Eridanos (mythology)
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The river Eridanos (or Eridanus) is an imagined river of Greek mythology whose name has been adopted by paleogeographers to describe the real ice age river that ran where the Baltic Seais now: see Eridanus (geology).
The Eridanos is mentioned in ancient Greek writings as a river in northern Europe rich in amber. There have been various guesses at which real river was the Eridanus: these include the Po in north Italy, and the Nile and the Danube. Another, lesser Eridanos, a small river near Athens has been rediscovered in modern times, with the contruction of the Athens Metro.
Hesiod, in Theogony, calls it " deep-eddying Eridanos" in his list of rivers, the offspring of Tethys. In Dionysiaca, the vast monster Typhon boasts that he will bathe in "starry Eridanus." Herodotus (III, 115) points out that the word Eridanos is essentially Greek in character, and surmises that consequently the river supposed to run round the world is probably a Greek invention. He associated it with the river Po, because the Po was located near the end of the Amber Trail. Amber originated from the tears of the Heliades shed when their brother, Phaeton, died and fell from the sky and tumbled into the Eridanos (Ovid, Metamorphoses II, 367-380), where, “along the green banks of the river Eridanos,” King Cygnus mourned him and was transformed into a swan. There in the far west, Heracles asked the river nymphs of Eridanos to help him locate the Garden of the Hesperides.
Strabo disregards such mythmaking:
- "One must put aside many of the mythical or false accounts such as those of Phaethon and of the Heliades changed into black poplars near the Eridanos (a river that does not exist anywhere on earth, although it is said to be near the Po), and of the Islands of Amber that lie off the Po, and of the guinea-fowl on them, because none of these exist in this area." —Geography V,1,9.
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