Bouzyges is a culture hero from

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 ...

, credited with the invention of many agricultural practices; most notably, he was the first man to

yoke A yoke is a wooden beam sometimes used between a pair of oxen or other animals to enable them to pull together on a load when working in pairs, as oxen usually do; some yokes are fitted to individual animals. There are several types of yoke, u ...

oxen to a plough and introduced cultivation to Athens. He has been associated with Epimenides

The name was also used by an order of priests associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries; these priests, collectively known as the Bouzygai, were also the priests of

Zeus Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label= genitive Boeotian Aeolic and Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label= genitive el, Δίας, ''Días'' () is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek reli ...

at the

Palladium Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself na ...

. They also served as priests elsewhere such as

Ilissus The Ilisos or Ilisus ( el, Ιλισός, ) is a river in Athens, Greece. Originally a tributary of the Kifisos, it has been rechanneled to the sea. It is now largely channeled underground, though as of June 2019 there are plans to unearth the ...

. The Bouzygai could also refer to the clan that claimed descent from Bouzyges. An annual festival was celebrated in his honor at the foot of the Acropolis and this was presided by a member of such family. It is said that

Pericles Pericles (; grc-gre, Περικλῆς; c. 495 – 429 BC) was a Greek politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Pelo ...

may have been one of the Bouzygai. However, some scholars disputed this, suggesting that this clan is an inferior counterpart of the Athenian statesman.

References

Characters in Greek mythology {{greek-myth-stub