Aedon
Greek · mortal · heroic age · Recorded classification
Daughter of Pandareus and wife of Zethus of Thebes; mother of Itylus. In jealousy of Niobe many children she tried to kill Niobe son but slew her own child Itylus in the dark, and was transformed into the lamenting nightingale, the earliest Homeric form (Odyssey 19) of the nightingale myth later overlaid by the Procne-Philomela version. Named in the prose of greek_zethus as the wife whose envy of Niobe led to the killing of their son Itylus.
Children
Relations
- spouse: ZethusHomer, Odyssey 19.518-523 (primary)
- mother of: ItylusMother and, by tragic accident, killer of Itylus.Homer, Odyssey 19.522-523 (primary)
Sources
- existence: Homer, Odyssey 19.518-523 (primary); Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1849), s.v. Aedon (secondary); Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993), pp. 239-240 (secondary)