Echetus
Echetus (/ˈɛkɪtəs/; Ancient Greek: Ἔχετος, romanized: Ékhetos) is a mythical king and son of Euchenor (Εὐχήνωρ) and Phlogea (Φλόγεα) mentioned in Homer's Odyssey. The epic describes him as a frightening and cruel king.
Mythology
He is mentioned in Book 18 of Homer's Odyssey, as well as in Book 21 in which he is described as the "destroyer of all mortals" by Antinous (one of the suitors).
In Book 18, the beggar Irus was threatened with being handed over to Echetus, who would then have had Irus' nose, ears and testes cut off and thrown to his dogs. The story also described how Echetus had a daughter, Metope, who had an intrigue with a lover; as a punishment Echetus mutilated the lover and blinded Metope by piercing her eyes with bronze needles. He then incarcerated her in a tower and gave her grains of bronze, promising that she would regain her sight when she had ground these grains into flour.[1][2]
Eustathius and the scholia on this passage call the daughter and her lover Amphissa and Aechmodicus respectively.[3][4]
Modern analyses on Echetus
It is thought that Echetus was a mythological creation, used to scare disobedient children or used as the villain in bedtime stories. An alternate theory is that Echetus was a real king around the time of Homer, and that he was quite deformed and possibly a cannibal; no evidence currently exists to support this theory, however.[5]
Some historians suggest that the word ἤπειρόνδε epironde "mainland", mentioned in the Odyssey in the passages involving king Echetus, must refer to mainland Greece from the perspective of Homer's Ithaca.[6][7] Some scholars have conjectured that Echetus in the Odyssey is a mythical "king of Epirus",[8][9] but Epirus as a region is not mentioned in the Odyssey, it is attested for the first time by Hecataeus of Miletus (6th century BCE),[10] and a unified state of Epirus only emerged by encompassing all the major Epirote peoples (Molossians, Thesprotians and Chaonians) between the late Classical and early Hellenistic periods.[11] In the Odyssey, king Echetus, who seems to belong to the mainland opposite Ithaca, is hostile to this island; by contrast Thesprotia, which is a region more distant than the area of Echetus, is an ally of Ithaca.[7]
Notes
- ^ Homer, Odyssey 18.85, 18.116 & 21.307
- ^ Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4.1093
- ^ George W. Mooney, Commentary on Apollonius: Argonautica 4.1093
- ^ Eustathius, Commentaries on Homer, p. 1839.
- ^ On Echetos' cannibalism, see Collins 1996, p. 50ff.
- ^ Foster, Margaret (2017). The Seer and the City: Religion, Politics and Colonial Ideology in Ancient Greece. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. p. 69. ISBN 9780520295001.
"...book 18 (84-87): [...] "If this man beats you and proves himself the stronger, I will send you toward the mainland, having thrown you on a black ship, to King Echetos, a scourge for all men, who will cut off your nose and ears with pitiless bronze and, tearing off your genitals, give them raw to the dogs to divide among themselves."
"I agree with Malkin (1998: 153) that the "mainland" here must refer to mainland Greece."
- ^ a b Malkin, Irad (2001). Malkin, Irad (ed.). Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity. Center for Hellenic Studies colloquia. Vol. 5. Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University. p. 205. ISBN 978-0-674-00662-1.
- ^ Hodges 2025, p. 5: "Epirus, by contrast, was the shadowy realm of the savage King Echetus in the Odyssey, but also the great kingdom of Pyrrhus and the scene of legendary battles between Julius Caesar and Pompey, then Octavian (later the Emperor Augustus) and Mark Anthony (with Cleopatra)."
- ^ Lefteratou 2023, p. 147: "The line introducing him is one used to describe one of the scariest tyrants in the Homeric epics, Echetos, king of Epirus, a kind of legendary boogeyman and allegedly the most 'baneful of mortals' [...]"
- ^ Chapinal-Heras, Diego (2021). Experiencing Dodona: The Development of the Epirote Sanctuary from Archaic to Hellenistic Times. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-3-11-072759-3.
- ^ Melfi, Milena; Piccinini, Jessica (2012). "Geografia storica del territorio di Hadrianopolis nella valle del Drino (V sec. a.c.-44 a.c.)". In Roberto Perna, Dhimitër Çondi (ed.). Hadrianopolis II: risultati delle indagini archeologiche 2005-2010. Bibliotheca archaeologica. Vol. 29. Edipuglia. p. 40. ISBN 978-88-7228-683-8.
References
- Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica translated by Robert Cooper Seaton (1853-1915), R. C. Loeb Classical Library Volume 001. London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1912. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
- Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica. George W. Mooney. London. Longmans, Green. 1912. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Collins, Christopher (1996). Authority Figures: Metaphors of Mastery from the Iliad to the Apocalypse. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9780847682393.
- Hodges, Richard (2025). Butrint: At the Crossroads of the Mediterranean. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781350548619.
- Lefteratou, Anna (2023). The Homeric Centos: Homer and the Bible Interwoven. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780197666586.
- Homer, The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. ISBN 978-0674995611. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.