Chelidon (mythology)

For other uses, see Chelidon (Greek myth).

In Greek mythology, Chelidon (Ancient Greek: Χελιδών, romanized: Khelidon, lit. 'swallow') was a minor figure, a noblewoman from either the city of Miletus or Colophon in an Anatolian variant of the story of Philomela.

Family

Chelidon was the daughter of Pandareus and his wife, and thus sister to Aëdon, Cleodora (or Cleothera), Merope (according to Pausanias, the last two were called Cameiro and Clytia) and an unnamed brother.

Mythology

After her sister Aëdon won a bet against her husband Polytechnus, Polytechnus was forced to find his wife a slave. He went to Pandareus, claiming that Aëdon wanted to see her sister. Chelidon left with Polytechnus, but he forced himself on her, cut her hair short, and dressed her up as a slave, terrorizing her against telling anyone what had happened. He then gave her to Aëdon as a slave. Aëdon did not suspect anything until one day she overheard Chelidon lamenting her cruel fate. The two sisters then killed Itys, Aëdon and Polytechnus's son, and fed him to his father while they ran back to their own. Polytechnus hunted them down, but Pandareus protected his daughters and had Polytechnus tied up, smeared with honey and left to the mercy of flocks of flies. But Aëdon, feeling sorry for her husband, kept the flies off of him. Pandareus, his wife and the unnamed son attacked her, so Zeus decided to turn them all into birds. Chelidon became a swallow.

See also

• Antiope
• Io
• Nyctaea

Bibliography

• Antoninus Liberalis, The Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis translated by Francis Celoria (Routledge 1992). Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Bell, Robert E., Women of Classical Mythology: A Biographical Dictionary. ABC-Clio. 1991. ISBN 9780874365818, 0874365813.
• Celoria, Francis (1992). The Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis: A Translation with a Commentary. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-06896-7.
• Homer, The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. ISBN 978-0674995611. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Homer. The Odyssey, Book XIX, in The Iliad & The Odyssey. Trans. Samuel Butler. pp. 676–7. ISBN 978-1-4351-1043-4
• Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. ISBN 0-674-99328-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
• Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio. 3 vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, v. 3, page 109