InGreek mythology,Selemnus (Ancient Greek:Σέλεμνος,romanized: Sélemnos) is a young shepherd boy turned river god from thePeloponnese in southernGreece. He was traditionally the divine personification of theSelemnos, a river which flows in the region ofAchaea, northern Peloponnese. Selemnus is notable for his brief and tragic love story with the nymphArgyra, preserved in theDescription of Greece, a travel guide byPausanias, an ancient Greek traveller of the second century AD.
Traditionally, the 3,000river gods were said to be the children of theTitansOceanus and his sister-wifeTethys,[1] although in the Achaean tradition Selemnus having been a mortal man originally means he would have had different parents, who are not given names in the surviving texts.
According to a localPatraean myth, the river Selemnus was originally a mortal man, a young and handsome shepherd who used to feed his flock by the Argyra spring near the town ofArgyra.[2] The sea-nymph of that spring,Argyra, fell in love with him and would often visit him and sleep by his side.[3][4] But as the years passed and Selemnus grew older and less handsome, Argyra ceased to visit him with the same frequency as before.[5][6] Eventually she stopped coming to him altogether and withdrew to her liquid home.[7][8]
Selemnus was heartbroken over her desertation.[9] In his despair he wasted away and eventually died of grief.[10]Aphrodite, the goddess of love, pitied the unfortunate man so she turned him into a river which took his name,Selemnos.[7][11] But even in his new aquatic form he still pined for Argyra and missed her terribly,[12] so Aphrodite further helped him out by wiping out all of his memories of Argyra and his love for her.[7][13]
For that reason, men and women ofAchaea would wash themselves in the waters of the Selemnus in order to rid themselves of their erotic passions.[12][14]Pausanias, who rarely makes remarks on the legends he relates,[10] comments that if true, this would make the river more valuable to mankind than any wealth.[13][15][14]
Selemnus and Argyra's myth seems to have been modelled on the myth of the river-godAlpheus and the nymph-turned-springArethusa, to which it is explicitly compared.[16][17] The myth also serves as a doublet to the story ofTithonus andEos, as both feature an immortal goddess who falls in love with a mortal man, but ceases to love and visit him the more he ages and loses his beauty, though Selemnus' fate is a bit less grim in the end compared to Tithonus'.[18] InPropertius's telling, he wrote that Eos did not forsake Tithonus, old and aged as he was, and would still embrace him and hold him in her arms rather than leaving him deserted in his cold chamber, while cursing the gods for his cruel fate.[19]
Due to the scarcity of preserved historical evidence, it cannot be determined with certainty whether Selemnus was a prominent river-god, as merely one mythological tale concerning him survives, and it focuses on his mortal, pre-fluvial life.[20] The legend was probably invented to offer an aetiological explanation for the name of the spring[11] and its unique, magical properties.[21]
Today the Selemnos is all but dried up, only a narrow torrent remains.[4] The exact location of the ancient town near which the story took place remains unidentified.[22]
Other transformations in Greek mythology include:
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