User:Paul August/Thoas (king of the Taurians)

Thoas (king of the Taurians)

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Sources

Ancient

Antonius Liberalis

Metamorphoses 27

IPHIGENIA

Artemis made a bull calf appear by the Altar instead of Iphigenia whom she carried off far away from Greece, to the Sea of Pontus with its welcoming name of Euxine,³¹² to Thoas son Borysthenes.³¹³ She called the tribe of Nomads there Taurians³¹⁴ becuase of a bull [tauros] had appeared instead of Iphigenia on the altar.

Apollodorus

E.6.27

So when Orestes was come with Pylades to the land of the Taurians, he was detected, caught, and carried in bonds before Thoas the king, who sent them both to the priestess. But being recognized by his sister, who acted as priestess among the Taurians, he fled with her, carrying off the wooden image.1 It was conveyed to Athens and is now called the image of Tauropolus.2 But some say that Orestes was driven in a storm to the island of Rhodes, ... and in accordance with an oracle the image was dedicated in a fortification wall.3

Euripides

Iphigenia among the Taurians

26–39

Iphigenia: ... I came to Aulis; held up high over the altar, I, the unhappy one, was about to die by the sword; but Artemis gave the Achaeans a deer in exchange for me and stole me from them; conducting me through the bright air, [30] she settled me here in the land of the Taurians. A barbarian rules this land of barbarians: Thoas, who runs as quickly as the flight of birds, and so he received his name for his swiftness of foot. Artemis has made me the priestess in this temple. [35] Here I begin the rites, which the goddess delights in, of a banquet noble in name only—I am silent as to the rest, for I fear the goddess— [for I sacrifice, by a custom of the city established earlier, any Hellene who comes to this land.] [40]

Hyginus

Fabulae

15

Hypsipyle secretly put her father Thoas on board a ship which a storm carried to the island Taurica.

120

[Grant:] IPHIGENIA: When the Furies were pursuing Orestes, he went to Delphi to inquire when his sufferings would end. The reply was that he should go to the lad of Taurica to King Thoas, father of Hypsipyle, and bring to Argos from the temple there the statue of Diana; then there would be an end to his sufferings. Upon hearing this oracle, along with Pylades his companion, son of Strophius, he embarked and quickly came to the land of the Taurians. It was their custom to sacrifice at the temple of Diana whatever stranger came within their borders. When Orestes and Pylades were hiding in a cave waiting an opportunity, they were seized by shepherds and brought to King Thoas. Thoas, as was his custom, ordered them to be brought bound into the temple of Diana to be sacrificed. The priestess there was Iphigenia, sister of Orestes, and when by tokens and questioning she found out who they were and why they had come, she herself, casting aside the vessels for sacrifice, started to remove the statue of Diana. When the king came up and asked her why she was doing this, she made pretence and said that since the men were accursed they had defiled the statue; because impious and wicked men had been brought into the temple, the statue should be taken to the sea for cleansing. She bade him make a proclamation forbidding citizens to go outside the city. The king complied with the words of the priestess. Iphigenia, seizing the opportunity, took the statue, embarked with Orestes and Pylades, and by a favouring breeze was borne to the island Zminthe to Chryses, priest of Apollo.

121

[Grant:] CHRYSES: When Agamemnon was on his was to Troy, Achilles, too, came to Moesia, and took Chryseis, daughter of the priest of Apollo, and gave her in marriage to Agamemnon. When Chryses came to Agamemnon to beg him to return his daughter, he was refused. Because of this Apollo destroyed almost all the army, partly by famine, partly by pestilence. And so Agamemnon sent back Chryseis, though she was pregnant, to the priest. Though she claimed to be untouched by him, when her time came she bore Chryses the Younger, and said she had conceived by Apollo. Later when Chryses was about to return Iphigenia and Orestes to Thoas, he [Chryses the Elder] learned that they were children of Agamemnon, and revealed to Chryses his [grand]son the truth — that they were brothers and that he was a son of Agamemnon. Then Chryses, thus informed, with Orestes his brother, killed Thoas, and from there they came safe to Mycenae with the statue of Diana.

Pausanias

3.16.7

The place named Limnaeum （Marshy） is sacred to Artemis Orthia （Upright）. The wooden image there they say is that which once Orestes and Iphigenia stole out of the Tauric land, and the Lacedaemonians say that it was brought to their land because there also Orestes was king. I think their story more probable than that of the Athenians. For what could have induced Iphigenia to leave the image behind at Brauron? Or why did the Athenians, when they were preparing to abandon their land, fail to include this image in what they put on board their ships?

