Phthonus

Phthonus (Greek Phthonos) was the personification of envy and jealous ill will. He is a minor figure who appears mostly as a whispering or scheming spirit in poetry rather than as a god with myths or cult of his own, and ancient authors do not agree on, or often mention, his parentage.

Phthonus in Ancient Literature

The Greek word phthonos means envy or grudging resentment, and poets sometimes speak of it as if it were a being. Plato has Socrates say in the Phaedrus (247a) that “jealousy is excluded from the celestial band”, that is, that the gods feel none, and in the Timaeus (29e) that in the good creator “no envy ariseth ever”. Three passages are the clearest examples of Envy as a person.

• At the end of his Hymn to Apollo (lines 105–113), Callimachus has Phthonos whisper in Apollo’s ear that he admires no poet whose song is not as vast as the sea. Apollo rejects Envy’s complaint, answering that quality matters more than quantity.
• Lucian describes a famous painting by Apelles of Slander: a man with the ears of Midas receives Slander, who drags an innocent youth by the hair, and she is led by “a pale ugly man who has a piercing eye and looks as if he had wasted away in long illness”, whom Lucian takes to be Envy (Slander 5).
• In the Dionysiaca (book 8, from line 34), Nonnus shows Phthonos tormented by the sight of Zeus with Semele and jealous of Dionysus, still unborn in her womb. Disguised as Ares, he goes to Athena and Hera and tells them that Semele has stolen Hera’s husband, and so sets Hera’s plot against Semele in motion. The death of Semele is told on her own page.

Family

No early source gives Phthonus parents, a consort or children, and he has no cult. Hesiod, who lists the children of Night, names Nemesis, Deceit and Strife among them but not Envy (Theogony 211–225). Stories that he killed his wives, or that Dionysus and Nyx were his parents, are not found in any ancient source and are not repeated here.

See Also: Nemesis, Zelus, Hera, Zeus, Semele, Dionysus, Apollo