Achelous (also Acheloos or Acheloios) (; Ancient Greek: Ἀχελώϊος, and later , Akhelôios) was the god in ancient Greek religion and mythology associated with the Achelous River, the largest river in Greece. According to Hesiod, he was the son of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. He was also said to be the father of the Sirens, several nymphs, and other offspring.
Achelous was able to change his shape, and in the form of a bull, he wrestled Heracles for the right to marry Deianeira, but lost. He was also involved in the legend of the Argive hero Alcmaeon.Isler 2006, s.v. Achelous 2; Grimal, s.v. Achelous; Smith 1873, s.v. Achelous.
Etymology The name Ἀχελώϊος is possibly pre-Greek;Isler 1981, p. 12 (citing Isler 1970). its meaning is not entirely certain. Recent arguments suggest it is Semitic in origin, with the initial Αχ- stemming from the Akkadian aḫu ("bank of the river"), or aḫû ("seashore") and the suffix -ελώἴος, from the Akkadian illu ("watercourse" or "water of the river invading land").Molinari and Sisci, pp. 93–95. According to linguist , the Thracian river name Achelōos (alternatively, Achēlon and Achelon), located near Anchialo, in the Black Sea, is cognate to the Greek word, both deriving from a Proto-Indo-European stem *ɘku̯el, meaning 'water'.
Family
According to Hesiod, Achelous, along with all the other river gods, was the son of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys.Hesiod, Theogony 340, 366–370; so also Hyginus, Fabulae Theogony.6. According to the sixth-century mythographer Acusilaus, Achelous was the "oldest and most honoured" of the river-god offspring of Oceanus.Fowler 2013, pp. 12–13; Gantz, p. 28; Andolfi, fr. 1; Jebb, ln. 9; Freeman, p. 16; Acusilaus fr. 1 Fowler [= FGrHist 2 1 = Vorsokr. 9 B 21 = Macrobius, Saturnalia 5.18.9–10. Compare with Hesiod Theogony 361, 777, and Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.983b where the river Styx is said to be the eldest (daughter) and most honored (Fowler 2013, p. 13). Servius, relating a tradition of unknown origin, reports that Achelous was said to have been the son of Earth (i.e. Gaia).Fowler, p. 12; Fontenrose, p. 351; Servius on Virgil's Georgics 1.8. Isler 1981, p. 12, describes this tradition as probably older ("wohl urspriinglicherer") than the Hesiodic tradition. However Fowler, p. 12, does not speculate on the age of the tradition being reported by Servius, saying rather "one would like to know how old" it is. In the 16th century, Natalis Comes claimed that the archaic poet Alcaeus understood Achelous to be the son of Ocean and Earth, see Natalis Comes, Mythologiae 7.2 (p. 212) [= Alcaeus, fr. 450 Campbell; on the reliability of Comes' attributions to classical writers, see Fowler 2013, [https://books.google.com/books?id=scd8AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA735 pp. 735–7.
Achelous had various offspring.Parada, s.v. Achelous, p. 3. He was said to be the father of the Sirens.Grimal, s.vv. Achelous, Sirens; Kerényi 1951, pp. 56, 58. According to the 3rd-century BC poet Lycophron, the Sirens were the daughters of Achelous, by an unnamed "melodious mother" (perhaps meaning the mother was a Muse), while Ovid calls the Sirens simply daughters of Achelous, with no mention of their mother.Lycophron, Alexandra 712–716, with Mair's notes; Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.552–555, 14.87–88. Another 3rd-century BC, poet Apollonius of Rhodes, makes the mother the Muse Terpsichore,Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4.893; Nonnus, Dionysiaca 13.313–315. while according to other accounts, she was the Muse Melpomene,Apollodorus, 1.3.4, E 7.18; Hyginus, Fabulae Theogony.30, 125.13, 141. or the Calydonian princess Sterope.Apollodorus, 1.7.10. By Perimede, the daughter of Aeolus, Achelous was said to have fathered Hippodamas and Orestes.Hard, p. 410; Apollodorus, 1.7.3; Hesiod, fr. 10.34–45 Most (pp. 54–55).
