Melisseus

Mythology

Melisseus was the eldest and leader of the nine Kuretes of Crete, chthonic daimones of Mount Ida. The infant god was hidden from his cannibal father and raised in the cave sacred to the Goddess, celebrated by the Kuretes. The names of Melisseus's two daughters, Adrasteia (meaning 'inevitable') and Ida (meaning 'goddess'), are also names used for the Great Mother Rhea herself. The Dionysiaca of Nonnus elaborates and gives all nine names of the Kuretes.

The infant god was fed on milk and honey, the milk from Amalthea, who is either a goat or a nymph. Melisseus is simply another form of Melissus, also a Cretan 'honey-man,' remembered by later mythographers as a 'king of Crete. Fermented honey, an entheogen that was the gift of the Goddess, preceded the knowledge of wine in Aegean culture. These honey-kings consorting with the Goddess combined their position of authority with a sacral role.

Callimachus' Hymn to Zeus shows by etymologies that the mythic figures and geographical features obtained their names through their participation in Zeus' early life. A less Olympian-minded culture might have suggested that the horn was not actually Zeus' to give, and that it belonged already to the ancient and fertile Minoan-Mycenean nymphs of Crete. In a mythic fragment, Diodorus Siculus relates that five of the Kuretes sailed from Crete to the Chersonnese opposite Rhodes, expelled the Carians, and settled the land, each founding a city named after himself.

Triopas, a son of Helios and Rhodos, fled there after murdering his brother Tenages and was purified of the murder by Melisseus.