Cyrene

Cyrene was a Thessalian huntress, the daughter of Hypseus, king of the Lapiths, whom Apollo carried off to Libya. She became the mother of Aristaeus, the god of bees and flocks, and the city of Cyrene in North Africa was named after her. Her story is told most fully by Pindar in his ninth Pythian ode.

Family

In Pindar, Cyrene is the daughter of Hypseus, king of the proud Lapiths. Hypseus was a grandson of Oceanus, born to the Naiad Creusa, a daughter of Gaia, after she lay with the river god Peneus (Pindar, Pythian 9.13–18). Diodorus likewise calls Cyrene the daughter of Hypseus, son of Peneus (Diodorus 4.81.1). Apollonius does not name her father but sets her tending sheep along the marsh-meadow of the Peneus (Apollonius, Argonautica 2.500–501), so that she is linked with Thessaly and the river in his version too. Pindar, Apollonius and Diodorus do not name her mother.

The Huntress and the Lion

Pindar describes Cyrene as a girl who did not care for weaving or for the pleasures of banquets with her companions in the house. She fought wild beasts with bronze javelin and sword, and so gave her father’s herds much peace (Pindar, Pythian 9.18–25). One day, as she was wrestling alone and without weapons with a fierce lion, Apollo found her. He called the centaur Chiron out of his cave to marvel at her courage and to ask who she was, and whether it was right to lie with her at once. Chiron answered that Apollo already knew her ancestry, and that he had come to the glen to wed her (Pythian 9.26–51).

Apollo and Cyrene in Libya

Pindar says that Apollo, with his flowing hair, seized her from the wind-swept dells of Mount Pelion and carried her in a golden chariot to Libya, where he made her queen of a land rich in flocks and fruit. Aphrodite met him there and joined the god and the daughter of Hypseus in marriage (Pythian 9.5–13). Chiron foretold that Apollo would carry her over the sea to the choicest garden of Zeus and make her ruler of a city there, after gathering an island people to a hill in the plain, and that Libya would gladly receive her as a bride in a golden house and give her a share of land (Pythian 9.51–58). Diodorus says that Apollo carried her off from the neighbourhood of Pelion to the part of Libya where he later founded a city and named it Cyrene after her (Diodorus 4.81.1). In Apollonius, Apollo took her far from Haemonia (Thessaly) and placed her with the nymphs of Libya near the Myrtosian height, and in his love made her a nymph who lives long and hunts (Apollonius, Argonautica 2.500–509).

Children: Aristaeus

Cyrene bore Apollo a son, Aristaeus. Chiron prophesied that Hermes would carry the child to the Hours and to Earth, who would feed him nectar and ambrosia and make him immortal; to men he would be Agreus and Nomios, “Hunter” and “Shepherd”, a guardian of flocks, and to others Aristaeus (Pindar, Pythian 9.59–65). In Apollonius the infant was brought to be raised in the caves of Chiron; when grown, the Muses gave him a wife and taught him healing and prophecy, and he later went to Ceos and sacrificed to Sirius and to Zeus, so that the Etesian winds cool the land for forty days (Argonautica 2.506–527). Diodorus says the Nymphs raised him and taught him to curdle milk, make beehives and cultivate olive trees, and that he was the first to teach men these things (Diodorus 4.81.1–2). In Virgil’s Georgics, Aristaeus, grieving for his lost bees, calls to “Mother Cyrene” at the source of a river, and she lives beneath the stream surrounded by water nymphs (Georgics 4.315–334).

Cyrene Sources

Pindar, Pythian 9.5–65; Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 2.500–527; Diodorus Siculus 4.81.1–2; Virgil, Georgics 4.315–334.

See Also: Apollo, Aristaeus, Peneus, Chiron, Hypseus