Flight from Aegyptus interpretation by
John William Waterhouse After Aegyptus commanded that his fifty sons should marry the Danaides, Danaus elected to flee instead. To that purpose, he built a ship on the advice of
Athena, the first ship that ever was. In it, he fled to
Argos, to which he was connected by his descent from
Io, a priestess of Hera at Argos, who was wooed by
Zeus and turned into a heifer and pursued by
Hera until she found asylum in Egypt. Argos at the time was ruled by King
Pelasgus, the
eponym of all autochthonous [indigenous] inhabitants who had lived in Greece since the beginning, also called
Gelanor ("he who laughs"). The Danaides asked Pelasgus for protection when they arrived, the event portrayed in
The Suppliants by
Aeschylus. Protection was granted after a vote by the Argives. When
Pausanias visited Argos in the 2nd century CE, he related the succession of Danaus to the throne, judged by the Argives, who "from the earliest times ... have loved freedom and self-government, and they limited to the utmost the authority of their kings": : "On coming to Argos he claimed the kingdom against Gelanor, the son of
Sthenelus. Many plausible arguments were brought forward by both parties, and those of Sthenelas were considered as fair as those of his opponent; so the people, who were sitting in judgment, put off, they say, the decision to the following day. At dawn a wolf fell upon a herd of oxen that was pasturing before the wall, and attacked and fought with the bull that was the leader of the herd. It occurred to the Argives that Gelanor was like the bull and Danaus like the wolf, for as the wolf will not live with men, so Danaus up to that time had not lived with them. It was because the wolf overcame the bull that Danaus won the kingdom. Accordingly, believing that Apollo had brought the wolf on the herd, he founded a sanctuary of Apollo Lycius." The sanctuary of Apollo Lykeios ("wolf-Apollo", but also Apollo of the twilight) was still the most prominent feature of Argos in Pausanias's time: in the sanctuary, the tourist might see the throne of Danaus himself, an
eternal flame, called the fire of
Phoroneus.
Murdered bridegrooms . When Aegyptus and his fifty sons arrived to take the Danaides, Danaus gave them in order to spare the
Argives the pain of a battle. However, he instructed his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding night. Forty-nine followed through and subsequently buried the heads of their bridegrooms in
Lerna; but one,
Hypermnestra, refused because her husband,
Lynceus, honored her wish to remain a virgin. Danaus was angry with his disobedient daughter and threw her to the Argive courts.
Aphrodite intervened and saved her. Lynceus and Hypermnestra then began a dynasty of Argive kings (the
Danaid Dynasty). Some sources relate that
Amymone, the "blameless" Danaid, and/or Bryce (Bebryce) also spared their husbands.
Aftermath After his sons' deaths, Aegyptus escaped to Aroe in Greece and died there. His monument was shown in the temple of
Serapis at
Patrae. In some versions, Lynceus later killed Danaus as revenge for the death of his brothers. The remaining forty-nine Danaides had their grooms chosen by a common mythic competition: A foot-race was held, and the order in which the potential Argive grooms finished decided their brides (compare the myth of
Atalanta). Two of the grooms were
Archander and
Architeles, sons of
Achaeus: They married
Scaea and Automate, respectively. In later accounts, the Danaides were punished in
Tartarus by being forced to carry water in a jug to fill a bath without a bottom (or with a leak) and thereby wash off their sins, but the bath was never filled because the water was always leaking out.
Danaus in Rhodes Another account of the travels of Danaus gave him three daughters,
Ialysos,
Kamiros and
Lindos, who were worshipped in the cities that took their names in the island of
Rhodes, Ialysos, Kamiros and Lindos (but see also
Cercaphus). According to Rhodian mythographers who informed
Diodorus Siculus, Danaus would have stopped and founded a sanctuary to Athena Lindia on the way from Egypt to
Greece.
Ken Dowden observes that once the idea is dismissed that myth is directly narrating the movements of historical persons, that the loci of Danaian institutions at Lindos in Rhodes as well as at Argos suggest a Mycenaean colony sent to Rhodes from the Argolid, a tradition, in fact, that
Strabo reports.
Other feats Danaus was credited as the inventor of wells and is said to have migrated from Egypt about 1485 B.C. into that part of Greece previously known as Argos Dipsion. Notes in
Pliny the Elder's,
Natural History also added that: : "He [i.e., Danaus] may have introduced wells into Greece, but they had, long before his time, been employed in Egypt and in other countries. The term "Dipsion," "thirsting," which it appears had been applied to the district of Argos, may seem to render it probable, that, before the arrival of Danaus, the inhabitants had not adopted any artificial means of supplying themselves with water. But this country, we are told, is naturally well supplied with water." The town
Apobathmi in
ancient Argolis took its name from Danaus landing at this spot. ==The
Danais==