Agenor
Encyclopedia
Agenor was in Greek mythology
and history a Phoenicia
n king
of Tyre. Herodotus
estimates that Agenor lived sometime before the year 2000 B.C..
Agenor was born in Memphis
of Egypt
to Poseidon
and Libya
and he had a twin brother named Belus
. Belus remained in Egypt and reigned over Egypt, while Agenor departed to Phoenicia and reigned there. According to other sources, he was the son of Belus and Achiroe
.
Sources differ also as to Agenor's children; he is sometimes said to have been the father of Cadmus
, Europa
, Cilix
, Phoenix
, and Thasus
. Some sources state that Phoenix was Agenor's brother (and Belus's son); and it was Phoenix who was the father of these individuals. Agenor's wife is variously given as Telephassa
, Argiope, Cassiopeia, Epimedusa, and Tyro, with the latter giving her name to the city of Tyre. According to Pherecydes
, Agenor's first wife was Damno, daughter of Belus, who bore him Phoenix and two otherwise unknown daughters, Isaia and Melia, who married Aegyptus
and Danaus
respectively; Agenor then fathered Cadmus with Argiope, daughter of Neilus.
In the Iliad
, however, Europa is clearly a daughter of Phoenix. Either Cadmus or Europa are confirmed as children of Phoenix by the Ehoeae attributed to Hesiod
and by Bacchylides
and by various scholia
. Cilix and Phineus are also sons of Phoenix according to Pherecydes
, who also adds an otherwise unknown son named Doryclus.
Most later sources list Cadmus and Cilix as sons of Agenor directly without mentioning Phoenix. On the rare occasions when he is mentioned, Phoenix is listed as the brother of Cadmus and Cilix. Whether he is included as a brother of Agenor or as a son, his role in mythology is limited to inheriting his father's kingdom and to becoming the eponym of the Phoenicia
ns. All accounts agree on a Phoenician king who has several children, including the two sons named Cadmus
and Cilix
and a daughter
named Europa
.
saw Agenor's daughter Europa gathering flowers and immediately fell in love with her. Zeus transformed himself into a white bull and carried Europa away to the island of Crete
. He then revealed his true identity and Europa became the first queen of Crete. Agenor, meanwhile, sent Europa's brothers, Cadmus and Cilix in search of her, telling them not to return without her. In some versions of the tale, Agenor sends her other brothers as well: Phineus
or Thasus
(and of course Phoenix in the versions where the Cadmus's father is Agenor).
As Europa could not be found, none of the brothers returned. Cadmus consulted the oracle
of Delphi
and was advised to travel until encountering a cow. He was to follow this cow and to found a city where the cow would lie down; this city became Thebes
. Cilix searched for her and settled down in Asia Minor
. The land was called Cilicia
after him.
calls Carthage
the city of Agenor, by which he alludes to the descent of Dido from Agenor. German philologist
Philipp Karl Buttmann
points out that the genuine Phoenicia
n name of Agenor was Chnas or Khna, which is the same as Canaan
, and upon these facts he builds the hypothesis that Agenor or Chnas is the same as the Canaan in the books of Moses
. Quintus Curtius Rufus
considered Agenor to have been the founder of Sidon
, and he was also popularly supposed to have introduced the Phoenician alphabet
, which was later taught by Cadmus
to the Greeks and became the foundation of their own writing system.
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
and history a Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
n king
Monarch
A monarch is the person who heads a monarchy. This is a form of government in which a state or polity is ruled or controlled by an individual who typically inherits the throne by birth and occasionally rules for life or until abdication...
of Tyre. Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
estimates that Agenor lived sometime before the year 2000 B.C..
Genealogy
According to ApollodorusBibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)
The Bibliotheca , in three books, provides a comprehensive summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends, "the most valuable mythographical work that has come down from ancient times," Aubrey Diller observed, whose "stultifying purpose" was neatly expressed in the epigram noted by...
Agenor was born in Memphis
Memphis, Egypt
Memphis was the ancient capital of Aneb-Hetch, the first nome of Lower Egypt. Its ruins are located near the town of Helwan, south of Cairo.According to legend related by Manetho, the city was founded by the pharaoh Menes around 3000 BC. Capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom, it remained an...
of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
to Poseidon
Poseidon
Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
and Libya
Libya (mythology)
Libya is the name given to both a region of North Africa and a daughter of Epaphus, King of Egypt, in both Greek and Roman mythology.-Greek mythology:...
and he had a twin brother named Belus
Belus (Egyptian)
Belus was in Greek mythology a king of Egypt and father of Aegyptus and Danaus and brother to Agenor. The wife of Belus has been named as Achiroe, or Side ....
