Aristaeus

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Aristaeus by François Joseph Bosio (1768–1845), (Musée du Louvre)

A minor god in Greek mythology, which we read largely through Athenian writers, Aristaeus (/ærᵻˈstiːəs/; Greek: Ἀρισταῖος Aristaios), was the culture hero credited with the discovery of many useful arts, including bee-keeping;^[1] he was the son of Apollo and the huntress Cyrene. Aristeus ("the best") was a cult title in many places: Boeotia, Arcadia, Ceos, Sicily, Sardinia, Thessaly, and Macedonia; consequently a set of "travels" was imposed, connecting his epiphanies in order to account for these widespread manifestations.^[2]

If Aristaeus was a minor figure at Athens, he was more prominent in Boeotia, where he was "the pastoral Apollo"^[3] and was linked to the founding myth of Thebes by marriage with Autonoë, daughter of Cadmus, the founder.^[4] Aristaeus may appear as a winged youth in painted Boeotian pottery,^[5] similar to representations of the Boreads, spirits of the North Wind.

According to Pindar's ninth Pythian Ode and Apollonius' Argonautica (II.522ff), Cyrene despised spinning and other womanly arts and instead spent her days hunting, but, in a prophecy he put in the mouth of the wise centaur Chiron, Apollo would spirit her to Libya and make her the foundress of a great city, Cyrene, in a fertile coastal plain.^[6] When Aristaeus was born, according to what Pindar sang, Hermes took him to be raised on nectar and ambrosia and be made immortal by Gaia. The Myrtle-nymphs taught him useful arts and mysteries, how to curdle milk for cheese, how to tame the Goddess's bees and keep them in hives, and how to tame the wild oleaster and make it bear olives. Thus he became the patron god of cattle, fruit trees, hunting, husbandry and bee-keeping. He also taught humanity dairy skills (including cheesemaking) and the use of nets and traps in hunting.

When he was grown, he sailed from Libya to Boeotia, where he was inducted into further mysteries in the cave of Chiron the centaur. In Boeotia, he was married to Autonoë and became the father of the ill-fated Actaeon, who inherited the family passion for hunting, to his ruin, and of Macris, who nursed the child Dionysus.

"Aristaios" ("the best") is an epithet rather than a name

For some men to call Zeus and holy Apollo.

Agreus and Nomios,^[7] and for others Aristaios (Pindar)

Aristaeus in Ceos

Aristaeus' presence in Ceos, attested in the fourth and third centuries BC,^[8] was attributed to a Delphic prophecy that counselled Aristaeus to sail to Ceos, where he would be greatly honored. He found the islanders suffering from sickness under the stifling and baneful effects of the Dog-Star Sirius at its first appearance before the sun's rising, in early July. In the foundation legend of a specifically Cean weather-magic ritual, Aristaeus was credited with the double sacrifice that countered the deadly effects of the Dog-Star, a sacrifice at dawn to Zeus Ikmaios, "Rain-making Zeus" at a mountaintop altar^[9] following a pre-dawn chthonic sacrifice to Sirius, the Dog-Star, at its first annual appearance,^[10] which brought the annual relief of the cooling Etesian winds.

In a development that offered more immediate causality for the myth, Aristaeus discerned that the Ceans' troubles arose from murderers hiding in their midst, the killers of Icarius in fact. When the miscreants were found out and executed, and a shrine erected to Zeus Ikmaios, the great god was propitiated and decreed that henceforth the Etesian wind should blow and cool all the Aegean for forty days from the baleful rising of Sirius. But the Ceans continued to propitiate the Dog-Star, just before its rising, just to be sure.^[11] Aristaeus appears on Cean coins.^[12]

Then Aristaeus, on his civilizing mission, visited Arcadia, where the winged male figure who appears on ivory tablets in the sanctuary of Ortheia as the consort of the goddess has been identified as Aristaeus by L. Marangou.^[13]

Aristaeus settled for a time in the Vale of Tempe. By the time of Virgil's Georgics, the myth has Aristaeus chasing Eurydice when she was bitten by a serpent and died.

Issue

According to Pherecydes, Aristaeus fathered Hecate, goddess of witchcraft, crossroads and the night. Hesiod's Theogony suggests her parents were Perses and Asteria.

Aristaeus and the bees

Soon Aristaeus' bees sickened and began to die. He went to the fountain Arethusa and was advised to establish altars, sacrifice cattle and leave their carcasses. From the carcasses, new swarms of bees rose (see Bugonia).^[14]

A variation of this tale was told in the 2002 novel by Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees.^[15]

"Aristaeus'" as a name

In later times, Aristaios was a familiar Greek name, borne by several archons of Athens and attested in inscriptions.^[16]

See also

• Bee deities:
  • Ah-Muzen-Cab -- Mayan god of bees.
  • Austėja -- Lithuanian -- goddess of bees.
  • Bhramari -- Hindu goddess of bees.
  • Bubilas -- Lithuanian -- god of bees.
  • Melissa -- Ancient Greek/Minoan -- goddess of bees.
  • Mellona -- Roman goddess of bees.
  • Colel Cab -- Mayan goddess of bees.
  • Bee (mythology)
• USS Aristaeus (ARB-1)
• Fu Xi, an important culture hero from the Chinese mythology who bears some strong resemblances to Aristaios as a teacher of mortals

Notes

External links

• Media related to Aristaeus at Wikimedia Commons