Aristaeus

Mythological accounts

Cyrene rejected spinning and other domestic crafts, preferring to hunt and tend flocks. The centaur Chiron foretold that Apollo would take her to Libya, where she would found the city of Cyrene. Their son Aristaeus was taken by Hermes to be fed nectar and ambrosia and made immortal by Gaia. According to another account, Aristaeus was born in Libya and raised by nymphs, who called him Nomius and Agreus and taught him cheesemaking, beekeeping, and olive cultivation, skills he passed on to humans.

As an adult, he married Autonoe, daughter of Cadmus, and their son was Actaeon. After Actaeon’s death, Aristaeus consulted Apollo’s oracle and was told to go to Ceos, where he ended a plague by offering a sacrifice on behalf of all Greeks, leaving unnamed descendants there. He later returned to Libya, then sailed to Sardinia with his mother’s aid, making the barren land fertile. He visited Sicily, where he was greatly honored, and Thrace, where Dionysus initiated him into secret rites.

Finally settling on Mount Haemus in northern Thrace, he stopped appearing to mortals and was worshipped as a god by Greeks and non-Greeks alike.

Patronage

Aristaeus is the patron god of numerous rustic activities. From Chiron, the Muses, and his father Apollo, he learned prophecy, healing, and herblore, presiding over physic gardens. From Artemis and his mother Cyrene, he learned tracking, hunting, trapping, dressing and preparing meat and skins, and using nets and traps. He is a protector of olive trees, orchards, oliviculture, and olive oil presses.

He is also patron of shepherds, herding, sheep shearing, pastoralism, cattle, and pastures. From Dionysus he learned to produce wine and mead, and is worshipped as protector of grapevines, vineyards, winepresses, and viticulture. From Demeter he learned agriculture, horticulture, fungiculture, and animal husbandry, protecting gardens, farms, fields, and orchards; some versions credit Demeter with teaching him leather-making. He is patron of fruit trees, herbs, spices, edible flowers, fungi, foraging, hunting, fishing, husbandry, agriculture, food preservation, and condiments.

From Hestia he learned cooking and baking, presiding over quern-stones, gristmills, watermills, and ovens. From Poseidon he learned fishing and spearfishing. From Athena he learned weaving, carding, and hand-spinning fibers into wool and thread, and is patron of ropemaking, net-making, basket weaving, and working clay and glass. From Hephaestus he learned to work with metal, stone, clay, glass, and wood, presiding over clay kilns, masonry ovens, and charcoal piles. In Ceos, he is a god of the Etesian winds.

Issue

After leaving Libya, Aristaeus sailed to Boeotia and received further instruction in the cave of the centaur Chiron. There he married Autonoë, and they had two children: Actaeon, whose love of hunting led to his destruction, and Macris, also called Nysa, who later nursed the infant Dionysus. Some accounts say Aristaeus was the father of Hecate, goddess of witchcraft and the night, though another tradition names her parents as Perses and Asteria.

Aristaeus in Ceos

According to ancient records from the fourth and third centuries BC, Aristaeus came to Ceos because a prophecy from Delphi told him to sail there, where he would receive great honors. When he arrived, the islanders were ill due to the oppressive heat of the Dog-Star Sirius, which first appeared just before sunrise in early July. A local legend credits Aristaeus with creating a weather-magic ritual involving two sacrifices: one to Sirius itself, offered before dawn at the star’s first yearly appearance, and another at sunrise to Zeus Ikmaios, the god of rain, on a mountaintop altar.

This ritual supposedly brought the cooling Etesian winds each year. An alternate story says Aristaeus realized the Ceans’ suffering came from murderers in their midst—the killers of Icarius. Once these criminals were put to death and a shrine to Zeus Ikmaios was built, the god ordered the Etesian winds to blow for forty days after Sirius rose, cooling the entire Aegean. The Ceans, however, kept making offerings to Sirius just before its rising, to be safe. Aristaeus also appears on Cean coins.