Gorgythion
Encyclopedia
In Greek mythology
, Gorgythion (Greek
: Γοργυθίων, gen.: Γοργυθίωνος) was one of the sons of King Priam
of Troy
at the time of the Trojan War
and appears as a minor character in Homer
's Iliad
. His mother was Castianeira of Aisyme.
Those scholars who believe that the Trojan War was a real war generally date it to the 12th
or 11th
centuries BC. The dates given for the war by Eratosthenes
, which are 1194–1184 BC, are a little later than the archaeological evidence of the burning of Troy VII
, excavated by Manfred Korfmann
in the 1980s.
: "I begat the bravest sons in wide Troy, of whom I say that none are left. Fifty there were to me, when the sons of the Greeks arrived; nineteen indeed from one womb, but the others women bore to me in my palaces. And of the greater number fierce Mars indeed has relaxed the knees under them..." Gorgythion is referred to at his death as "...the brave son
of Priam". Of Gorgythion's mother Castianeira, Homer says (in Samuel Butler
's translation) "His mother, fair Castianeira, lovely as a goddess, had been married from Aesyme."
Apollodorus of Athens
says that Priam had nine sons and four daughters by Hecuba
(the sons being Hector
, Paris
, Deiphobus
, Helenus
, Pammon
, Polites
, Antiphus
, Hipponous
, Polydorus
, and the daughters Creusa
, Laodice
, Polyxena
, and the prophetess Cassandra
), and he names thirty-eight sons by other women, including Troilus
, Hippothous
, Kebriones
, and Gorgythion.
In the Fabulae of Gaius Julius Hyginus
, fable 90 consists wholly of a list of "Sons and daughters of Priam to the number of fifty-five", in which Gorgythion is included.
is the blameless. Jane Ellen Harrison
pointed out that "blameless" (άμύμων) was an epithet of the heroized dead, who were venerated and appeased at shrines. Zeus even applies the epithet to Aegisthus
, the usurper, Harrison observes.
In applying "blameless" to Gorgythion, then, the poet may have been reflecting a tradition of cult among his descendents, that was known to Homer or in the Homeric tradition. John Pairman Brown has suggested that Gorgythion's name "surely echoes the Gergithes; the 'Gergithes remnants of the Teucrians' are projected back into the heroic age as individual antagonists".
According to Herodotus
, the Gergithes were "the remnants of the ancient Teucrians" (that is, of the ancient Trojans).
's at lines 303-305 of Book VIII of the Iliad, although Teucer's target is Gorgythion's brother Hector
. Teucer aims two arrows at Hector, but kills first Gorgythion and next Hector's friend Archeptolemus, which serves to increase the impression of Hector's elusiveness and strength.
When Gorgythion dies, Homer says -
Susanne Lindgren Wofford comments on this simile "But the poppy is not wilted or dead, just top-heavy; in any case, a poppy will return every spring to bow its head, but Gorgythion's death is final; it is a unique event that does not participate in any natural cycles of renewal or return... to make death seem beautiful is to transform it into something different."
In Alexander Pope
's looser but more poetic translation (1715–1720), the death scene reads -
This translation of the Iliad was called by Samuel Johnson
"a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal", while Richard Bentley
wrote: "It is a pretty poem, Mr Pope, but you must not call it Homer."
In the 4th century AD, a Roman called Q. Septimius published Dictys Cretensis Ephemeridos belli Trojani, purporting to be a translation by Lucius Septimius of a chronicle of the Trojan War by Dictys of Crete
, the companion of Idomeneus
during the Trojan War. In Book 3, Patroclus
, and not Teucer, is said to have killed Gorgythion:
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, Gorgythion (Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
: Γοργυθίων, gen.: Γοργυθίωνος) was one of the sons of King Priam
Priam
Priam was the king of Troy during the Trojan War and youngest son of Laomedon. Modern scholars derive his name from the Luwian compound Priimuua, which means "exceptionally courageous".- Marriage and issue :...
of Troy
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
at the time of the Trojan War
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
and appears as a minor character in Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
. His mother was Castianeira of Aisyme.
Period
12th century BC
-Overview:The 12th century BC is the period from 1200 to 1101 BC. Although many human societies were literate in this period, most individual persons mentioned in this article ought to be considered legendary rather than historical...
or 11th
11th century BC
The 11th century BC comprises all years from 1100 BC to 1001 BC. Although many human societies were literate in this period, some of the individuals mentioned below may be considered legendary rather than fully historical.-Events:...
centuries BC. The dates given for the war by Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek mathematician, poet, athlete, geographer, astronomer, and music theorist.He was the first person to use the word "geography" and invented the discipline of geography as we understand it...
, which are 1194–1184 BC, are a little later than the archaeological evidence of the burning of Troy VII
Troy VII
Troy VII, in the mound at Hisarlik, is an archaeological layer of Troy representing late Hittite Empire to Neo-Hittite times . It was a walled city with towers reaching a height of nine meters; the foundations of one of its bastions measure 18 meters by 18 meters...
, excavated by Manfred Korfmann
Manfred Korfmann
Manfred Osman Korfmann was a German archaeologist.- Biography :...
in the 1980s.