. Belus remained in Egypt and reigned over Egypt, while Agenor departed to Phoenicia and reigned there. According to other sources, he was the son of Belus and Achiroe
Achiroe
Achiroë or Anchirrhoë , or according to Apollodorus Anchinoë , which is perhaps a mistake for Anchiroë, was in Greek mythology a naiad, a daughter of the river-god Nilus. She was also the wife of Belus, by whom she became the mother of Aegyptus and Danaus, and, according to some accounts, ...
.
Sources differ also as to Agenor's children; he is sometimes said to have been the father of Cadmus
Cadmus
Cadmus or Kadmos , in Greek mythology was a Phoenician prince, the son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre and the brother of Phoenix, Cilix and Europa. He was originally sent by his royal parents to seek out and escort his sister Europa back to Tyre after she was abducted from the shores...
, Europa
Europa (mythology)
In Greek mythology Europa was a Phoenician woman of high lineage, from whom the name of the continent Europe has ultimately been taken. The name Europa occurs in Hesiod's long list of daughters of primordial Oceanus and Tethys...
, Cilix
Cilix
In Greek mythology, Cilix was a son of Agenor and Telephassa or Argiope and brother of Cadmus, Phoenix and Europa.When Europa was carried off by Zeus, Agenor sent his three sons out to find her, telling them not to return until they find her. The search was unsuccessful. Cilix eventually settled...
, Phoenix
Phoenix (son of Agenor)
In Greek mythology, Phoenix was a son of Agenor and Telephassa , brother of Cadmus, Cilix and Europe.When Europa was carried off by Zeus, her three brothers were sent out by Agenor to find her, but the search was unsuccessful...
, and Thasus
Thasus
In Greek mythology, Thasus was a son of Poseidon . In the stories, he was one of those who set out from Phoenicia in search of Europa, and "founded" the eponymous town of Thasos on the island of the same name....
. Some sources state that Phoenix was Agenor's brother (and Belus's son); and it was Phoenix who was the father of these individuals. Agenor's wife is variously given as Telephassa
Telephassa
In Greek mythology, Telephassa is a lunar epithet like Telephae that is sometimes substituted for Argiope, the wife of Agenor, according to his name a "leader of men" in Phoenicia, and mother of Cadmus. In some versions she is the daughter of Nilus, god of the Nile and Nephele, a soft cloud oceanid...
, Argiope, Cassiopeia, Epimedusa, and Tyro, with the latter giving her name to the city of Tyre. According to Pherecydes
Pherecydes of Leros
Pherecydes of Leros was a Greek mythographer and logographer. He came from the island of Leros. Pherecydes spent the greater part of his working life in Athens, and so he was also called Pherecydes of Athens: the encyclopedic Byzantine Suda consider Pherecydes of Athens and of Leros...
, Agenor's first wife was Damno, daughter of Belus, who bore him Phoenix and two otherwise unknown daughters, Isaia and Melia, who married Aegyptus
Aegyptus
- Aegyptus, King of Egypt and Arabia :In Greek mythology, Aegyptus is a descendant of the heifer maiden, Io, and the river-god Nilus, and was a king in Egypt. Aegyptos was the son of Belus and Achiroe, a naiad daughter of Nile. Aegyptus fathered fifty sons, who were all but one murdered by the...
and Danaus
Danaus
In Greek mythology Danaus, or Danaos , was the twin brother of Aegyptus and son of Achiroe and Belus, a mythical king of Egypt. The myth of Danaus is a foundation legend of Argos, one of the foremost Mycenaean cities of the Peloponnesus...
respectively; Agenor then fathered Cadmus with Argiope, daughter of Neilus.
In the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
, however, Europa is clearly a daughter of Phoenix. Either Cadmus or Europa are confirmed as children of Phoenix by the Ehoeae attributed to Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
and by Bacchylides
Bacchylides
Bacchylides was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets which included his uncle Simonides. The elegance and polished style of his lyrics have been a commonplace of Bacchylidean scholarship since at least Longinus...
and by various scholia
Scholium
Scholia , are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments, either original or extracted from pre-existing commentaries, which are inserted on the margin of the manuscript of an ancient author, as glosses. One who writes scholia is a scholiast...
. Cilix and Phineus are also sons of Phoenix according to Pherecydes
Pherecydes
Pherecydes was the name of:*Pherecydes of Syros, a pre-Socratic philosopher and author from the island of Syros, by some believed to have influenced Pythagoras...
, who also adds an otherwise unknown son named Doryclus.
