Enorchus (

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

: Ἐνόρχης) or Enorches (''Enorchês'') is a figure from

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 ...

for whom the only surviving sources are

scholia Scholia (: scholium or scholion, from , "comment", "interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of the manuscript of ancient a ...

on the ''Alexandra'' of

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 ...

. According to the scholia, Enorchus was a son of

Thyestes In Greek mythology, Thyestes (pronounced , , ) was a king of Olympia. Thyestes and his brother, Atreus, were exiled by their father for having murdered their half-brother, Chrysippus, in their desire for the throne of Olympia. They took refuge ...

by his sister Daeta (or Daesa) and was born out of an egg. He built a temple to

Dionysus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; ) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus ( or ; ...

, which is given as the explanation for the fact that ''Enorches'' is also an

epithet An epithet (, ), also a byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) commonly accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a real or fictitious person, place, or thing. It is usually literally descriptive, as in Alfred the Great, Suleima ...

of Dionysus.Scheer (1881) ''Lycophronis Alexandra. Vol. 2 : Scholia Continens''
Σ 212
According to the scholia it is his epithet at

Lesbos Lesbos or Lesvos ( ) is a Greek island located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of , with approximately of coastline, making it the third largest island in Greece and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, eighth largest ...

, though Hesychius states – without giving a reason or mentioning the son of Thyestes – that the place was

Samos Samos (, also ; , ) is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese archipelago, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the Mycale Strait. It is also a separate reg ...

Depiction

Enorchus is possibly represented on an oil jar (

lekythos A lekythos (; : lekythoi) is a type of ancient Greek vessel used for storing oil, especially olive oil. It has a narrow body and one handle attached to the neck of the vessel, and is thus a narrow type of jug, with no pouring lip; the oinochoe ...

) from around 430–425 BCE. The image depicts an altar on which rests an egg, within which is an infant – naked except for a necklace of amulets – who reaches towards a woman standing to the right as she stares at the altar.Berger-Doer (1986) s.v. ''Enorches'' (= LIMC III-1
p.744–745
. The identification is, however, heavily contested, with

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), ...

being offered as a more probable identification (the woman thus being Leda).Zimmermann-Elseify (2023) p. 72. In favour of the identification as Enorchus, Lesley Beaumont points out that the hairstyle of the infant matches the common representation of that of infant boys on red-figure iconography, and Gratia Berger-Doer argues that the amulet necklace around his neck identifies him as a so-called 'temple boy'. Nina Zimmermann-Elseify, however, argues that the fact that this type of figure on oenochoae is usually a male infant can be explained by the painter not having access to a pattern for painting female infants. Lilly Kahil and Noëlle Icard further note that it is more likely to be Helen based on the far greater popularity of the myths surrounding Helen's birth from an egg.Kahil and Icard (1986) s.v. ''Helene'' (=LIMC IV-1
p.503
.

Notes

References

* * * * * * Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, ''

A Greek-English Lexicon A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, and others worldwide. Its name in English is '' a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient ...

'', revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie,

Clarendon Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

Oxford, 1940
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
* * {{cite book , title=Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum : Attisch rotfigurige Lekythen , volume=13 , editor-last=Zimmermann-Elseify , editor-first=Nina , date=2013 , publisher=C. H. Beck , location=München , isbn=978-3-406-64873-1, url=https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Akad-Bayern-Diverse_13_0001-0083.pdf Epithets of Dionysus Characters in Greek mythology

Depiction

See also

Notes

References