Hind of Cérynie

With the dires of Callimaque de Cyrène, five hinds fast, stature of a bull, fed on the edges of the river thessalien Anauros to the foot of the Parrhasion mount. Although females and thus by nature deprived of wood, these animals had gilded horns and shoes of Airain.

Artémis pursued them and captured four of them that it harnessed with its quadriga. The fifth escaped while crossing Céladon to the hill from Cérynie. Its bond with the Achaean city of Cérynée or with the river Cérynite remains obscure. Cervidé being of this fact devoted to Artémis, it was defended of the touch and to kill her even more. Héraclès continued the animal a whole year without reaching it. One day, the hind became exhausted and took refuge on the Artémission mount. She wanted to cross the Ladon river in Arcadie when Héraclès stripped to him an arrow between the bone and the tendon of the leg. What wounded it slightly without no blood drops being versed. Héraclès charged the animal on its shoulders and crossed Arcadie to go to Eurysthée. In way, it met Artémis and Apollon which showed it sacrilege to have maltreated the animal. The hunter was challenged some and emphasized the obligation in which it was. It rejected the responsibility for the business on Eurysthée. The anger of Artémis calmed down and it authorized it to go to Mycènes on the condition of slackening then its protected without him to make of evil.

According to Pindare, the hind is not other than the Pléiade Taygète, than Artémis metamorphosed to withdraw it in advance Zeus. The author tells that the hero continued the animal through the Istrie, in the country of the Hyperboréens and until at the Bienheureux. The continuation thus involved it beyond Arcadie and at the end of this hunting, it would have found the wild olive-tree which will be used as crown to the winner of the Olympic Games.

The contradictory version and isolated from Euripide tells that the Hind, of gigantic size, lived in the wood of Oenoé, in Argolide and devastated harvests. Héraclès killed it and devoted the wood of the animal in the temple of Artémis Oenoatis in order to be reconciled with the goddess.

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