Parentage
Near the end of the Iliad, Priam himself tells AchillesAchilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
: "I begat the bravest sons in wide Troy, of whom I say that none are left. Fifty there were to me, when the sons of the Greeks arrived; nineteen indeed from one womb, but the others women bore to me in my palaces. And of the greater number fierce Mars indeed has relaxed the knees under them..." Gorgythion is referred to at his death as "...the brave son
of Priam". Of Gorgythion's mother Castianeira, Homer says (in Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh...
's translation) "His mother, fair Castianeira, lovely as a goddess, had been married from Aesyme."
Apollodorus of Athens
Apollodorus
Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace...
says that Priam had nine sons and four daughters by Hecuba
Hecuba
Hecuba was a queen in Greek mythology, the wife of King Priam of Troy during the Trojan War, with whom she had 19 children. These children included several major characters of Homer's Iliad such as the warriors Hector and Paris, and the prophetess Cassandra...
(the sons being Hector
Hector
In Greek mythology, Hectōr , or Hektōr, is a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War. As the first-born son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, a descendant of Dardanus, who lived under Mount Ida, and of Tros, the founder of Troy, he was a prince of the royal house and the...
, Paris
Paris (mythology)
Paris , the son of Priam, king of Troy, appears in a number of Greek legends. Probably the best-known was his elopement with Helen, queen of Sparta, this being one of the immediate causes of the Trojan War...
, Deiphobus
Deiphobus
In Greek mythology, Deiphobus was a son of Priam and Hecuba. He was a prince of Troy, and the greatest of Priam's sons after Hector and Paris...
, Helenus
Helenus
Helenus was a Trojan soldier and prophet in the Trojan War.In Greek mythology, Helenus was the son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy, and the twin brother of the prophetess Cassandra. He was also called Scamandrios. According to legend, Cassandra, having been given the power of prophecy by...
, Pammon
Pammon
Pammon , in Greek mythology, is one of the sons of Priam and Hecuba according to Apollodorus of Athens and Homer.Apollodorus says that Priam had nine sons and four daughters by Hecuba, the sons being Hector, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, Pammon, Polites, Antiphus, Hipponous, Polydorus, and the...
, Polites
Polites
In Greek mythology, Polites referred to two different people, both of whom feature as minor characters in the epics by Homer.*Polites was a member of Odysseus's crew...
, Antiphus
Antiphus
In Greek mythology, Antiphus or Ántiphos is a name attributed to multiple individuals:*Antiphus, one of the 50 sons of Priam, and son of Hecuba. During the Trojan War, he was killed by Agamemnon....
, Hipponous
Hipponous
In Greek mythology, Hipponous referred to several people:*One was the father of Capaneus and Periboea with Astymone.*Another was one of the fifty sons of Priam.*Another was the last Trojan who Achilles killed before his death....
, Polydorus
Polydorus
In Greek mythology, Polydorus referred to several different people.*An Argive, son of Hippomedon...
, and the daughters Creusa
Creusa
In Greek mythology, four people had the name Creusa ; the name simply means "princess".-Naiad:According to Pindar's 9th Pythian Ode, Creusa was a naiad and daughter of Gaia who bore Hypseus, King of the Lapiths to the river god Peneus. Hypseus had one daughter, Cyrene. When a lion attacked her...
, Laodice
Laodice (mythology)
Laodice was the daughter of Priam of Troy and Hecuba. She is described as the most beautiful of Priam's daughters. Laodice refers to Helen as her junior even though Helen is probably 34 years old and yet she is more beautiful than her sister Cassandra, who might be eighteen at the same time and who...
, Polyxena
Polyxena
In Greek mythology, Polyxena was the youngest daughter of King Priam of Troy and his queen, Hecuba. She is considered the Trojan version of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Polyxena is not in Homer's Iliad, appearing in works by later poets, perhaps to add romance to Homer's...
, and the prophetess Cassandra
Cassandra
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy...
), and he names thirty-eight sons by other women, including Troilus
Troilus
Troilus is a legendary character associated with the story of the Trojan War...
, Hippothous
Hippothous
In Greek mythology Hippothous is the name of seven men.1. Hippothous son of Cercyon. He was one of the hunters of the Calydonian Boar. He later inherited the kingdom of Arcadia when king Agapenor did not return from the Trojan War. His successor was his son, Aepytus.2. Hippothous, son of Lethus...
, Kebriones
Kebriones
In Greek mythology, Kebriones was the illegitimate son of King Priam of Troy and a slave. In the Iliad he was the half-brother of Hector and his final charioteer during the Trojan War. Along with Hektor and Paris he was part of the division that finally breached the Argive wall...
, and Gorgythion.
In the Fabulae of Gaius Julius Hyginus
Gaius Julius Hyginus
Gaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was by Augustus elected superintendent of the Palatine library according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20...
, fable 90 consists wholly of a list of "Sons and daughters of Priam to the number of fifty-five", in which Gorgythion is included.
