[236] Homer, Odyss. xi. 234-257; xv. 226.
[237] Diodôrus, iv. 68. Sophoklês, Fragm. 1. Τυρώ. Σαφῶς Σιδηρὼ καὶ φέρουσα τοὔνομα. The genius of Sophoklês is occasionally seduced by this play upon the etymology of a name, even in the most impressive scenes of his tragedies. See Ajax, 425. Compare Hellanik. Fragm. p. 9, ed. Preller. There was a first and second edition of the Tyrô—τῆς δευτέρας Τυροῦς. Schol. ad Aristoph. Av. 276. See the few fragments of the lost drama in Dindorf’s Collection, p. 53. The plot was in many respects analogous to the Antiopê of Euripidês.
[238] A third story, different both from Homer and from Sophoklês, respecting Tyrô, is found in Hyginus (Fab. lx.): it is of a tragical cast, and borrowed, like so many other tales in that collection, from one of the lost Greek dramas.
Her father, the unjust Salmôneus, exhibited in his conduct the most insolent impiety towards the gods. He assumed the name and title even of Zeus, and caused to be offered to himself the sacrifices destined for that god: he also imitated the thunder and lightning, by driving about with brazen caldrons attached to his chariot and casting lighted torches towards heaven. Such wickedness finally drew upon him the wrath of Zeus, who smote him with a thunderbolt, and effaced from the earth the city which he had founded, with all its inhabitants.[239]
[239] Apollod. i. 9, 7. Σαλμωνεύς τ᾽ ἄδικος καὶ ὑπέρθυμος Περιήρης. Hesiod, Fragm. Catal. 8. Marktscheffel.
Where the city of Salmôneus was situated, the ancient investigators were not agreed; whether in the Pisatid, or in Elis, or in Thessaly (see Strabo, viii. p. 356). Euripidês in his Æolus placed him on the banks of the Alpheius (Eurip. Fragm. Æol. 1). A village and fountain in the Pisatid bore the name of Salmônê; but the mention of the river Enipeus seems to mark Thessaly as the original seat of the legend. But the _naïveté_ of the tale preserved by Apollodôrus (Virgil in the Æneid, vi. 586, has retouched it) marks its ancient date: the final circumstance of that tale was, that the city and its inhabitants were annihilated.
Ephorus makes Salmôneus king of the Epeians and of the Pisatæ (Fragm. 15, ed. Didot).
The lost drama of Sophoklês, called Σαλμωνεὺς, was a δρᾶμα σατυρικόν See Dindorf’s Fragm. 483.