Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

, Corythus () is a minor Trojan man, the son of Prince

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

by either

Oenone In Greek mythology, Oenone (; Ancient Greek: Οἰνώνη ''Oinōnē''; "wine woman") was the first wife of Paris of Troy, whom he abandoned for Helen. Oenone was also the ancient name of an island, which was later named after Aegina, daughter ...

or rarely

Helen of Troy Helen (), also known as Helen of Troy, or Helen of Sparta, and in Latin as Helena, was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda (mythology), ...

, both women he was married to. Corythus arrived at

Troy Troy (/; ; ) or Ilion (; ) was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey. It is best known as the setting for the Greek mythology, Greek myth of the Trojan War. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destina ...

in the mid of the decade-spanning

Trojan War The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the twelfth or thirteenth century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Homer), Achaeans (Ancient Greece, Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris (mytho ...

and there he charmed and was charmed by Helen, thus incurring Paris' wrath and jealousy. In the end, the angry Paris killed him, not knowing Corythus was his son.

Family

In ancient sources, Corythus is consistently the son of the Trojan prince

(also called Alexander), either by his first wife

before he left her for Helen, or by Helen herself. As the son of Helen, he had three full-siblings, brothers Bunomus and Idaeus and sister Helen.

Mythology

In the versions where Corythus is the son of Helen and Paris, he is said to have died alongside his brothers after a roof in their house in

collapsed on them.

Dictys Cretensis Dictys Cretensis, i.e. Dictys of Crete (, ; ) of Knossos was a legendary companion of Idomeneus during the Trojan War, and the purported author of a diary of its events, that deployed some of the same materials worked up by Homer for the ''Iliad'' ...

br>5.5
/ref> They were all buried with due ceremony. The poet Alexander described him as 'fruit of marriage-rape' and 'the herdsman's evil brood'. Parthenius, ''Love Sorrows'
34
/ref> The parentage of Corythus as the son of Helen has been credited to

Nicander Nicander of Colophon (; fl. 2nd century BC) was a Greece, Greek poet, physician, and grammarian. The scattered biographical details in the ancient sources are so contradictory that it was sometimes assumed that there were two Hellenistic authors ...

. But in most authors, Corythus was a son of the nymph

, Paris' previous wife before he deserted her for the love of Helen, queen of

Sparta Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement in the Evrotas Valley, valley of Evrotas (river), Evrotas rive ...

. The jealous and hurt Oenone sent Corythus to the Trojan court,

Tzetzes John Tzetzes (; , Constantinople – 1180, Constantinople) was a Byzantine poet and grammarian who lived at Constantinople in the 12th century. He is known for making significant contributions in preserving much valuable information from ancien ...

on Lycophro
57
/ref> with the instructions to do stir some trouble and do ill to Helen by making Paris jealous, or alternatively Corythus went to Troy to help the effort against the Greeks. Corythus, who had grown to be even more good-looking than his father, was received very warmly by Helen and even fell in love with her. Paris grew envious, so he slew Corythus after seeing him sitting next to Helen in her bedroom, not knowing this was his own son; Oenone then cursed Paris to be wounded severely by the Achaeans so that he would be at her need and ask for her.

Conon Conon () (before 443 BC – ) was an Athenian general at the end of the Peloponnesian War, who led the Athenian naval forces when they were defeated by a Peloponnesian fleet in the crucial Battle of Aegospotami; later he contributed significantly ...

, ''Narrations'
23
/ref> When that day came, Oenone refused to help Paris and so he died. Later she repented and hung herself. Lycophron makes an obscure reference to Oenone sending Corythus to 'inform about the land', and him being a spy or traitor, alluding apparently to a little-known version in which the Greeks found Troy thanks to Corythus' information.

References

Bibliography

* * *

, ''Fifty Narrations'', surviving as one-paragraph summaries in the Bibliotheca (Library) of Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, translated from the Greek by Brady Kiesling
Online text available at topos.text.
*

, ''from The Trojan War. The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian'', translated by Richard McIlwaine Frazer Jr. (1931-), Indiana University Press. 1966
Online text at topos.text.
* * * * * *

Lycophron Lycophron ( ; ; born about 330–325 BC) was a Hellenistic Greek tragic poet, grammarian, and commentator on comedy, to whom the poem ''Alexandra'' is attributed (perhaps falsely). Life and miscellaneous works He was born at Chalcis in Euboea, a ...

, ''Alexandra'' (or ''Cassandra'') in ''Callimachus and Lycophron with an English translation by A. W. Mair ; Aratus, with an English translation by G. R. Mair'', London: W. Heinemann, New York: G. P. Putnam 1921
Internet Archive.
* * Parthenius, ''Love Romances'' translated by Sir Stephen Gaselee (1882-1943), S. Loeb Classical Library Volume 69. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1916
Online version at the Topos Text Project.
*
Online version at the Perseus.tufts library.
* Tzetzes, John, ''Scholia to Lycophron's Alexandra'', marginal notes by Isaak and Ioannis Tzetzes and others, from the Greek edition of Eduard Scheer (Weidmann 1881) (downloadable at archive.org, translated by CHATGPT 4.0 with more speed than accuracy, with prompts and work-arounds by Bruce Hartzler and a few manual improvements (?) by Brady Kiesling
Online text available at topos.text.
{{refend Trojans Princes in Greek mythology Children of Helen of Troy Filicide in mythology Deaths due to building and structure collapses

Family

Mythology

See also

References

Bibliography