Inachus

In Greek mythology, Inachus (Ancient Greek: Ἴναχος) was the first king of Argos after whom a river was called Inachus River, the modern Panitsa that drains the western margin of the Argive plain.

The historian Pausanias describes him as the eldest king of Argos who named the river after himself and sacrificed to Hera. He also notes that some said he was not a mortal, but a river. He states that Inachus, Cephissus and Asterion were mediators in a land dispute between Poseidon and Hera; when they judged for Hera, Poseidon took away their water (elsewhere he writes that Poseidon flooded the region as his revenge). He mentions Dinomenes (Io) and Mycene as daughters of Inachus.

Though Jerome and Eusebius (both citing Castor of Rhodes), and as even late as 1812 John Lemprièreeuhemeristically asserted that he was the first king of Argos, and Robert Graves that he was a descendant of Iapetus, most modern mythologists understand Inachus as one of the river gods, all sons of Oceanus and Tethys and thus to the Greeks part of the pre-Olympian or "Pelasgian" mythic landscape; in Greek iconography, Walter Burkert notes, the rivers are represented in the form of a bull with a human head or face. In the Danaan founding myth, Poseidon had dried up the springs of the Argolid out of anger at Inachus for testifying that the land belonged to the ancient goddess, Hera; to counter this drought, Danaus sent his daughters to draw water. One of them, Amymone, in her search lay with Poseidon, and he revealed to her the springs at Lerna.

Inachus (disambiguation)

Inachus or Inachos (Greek: Ίναχος) is:

Inachus (genus)

Inachus is a genus of crab, containing the following species:

References