Greek mythology A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities ...

, Argyra (;

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

: Ἀργυρᾶ) was one of the Naiads, a

nymph A nymph ( grc, νύμφη, nýmphē, el, script=Latn, nímfi, label= Modern Greek; , ) in ancient Greek folklore is a minor female nature deity. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are ...

who lived in a well. There was a city in ancient Achaea, also named Argyra, that was the site of a spring.

Mythology

According to legend, the nymph Argyra was in love with a shepherd named

Selemnus Selemnos (Ancient Greek: Σέλεμνος, la, Selemnus) is a river in the northern part of Achaea, Greece. The river flows entirely in the municipal unit of Rio and empties into the Gulf of Corinth. Geography The river begins on the northwest ...

whom she visited frequently. But when he aged and his youthful beauty vanished, she forsook him. When the boy died of grief, the goddess

Aphrodite Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols inclu ...

out of pity changed him into a river. There was a popular belief in Achaia that a forsaken lover who bathes in this river will forget their pain.Pausanias, ''Graeciae Descriptio'
7.23.2
/ref>

Notes

References

Pausanias Pausanias ( el, Παυσανίας) may refer to: *Pausanias of Athens, lover of the poet Agathon and a character in Plato's ''Symposium'' *Pausanias the Regent, Spartan general and regent of the 5th century BC * Pausanias of Sicily, physician of t ...

, ''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
Naiads Mythology of Achaea {{Greek-deity-stub