Aristaeus

A son foretold

The story of Aristaeus begins with a prophecy. The god Apollo sees Cyrene, a huntress, wrestling a lion in Thessaly. He asks the centaur Chiron who she is. Chiron foretells that the god will carry her to Libya, where she will bear a son.

The god Hermes will take the child to the Hours and to Gaia, goddesses who will feed him nectar and ambrosia, the drink and food of the gods. The poet Pindar, who tells this story, says some will call the child Agreus, meaning Hunter, and others Nomios, meaning Shepherd. Aristaeus is another name in the same list. Each name points to a part of the work he will govern, and no single title sums him up.

Apollonius of Rhodes, author of the epic poem the Argonautica, tells the upbringing differently. Apollo brings the baby to the cave of Chiron. Later the goddesses called the Muses teach him healing and prophecy, then put their flocks in his care. Both poets link his authority to what he was taught. He learns first, and then uses those skills among animals, plants and weather.

What the nymphs teach Aristaeus

Diodorus Siculus, author of the Library of History, makes the practical lessons clear. Nymphs, lesser female goddesses, teach Aristaeus to curdle milk, build beehives and grow olive trees. He then shows these skills to other people. Because the skills are so useful, people honour him like a god.

Diodorus gives an ancient explanation for grouping several kinds of country knowledge under one divine name. He does not offer a history of who first made cheese or kept bees. Each skill turns a wild or perishable resource into something people can tend: milk becomes curds, bees live in hives and olive trees become a farmed crop.

A son lost

His family story breaks into that useful order. Aristaeus marries Autonoe, a daughter of Cadmus, and they have a son, Actaeon. Actaeon becomes a hunter too, but the goddess Artemis destroys him through his own dogs. Diodorus gives more than one reason for her anger and settles on none.

After Actaeon dies, Aristaeus goes to the oracle of Apollo, a shrine where the god answers questions. Diodorus says the oracle tells him to move his home to the island of Kea, and foretells the honours he will receive there. So the move answers a private loss and also begins a public remedy.

The heat of Sirius on Kea

Apollonius tells what happens on Kea. When Sirius, the Dog Star, rises, the islands cannot escape the heat. Crops fail and sickness follows. The people of Kea call for Aristaeus, after Apollo tells his son to leave Phthia, settle on the island and answer the star with sacrifice.

Aristaeus builds a great altar on a mountain to Zeus Ikmaios, Zeus who brings moisture. He makes offerings to both Zeus and Sirius. Then the Etesian winds begin to blow from the north. Apollonius says they cool the land for forty days. He adds that in his own time the priests of Kea still made sacrifices before the Dog Star rose.

This story shows the clearest measure of the power of Aristaeus. He does not command the weather as Zeus does. He learns the right ritual, sets it up on a mountain and leaves behind a practice that people repeat. Relief comes through the wind, not from his own hand.

What Kea keeps

Apollonius also says Aristaeus gathers the Parrhasians, a people descended from Lycaon, and makes his home among them. He does more than visit Kea to end one emergency. He founds a community and a yearly round of rites.

Diodorus says Aristaeus leaves descendants on the island before he travels on. Apollonius leaves the priests performing the rites each year. In both accounts, Kea keeps what he brought after he has gone. In one telling it is a family line. In the other it is an altar raised before the forty days of northern wind.