Itylus

Only son of Zethus of Thebes and Aedon. Accidentally killed by his own mother, who in the dark mistook him for the eldest son of Niobe; his death is the Homeric origin (Odyssey 19) of the nightingale grief-song. Named in the prose of greek_zethus as the son accidentally killed by Aedon.

Parentage

• Zethus
• Aedon

Powers

• Become the grief-song of the nightingale through a mother's lament

Relations

• father: Zethus
• mother: Aedon

Sources

• Homer, Odyssey 19.518-523
• Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1849), s.v. Aedon
• Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993), pp. 239-240