Name and description
In the Iliad, Gorgythion is described as beautiful, and his epithetEpithets in Homer
A characteristic of Homer's style is the use of epithets, as in "rosy-fingered" dawn or "swift-footed" Achilles. Epithets are used because of the constraints of the dactylic hexameter and because of the oral transmission of the poems; they are mnemonic aids to the poet and the audience...
is the blameless. Jane Ellen Harrison
Jane Ellen Harrison
Jane Ellen Harrison was a British classical scholar, linguist and feminist. Harrison is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, of modern studies in Greek mythology. She applied 19th century archaeological discoveries to the interpretation of Greek religion in ways that have...
pointed out that "blameless" (άμύμων) was an epithet of the heroized dead, who were venerated and appeased at shrines. Zeus even applies the epithet to Aegisthus
Aegisthus
In Greek mythology, Aegisthus was the son of Thyestes and of Thyestes' daughter, Pelopia....
, the usurper, Harrison observes.
"The epithet άμύμων in Homer is applied to individual heroes, to a hero's tomb [Odyssey xxiv.80], to magical, half-mythical peoples like the Phaeacians and Aethiopians [Iliad x.423] who to the popular imagination are half canonized, to the magic island [Odyssey xii.261] of the god HeliosHeliosHelios was the personification of the Sun in Greek mythology. Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion, while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn...
, to the imaginary half-magical Good Old King [Odyssey xix.109]. It is used also of the 'convoy' [Iliad vi.171] sent by the gods, which of course is magical in character; it is never, I believe, an epithet of the Olympians themselves. There is about the word a touch of what is magical and demonic rather than actually divine."
In applying "blameless" to Gorgythion, then, the poet may have been reflecting a tradition of cult among his descendents, that was known to Homer or in the Homeric tradition. John Pairman Brown has suggested that Gorgythion's name "surely echoes the Gergithes; the 'Gergithes remnants of the Teucrians' are projected back into the heroic age as individual antagonists".
According to Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
, the Gergithes were "the remnants of the ancient Teucrians" (that is, of the ancient Trojans).
Death
Gorgythion is killed by an arrow of TeucerTeucer
In Greek mythology Teucer, also Teucrus or Teucris , was the son of King Telamon of Salamis Island and his second wife Hesione, daughter of King Laomedon of Troy. He fought alongside his half-brother, Ajax, in the Trojan War and is the legendary founder of the city Salamis on Cyprus...
's at lines 303-305 of Book VIII of the Iliad, although Teucer's target is Gorgythion's brother Hector
Hector
In Greek mythology, Hectōr , or Hektōr, is a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War. As the first-born son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, a descendant of Dardanus, who lived under Mount Ida, and of Tros, the founder of Troy, he was a prince of the royal house and the...
. Teucer aims two arrows at Hector, but kills first Gorgythion and next Hector's friend Archeptolemus, which serves to increase the impression of Hector's elusiveness and strength.
When Gorgythion dies, Homer says -
Susanne Lindgren Wofford comments on this simile "But the poppy is not wilted or dead, just top-heavy; in any case, a poppy will return every spring to bow its head, but Gorgythion's death is final; it is a unique event that does not participate in any natural cycles of renewal or return... to make death seem beautiful is to transform it into something different."
In Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
's looser but more poetic translation (1715–1720), the death scene reads -
This translation of the Iliad was called by Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
"a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal", while Richard Bentley
Richard Bentley
Richard Bentley was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge....
wrote: "It is a pretty poem, Mr Pope, but you must not call it Homer."
In the 4th century AD, a Roman called Q. Septimius published Dictys Cretensis Ephemeridos belli Trojani, purporting to be a translation by Lucius Septimius of a chronicle of the Trojan War by Dictys of Crete
Dictys Cretensis
Dictys Cretensis of Knossus was the legendary companion of Idomeneus during the Trojan War, and the purported author of a diary of its events, that deployed some of the same materials worked up by Homer for the Iliad...
, the companion of Idomeneus
Idomeneus
In Greek mythology, Idomeneus , "strength of Ida") was a Cretan warrior, father of Orsilochus and Chalkiope, son of Deucalion, grandson of Minos and king of Crete. He led the Cretan armies to the Trojan War and was also one of Helen's suitors. Meriones was his charioteer and brother-in-arms...
during the Trojan War. In Book 3, Patroclus
Patroclus
In Greek mythology, as recorded in the Iliad by Homer, Patroclus, or Patroklos , was the son of Menoetius, grandson of Actor, King of Opus, and was Achilles' beloved comrade and brother-in-arms....
, and not Teucer, is said to have killed Gorgythion:
Other uses of the name
- The name Gorgythion was given to a genusGenusIn biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
of Pyrginae, North American butterfliesButterflyA butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...
commonly known as Spread-winged SkippersSpread-winged SkippersSpread-winged skippers, Pyrginae, are a subfamily of the skipper butterfly family . The subfamily was established by Hermann Burmeister in 1878...
, in Frederick Du Cane Godman and O. Salvin's Biologia Centrali Americana (1896). - 48373 Gorgythion48373 Gorgythion- External links :*...
is an asteroid of the solar systemSolar SystemThe Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
, discovered on October 16, 1977, by C. J. van Houten and I. van Houten-Groeneveld.