Aethusa

In Greek mythology, Aethusa (Ancient Greek: Αἵθουσα) was a daughter of Poseidon and the Pleiad Alcyone, daughter of Atlas.[1][2][3] She was loved by Apollo and bore to him Eleuther[4][5] and Linus.[3][6] Through either of the latter two, Aethusa became the grandmother of Pierus, father of Oeagrus, father of the musician Orpheus. Because of this genealogical fact, she was usually identified as a Thracian.[1]

The word aethusa was used as an epithet for a portico that was open to the sun, that is, Apollo.[7]

According to Pliny's Naturalis Historia, Aethusa is also the eponym of the Italian island which is now called Linosa.

Notes

1. Suda, s.v. Homer
2. Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Aethusa". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 1. Boston, MA. p. 51.
3. Of the Origin of Homer and Hesiod and their Contest, Fragment 1, 314
4. Pseudo-Apollodorus. Bibliotheca, 3.10.3
5. Pausanias, 9. 20. ,§ 2
6. Suda Encyclopedia s.v. Homer.
7. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse (1887). Homer: An Introduction to the Iliad and the Odyssey. Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons. p. 58. aethusa.

References

• Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
• Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio. 3 vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Pseudo-Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Aethusa". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.