Most later sources list Cadmus and Cilix as sons of Agenor directly without mentioning Phoenix. On the rare occasions when he is mentioned, Phoenix is listed as the brother of Cadmus and Cilix. Whether he is included as a brother of Agenor or as a son, his role in mythology is limited to inheriting his father's kingdom and to becoming the eponym of the Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
ns. All accounts agree on a Phoenician king who has several children, including the two sons named Cadmus
Cadmus
Cadmus or Kadmos , in Greek mythology was a Phoenician prince, the son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre and the brother of Phoenix, Cilix and Europa. He was originally sent by his royal parents to seek out and escort his sister Europa back to Tyre after she was abducted from the shores...
and Cilix
Cilix
In Greek mythology, Cilix was a son of Agenor and Telephassa or Argiope and brother of Cadmus, Phoenix and Europa.When Europa was carried off by Zeus, Agenor sent his three sons out to find her, telling them not to return until they find her. The search was unsuccessful. Cilix eventually settled...
and a daughter
Daughter
A daughter is a female offspring; a girl, woman, or female animal in relation to her parents. The male equivalent is a son. Analogously the name is used on several areas to show relations between groups or elements.-Etymology:...
named Europa
Europa (mythology)
In Greek mythology Europa was a Phoenician woman of high lineage, from whom the name of the continent Europe has ultimately been taken. The name Europa occurs in Hesiod's long list of daughters of primordial Oceanus and Tethys...
.
Myth
ZeusZeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
saw Agenor's daughter Europa gathering flowers and immediately fell in love with her. Zeus transformed himself into a white bull and carried Europa away to the island of Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
. He then revealed his true identity and Europa became the first queen of Crete. Agenor, meanwhile, sent Europa's brothers, Cadmus and Cilix in search of her, telling them not to return without her. In some versions of the tale, Agenor sends her other brothers as well: Phineus
Phineus
Phineus may refer to:* Phineus, killed by Perseus. See Andromeda * Blind King Phineus or Phineas of Thrace, visited by Jason and the Argonauts* Phineas Nigellus, a deceased headmaster in the Harry Potter universe...
or Thasus
Thasus
In Greek mythology, Thasus was a son of Poseidon . In the stories, he was one of those who set out from Phoenicia in search of Europa, and "founded" the eponymous town of Thasos on the island of the same name....
(and of course Phoenix in the versions where the Cadmus's father is Agenor).
As Europa could not be found, none of the brothers returned. Cadmus consulted the oracle
Oracle
In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination....
of Delphi
Delphi
Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...
and was advised to travel until encountering a cow. He was to follow this cow and to found a city where the cow would lie down; this city became Thebes
Thebes, Greece
Thebes is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It played an important role in Greek myth, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others...
. Cilix searched for her and settled down in Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
. The land was called Cilicia
Cilicia
In antiquity, Cilicia was the south coastal region of Asia Minor, south of the central Anatolian plateau. It existed as a political entity from Hittite times into the Byzantine empire...
after him.
Agenor and city-founding
VirgilVirgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
calls Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
the city of Agenor, by which he alludes to the descent of Dido from Agenor. German philologist
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
Philipp Karl Buttmann
Philipp Karl Buttmann
Philipp Karl Buttmann , German philologist, was born at Frankfurt am Main.He was educated in his native town and at the university of Göttingen. In 1789 he obtained an appointment in the library at Berlin, and for some years he edited Spener's Journal. In 1796 he became professor at the...
points out that the genuine Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
n name of Agenor was Chnas or Khna, which is the same as Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
, and upon these facts he builds the hypothesis that Agenor or Chnas is the same as the Canaan in the books of Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
. Quintus Curtius Rufus
Quintus Curtius Rufus
Quintus Curtius Rufus was a Roman historian, writing probably during the reign of the Emperor Claudius or Vespasian. His only surviving work, Historiae Alexandri Magni, is a biography of Alexander the Great in Latin in ten books, of which the first two are lost, and the remaining eight are...
considered Agenor to have been the founder of Sidon
Sidon
Sidon or Saïda is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located in the South Governorate of Lebanon, on the Mediterranean coast, about 40 km north of Tyre and 40 km south of the capital Beirut. In Genesis, Sidon is the son of Canaan the grandson of Noah...
, and he was also popularly supposed to have introduced the Phoenician alphabet
Phoenician alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...
, which was later taught by Cadmus
Cadmus
Cadmus or Kadmos , in Greek mythology was a Phoenician prince, the son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre and the brother of Phoenix, Cilix and Europa. He was originally sent by his royal parents to seek out and escort his sister Europa back to Tyre after she was abducted from the shores...
to the Greeks and became the foundation of their own writing system.