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DANAUS , in See also: Greek See also: legend, son of Belus, See also: king of
See also: Egypt, and twin-See also: brother of Aegyptus
.
He was See also: born at Chemmis (Panopolis) in Egypt, buthavingbeendriven out byhis brother he fled with his fifty daughters to See also: Argos, the home of his ancestress lo
.
Here he became king and taught the inhabitants of the country to dig See also: wells
.
In the meantime the fifty sons of Aegyptus arrived in Argos, and Danaus was obliged to consent to their See also: marriage with his daughters
.
But to each of these he gave a knife with injunctions to slay her See also: husband on the marriage See also: night
.
They all obeyed except Hyperm(n)estra, who spared Lynceus
.
She was brought to trial by her See also: father, acquitted and afterwards married to her See also: lover
.
Being unable to find suitors for the other daughters, Danaus offered them in marriage to the youths of the See also: district who proved themselves victorious in racing contests (Pindar, Pythia, ix
.
117)
.
According to another See also: story, Lynceus slew Danaus and his daughters and seized the See also: throne of Argos (schol. on See also: Euripides, See also: Hecuba, 886)
.
By way of expiation for their See also: crime the Danaides were condemned to the endless task of filling with See also: water a vessel which had no bottom
.
This punishment, originally inflicted on those who neglected certain mystic See also: rites, was transferred to those who, like the Danaides, despised the mystic rite of marriage; cf. the water-bearing figure (Aovrpocbbpos) on the See also: grave of unmarried persons
.
The See also: murder of the sons of Aegyptus by their wives is supposed to represent the drying up of the See also: rivers and springs of Argolis in summer by the agency of the See also: nymphs
.
See also: Apollodorus ii
.
1 ; Horace, Odes, iii
.
I I ; O
.
Waser, in Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft, ii
.
Heft 1, 1899; articles in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie and W
.
H
.
Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie; See also: Campbell
See also: Bonner, in Harvard Studies, xiii
.
(1902)
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