In
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...
, Ptolemy or Ptolomeus (;
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 peri ...
: Πτολεμαῖος) was an ancestral ruler of
Thebes, in
ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...
living in the 12th century BCE. His father was
Damasichthon; his son,
Xanthus Xanthus (; grc, Ξάνθος, ''Xanthos'', "yellow, blond") or Xanthos may refer to:
In Greek mythology
* Xanthos (King of Thebes), the son of Ptolemy, killed by Andropompus or Melanthus
*Xanthus (mythology), several figures, including gods, men, ...
. Since the Homeric root to Ptolemy includes no "
T", the name is reconstructed as Polemy.
[The change from ''polemos'' to ''ptolemos'' is an example of a type of linguistic compounding called ]terpsimbrotos
''Terpsimbrotos'' is a type of linguistic compound (inflectional verbal compounds, German ''verbales Rektionskompositum''), on a par with the bahuvrihi and tatpurusha types. It is derived from a finite verbal phrase, the verbal inflection still v ...
. The ''pt-'' in ''ptolemos'' (vs. earlier ''polemos'') "war" is thought to arise from a re-analysis of the compound word ''*phere-t-polemos'', metathesised to ''phere-ptolemos''. George Dunkel, "Two old problems in Greek: πτόλεμος and τερψίμβροτος", ''Glotta'' 70:3/4:197-225 (1992) .
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
{{Greek-myth-stub
Theban kings
Kings in Greek mythology
Theban characters in Greek mythology