Minyas (mythology)

As the ancestor of the Minyans, a number of Boeotian genealogies lead back to him, according to the classicist H.J. Rose. Accounts vary as to his own parentage: one source states that he was thought to be the son of Orchomenus and Hermippe, his real father being Poseidon;[2] in another account he is called son of Poseidon and Callirhoe;[3] yet others variously give his father as Chryses (son of Poseidon and Chrysogeneia, daughter of Almus),[4] Eteocles,[5] Aeolus,[1] Ares, Aleus, Sisyphus and Halmus (Almus).

Minyas was married to either Euryanassa, Euryale, Tritogeneia (daughter of Aeolus), Clytodora, or Phanosyra (daughter of Paeon). Of them, either Euryanassa or Clytodora bore him a daughter Clymene (also called Periclymene,[6][7] mother of Iphiclus and Alcimede by Phylacus or Cephalus). Clytodora is also given as the mother by Minyas of Orchomenus, Presbon, Athamas,[2] Diochthondas[8] and Eteoclymene.[9] Minyas' other children include Cyparissus, the founder of Anticyra,[10] and three daughters known as the Minyades who were turned into bats.[11][12][13] In some accounts, he was also said to be the father of Persephone who married Amphion and by him became the mother of Chloris, wife of Neleus.[14] Also, Elara, the mother of the giant Tityus was also described sometimes as Minyas' daughter.[15][16]

According to Apollonius Rhodius[17] and Pausanias,[18] he was the first king to have made a treasury, of which the ruins were still extant in Pausanias' times.

• Minyans
• Boeotia
• Graïke
• Graia
• Persephone
• Chloris

• Fowler, R. L. (2000), Early Greek Mythography: Volume 1: Text and Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0198147404.
• Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, v. 2, page 1092
• Thirlwall, Connop (1895). A History of Greece. Original from the University of Virginia: Longmans. p. 92.