Crocus (mythology)

In Classical mythology, Crocus (Greek: Κρόκος) was a mortal youth who, because he was unhappy with his love affair with the nymph Smilax, was turned by the gods into a plant bearing his name, the crocus (saffron). Smilax is believed to have been given a similar fate and transformed into bindweed.[1][2][3]

In another variation of the myth, Crocus was said to be a companion of Hermes and was accidentally killed by the god in a game of discus. Hermes was so distraught at this that he and Chloris transformed Crocus' body into a flower.[4] The myth is similar to that of Apollo and Hyacinthus, and may indeed be a variation thereof.

In his translation of Nonnos' Dionysiaca, W.H.D. Rouse describes the tale of Crocus as being from the late Classical period and little-known.[5]

References
  1. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4. 283
  2. Nonnus, Dionysiaca, 12. 86
  3. Servius on Virgil's Georgics, 4. 182
  4. Galenus, De constitutione artis medicae, 9. 4. (Corpus medicorum Graecorum, 13. p. 269)
  5. In: Nonnos, Dionysiaca. With an English translation by W. H. D. Rouse. Volume I, books I - XV. Cambridge - Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1940, p. 404

Sources


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