TheriverEridanos/əˈrɪdəˌnɒs/ orEridanus (/əˈrɪdənəs/;Ancient Greek:Ἠριδανός) is, both, the name of a river inNorthern Europe mentioned inGreek mythology andhistoriography, and the name of its god.
Hesiod, in theTheogony, calls it "deep-eddying Eridanos" in his list of rivers, the offspring of the TitansTethys and her brother-husbandOceanus.[1] He was called the king of the rivers.[2]
Herodotus suspects the wordEridanos to be essentially Greek in character, and notably forged by some unknown poet, and expresses his disbelief in the whole concept—passed on to him by others, themselves not eye-witnesses—of such a river flowing into a northern sea, surrounding Europe, where the mythicalAmber andTin Isles were supposed; he upholds the belief in the abundance of natural goods at the world's ends though, to be found in the north of Europe as well as in India (east: big animals, gold,cotton) and Arabia (south:incense,myrrh, etc.).[3] The Eridanos was later associated with the riverPo, because the Po was located near the end of theAmber Trail.
According toApollonius of Rhodes[4] andOvid,[5]amber originated from the tears of theHeliades, encased inpoplars asdryads, shed when their brother,Phaethon, died and fell from the sky, struck by Zeus' thunderbolt, and tumbled into the Eridanos, where "to this very day the marsh exhales a heavy vapour which rises from his smouldering wound; no bird can stretch out its fragile wings to fly over that water, but in mid-flight it falls dead in the flames";[6] "along the green banks of the river Eridanos,"Cygnus mourned him—Ovid told—and was transformed into a swan. There in the far west,Heracles asked theriver nymphs of Eridanos to help him locate theGarden of the Hesperides.Strabo commented disregardingly on such mythmaking:
[...] one must put aside many of the mythical or false accounts such as those of Phaethon and of the Heliades changed into black poplars near the Eridanos (a river that does not exist anywhere on earth, although it is said to be near the Po), and of the Islands of Amber that lie off the Po, and of theguinea-fowl on them, because none of these exist in this area.[...] τὰ δὲ πολλὰ τῶν μυθευομένων ἢ κατεψευσμένων ἄλλως ἐᾶν δεῖ͵ οἷον τὰ περὶ Φαέθοντα καὶ τὰς Ἡλιάδας τὰς ἀπαιγειρουμένας περὶ τὸν Ἠριδανόν͵ τὸν μηδαμοῦ γῆς ὄντα͵ πλησίον δὲ τοῦ Πάδου λεγόμενον͵ καὶ τὰς Ἠλεκτρίδας νήσους τὰς πρὸ τοῦ Πάδου καὶ μελεαγρίδας ἐν αὐταῖς· οὐδὲ γὰρ τούτων οὐδέν ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς τόποις.[7]
Virgil introduced it as one of the rivers ofHades in hisAeneid.[8]
When inNonnus' fourth- or fifth-century CEDionysiaca the vast monsterTyphon boasts that he will bathe in "starry Eridanus", it ishyperbole, for theconstellation Eridanus, represented as a river, was one of the 48 constellations listed by the second-century astronomerPtolemy; it remains one of the 88 modern constellations.
There have been various guesses at which real river was the Eridanos: these include thePo River in north Italy, theRhone in France, and theRhine. The Eridanos is mentioned inGreek writings as a river in northernEurope rich inamber (Vistula onAmber Road?).[9] A small river near Athens was namedEridanos in ancient times, and has been rediscovered with the excavations for construction of theAthens Metro.There were no serious scientific works that would investigate the connection of Eridanus with the Balkan hydronym for the riverDrina, although such studies would be necessary, bearing in mind the proximity of the LowerDanube to ancient trade centers on the Mediterranean, as well as the archaeologically increasingly confirmed importance of this area in ancient and pre-antique history.
An ancient river that no-longer exists has been given the nameEridanos in honor of the mythological river.