Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/17

ECHIDNA. poems mention two personages of this name, the one a Trojan, who was slain by Antilochus (//. iv. 457, &c.), and the other a Sicyonian, who made Agamemnon a present of the mare Aethe, in order not to be obliged to accompany him to Troy. {II. xxiii. 293, &c.) ' [L. S.] ECHESTRATUS ('Ex^o-Tparos), son of Agis I., and third of the Agid line of Spartan kings. In his reign the district of Cynuria on the Argive border vvas reduced. He was the father of Labotas or Leobotes, king of Sparta. (Pans, iii. 2. § 2 ; Herod, vii. 204.) [A.H.C.] ECHETI'MUS ('ExeTtMos), of Sicyon, was the husband of Nicagora, who was believed to have brought the image of Asclepius, in the form of a dragon, from Epidaunis to Sicyon, on a car drawn by mules. (Pans. ii. 10. § 3.) [L. S ] ECHETLUS ("ExerAos), a mysterious being, about whom the following tradition was current at Athens. During the battle of Marathon there ap- peared among the Greeks a man, who resembled a rustic, and slew many of the barbarians with his plough. After the battle, when he was searched for, he was not to be found anywhere, and when the Athenians consulted the oracle, they were com- manded to worship the hero Echetlaeus, that is the hero with the exerArj, or ploughshare. Echetlus was to be seen in the painting in the Poecile, which represented the battle of Marathon, (Pans, i. 15. §4, 32, §4.) [L.S.J E'CHETUS ("Exeros), a cruel king of Epeirus, who was the terror of all mortals. He was a son of Euchenor and Phlogea. His daughter. Metope or Amphissa, who had yielded to the embraces of her lover Aechraodicus, was blinded by her father, and Aechraodicus was cruelly mutilated. Echetus further gave his daughter iron barleycorns, pro- mising to restore her sight, if she would grind them into flour. (Horn. Od. xviii. 83, &c., xxi. 307 ; Apollon. Rhod. iv. 1093 ; Eustath. ad Horn. p. 1839.) [L. S.] ECHIDNA ("ExiSi/a), a daughter of Tartarus and Ge (ApoUod. ii. 1. § 2), or of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe (Hesiod. Tlieog. 295), and according to others again, of Peiras and Styx. (Pans. viii. 18. ^1.) Echidna was a monster, half maiden and half serpent, with black eyes, fearful and blood- thirsty. She was the destruction of man, and be- came by Typhon the mother of the Chimaera, of the many-headed dog Orthus, of the hundred- headed dragon who guarded the apples of the II es- perides, of the Colchian dragon, of the Sphinx, Cerberus, Scylla, Gorgon, the Lemaean Hydra, of the eagle which consumed the liver of Prometheus, and of the Ncmean lion. (lies. Theog. 307, &c. ; Apollod. ii. 3. § 1, 5. §§ 10, 11, iii. 5. § 8 ; Hy- gin. Fab. Praef. p. 3, and Fab. 151.) She was killed in her sleep by Argus Panoptes. (Apollod. ii. 1. § 2.) According to Hesiod she lived with Typhon in a cave in the country of the Arimi, whereas the Greeks on the Euxine conceived her to have lived in Scythia. When Heracles, they said, carried away the oxen of Geryones, he also visited the country of the Scythians, which was then still a desert. Once while he was asleep there, his horses suddenly disappeared, and when he woke and wandered about in search of them, he came into the country of Hylaea, He there found the monster Echidna in a cave. When he asked whether she knew anything about his horses, she answered, that they were in her own possession, ECHO. 3 but that she would not give them up, unless lie, would consent to stay with her for a time. Plera- cles complied with the request, and became by her the father of Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scythes. The last of them became king of the Scythians, ac- cording to his father's arrangement, because he was the only one among the three brothers that was able to manage the bow which Heracles had left behind, and to use his father's girdle. (Herod, iv. 8—10.) [L. S.j ECHI'NADES. [Achelous.] ECHI'ON ('ExiW). 1. One of the live sur- viving Spartae that had grown up from the dra- gon's teeth, which Cadmus had sown. (Apollod. iii. 4. § 1 ; Hygin. Fab. 178 ; Ov. Met. iii. 126.) He was married to Agave, by whom he became the father of Pentheus. (Apollod. iii. 5. § 2.) He is said to have dedicated a temple of Cybele in Boe- otia, and to have assisted Cadmus in the building of Thebes. (Ov. Met.x. 686.; 2. A son of Hermes and Antianeira at Alope. (Hygin. Fab. 14 ; Apollon. Rhod. i. 56.) He was a twin- brother of Erytus or Eurytus, together with whom he took part in the Calydonian hunt, and in the expedition of the Argonauts, in which, as the son of Hermes, he acted the part of a cunning spy. (Pind. Pyth. iv. 179; Ov. Met. viii. 311; comp. Orph. Argon. 134, where his mother is called Laothoe.) A third personage of this name, one of the giants, is mentioned by Claudian. {Gigant. 104.) [L. S.] ECHI'ON, a painter and statuary, who flou- rished in the 107th Olympiad (b. c. 352). His most noted pictures were the following: Father Liber ; Tragedy and Comedy ; Semiramis passing from the state of a handmaid to that of a queen, with an old woman carrying torches before her ; in this picture the modesty of the new bride was ad- mirably depicted. He is ranked by Pliny and Cicero with the greatest painters of Greece, Apelles, Melanthius, and Nicomachus. (Plin. xxxiv. 8. s. 19; XXXV. 7. s. 32 ; 10. s. 36. § 9.) The picture in the Vatican, known as "the Aldobrandini Mar- riage," is supposed by some to be a copy from the " Bride " of Echion. ( Kugler, Handbuch d. Kund- gesclu p. 236; Muller, Arch. d. Kunst, § 140, 3.) Hirt supposes that the name of the painter of Alexander's marriage, whom Lucian praises so highly, Aetion, is a corruption of Echion. {Gesch. d. Bild. Kunste, pp. 265—268.) [P. S.] E'CHIUS ("Extos.) Two mythical personages of this name occur in the Iliad ; the one a Greek and a son of Mecisteus, was slain by Polites (viii. 333, XV. 339), and the other, a Trojan, was slain by Patroclus. (xvi. 416.) [L. S.] ECHO ('Hx«), an Oreade, who when Zeus was playing with the nymphs, used to keep Hera at a distance b}-^ incessantly talking to her. In this manner Hera was not able to detect her faithless husband, and the nymphs had time to escape. Hera, however, found out the deception, and she punished Echo by changing her into an echo, that is, a being with no controul over its tongue, which is neither able to speak before anybody else has spoken, nor to be silent when somebody else has spoken. Echo in this state fell desperately in love with Narcissus, but as her love was not returned, she pined away in grief, so that in the end there remained of her nothing but her voice. (Ov. Alet. iii. 356 — 401.) There were in Greece certain porticoes, called the Porticoes of Echo, on account b2