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| Chapter VII.—Fabulous Heathen Genealogies.
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Why need I recount the Greek fables,—of
Pluto, king of darkness, of Neptune descending beneath the sea, and
embracing Melanippe and begetting a cannibal son,—or the many
tales your writers have woven into their tragedies concerning the sons
of Jupiter, and whose pedigree they register because they were born
men, and not gods? And the comic poet Aristophanes, in the play called
“The Birds,” having taken upon him to handle the subject of
the Creation, said that in the beginning the world was produced from an
egg, saying:558
| 558 Aristoph.,
Av., 694. A wind-egg being one produced without impregnation,
and coming to nothing. | —
“A windy egg was laid by black-winged night
At first.”
But Satyrus, also giving a history
of the Alexandrine families, beginning from Philopator, who was also
named Ptolemy, gives out that Bacchus was his progenitor; wherefore
also Ptolemy was the founder of this559
| 559 The Dionysian family taking its name from Dionysus
or Bacchus. | family. Satyrus then speaks thus: That Dejanira
was born of Bacchus and Althea, the daughter of Thestius; and from her
and Hercules the son of Jupiter there sprang, as I suppose, Hyllus; and
from him Cleodemus, and from him Aristomachus, and from him Temenus,
and from him Ceisus, and from him Maron, and from him Thestrus, and
from him Acous, and from him Aristomidas, and from him Caranus, and
from him Cœnus, and from him Tyrimmas, and from him Perdiccas,
and from him Philip, and from him Æropus, and from him Alcetas,
and from him Amyntas, and from him Bocrus, and from him Meleager, and
from him Arsinoë and from her and Lagus Ptolemy Soter, and from him
and Arsinoe Ptolemy Euergetes, and from him and Berenicé, daughter
of Maga, king of Cyrene, Ptolemy Philopator. Thus, then, stands the
relationship of the Alexandrine kings to Bacchus. And therefore in the
Dionysian tribe there are distinct families: the Althean from Althea,
who was the wife of Dionysus and daughter of Thestius; the family of
Dejanira also, from her who was the daughter of Dionysus and Althea, and
wife of Hercules;—whence, too, the families have their names: the
family of Ariadne, from Ariadne, daughter of Minos and wife of Dionysus,
a dutiful daughter, who had intercourse with Dionysus in another form; the
Thestian, from Thestius, the father of Althea; the Thoantian, from Thoas,
son of Dionysus; the Staphylian, from Staphylus, son of Dionysus; the
Euænian, from Eunous, son of Dionysus; the Maronian, from Maron, son
of Ariadne and Dionysus;—for all these are sons of Dionysus. And,
indeed, many other names were thus originated, and exist to this day; as
the Heraclidæ from Hercules, and the Apollonidæ from Apollo, and
the Poseidonii from Poseidon, and from Zeus the Dii and Diogenæ.
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