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 ...

, Selemnus () is a young shepherd boy turned river god from the

Peloponnese The Peloponnese ( ), Peloponnesus ( ; , ) or Morea (; ) is a peninsula and geographic region in Southern Greece, and the southernmost region of the Balkans. It is connected to the central part of the country by the Isthmus of Corinth land bridg ...

in southern

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

. He was traditionally the divine personification of the

Selemnos Selemnos (Ancient Greek: Σέλεμνος, ) is a river in the northern part of Achaea, Greece. The river flows entirely in the municipal unit of Rio and empties into the Gulf of Corinth. Geography The river begins on the northwest side of the ...

, a river which flows in the region of

Achaea Achaea () or Achaia (), sometimes transliterated from Greek language, Greek as Akhaia (, ''Akhaḯa'', ), is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the modern regions of Greece, region of Western Greece and is situated in the northwest ...

, northern Peloponnese. Selemnus is notable for his brief and tragic love story with the nymph Argyra, preserved in the ''

Description of Greece ''Description of Greece'' () is the only surviving work by the ancient "geographer" or tourist Pausanias (geographer), Pausanias (c. 110 – c. 180). Pausanias' ''Description of Greece'' comprises ten books, each of them dedicated to some ...

'', a travel guide by Pausanias, an ancient Greek traveller of the second century AD.

Family

Traditionally, the 3,000 river gods were said to be the children of the

Titans In Greek mythology, the Titans ( ; ) were the pre-Twelve Olympians, Olympian gods. According to the ''Theogony'' of Hesiod, they were the twelve children of the primordial parents Uranus (mythology), Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth). The six male ...

Oceanus In Greek mythology, Oceanus ( ; , also , , or ) was a Titans, Titan son of Uranus (mythology), Uranus and Gaia, the husband of his sister the Titan Tethys (mythology), Tethys, and the father of the River gods (Greek mythology), river gods ...

and his sister-wife Tethys, although in the Achaean tradition Selemnus having been a mortal man originally means he would have had different parents, who are not given names in the surviving texts.

Mythology

According to a local Patraean myth, the river Selemnus was originally a mortal man, a young and handsome shepherd who used to feed his flock by the Argyra spring near the town of Argyra. The sea-nymph of that spring, Argyra, fell in love with him and would often visit him and sleep by his side. But as the years passed and Selemnus grew older and less handsome, Argyra ceased to visit him with the same frequency as before. Eventually she stopped coming to him altogether and withdrew to her liquid home. Pausaniasbr>7.23.2
/ref> Selemnus was heartbroken over her desertation. In his despair he wasted away and eventually died of grief.

Aphrodite Aphrodite (, ) is an Greek mythology, ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, procreation, and as her syncretism, syncretised Roman counterpart , desire, Sexual intercourse, sex, fertility, prosperity, and ...

, the goddess of love, pitied the unfortunate man so she turned him into a river which took his name,

. But even in his new aquatic form he still pined for Argyra and missed her terribly, so Aphrodite further helped him out by wiping out all of his memories of Argyra and his love for her. For that reason, men and women of

would wash themselves in the waters of the Selemnus in order to rid themselves of their passions. Pausanias, who rarely makes remarks on the legends he relates, comments that if true, this would make the river more valuable to mankind than any wealth.

Culture

Selemnus and Argyra's myth seems to have been modelled on the myth of the river-god Alpheus and the nymph-turned-spring Arethusa, to which it is explicitly compared. The myth also serves as a doublet to the story of

Tithonus In Greek mythology, Tithonus ( or ; ) was the lover of Eos, Goddess of the Dawn. He was a prince of Troy, the son of King Laomedon by the Naiad Strymo (). The mythology reflected by the fifth-century vase-painters of Athens envisaged Tithonus a ...

and

Eos In ancient Greek mythology and Ancient Greek religion, religion, Eos (; Ionic Greek, Ionic and Homeric Greek ''Ēṓs'', Attic Greek, Attic ''Héōs'', "dawn", or ; Aeolic Greek, Aeolic ''Aúōs'', Doric Greek, Doric ''Āṓs'') is the go ...

, as both feature an immortal goddess who falls in love with a mortal man, but ceases to love and visit him the more he ages and loses his beauty, though Selemnus' fate is a bit less grim in the end compared to Tithonus'. In

Propertius Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium (now Assisi) and died shortly after 15 BC. Propertius' surviving work comprises four books of '' Elegies'' ('). He was a friend of the ...

's telling, he wrote that Eos did not forsake Tithonus, old and aged as he was, and would still embrace him and hold him in her arms rather than leaving him deserted in his cold chamber, while cursing the gods for his cruel fate.

, ''Elegies'
2.18b
/ref> Due to the scarcity of preserved historical evidence, it cannot be determined with certainty whether Selemnus was a prominent river-god, as merely one mythological tale concerning him survives, and it focuses on his mortal, pre-fluvial life. The legend was probably invented to offer an aetiological explanation for the name of the spring and its unique, magical properties. Today the Selemnos is all but dried up, only a narrow torrent remains. The exact location of the ancient town near which the story took place remains unidentified.

References

Bibliography

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Hesiod Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...

, ''

Theogony The ''Theogony'' () is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogy, genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Homeric Greek, epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 1,022 lines. It is one ...

'', in ''The Homeric Hymns and Homerica'', with an English translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
* * * * * Pausanias, ''

'' 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.
* *
Online version at the Perseus.tufts library.
*

External links