General Notes

[FAMILY.FTW]

AEGINA was the daughter of the god of the Asopus River, which flows from Phliasia through Sicyonia into the Corinthian Gulf. Asopus married Metope, daughter of the river-god Ladon, and had by her two sons, Ismenus and Pelagon, and twenty daughters, one of whom was Aegina. Since she was very beautiful, she attracted the attention of Zeus, who abducted her and carried her from her home in Phlius to the island of Oenone or Oenopia, afterward called Aegina. A little tired of having his beautiful daughters carried away by lustful gods (Poseidon and Apollo were other examples), Asopus went in search of Aegina. At Corinth her learned from Sisyphus, the king (perhaps in exchange for supplying the Acrocorinthus with a spring), the facts about Aegina's disappearance. Asopus then pursued Zeus until the god, by hurling thunderbolts at him, sent him back to his original bed. Pieces of charcoal found in the riverbed in later times were thought to be residue from the stormy struggle. For his interference in the affair, after his death Sisyphus received special punishment in the lower world. Aegina became by Zeus the mother of Aeacus. His youth was marked by the progressive disappearance of the island's population by a plague or a dragon sent by the ever-jealous Hera. When Aeacus eventually became king, he had almost no subjects to govern, so Zeus restored the people by changing ants into human beings. Aeacus went on to become such a just king that his counsel was sought even by the gods, and after his death he was made one of the judges of the lower world. After her affair with Zeus, Aegina married Actor, son of Deion, and became by him the mother of Menoetius, who became the father of Patroclus, the famous friend of Achilles. In fact, it was through Aegina that Patroclus and Achilles were related, on being her grandson and the other her great-grandson by the separate lines begun by her two husbands. One commentator (Pythaenetos, quoting the scholiast on Pindar's Olympian Odes 9.107) said Menoetius was Actor's son by Damocrateia, a daughter of Aegina and Zeus. This makes sense in terms of putting Patroclus and Achilles in the same generation. In that case, also, Aegina's sexual encounters with the greeatest of the gods would have remained inviolate, unless we consider the single account that she was the mother of Sinope (usually called her sister) by Ares. Even here she at least kept with the immortals for lovers. [Apollodorus 3.12.6; Pausanias 2.5.1; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius 436.]