The Danaids

The Danaids – or Danaides, also called Belides after their grandfather Belus – were the fifty daughters of Danaus. Danaus’ twin brother Aegyptus had fifty sons, and the sons demanded the daughters in marriage. Danaus fled with his daughters to Argos, gave them to the young men when they followed, and ordered each bride to kill her husband on the wedding night. All but one obeyed.

The Twin Brothers

Danaus and Aegyptus

Belus, a son of Poseidon and Libya, stayed in Egypt, reigned there and married Anchinoe, a daughter of the river Nile. She bore him the twins Aegyptus and Danaus (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.4). Belus settled Danaus in Libya and Aegyptus in Arabia, but Aegyptus subdued the country of the Melampodes (“Black-feet”) and named it Egypt after himself. Each brother had children by many wives: Aegyptus fifty sons, Danaus fifty daughters (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.4).

Aegyptus’ Offer

The brothers then quarrelled over the kingdom. Apollodorus says that Danaus feared the sons of Aegyptus, while Aeschylus’ Suppliants presents the fifty sons as pursuers who want the girls as wives against their will. The play gives the daughters themselves as the speakers who flee and beg for shelter in Argos.

The Escape

Sailing Away to Argos

On the advice of Athena, Danaus built a ship, according to Apollodorus the first ever built, put his daughters on board and fled. He called at Rhodes and set up an image of Athena of Lindos there (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.4; compare Herodotus 2.182). Pausanias says the first place in Argolis where he landed was a spot called Apobathmi, “Steps” (Pausanias 2.38.4).

In Argos

The sources differ on how Danaus became master of Argos. In Aeschylus’ Suppliants the girls arrive as suppliants before Pelasgus, king of the Argives, son of Palaechthon (Aeschylus, Suppliants 250–251). He puts their request to the people, and the Argive assembly votes to protect them (Suppliants 600–624). In Apollodorus and Pausanias the reigning king is Gelanor, who gives up the kingdom to Danaus; Pausanias adds that the Argives took the wolf that beat a bull in a fight before their city as a sign from Apollo, and Danaus founded the sanctuary of Apollo Lycius (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.4; Pausanias 2.16.1, 2.19.3–4). Apollodorus also says that Danaus named the people Danaans after himself.

The land had no water, because Poseidon had dried up even the springs, angry at Inachus for testifying that the land belonged to Hera. Danaus sent his daughters to draw water (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.4; compare Pausanias 2.15.5). This is the setting of the story of Amymone, told below.

The Marriage

A Bloodstained Wedding Night

The sons of Aegyptus came to Argos, asked Danaus to lay aside his enmity and begged to marry his daughters. Danaus distrusted them and bore a grudge for his exile, but he agreed and distributed the girls among them. Apollodorus names every pair. Lynceus and Proteus, sons of a royal mother, were given the eldest, Hypermnestra, and Gorgophone; the other bridegrooms drew their brides by lot, with a few matched by the similarity of their names (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.5). Danaus gave a feast, handed his daughters daggers, and the brides killed their bridegrooms as they slept (Library 2.1.5).

Pausanias adds where the dead lay: the bodies were buried at Lerna, where the young men were killed, and the severed heads, which the women had cut off as proof for their father, lie in a tomb on the road up to the Argive citadel (Pausanias 2.24.2). Apollodorus places them differently: the sisters buried the heads at Lerna and paid funeral honours to the bodies in front of the city (Library 2.1.5).

Hypermestra

Hypermestra, called Hypermnestra by Apollodorus and Pausanias, the eldest, did not kill Lynceus. Apollodorus says she saved him because he had respected her virginity, and that Danaus therefore shut her up under guard (Library 2.1.5). Pausanias says Danaus brought her to trial because he felt his life was in danger as long as Lynceus lived. The Argives acquitted her, and in memory of her escape she dedicated an image of Aphrodite the Bringer of Victory; the place behind the sanctuary of Cephisus was still called the Place of Judgment (Pausanias 2.19.6, 2.20.7). Lynceus escaped to Lyrceia, where he lit a beacon as the signal he had agreed with Hypermnestra, and she lit a beacon on the Larisa, the citadel of Argos; the Argives still held a beacon festival every year, Pausanias says (Pausanias 2.25.4).

The Outcome

Running for Your Wife

Athena and Hermes purified the murderers at the command of Zeus. Danaus afterwards united Hypermnestra with Lynceus, and he gave the other daughters to the winners of an athletic contest (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.5). Pausanias explains the reason: no one wanted to marry the girls because of their pollution, so Danaus announced that he would give them away without bride-gifts and held a foot-race, in which the first to arrive chose first, the second chose next, and so on (Pausanias 3.12.2). Pindar alludes to it: he says Danaus in Argos found the quickest marriage for forty-eight maidens, setting the whole group at the end of the course and letting the suitors choose in the order they finished (Pindar, Pythian 9.112–116).

Poseidon and Amymone

Amymone was out looking for water when she threw her dart at a deer and hit a sleeping satyr, who woke and tried to rape her. Poseidon appeared and the satyr fled. She lay with Poseidon, and he showed her the springs at Lerna (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.4); a river at Lerna was still called Amymone in Pausanias’ day (Pausanias 2.37.1). Their son was Nauplius (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.5). Apollodorus nevertheless lists Amymone among the brides, as the wife allotted to Enceladus (Library 2.1.5), so his text does not say she was spared the murder.

Lynceus and Hypermestra

Lynceus reigned over Argos after Danaus, and had a son Abas by Hypermnestra. Abas in turn became the father of the twins Acrisius and Proetus (Apollodorus, Library 2.2.1). In Argos Pausanias saw the tomb of Hypermnestra the daughter of Danaus, in which Lynceus is buried too (Pausanias 2.21.2), and the tomb of Danaus (Pausanias 2.20.6).

The Danaids in the Underworld

Forty-nine daughters killed their husbands. Ovid places them among the damned in the Underworld, where the Belides keep returning to water they are bound to lose (Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.463) and, when Orpheus sings there, are said to stop drawing it (Metamorphoses 10.44). The crime itself was remembered in art: Virgil describes the belt of Pallas, engraved with the young men murdered on a single wedding night (Virgil, Aeneid 10.495–499).

The Danaids Sources

Aeschylus wrote a trilogy on the story, of which only the first play, Suppliants, survives, ending with the arrival of the sons of Aegyptus. The main surviving narrative is Apollodorus’ Library 2.1.4–5 and 2.2.1. Pausanias supplies the local tradition: 2.15.5, 2.16.1, 2.19.3–7, 2.20.6–7, 2.21.2, 2.24.2, 2.25.4, 2.37.1, 2.38.4 and 3.12.2. Other sources are Pindar, Pythian 9.112–116 (the foot-race), Herodotus 2.182 (the image at Lindos), Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.463 and 10.44 and Virgil, Aeneid 10.495–499 (the punishment and the belt of Pallas).

See Also: Lynceus, Poseidon, Inachus, Io, Athena, Hermes