Asterion (king of Crete)

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For other uses, see Asterion.

In Greek mythology, Asterion (/əˈstɪriən/; Ancient Greek: Ἀστερίων, gen.: Ἀστερίωνος, literally "starry") or Asterius (/əˈstɪriəs/; Ἀστέριος) denotes two sacred kings of Crete.

Asterion I[]

The first Asterion, the son of Tectamus (son of Dorus) and an unnamed daughter of Cretheus. His father sailed to Crete with some Aeolians and Pelasgians and became the ruler of the island. Asterion inherited the throne from his father and he was the king of Crete at the time when Europa was abducted by Zeus and brought to his kingdom. He married Europa and became the stepfather of her sons by Zeus,[1] who assumed the form of the Cretan bull to accomplish his role. Asterion brought up his stepsons: Minos, the just king in Crete who judged the Underworld; Rhadamanthus, presiding over the Blessed Island or in the Underworld; and Sarpedon, king in Lycia. When he died without male heirs, Asterion gave his kingdom to Minos, who promptly "banished" his brothers after quarreling with them. Crete, daughter of Asterion, was a possible wife of Minos.[2][3]

Asterion II[]

Main article: Minotaur

According to Karl Kerenyi[4] and other scholars, the second Asterion, the star at the center of the labyrinth on Cretan coins, was in fact the Minotaur, as the compiler of Bibliotheca[5] (III.1.4) asserts:

Pasiphaë gave birth to Asterius, who was called the Minotaur. He had the face of a bull, but the rest of him was human; and Minos, in compliance with certain oracles, shut him up and guarded him in the Labyrinth.

"Minotaur" is simply a name of Hellenic coining to describe his Cretan symbolism, since "Minotaur" is a portmanteau of Minos and taûros, the Greek word for bull. Coins minted at Cnossus from the fifth century showed the kneeling bull or the head of a goddess crowned with a wreath of grain[6] and on the reverse—the "underside"—a scheme of four meander patterns joined at the centre windmill fashion, sometimes with sickle moons or with a star-rosette at the center: "it is a small view of the nocturnal world on the face of the coin that lay downward in the printing process, and is, as it were, oriented downward".

See also[]

Citations[]

  1. ^ Apollodorus, 3.1.2; Asterius "having died childless" 3.1.3; scholiast on Homer, Iliad 12.292.
  2. ^ Apollodorus, 3.1.2–4; Nonnus, Dionysiaca 1.354 & 2.695
  3. ^ Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 4.60.3, give Asterius; Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio 2.31.1, gives Asterion
  4. ^ Kerenyi (1951), p. 111; Kerenyi (1976), p. 105.
  5. ^ Apollodorus, 3.1.4
  6. ^ Compare Carme.

General references[]

Primary sources[]

  • Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
  • Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History translated by Charles Henry Oldfather. Twelve volumes. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989. Vol. 3. Books 4.59–8. Online version at Bill Thayer's Web Site
  • Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica. Vol 1-2. Immanel Bekker. Ludwig Dindorf. Friedrich Vogel. in aedibus B. G. Teubneri. Leipzig. 1888-1890. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
  • Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca translated by William Henry Denham Rouse (1863-1950), from the Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1940. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
  • Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca. Three vols. W.H.D. Rouse. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1940-1942. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
  • 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. Three vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.

Secondary sources[]

  • A. B. Cook, Zeus, i.543ff.
  • Karl Kerenyi. The Gods of the Greeks. London: Thames & Hudson, 1951.
  • Karl Kerenyi. Dionysus: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976.
  • Sara Douglass, 2002–6. The Troy Game Series. (Asterion referred to as the name of the Minotaur)
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