In Greek mythology

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...

, Sithon was a king of the Odomanti or Hadomanti in Thrace

Thrace

Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...

, son of either 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 Ossa or of Ares

Ares

Ares is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and Hera. In Greek literature, he often represents the physical or violent aspect of war, in contrast to the armored Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and...

 and Anchiroe, daughter of the river god Neilus. He was married to the nymph

Nymph

A nymph in Greek mythology is a female minor nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from gods, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing;...

 Mendeis, though Anchiroe is otherwise also given as his wife rather than mother, and had three daughters: Phyllis

Phyllis

Phyllis is a character in Greek mythology, daughter of a Thracian king . She married Demophon, King of Athens and son of Theseus, while he stopped in Thrace on his journey home from the Trojan War....

, who loved Demophon of Athens; Rhoeteia, eponym

Eponym

An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...

 of the promontory of Rhoetium in the Troad; and Pallene.

Sithon promised both the hand of Pallene and his kingdom to the one who would defeat him in single combat. Pallene was so beautiful that a lot of suitors sought her hand, but all of them, including Merops

Merops

Merops may refer to:* Merops , a genus of bee-eaters.* MEROPS, an on-line database for peptidases.It may also refer to several figures from Greek mythology:* King of Ethiopia, husband of Clymene, who lay with Helios and bore Phaethon...

 of Anthemousia and Periphetes

Periphetes

Periphetes is the name of several characters from Greek mythology.The most prominent Periphetes, also known as Corynetes or the Club-Bearer, was a son of Hephaestus and Anticleia. Like his father, he was lame in one leg with only one eye as a Cyclopes would have...

 of Mygdonia, were slain by Sithon. As he grew older and his strength began to fail him, he arranged that the suitors fight each other instead of himself until one of them was killed; the winner would then get both Pallene and the kingdom. When two new wooers, Dryas

Dryas

Dryas is the name of nine characters in Greek mythology1. Dryas was the son of King Lycurgus, king of the Edoni in Thrace. He was killed when Lycurgus went insane and mistook him for a mature trunk of ivy, a plant holy to the god Dionysus, whose cult Lycurgus was attempting to extirpate.Resisting...

 and Cleitus, arrived, Pallene fell in love with Cleitus. Out of fear for him, she cried so much that her old tutor realized what her feelings were and decided to help. As the suitors were supposed to fight on chariots, he bribed Dryas' charioteer so that he left undone the pins of the chariot wheels. So when Dryas attacked, the wheels came off and he fell to the ground, and was defeated and killed by Cleitus with ease. Sithon became aware of the stratagem and was outraged so much that he intended to slay his daughter next to Dryas' funeral pyre. But the girl was saved by Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....

, who appeared at night in front of the inhabitants of the country; alternatively, a sudden heavy shower was sent down by the gods, making Sithon change his mind. He married Pallene to Cleitus; after his death they inherited the kingdom, and the country and a city in Thrace subsequently received the name of Pallene.

A different story of Sithon and Pallene is found in Nonnus

Nonnus

Nonnus of Panopolis , was a Greek epic poet. He was a native of Panopolis in the Egyptian Thebaid, and probably lived at the end of the 4th or early 5th century....

' Dionysiaca

Dionysiaca

The Dionysiaca is an ancient epic poem and the principal work of Nonnus. It is an epic in 48 books, the longest surviving poem from antiquity at 20,426 lines, composed in Homeric dialect and dactylic hexameters, the main subject of which is the life of Dionysus, his expedition to India, and his...

. According to it, Sithon was in love with his own daughter, and that was the reason why he was killing her wooers one after another. This lasted until one day Dionysus

Dionysus

Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...

 came and suggested that he would fight for Pallene's hand with the maiden herself. Sithon agreed, and Dionysus wrestled with Pallene in a manner that was more like seducing her. Sithon interrupted and pronounced the god winner; Dionysus then killed the king with his thyrsus

Thyrsus

In Greek mythology, a thyrsus or thyrsos was a staff of giant fennel covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and always topped with a pine cone. These staffs were carried by Dionysus and his followers. Euripides wrote that honey dripped from the thyrsos staves that the...

, thus avenging the deaths of the previous suitors. He consorted with Pallene, although he stayed with her for but a night.

The myths of Sithon, Pallene and the suitors are similar to those of Oenomaus

Oenomaus

In Greek mythology, King Oenomaus of Pisa, the father of Hippodamia, was the son of Ares, either by the naiad Harpina or by Sterope, one of the Pleiades, whom some identify as his consort instead...

, Hippodamia

Hippodamia

Hippodamia was a daughter of King Oenomaus and wife of Pelops with whom her offspring were Thyestes, Atreus, Pittheus, Alcathous, Troezen, Hippalcimus, Copreus, Astydameia, Nicippe, Eurydice and others....

 and Pelops

Pelops

In Greek mythology, Pelops , was king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus. He was the founder of the House of Atreus through his son of that name....

.