first-man — son of Inachus, teacher of fire and law in Pausanias — as the inventor who brings statute to humankind.
In play
Description of Greece
Pausanias
Pausanias preserves Argive memory of Phoroneus as the first man and first king of the land, with a tomb and cult at Argos — Inachus' son as culture-hero of the Peloponnese.
Phoroneus
Primeval king of Argos, son of the river Inachus — father of Niobe of Argos and Apis in the early Argive king-lists.
Inachus
River-god of Argos and father of Phoroneus — the watery stem of the oldest Argive dynasty.
Argos
The city whose earliest remembered king is Phoroneus — Argive antiquity measured from Inachus' son.