Phaea
Phaea
- Ken Dowden
Extract
Phaea, the ferocious Sow of Crommyon, killed by *Theseus, first called Phaea in Apollod. Epit. 1. 1 (1st cent. ce). It is named by (or maybe ‘after’) the old woman who reared it. Crommyon was a village belonging to *Corinth (previously to *Megara). The deed invites association with *Heracles' slaughter of the Erymanthian boar and is depicted on 17, mainly red-figure, vases (often including the old woman egging the sow on), as well as on a metope of the Hephaisteion (see athens, topography, Agora), as once it had on the Athenian treasury at *Delphi. It presumably entered literature with the lost late 6th-cent. bce epic Theseid (see epic cycle).
Subjects
- Greek Myth and Religion
