Ixion

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Ixion

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Ixion was king of the Lapiths, the most ancient tribe of Thessaly

Thessaly

Thessaly is one of the 13 Peripheries of Greece of Greece, and is further sub-divided into 4 Prefectures of Greece. The capital of the periphery and traditional Regions of Greece is Larissa....
, and a son of Ares

Ares

In Greek mythology, Ares is the son of Zeus and Hera. Though often referred to as the Twelve Olympians God of warfare, he is more accurately the god of bloodlust, or slaughter personified: "Ares is apparently an ancient abstract noun meaning throng of battle, war."...
or Antion or the notorious evildoer Phlegyas

Phlegyas

Phlegyas, son of Ares and Chryse, was king of the Lapiths in Greek mythology. He was the father of Ixion and Coronis, one of Apollo's lovers. While pregnant with Asclepius, Coronis fell in love with Ischys, son of Elatus....
, whose name connotes "fiery". Peirithoös

Pirithous

In Greek mythology, Pirithous - ?e??????? was the King of the Lapiths in Thessaly and husband of Hippodamia , at whose wedding the famous Centauromachy occurred....
was his son (or stepson, if Zeus

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
were his father, as the sky-god claims to Hera in Iliad 14). Ixion married Dia

Dia (mythology)

Dia in Greek mythology was the mother of the Lapiths Pirithous, whose marriage to Hippodamia was the occasion of the Lapiths' battle with the Centaurs....
, a daughter of Deioneus

Deioneus

In Greek mythology, Deioneus or Deion is a name attributed to the following individuals:*Son of Aeolus#Son of Poseidon, king of Phocis, and father of Cephalus, Actor , Aenetus, Phylacus and Asterodia....
(or Eioneus

Deioneus

Bride price

Bride price also known as bride wealth is an amount of money or property or wealth paid by the groom or his family to the parents of a woman upon the marriage of their daughter to the groom....
, so Deioneus stole some of Ixion's horses in retaliation.

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In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Thessaly

Ares

Phlegyas

Pirithous

Zeus

Dia (mythology)

Dia in Greek mythology was the mother of the Lapiths Pirithous, whose marriage to Hippodamia was the occasion of the Lapiths' battle with the Centaurs....
, a daughter of Deioneus

Deioneus

Bride price

Larissa

Larissa is a city and the capital of the Thessaly Peripheries of Greece of Greece, and capital of the Larissa Prefecture. It is a principal agricultural centre and a national transportation hub, linked by rail with the port of Volos and with Thessaloniki and Athens....
. When Deioneus arrived, Ixion pushed him into a bed of burning coals and wood. These circumstances are secondary to the fact of Ixion's primordial act of murder: in the Greek Anthology

Greek Anthology

The Greek Anthology is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature.While papyrus containing fragments of collections of poetry have been found in Egypt, the earliest known anthology in Greek was compiled by Meleager of Gadara, under the title Anthologia, or "Garland."...
(iii.12), among a collection of inscriptions from a temple in Cyzicus is an epigrammatic description of Ixion slaying Phorbas

Phorbas

In Greek mythology, Phorbas or Phorbaceus, native to Thessaloniki, was the son of Lapithes and Orsinome, and a brother of Periphas. When the people of the island of Rhodes fell victim to a plague of masses of serpents , an oracle directed them to call on a man named Phorbas....
and Polymelos, who had slain his mother, Megara

Megara (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Megara was the oldest daughter of Creon, king of Thebes, Greece. In reward for Heracles' defending Thebes from Orchomenus in single-handed battle, Creon offered his daughter Megara to Heracles and he brought her home to the house of Amphitryon....
.

Ixion went mad, defiled by his act; the neighboring princes were so offended by this act of treachery and violation of xenia
Xenia (Greek)

Xenia is the Greeks concept of hospitality, or generosity and courtesy shown to those who are far from home. It is often translated as "guest-friendship" because the rituals of hospitality created and expressed a reciprocal relationship between guest and host....
that they refused to perform the rituals that would cleanse Ixion of his guilt (see catharsis
Catharsis

Catharsis is a Ancient Greek word meaning "purification", "cleansing" or "clarification." It is derived from the infinitive verb of Transliteration as kathairein "to purify, purge," and adjective katharos "pure or clean."...
). Thereafter, Ixion lived as an outlaw and shunned. By killing his father-in-law, Ixion was reckoned the first man guilty of kin-slaying in Greek mythology. That alone would warrant him a terrible punishment.

