Linus of Thrace

For other uses, seeLinus (mythology).

Linus teaches the letters toMusaeuson thetondoof akylix.Eretria Painter,circa440/35 BC.Paris,Louvre.

InGreek mythology,Linus(Ancient Greek:ΛῖνοςLinos"flax" ) was a reputed musician and master of eloquent speech.He was regarded as the first leader of lyric song.

Family

Linus's parentage was variously given in ancient sources as: (1)MuseCalliopeandOeagrusorApollo,(2) MuseUraniaand Apollo,(3) Urania andAmphimarus,son ofPoseidon,(4) the river-godIsmenius,(5) Urania andHermes,(6) MuseTerpsichoreand Apollo,(7) MuseClioandMagnes,(8) Pierus,(9) Apollo andAethusa,daughter of Poseidon,and lastly (10) Apollo andChalciope.With various genealogy given, Linus was usually represented as the brother of another musicianOrpheus.Some accounts instead makes the latter his great-grandson through Pierus, father of Oeagrus.

Comparative table of Linus's family

Relation	Names	Sources
		Homer	Hesiod	Apollodorus	Hyginus	Pausanias		Diogenes	Suda	Tzetzes		Contest
Parents	Aethusa and Apollo	✓										✓
	Urania		✓
	Calliope and Oiagrus or Apollo			✓
	Urania and Apollo				✓
	Urania and Amphimarus					✓			✓
	Ismenius						✓
	Urania and Hermes							✓	✓
	Terpsichore and Apollo								✓
	Aethuse								✓
	Clio and Magnes									✓
	Pierus										✓
Sibling	Orpheus			✓
Offspring	Pierus								✓

Biography

Linus may have been the personification of a dirge or lamentation (threnody), as there was aclassical Greeksong genre known aslinos,a form of dirge, which was sometimes seen as a lament for him. This would account for his being the son of Apollo and a Muse, and by which fact, Linus was also considered the inventor of melody and rhythm or of dirges (thrênoi) and songs in general.Thus, he was called"pantoiês sophiês dedaêkôs"byHesiod.Either he or his brother Orpheus was regarded as the inventor of the harp; otherwise Linus was credited to be the first to use the harp accompanied with singing.From his father Apollo, he received the three-stringed lute.

During the Hellenistic period,Alexandrine grammarianseven regarded Linus as a historical personage and according to a legend, he was known as the writer of apocryphal works in which he described exploits of the godDionysusand other mythical legends. With these, he was among other mythical authors, like Musaeus and Orpheus, ofPelasgicwritings.Diogenes Laertiusascribes to him several poetical productions, such as a cosmogony on the course of the sun and moon, on the generation of animals and fruits, and the like. His poem begins with the line:"Time was when all things grew up at once;.."

Mythology

Linus was said to have lived during the reign ofCadmusinThebesand became important in the art of music along withAmphion and Zethus(1420 BC).In theSuda,Linus was said to have been the first to bring the alphabet fromPhoeniciato the GreeksbutDiodorus Siculusgives a different account.

...when Cadmus brought from Phoenicia the letters, as they are called, Linus was again the first to transfer them into the Greek language, to give a name to each character, and to fix its shape. Now the letters, as a group, are called "Phoenician" because they were brought to the Greeks from the Phoenicians, but as single letters the Pelasgians were the first to make use of the transferred characters and so they were called.

The same author recounted thatMarsyaswas flayed by Apollo who broke the strings of the lyre as well as the harmony he had discovered. The harmony of the strings, however, was rediscovered, when the Muses added later the middle string, Linus struck the string with the forefinger, and Orpheus andThamyrasthe lowest string and the one next to it.According toHyginus,Linus won the contest of singing during the games for the Argives conducted byAcastus,son ofPelias.

Versions of Death

by Apollo

According to Boeotian tradition, Apollo slew Linus with his arrows for being his rival in a musical contest (Linus's parentage here was described as the son of Urania and Amphimarus) and nearMount Heliconhis image stood in a hollow rock, formed in the shape of a grotto.Every year before sacrifices were offered to the Muses, a funeral sacrifice was offered to him, and dirges (linoi) were sung in his honour. His tomb was claimed both by the city of Argos and by Thebes.Chalcis in Euboea likewise boasted of possessing the tomb of Linus, the inscription of which is preserved by Diogenes Laertius.

