Broteas

Broteas was a son of Tantalus and so a brother of Pelops and Niobe. Pausanias reports that the Magnesians at Mount Sipylus said he made the oldest image of the Mother of the Gods, cut into the rock Coddinus. In Apollodorus he is a hunter who showed no honour to Artemis and went mad and burned himself to death (Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.22.4; Apollodorus, Epitome 2.2).

Family

Pausanias calls Broteas the son of Tantalus (Description of Greece 3.22.4). Tantalus lived in the land of Sipylus, where Pausanias saw a lake named after him and a famous grave (Description of Greece 2.22.3; 5.13.7). Among the other children of Tantalus were Pelops and Niobe. Hyginus gives Dione as the mother of Pelops and of Niobe (Hyginus, Fabulae, the sections “Tantalus”, “Pelops” and “Niobe”). No ancient source names the mother of Broteas himself.

In the Iliad, Niobe, whose twelve children were killed by Apollo and Artemis, is said to be a stone among the rocks of Sipylus, still brooding over her grief (Homer, Iliad 24.602–617). Pelops later fled from Sipylus, according to Pausanias, when Ilus the Phrygian led an army against him (Description of Greece 2.22.3).

Pausanias also mentions a Tantalus, the first husband of Clytemnestra, whom some called the son of Thyestes and others the son of a Broteas. He does not say whether this is the same Broteas (Description of Greece 2.22.3).

The Image of the Mother of the Gods

Pausanias describes two sanctuaries of the Mother of the Gods. The people of Acriae in Laconia said theirs was the oldest sanctuary of the goddess in the Peloponnese, but the Magnesians who live north of Mount Sipylus have, on the rock Coddinus, the most ancient of all the images of the Mother of the Gods, and they say that it was made by Broteas, the son of Tantalus (Description of Greece 3.22.4). On a peak of Sipylus, beyond the sanctuary of Plastene the Mother, was also the throne of Pelops (Description of Greece 5.13.7).

The Death of Broteas

Apollodorus writes only a few words about him. Broteas was a hunter who did not honour Artemis and boasted that even fire could not hurt him. He went mad and threw himself into a fire (Apollodorus, Epitome 2.2).

Broteas Sources

Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.22.4, 2.22.3, 5.13.7; Apollodorus, Epitome 2.2; Homer, Iliad 24.602–617; Hyginus, Fabulae (“Tantalus”, “Pelops”, “Niobe”).

See Also: Tantalus, Pelops, Niobe, Artemis, Hippodamia