Achelous was also said to be the father (with no mothers mentioned) of several nymphs associated with various famous springs.Isler 1981, p. 12; Grimal, s.v. Achelous. These included Pirene, the nymph of a spring at Corinth,Pausanias, 2.2.3. Castalia, the nymph of a spring at Delphi,Panyassis fr. 2 West = Pausanias, 10.8.9. and Dirce, the nymph of a spring (and the stream that flowed from it) at Thebes, which became associated with the Dirce who was Antiope's aunt.Hard, p. 304; Euripides, Bacchae 519–520. Plato has "the nymphs" as daughters of Achelous,Plato, Phaedrus 263d. and the 5th-century BC poet Panyassis seems also to have referred to "Achelesian nymphs".D'Alessio, p. 30; Panyassis fr. 23 West. He was also the father (again with no mother mentioned) of Alcmeon's second wife Callirrhoe, whose name means "the lovely spring".Hard, p. 327; Grimal, s.v. Achelous; Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.413–414; Apollodorus, 3.7.5; Pausanias, 8.24.9. Such examples suggest the possibility of a tradition in which Achelous was considered to be the father of all springs or, at least, the nymphs associated with them.See D'Alessio, p. 30, which attributes to Panyassis, and "many other fifth-century authors the idea that all springs derive" from Achelous, and Isler 1981, p. 12, which says Achelous was considered generally the father of all spring nymphs ("überhaupt als Vater aller Quellnymphen").
Mythology Heracles and Deianeira
Achelous was a suitor for Deianeira, daughter of Oeneus, the king of Calydon; he transformed himself into a bull and fought Heracles for the right to marry Deianeira, but was defeated, and Heracles married Deianeira.Gantz, pp. 28–29, 41–42, 431–433; Hard, pp. 41, 279–280; Fowler 2013, pp. 323–324; Fontenrose, pp. 350–356; Sophocles, Women of Trachis 9–26, 497–525; Propertius, Elegies 2.34.33–34; Hyginus, Fabulae 31.7; Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.1–100, Amores 3.6.35–36, Heroides 9.137–140, 16.263–268; Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus 299–303, 495–499; Statius, Thebaid 4.106; Apollodorus, 1.8.1, 2.7.5; Pausanias, 3.18.16, 6.19.12; Philostratus the Younger, Imagines 4; Nonnus, Dionysiaca 17.238–239, 43.12–15. The story of Achelous, in the form of a bull, battling with Heracles for Deianeira, was apparently told as early as the 7th century BC, in a lost poem by the Greek poet Archilochus, while according to a summary of a lost poem by the early 5th-century BC Greek poet Pindar, during the contest, Heracles broke off one of Achelous's bull-horns, and the river-god was able to get his horn back by trading it for a horn from Amalthea.Gantz, pp. 28, 41–42, 432; Hard, p. 280; Jebb, Introduction 5; Archilochus, fr. 286 West [= Dio Chrysostom, 60.1], fr. 287 West [= Scholiast on Homer, Iliad 21.237]. Compare with Apollodorus, 2.7.5 [= Pherecydes of Athens fr. 42 Fowler], which says that the horn of Amalthea which Achelous traded for his broken-off horn, was also a bull's horn which, "according to Pherecydes, had the power of supplying meat or drink in abundance, whatever one might wish". Amalthea was the owner of a goat (or in later sources the goat itself) that nursed the infant Zeus (see Gantz, p. 41). According to Hard, p. 280, Apollodorus making Amalthea's horn of plenty a bull's horn was "evidently a misapprehension" arising from the fact that it was traded for the bull-horn of Achelous.
Sophocles, in his play Women of Trachis (c. 450–425 BC), has Deianeira tell her story, how Achelous wooed her in the shape of a bull, a snake, and a half-man/half-bull:Gantz, p. 432.
