Arne Sithonis
Arnê of Siphnos (Ἄρνη) is a mythologized princess of the ancient Greek island of Siphnos, who according to legend betrayed her motherland, which was known for its wealth and fertility, after the legendary king Minos had bribed her with gold into supporting Crete. After she had accepted the bribe that "her greed demanded", Minos' troops attacked Siphnos. For this misdeed the gods punished her by turning her into a black-footed, black-winged jackdaw, and she would be forever attracted to golden and shining objects.
The only source on Arnê's story is Ovid's mythological poem Metamorphoses from 8 BC.[1]
Chronological problems
The connection of Arnê and Minos stands on shaky grounds. The first mention of Minos is probably in Homer's Odyssey,[2] usually dated to the late 8th century BC. In addition, Minos is said to have lived three generations before the Trojan War (i.e. ca. 1400 to 1300 BC).[3] The abundant gold resources of Siphnos however are said to have lasted beyond the 6th century BC, so there would not have been any incentive for Arnê to betray her people for foreign gold, except due to a hypothetical early and temporary resource shortage on Siphnos. It is therefore probable that the story of Arnê's betrayal was either subject to réécriture by later Greek mythologists between 500 and 300 BC (or even later) or was relocated to Siphnos from a different region.
The possibility of a relocated legend might be substantiated by the fact that the word ἄρνη (arnê) usually referred to the Proto-Greek term for Greek "cities of origin", which were situated in continental Greece, especially Boeotia.[4]
References
- ↑ Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses 7.465
- ↑ Homer, Οδύσσεια XI 568
- ↑ This in itself would pose a problem, if the sources are correct, which suggest that the colonization of Siphnos began around 1000–900 BC: Sifnos tourist information.
- ↑ See Arne for a list of geographical places and the corresponding sources; a rehistorifying hypothesis could e.g. render "Arnê of Siphnos" as a personification of the inhabitants of a Boeotian ἄρνη, who were expelled to Siphnos as a consequence of their political betrayal in an earlier continental conflict. Their island exile became a blessing due to the abundant and sustainable gold resources, which was then added to the original legend as a later redactional layer. King Minos would have become part of the legend as a historical anchor for the relocalization in the South-Aegean region. In this respect the political extremes between Boeotian and Attican Greeks might be of importance, the latter being characterized by their efforts to discredit Minos and the Boeotians alike by means of propaganda, defamation as well as historiographical and mythological réécriture.