Cycnos wire of Sthénélos

See also: Cycnos

In the Greek Mythology, Cycnos (in Greek old Κύκνος / Kýknos , “the swan”), wire of Sthénélos and the Océanide Clymène, is king of Ligurie after his/her father. Half-brother of Phaéton (by his/her mother) and very attached to him, it gave up his kingdom to go to cry it over the edges of the Éridan when it learned the news from his death. All the day, and often the night, it went in loneliness, along the river, exhaling its complaints by songs melancholic persons with which the soft one mixed clapotement with water and the quivering of the poplars (the Héliades, sisters of Phaéton, had thus been metamorphosed). He arrived at old age without being able to comfort itself. The gods had pity of him: they changed into feathers its grey hair, and metamorphosed it in swan.

In this form, Cycnos still remembers the lightning of Zeus which made perish his/her friend; it still pushes sad complaints, does not dare to take its rise, shaves the ground, and lives the most contrary element with fire.

Sources

(II, 367 and suiv.).
(X, 186).

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