Cycnus

The butterfly genus Cycnus is now synonymized with Panthiades.

In Greek mythology, multiple characters were known as Cycnus (Κύκνος) or Cygnus. The literal meaning of the name is "swan", and accordingly most of them ended up being transformed into swans.

  • Cycnus, one of the suitors of Penelope.[5]
  • Cycnus, son of King Eredion of Achaea, who, in one version, seduced Leda and made her mother of triplets: the Dioscuri and Helen.[6] In all other sources, she had these children by Zeus who approached her in the shape of a swan (kyknos).
  • Cycnus, a blunder for Guneus in the manuscript of Hyginus' Fab. 97 (list of the Achaean leaders against Troy).

According to Pseudo-Eratosthenes and Hyginus' Poetical Astronomy, the constellation Cygnus was the stellar image of the swan Zeus had transformed into in order to seduce Leda[7] or Nemesis.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1. 27. 6
  2. ↑ Strabo, Geography, 13. 1. 19
  3. ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2, 367 sqq.
  4. ↑ Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses, 12
  5. ↑ Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Epitome of Book 4, 7. 27
  6. ↑ Tzetzes on Lycophron, 506
  7. ↑ Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catasterismi, 25
  8. ↑ Hyginus, Poetical Astronomy, 2. 8
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