Arcesius

In Greek Mythology, Arcesius (also spelled Arceisius, Arkeisios and Arcisius; Ancient Greek: Ἀρκείσιος) was the son of either Zeus or Cephalus, and king in Ithaca.

Mythology

According to scholia on the Odyssey, Arcesius' parents were Zeus and Euryodeia;^[1] Ovid also writes of Arcesius as a son of Zeus.^[2] Other sources make him a son of Cephalus. Aristotle in his lost work The State of the Ithacians cited a myth according to which Cephalus was instructed by an oracle to mate with the first female being he should encounter if he wanted to have offspring; Cephalus mated with a she-bear, who then transformed into a human woman and bore him a son, Arcesius.^[3] Hyginus makes Arcesius a son of Cephalus and Procris,^[4] while Eustathius and the exegetical scholia to the Iliad report a version according to which Arcesius was a grandson of Cephalus through Cillus or Celeus.^[5]

Zeus made Arcesius' line one of "only sons": his only son was Laertes, whose only son was Odysseus, whose only son was Telemachus.^[6] Arcesius's wife (and thus mother of Laertes) was Chalcomedusa.^[7]

Arcesius line

Arceisiades (Ancient Greek: Ἀρκεισιάδης) was a patronymic from Arcesius, which Laertes as well as his son, Odysseus, is designated by. ^[8]

Namesakes

Of another Arcesius, an architect, Vitruvius (vii, introduction) notes: "Arcesius, on the Corinthian order proportions, and on the Ionic order temple of Aesculapius at Tralles, which it is said that he built with his own hands."

Notes

1. Scholia & Eustathius ad Homer, Odyssey 16.118
2. Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.144
3. Aristotle in Etymologicum Magnum 130.21 under Arkeisios.
4. Hyginus, Fabulae 189
5. Scholia ad Homer, Iliad 2.173b; Eustathius ad Iliad 2.631
6. Homer, Odyssey 14.182 & 16.118; cf. also Apollodorus, 1.9.16; Hyginus, Fabulae 173
7. Scholia ad Homer, Odyssey 16.118; Eustathius ad Homer, Odyssey p. 1796, 35
8. Homer, Odyssey 4.755 & 24.270

References

• Homer. The Odyssey, Book XVI, in The Iliad & The Odyssey. Trans. Samuel Butler. p. 625. ISBN 978-1-4351-1043-4.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Arceisiades". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 253.