Dryas (mythology)

Dryas (Ancient Greek: Δρύας, gen. Δρύαντος, from δρῦς "oak") is the name of ten characters in Greek mythology.

  • Dryas, one of the sons of Aegyptus and Polyxo. He married (and was murdered by) Hecabe or Eurydice, daughter of Danaus and the naiad Caliadne, daughter of Nilus and Polyxo's sister.[1][2]
  • Dryas was the son of King Lycurgus, king of the Edoni in Thrace. He was killed when Lycurgus went insane[3] and mistook him for a mature trunk of ivy, a plant holy to the god Dionysus, whose cult Lycurgus was attempting to extirpate.[4]
  • Dryas, father of the aforementioned Lycurgus, and thus grandfather of the above Dryas.[4][5][6][7]
  • Dryas, a leader of the Lapiths against the Centaurs, and a participant of the battle that began at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia, where he killed the Centaur Rhoetus, who had killed his fellow Lapiths Corythus and Euagrus just before that.[8][9] In Iliad 1, Nestor numbers Dryas among an earlier generation of heroes of his youth, "the strongest men that Earth has bred, the strongest men against the strongest enemies, a savage mountain-dwelling tribe [i. e. the Centaurs] whom they utterly destroyed", and call him "shepherd of the people".[10] No trace of such an oral tradition, which Homer's listeners would have recognized in Nestor's allusion, survived in literary epic.
  • Dryas, the son of Ares[11] or of Iapetus.[12]
  • Dryas the seer, father of Munichus.[13]
  • Dryas, one of the suitors of Pallene, daughter of Sithon. He was killed by Cleitus, who then went on to marry Pallene.[14][15]
  • Dryas, father of Amphilochus, the husband of Alcinoe.[16]
  • Dryas, son of Orion, a chieftain from Tanagra. He brought 1000 archers with him to defend Thebes against the Seven.[17] Ares made use of the fact that Dryas shared his father's hate of Artemis and her followers, and turned him against Parthenopaeus and his Arcadian contingent. Upon killing Parthenopaeus, Dryas was himself felled by an unknown hand.[18]
  • Dryas, a Greek warrior killed during the Trojan War by Deiphobus.[19]
Not to be confused with Dryad.

References
  1. Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 2. 1. 5
  2. Hyginus, Fabulae, 170
  3. Homer calls him mainomenos, "mad", from the same root as "Maenad" Iliad 4.130-40.
  4. Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 3. 5. 1
  5. Homer, Iliad, 6. 130
  6. Hyginus, Fabulae, 132
  7. Sophocles, Antigone, 955
  8. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 12. 290 ff
  9. Shield of Heracles, 179
  10. Homer, Iliad 1.263
  11. Pseudo-Apollodorus. Bibliotheca, 1.8.2 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.
  12. Hyginus. Fabulae, 173. Translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies
  13. Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses, 14
  14. Parthenius, Love Romances, 6
  15. Conon, Narrations, 10
  16. Parthenius, Love Romances, 27
  17. Statius, Thebaid, 7. 255 ff
  18. Statius, Thebaid, 9.841 ff
  19. Quintus Smyrnaeus, The Fall of Troy, 11.90

Sources
  • Robert Graves, (1955) 1960. The Greek Myths 27.e.
  • Homer, Iliad vi. 530–40.
  • Karl Kerenyi, 1976. Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life (Princeton: Bollingen) Translated by Ralph Manheim.
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