In later accounts, Achelous does not get his horn back, as he does in Pindar's poem. Ovid, in his poem Metamorphoses (8 AD), has Achelous tell a different story.Gantz, p. 433; Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.1–100; compare with Ovid, Amores 3.6.35–36. In this version, Achelous fights Heracles, and loses three times: first in his normal (human?) shape, then as a snake, and finally as a bull. Heracles tore off one of Achelous's bull-horns, and the Naiads filled the horn with fruit and flowers, transforming it into the "Horn of Plenty" (cornucopia).Gantz, p. 42; Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.85–88. According to the Fabulae (before 207 AD), by the Latin mythographer Hyginus, Heracles gave the broken-off horn to "the Hesperides (or Nymphs)", and it was "these goddesses" who "filled the horn with fruit and called it "Cornucopia".Fontenrose, p. 351; Hyginus, Fabulae 31.7. According to Strabo, in some versions of the story Heracles gave Achelous's horn to Deianeira's father Oeneus as a wedding gift.Jebb, ln. 518; Strabo, 10.2.19. Cf. Nonnus, Dionysiaca 17.238–239. While several sources make Achelous the father, by various mothers, of the Sirens (see above), according to the 4th-century AD Greek teacher of rhetoric Libanius, they were born from the blood Achelous shed when Heracles broke off his horn.Grimal, s.v. Sirens; Kerényi 1959, p. 199; Kerényi 1951, p. 56; Libanius, Progymnasmata, Narration 1: "On Deianira" (Gibson, pp. 10–11), Narration 31: "On Deianira" (Gibson, pp. 32–33). Compare with the birth of the Erinyes (Furies), Giants, and the Meliae, born from the blood shed when Uranus was castrated by his son, the Titan Cronus.
The breaking off of Achelous' horn was rationalized as Heracles' diversion of the Acarnanian river.Isler 2006, s.v. Achelous 2; Fontenrose, p. 351. Both Diodorus Siculus and Strabo give such accounts.Frazer, note 2 to Apollodorus 2.7.5; Smith 1873, s.v. Achelous; Diodorus Siculus, 4.35.3–4; Strabo, 10.2.19. According to Diodorus, Heracles diverted the Achelous River's course, while according to Strabo, some writers "conjecturing the truth from the myths" said that, to please his father-in-law Oeneus, Heracles confined the river by means of "embankments and channels". In this way, Heracles defeated the raging river, and in so doing created a large amount of new fertile land and "certain poets, as we are told, have made this deed into a myth" (Diodorus). By both accounts, this new bountiful land of the Achelous River delta came to be known as Amaltheia's horn of plenty.
Joseph Fontenrose saw in this story the possible reflection of an ancient tradition of conflict between Zeus and Achelous.Fontenrose, p. 233. For the Latin poets during the Roman Imperial period, from Propertius onward, the story of Heracles and Achelous' contest for Deianeria continued to be popular, with Achelous as "the stereotypical unlucky lover".Isler 2006, s.v. Achelous 2; Isler 1981, p. 13; Propertius, Elegies 2.34.33–34; Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.1–100, Amores 3.6.35–36, Heroides 9.137–140, 16.263–268; Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus 299–303, 495–499; Statius, Thebaid 4.106; Claudian, In praise of Serena 171–176; Sidonius Apollinaris, II. Panegyric on Anthemius 497–498, XI. Epithalamium 86–87. See also the slightly later Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 4.7.23–24.
Alcmaeon Achelous played a role in the story of the Argive hero Alcmaeon, who had killed his mother Eriphyle because of her treachery against his father Amphiaraus, and needed to be religiously purified.Hard, p. 327; Grimal, s.v. Alcmaeon. According to Apollodorus, Alcmaeon was first purified by Phegeus the king of Psophis, but nevertheless the land of Psophis became barren because of the cursed Alcmaeon's presence. As Thucydides tells the story, the oracle of Apollo told Alcmaeon that he needed to find a land to live in that did not yet exist at the time of his mother's death. After long travels, Alcmaeon finally came to the springs of the Achelous River, where he was purified by the river-god, and received Achelous's daughter Callirrhoe as his wife, and at the mouth of the river he discovered a land newly made by deposits of river silt, where he could make his home free of his curse.Apollodorus, 3.7.5; Thucydides, 2.102.2–6. Compare with Ovid, Fasti 2.43–46; Pausanias, 8.24.8–9. Later, according to Apollodorus, Achelous commanded Alcmaeon to dedicate the necklace and robe—the cause of his mother's treachery—at Delphi, which he did.Apollodorus, 3.7.7.
Creation of islands