However, Zeus

Zeus

Olympus

A number of different things are named Olympus:...
and introduced him at the table of the gods. Instead of being grateful, Ixion grew lustful for Hera

Hera

In the Twelve Olympians of classical Greek Mythology, Hera or Here was the wife and older sister of Zeus. Her chief function was as goddess of women and marriage....
, Zeus's consort, a further violation of guest-host relations. Zeus found out about his intentions and made a cloud in the shape of Hera, which became known as Nephele

Nephele

In Greek mythology, Nephele was a cloud nymph who figured prominently in the story of Phrixus and Helle .Greek myth also has it that Nephele is the cloud whom Zeus created in the image of Hera to trick Ixion, since he tried to rape the goddess....
, and tricked Ixion into coupling with it. From the union of Ixion and the false-Hera cloud came Centauros

Centaurus (Greek mythology)

In Greek mythology, Centaurus was the founder of the Centaur race - a breed of half-men, half-horse warriors that inhabited northern Greece. Centaurus was said to be the son of the god Apollo and the nymph Stilbe, daughter of the River God Peneus....
, who covered the Magnesia

Magnesia

Magnesia , deriving from the tribe name Magnetes, is the name of the southeastern area of Thessaly in central Greece. The modern prefecture was created in 1947 out of the Larissa prefecture....
n mares on Mount Pelion

Pelion

Pelion or Pelium is a mountain at the southeastern part of Thessaly in central Greece, forming a hook-like peninsula between the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea....
, Pindar told, engendering the race of Centaur

Centaur

In Greek mythology, the centaurs are a race of creatures composed of part human and part horse. In early Attica Pottery of ancient Greece, they are depicted with the torso of a human joined at the waist to the horse's withers, where the horse's neck would be....
s, who are called the Ixionidae from their descent.

Ixion was expelled from Olympus and blasted with a thunderbolt

Thunderbolt

A thunderbolt is a traditional expression for a discharge of lightning or a symbolic representation thereof. In its original usage the word may also have been a description of meteors, although this is not currently the case....
. Zeus ordered Hermes

Hermes

Hermes is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Twelve Olympians, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunni...
to bind Ixion to a winged fiery wheel that was always spinning; only when Orpheus

Orpheus

Orpheus was a legendary figure, probably from Thracian origin, venerated by the Greeks and Thracians of the Classical age as a chief among poets and musicians, and the perfector of the lyre invented by Hermes....
played his lyre did it stop for a while. Therefore, Ixion is bound to a burning solar wheel for all eternity, at first spinning across the heavens, but in later myth transferred to Tartarus

Tartarus

In classic Roman mythology, below Heaven, Earth, and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros . It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the Hades....
(Kerenyi 1951:160).

In the fifth century, Pindar

Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet.Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is by far the best preserved, and critics in antiquity tended to regard him as the greatest....
's Second Pythian Ode (ca. 476-68 BCE) expands on the example of Ixion, applicable to Hiero I of Syracuse

Hiero I of Syracuse

Hieron I was the son of Deinomenes, the brother of Gelon and tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily from 478 to 467 BC. In succeeding Gelon, he conspired against a third brother Polyzelos....
, the tyrant of whom the poet sings; and Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was an Ancient Greece playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedy whose Play survive extant, the others being Sophocles and Euripides....
, Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
and Timasitheos each wrote a tragedy of Ixion: none have survived.

Ixion was a figure also known to the Etruscans, for he is depicted bound to the spoked wheel, engraved on the back of a bronze mirror, ca 460-450 BCE, in the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture situated in London. Its collections, which number more than 7 million Object , are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present....
. Whether the Etruscans shared the Ixion figure with Hellenes from early times or whether Ixion figured among those Greek myths that were adapted at later dates to fit the Etruscan world-view, the figure on the mirror-back is shown as winged, a characteristic shared with Etruscan daimon
Daimon

Daimon may refer to:...
es and Underworld figures rather than human heroes. Etruscan mythology

Etruscan mythology

The Etruscan civilizations were a people of unknown origin living in Northern Italy, who were eventually integrated into Roman culture and politically became part of the Roman Republic....
selected for emphasis many Greek myths that, like Ixion's fate, could be read as admonitory warnings.

Ixion

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