Here Linus, whom Urania bore,The fair-crowned Muse,
sleeps on a foreign shore.

by Heracles

Linus also, who was admired because of his poetry and singing, had many pupils, and four of greatest renown, Heracles,Thamyris,Orpheus, andMusaeus.After he went toThebesand became a Theban,he taught music as well as letters to the youngHeracles.The boy, learning to play the lyre, was unable to appreciate what was taught him because of his sluggishness of soul. While Heracles was touching the instrument unmusically, Linus reprimanded him for making errors and punished him with rods. The pupil flew into a rage and violently struck his teacher with his own lyre.When he was tried for murder, Heracles quoted a law ofRhadamanthys,who laid it down that whoever defends himself against a wrongful aggressor shall go free, and so he was acquitted. He was then sent by his mortal father,Amphitryonto tend his cowherds.

A tale about the education of Heracles under Linus's tutelage was recorded byAthenaeus,in which he told of a play entitledLinusby the poetAlexis,

... Alexis, poet tells in the play entitled Linus. He imagines Heracles as being educated in the house of Linus and as having been bidden to select from a large number of books lying beside him and read. So he picked up a book on cookery and held it in both hands very carefully. Linus speaks: "Go up and take whatever book from there you wish; then looking very carefully at the titles, quietly and at your leisure, you shall read".

According toPausanias,Linus's death was very prominent that mourning to him spread widely even to all foreign land that even Egyptians made a Linus song, in the language called Maneros. He also added that of the Greek poets,Homershows that he knew of the sufferings of Linus were the theme of a Greek song when he says, thatHephaestus,among the other scenes he worked upon the shield ofAchilles,represented a boy harpist singing the Linus song:"In the midst of them a boy on a clear-toned lyre Played with great charm, and to his playing sang of beautiful Linus."

It is probably owing to the difficulty of reconciling the different myths about Linus, that the Thebansthought it necessary to distinguish between an earlier and later Linus; the earlier Linus who was killed by Apollo and the later who was said to have instructed Heracles in music, but to have been killed by the hero.

Interpretation

The principal places in Greece which are the scenes of the legends about Linus are Argos and Thebes, and the legends themselves bear a strong resemblance to those aboutHyacinthus,Narcissus,Glaucus,Adonis,Maneros,and others, all of whom are conceived as handsome and lovely youths, and either as princes or as shepherds. They are the favourites of the gods; and in the midst of the enjoyment of their happy youth, they are carried off by a sudden or violent death; but their remembrance is kept alive by men, who celebrate their memory in dirges and appropriate rites, and seek the vanished youths generally about the middle of summer, but in vain. The feeling which seems to have given rise to the stories about these personages, who form a distinct class by themselves in Greek mythology, is deeply felt grief at the catastrophes observable in nature, which dies away under the influence of the burning sun (Apollo) soon after it has developed all its fairest beauties.

Those popular dirges, therefore, originally the expression of grief at the premature death of nature through the heat of the sun, were transformed into lamentations of the deaths of youths, and were sung on certain religious occasions. They were afterwards considered to have been the productions of the very same youths whose memory was celebrated in them. The whole class of songs of this kind was calledthrênoi oiktoi,and the most celebrated and popular among them was the linos, which appears to have been popular even in the days of Homer.Pamphos, the Athenian, andSappho,sang of Linus under the name of Oetolinus (oitos Linou, i. e. the death of Linus); and the tragic poets, in mournful choral odes, often use the form ailinos,which is a compound of at, the interjection, and Line. As regards the etymology of Linus, Welcker regards it as formed from the mournful interjection,li,while others, on the analogy of Hyacinthus and Narcissus, consider Linus to have originally been the name of a flower (a species of narcissus).

Linus's family tree

÷Linus's parentage

Namesake

• Linus BeachinAntarcticais named after Linus of Thrace.

Sources

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Smith, William,ed. (1870)."Linus".Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.