Valerius Flaccus

Argonautica

300–303

[Hypsipyle] finished; [Thoas] in fear escapes in the oarless ship afar, and reaches the dwelling of the Tauri and Diana’s savage shrine. Here didst thou, goddess, put a sword in his hand, and didst appoint him warden of thy cheerless altar;

Modern

Gantz

p. 686

As the play [Euripides' play Iphigeneia among the Tauroi] opens, Iphigeneia describes her situation, brought to these people and their king Thoas after the sacrifice at Aulis and made to consecrate foreigners to the goddess [Artemis]. Orestes and Pylades then appear, seeking just this shrine of Artemis in order that they might carry off the statue within, for Apollo has told them that only thus, when they have conveyed it back to Athens, will Orestes' madness end. They however are spotted by herdsmen and captured, so that they come before Iphigeneia as prospective victims, in ignorance of her real identities and she of theirs. But they are Greeks, of course, and she conceives a plan of saving one of them so he might take back to Orestes a letter from her; when its contents are revealed as a safeguard against [cont.]

p. 687

loss the whole truth come out. Iphigeneia then proposes that Orestes' pollution as a matricide may be turned to their advantage; mauch as in Helen, she tells the king that such a victim must be purified at sea before the sacrifice, and the statue as well, thus aquiring an avenue of escape. The king's forces pursue when they discover statue and victims making for open water, but Athena appears to Thoas and instructs him to desist. ...

Later acoounts of the rescue ... Pausanias, for example (3.16.7). But Hyginus ... In this tale, as Orestes and Iphigeneia make there way back from the Crimea, they have stopped in at the island of Sminthe where they find the priest of Apollo—Chryses—and his daughter Chryseis, who years before on her return from Troy bore a child conceived by Agamemnon whom she named Chryses after her father. Fearing to admit the truth, however, she has claimed that the child is Apollo's. At this point the text shows some obscurity (or rather, reference back to Fab 120), with Chryses (the younger) apparently planning to return Orestes and Iphigeneia to Thoas, who is perhaps an ally. The elder Chryses then learns (from his daughter, presumably) the truth, which he reveals to his grandson, namely that these refugees are the latter's half-siblings. The refugees are therefore assisted as they kill Thoas (newly arrived to claim the victims?) and reach Mykenai safely with the statue. Obviously this sounds like a standard recognition play of the later fifth century, and in fact Sophokles is credited with a Chryses (of uncertain content) which might then anticipate the rescue in Iphigeneia among the Tauroi. But such a play (if it concerns Chryses) might also deal with his problems at Troy or elsewhere.

Grimal

s.v. Thoas

p. 453

Thoas (Θόας)

...

3. The king of Tauris at the time when Iphigenia became a priestess of Artemis there. This character was sometimes identified with THOAS 1, who found refuge after his escape from Lemnos. When Orestes and Pylades came to the [cont.]

p. 454

country and encountered Orestes' sister, IPHIGENIA, the king wanted her to sacrifice them, following the local custom, but they fled with Iphigenia and the goddess's statue to CHRYSES. Thoas pursued them there but was killed.

p. 513

Thoas ... (3) Hyg. Fab. 120-1; Sophocles, lost tragedy Chryses (Jebb-Pearson II, p. 327ff.). See IPHIGENIA.

Hard

p. 512

Orestes recovers his sister Iphigenia from the land of the Taurians

According to a further tale which first appeared in Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris, ...

p. 513

As priestess of Taurian Artemis ... Thoas, the king of the Taurians, ordered that they should be taken to Iphigenia ... She told Thoas that the captives were polluted ... Athena manifests herself to Thoas at the end of the play to order him to make no attempt at pursuit, ...

Smith

s.v. Thoas 2

A son of Dionysus and Ariadne. (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. 3.997; Stat. Theb. 4.769.) He was king of Lemnos and married to Myrina, by whom he became the father of Hypsipyle and Sicinus. (Hom. Il. 14.230; Diod. 5.79; Schol. ad Apollon. 1.601; Hygin. Fab. 15, 120 ; Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 1374.) When the Lemnian women all the men in the island, Hypsipyle saved her father Thoas, and concealed him. (Apollod. 1.9.17.) Afterwards, however, he was discovered by the other women, and killed (Apollod. 3.6.4), or he escaped to Tauris (Hygin. Fab. 15), or to the island of Oenoe near Euboea, which was henceforth called Sicinus. (Schol. ad Apollon. 1.624.)

s.v. Thoas 4

A son of Borysthenes, and king of Tauris, into whose dominions Iphigenia was carried by Artemis, when she was to have been sacrificed. He was killed by Chryses. Ant. Lib. 27 ; Hyg. Fab. 121; Eurip. Iphig. Taur.)

Tripp

s.v. Thoas 1

p. 575

A king of the Taurians. Thoas ruled the barbaric tribe among whom Iphigenia became a priestess of Artemis. Her brother ORESTES [C] stole away the goddess' statue and latr returned to kill the king, assisted by Chryses, son of Agamemnon's concubine Chryeïs. Hyginus believed this Thoas to be the same as the Lemnian Thoas. Thoas is a character in Euripides' play Iphigenia among the Taurians. See also Hyginus [Fabulae 15, 120-121].