In
Greek mythology, Laius ( ; grc, Λάϊος, Láïos) is a
Cretan man who attempted to steal from
Zeus, the king of gods, and was punished for it. He was transformed into bird for attempting to steal from him.
Mythology
The Cretan Laius and three other men,
Cerberus,
Aegolius
''Aegolius'' is a genus of small true owls. The genus name is from Latin, ''aegolius'', is a type of screech owl that was thought to be a bird of ill omen.
Taxonomy
The genus ''Aegolius'' was introduced in 1829 by the German naturalist Johann J ...
and
Celeus entered the sacred cave of
Zeus in Crete where the young god had been born and brought up with the aim to steal some of the sacred honey produced there by Zeus's former bee nurses. Zeus thundered and stripped them of their brazen armors. He meant to kill them all, but the goddess of justice
Themis and the
Fates advised Zeus against doing that, saying the cave as a holy place should not have anyone be killed inside it. So Zeus turned them all into birds instead; Celeus became a
blue thrush (''laios'').
[ Smith, s.v]
Laius 2
/ref> Laius shares a name with a mythical king of Thebes, the father of Oedipus
Oedipus (, ; grc-gre, Οἰδίπους "swollen foot") was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus accidentally fulfilled a prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby ...
.
See also
* Pandareus
* Tantalus
* Pyrrhus
References
Bibliography
* Antoninus Liberalis
Antoninus Liberalis ( el, Ἀντωνῖνος Λιβεράλις) was an Ancient Greek grammarian who probably flourished between AD 100 and 300.
His only surviving work is the ''Metamorphoses'' (Μεταμορφώσεων Συναγωγή, ''Me ...
, ''The Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis'' translated by Francis Celoria (Routledge 1992)
Online version at the Topos Text Project.
*
*
* William Smith, ''A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', London. John Murray: printed by Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square and Parliament Street, 1873.
Cretan characters in Greek mythology
Deeds of Zeus
Metamorphoses into birds in Greek mythology
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