Thriae

 ( Women Of Apollo ) 

The Thriae (; ) were , three virginal sisters, one of a number of such triads in Greek mythology.Hesiod's Theogony gives the Gorgon, the Horae, the Moirai, and the Charites; later myth adds the Erinyes, the Graiae, the Sirens, the Hesperides, and Greek cult has given more: see the list in Scheinberg 1979:2. They were named Melaina ("The Black"), Kleodora ("Famed for her Gift"), and Daphnis ("Laurel") or Corycia.

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Mythology They were the three () of the sacred springs of the Corycian Cave of Mount Parnassus in Phocis, and the patrons of . The nymphs had women's heads and torsos and lower body and wings of a bee.

Brenda Rosen (2025). 9781402765360, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. . ISBN 9781402765360

The nymph sisters were romantically linked to the gods Apollo and Poseidon; Corycia, the sister after whom the Corycian Cave was named, was the mother of Lycoreus with Apollo,Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.6.3Hyginus, Fabulae 161 Kleodora was loved by Poseidon, and was the mother by him (or Kleopompos) of Parnassos (who founded the city of ParnassusPausanias, Description of Greece 10.6.1) while Melaina was also loved by Apollo, and bore him Delphus (although another tradition names Thyia as the mother of Delphos).Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.6.4 Her name, meaning "the black," suggests that she presided over subterranean nymphs.

These three bee maidens with the power of divination and thus speaking truth are described in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, and the food of the gods is "identified as honey";Homeric Hymns 4.550-567 the bee maidens were originally associated with Apollo, and are probably not correctly identified with the Thriae. Both the Thriae and the Bee Maidens are credited with assisting Apollo in developing his adult powers, but the divination that Apollo learned from the Thriae differs from that of the Bee Maidens. The type of divination taught by the Thriae to Apollo was that of mantic pebbles, the throwing of stones, rather than the type of divination associated with the Bee Maidens and Hermes: cleromancy, the casting of lots. Honey, according to a Greek myth, was discovered by a nymph called Melissa ("Bee"); and honey was offered to the Greek gods from Helladic period. Bees were associated, too, with the Delphic oracle and the prophetess was sometimes called a bee.

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Notes

• Evelyn-White, Hugh, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Homeric Hymns. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.
• Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Hyginus, Gaius Julius, The Myths of Hyginus. Edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960.
• Scheinberg, Susan 1979. "The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes" Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 83 (1979), pp.1–28.
• Larson, Jennifer. “The Corycian Nymphs and the Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, (1996): 341-357.

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External links

• THRIAI on The Theoi Project

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