In
Greek mythology, Thoas (
Ancient Greek: Θόας, "fleet, swift")[1] was a son of the god
Dionysus and
Ariadne, the daughter of the
Cretan king
Minos. He was the king of
Lemnos when the Lemnian women decided to kill all the men on the island. He was the only man to survive the massacre, having been saved by his daughter
Hypsipyle.[2] He is sometimes identified with the
Thoas who was the king of the
Taurians when
Iphigenia was taken to the land of the Taurians and became a priestess of Artemis there.[3]
Family
Thoas was the son of
Dionysus and
Ariadne.[4] According to the mythographer
Apollodorus, after the god Dionysus fell in love with Ariadne he carried her to Lemnos where they produced four sons Thoas,
Staphylus,
Oenopion, and
Peparethus.[5] However, according to
Plutarch, by some accounts Oenopion and Staphylus were instead the sons of
Theseus and Ariadne.[6]
Thoas was the father of
Hypsipyle,[7] and according to the Iliad, by her and Jason, the grandfather of
Euneus.[8] Other sources say that Hypsipyle and Jason had, in addition to Euneus, a second son, variously given[9] as
Thoas,[10]Nebrophonus,[11] or
Deipylus,[12] After escaping Lemnos Thoas had a son
Sicinus, by the water nymph
Oenoe, after whom the Greek island of
Sikinos was said to have been named.[13] According to some, Thoas had a wife
Myrina, who was the daughter of
Cretheus.[14]
Mythology
King of Lemnos
Thoas was a king of
Lemnos.[15] According to the 1st-century BC historian
Diodorus Siculus, Thoas had been a general of the wise
Cretan king
Rhadamanthus (the brother of
Minos and Ariadne's uncle) who gave to Thoas the island of
Lemnos.[16]
The women of Lemnos
The first adventure (usually) of
Jason and the
Argonauts is their visit to the island of
Lemnos, where the women have killed all the men except Thoas.[17] There are hints of the story in the Iliad (c. 8th century), where Lemnos is referred to as the "city of godlike Thoas",[18] and
Euneus, Jason's son by Thoas' daughter
Hypsipyle, is mentioned.[19] The story was probably dealt with in Aeschylus' lost tragedies Hypsipyle and Lemniai (late 6th century-early 5th century BC).[20] The
lyric poetPindar (late 6th century-early 5th century BC) mentions "the race of the Lemnian women, who killed their husbands."[21] There was also a reference to the story in
Euripides' lost play Hypsipyle (c. 410 BC), where Hypsipyle tells Euneus: "Alas, the flight that I fled, my son—if you only knew it—from sea-girt Lemnos, because I did not cut off my father’s grey head!".[22] Already, for the mid-5th-century BC historian
Herodotus, the story of the women killing their husbands "who were Thoas' companions" had given rise to the proverbial phrase "Lemnian crime" used to mean any cruel deed.[23]
The earliest extant telling of the story, however, occurs in the 3rd-century BC Argonautica by
Apollonius of Rhodes.[24] According to this account, all the men on the island had been killed by the women, except for the "aged" Thoas, who was saved by his daughter Hypsipyle. She put Thoas into a "hollow chest" and set him adrift on the open sea. Fishermen pulled him ashore on the island of
Sicinus. The island was then called Oenoe and, a water nymph of the same name lived there. Thoas had a son Sicinus, by Oenoe, and the island later took the son's name.
The 1st-century AD Latin poet
Valerius Flaccus, in his Argonautica gives a more detailed account of Thoas' rescue and escape.[25] During the night of the massacre, Hypsipyle woke Thoas, covered his head, and took him to Dionysus' temple, where she hid him.[26] The next morning, Hypsipyle disguised Thoas as the temples' cult statue of Dionysus, placed him on the ritual chariot (used to parade the statue). She then took Thoas, through the streets of the city, crying aloud that the god's statue had been polluted by the night's bloody murders, and needed to be cleansed in the sea. By this subterfuge, and with the god Dionysus' help, Thoas was safely hid outside the city.[27] But fearing discovery, Hypsipyle finds an old abandoned boat, in which Thoas put to sea, eventually reaching the land of the Taurians, where "Diana put a sword in his hand, and didst appoint him warden of thy cheerless altar".[28]
Other accounts tell similar stories, with variations. According to the 1st-century AD Latin poet
Statius, Hypsipyle hid Thoas on a ship,[29] while according to the late 1st-century BC Latin mythographer
Hyginus, who identifies Thoas with the
Thoas who was the Taurian king, Hypsipyle put Thoas onto a ship which a storm carried to the "island Taurica".[30]
However, the 1st or 2nd-century AD Greek mythographer
Apollodorus gives a different ending to the story. He says that, while Thoas was saved at first, by Hypsipyle hiding him,[31] sometime later, when the Lemnian women discovered that Thoas had escaped the initial slaughter, they killed Thoas, and sold Hypsipyle into slavery.[32]
In the Iliad
In the Iliad,
Achilles offers as prize a silver mixing bowl, which had belonged to Thoas.[33] He had received it from the
Phoenicians, and it ended up in the possession of Thoas' grandson
Euneus, who gave it to
Patroclus as ransom for
Lycaon, a son of
Priam.
^Hyginus, Fabulae 120 considers them to be the same; cf.
Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica2.300–303. Parada, s.v. Thoas 3 treats them as the same, however Grimal (s.vv. Thoas 1, Thoas 3); Tripp (s.vv. Thoas 1, Thoas 2); and Smith 1873 (s.vv.
Thoas 2,
Thoas 4) all treat them separately, with Tripp s.v. Thoas 2 saying that "Hyginus confuses this Thoas [the king of Lemnos] with Thoas the king of the Taurians.
^Gantz, p. 346; Parada, s.v. Hypsipyle; Grimal, Table 21, p. 542.
^Euneus and Thoas, the twin sons of Hypsipyle and Jason, appeared as characters in Euripides' partially preserved play Hypsipyle, see Collard and Cropp,
pp. 251–255;
EuripidesHypsipyletest. iiia (Hypothesis) [=
P. Oxy. 2455 frs. 14–15, 3652 cols. i and ii.1-15]. Compare with
Statius, Thebaid6.340–343.
^Herodotus,
6.138.4. Compare with
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers (458 BC)
631-638, where the chorus says "the Lemnian holds first place among evils in story: it has long been told with groans as an abominable calamity. Men compare each new horror to Lemnian troubles."
Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996.
ISBN978-0-631-20102-1.
Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004,
ISBN9780415186360.
Google Books.
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, Fabulae in Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, Translated, with Introductions by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Hackett Publishing Company, 2007.
ISBN978-0-87220-821-6.
Käppel, Lutz (Kiel), Külzer, Andreas (Vienna) and Schwertheim, Elmar (Münster), “Myrina”, in: Brill's New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and , Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry. Consulted online on 24 June 2020.