Schoeneus is the Boeotian king named, in one of the two great traditions, as the father of Atalanta the runner — the rival of the Arcadian line that calls her the daughter of Iasus. Apollodorus records the dispute plainly: "Hesiod and some others have said that Atalanta was not a daughter of Iasus, but of Schoeneus."1
By the Aeolid reckoning Schoeneus is a son of Athamas: when Athamas settled the land he named Athamantia after himself, married Themisto daughter of Hypseus, and "begat Leucon, Erythrius, Schoeneus, and Ptous" — fixing the king's Boeotian, Aeolid stock.2
When the heroes gathered to hunt the boar of Calydon, Apollodorus enrolled among them "Atalanta, daughter of Schoeneus, from Arcadia" — fixing both the paternity and the curious double home that follows the name: a Boeotian sire, an Arcadian girl. Hyginus' hunting-catalogue agrees, naming the runner the same way, "Atalanta, daughter of Schoeneus," though elsewhere in his own collection he calls her father Iasius instead.3
Schoeneus' fatherhood is the Boeotian answer to a contested question. Apollodorus first gives the Arcadian version — Atalanta as daughter of Iasus son of Lycurgus — and then sets the alternatives beside it: "Hesiod and some others have said that Atalanta was not a daughter of Iasus, but of Schoeneus; and Euripides says that she was a daughter of Maenalus." The same passage carries the linked quarrels, the husband (Melanion or Hippomenes) and the father of Parthenopaeus ("by Melanion, or Ares") — none of which run through Schoeneus, but all of which mark his daughter as a figure the sources could not agree upon.4
In Hyginus' fable the king is the author of the trial. "Schoeneus is said to have had a most beautiful daughter, Atalanta, who by her swiftness used to surpass men in the race." She begged her father to keep her a virgin, and since suitors pressed in, he set the deadly footrace as her price — the loser run down and his head fixed in the stadium — until Hippomenes, son of Megareus and Merope, defeated her with three apples from Venus.5
Ovid follows the same Boeotian line within the Hippomenes contest, twice marking the runner as Schoeneus' daughter and leaving the doubt at the climax over who rejoiced more, "Megareus' son, or Schoeneus' daughter."6
Pausanias makes Schoeneus a name on the land and explains the two homes at once. On the Arcadian road, he writes, lies "Schoenus, so named from a Boeotian, Schoeneus," and reasons that if this Schoeneus emigrated into Arcadia, then the nearby race-courses of Atalanta took their name from his daughter. The emigration the geographer floats is the bridge between the Boeotian eponym and the Arcadian runner.7
The same wandering Schoeneus reappears in Hyginus as "Clymenus, son of Schoeneus, king of Arcadia," the father who lay with his own daughter Harpalyce and was served their child at a banquet — though that grim branch belongs to another story.8
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
