Dion (mythology)
Encyclopedia
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...

, Dion (Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 Διών) was a King in Laconia
Laconia
Laconia , also known as Lacedaemonia, is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. Its administrative capital is Sparti...

 and husband of Amphithea
Amphithea
Amphithea is the name of four women in Greek mythology:1. Amphithea, wife of Lycurgus, king of Nemea, and mother of Opheltes . Also known as Eurydice....

, the daughter of Pronax
Pronax
In Greek mythology, Pronax is the son of Talaus and Lysimache, and brother of Adrastus. The Nemean Games are supposed to have been instituted in his honour....

. Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

, who had been kindly received by Dion and Amphithea, rewarded them by conferring upon their three daughters, Orphe, Lyco, and Carya
Carya (daughter of Dion)
In Greek mythology, Carya was a daughter of the Laconian king Dion and Amphithea, daughter of Pronax. Her sisters were Lyco and Orphe. Apollo, in reward for Dion and Amphithea receiving him with great reverence and hospitality, bestowed a gift of prophecy upon their daughters, but imposed a...

, the gift of prophecy, on condition, however, that they should not betray the gods nor search after forbidden things. Dion erected a temple to 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...

, who also visited his house and fell in love with Carya. When Orphe and Lyco tried not to let their sister consort with the god (thus breaking the restrictions imposed by Apollo), Dionysus changed them into rocks and Carya into a walnut tree. The Lacedaemonians, on being informed of it by Artemis
Artemis
Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...

, dedicated a temple to Artemis Caryatis
Caryatis
In ancient Greek religion Artemis Caryatis was an epithet of Artemis that was derived from the small polis of Karyai in Laconia; there an archaic open-air temenos was dedicated to Carya, the Lady of the Nut-Tree, whose priestesses were called the caryatidai, represented on the Athenian Acropolis as...

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