Daughter of Salmoneus and wife of Cretheus son of Aeolus, who loved the river Enipeus until Poseidon took the river's likeness and lay with her; she bore Pelias and Neleus, and to Cretheus Aeson, Pheres, and Amythaon.1
Among the noble women Odysseus sees in the house of Hades, the first is high-born Tyro, who declared herself the daughter of noble Salmoneus and the wife of Cretheus son of Aeolus. She had loved the river Enipeus, fairest of the streams that pour upon the earth, and would haunt his waters; there Poseidon, taking the river's form, lay with her at the mouths of the eddying stream, while a dark wave arched over to hide the god and the mortal woman. From that union she bore Pelias and Neleus, who became strong servants of great Zeus — Pelias dwelling in Iolcus, Neleus in sandy Pylos — and to Cretheus she bore Aeson, Pheres, and Amythaon who fought from chariots.2
Apollodorus names her mother Alcidice and has her reared in the house of Cretheus, and adds an etymology and an aftermath Homer never tells. Tyro exposed the twins; a passing mare kicked one, leaving a livid mark (pelion) on its face, so the horsekeeper who reared them called that one Pelias and the other Neleus. Grown, they learned how their stepmother Sidero had ill-used their mother and pursued her to the precinct of Hera, where Pelias cut her down on the very altars.3
Apollodorus carries the line by Cretheus forward: Aeson, who fathered Jason on Polymede; Pheres, who founded Pherae in Thessaly; and Amythaon, who dwelt in Pylus and fathered the seer Melampus and his brother Bias. From Tyro's mortal house the Argonautic and Melampid families alike descend.4
Hyginus carries an altogether different Tyro, born of the hatred between two sons of Aeolus. When Sisyphus asked Apollo how to destroy his brother Salmoneus, the answer came that sons begotten on Tyro, his brother's daughter, would avenge him. So Sisyphus lay with his niece and she bore two sons; but Tyro, learning the oracle's intent, killed her own children rather than let them serve her father's ruin. Here the twins are no god's offspring but a weapon in a fratricidal quarrel, a tradition standing flatly against the Poseidon-paternity of Pelias and Neleus.5
Pausanias finds her among the dead once more, not in verse but in paint: in Polygnotus' great underworld at Delphi, the daughter of Salmoneus sits on a rock among the women of Hades, beside Eriphyle.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story