Characters
- Aristaeus — son; pastoral and rustic culture-hero
- Artemis — lover; carries Cyrene to Libya; father of Aristaeus
- Chiron — centaur; prophesies the union and Libyan destiny
- Cyrene — Lapith huntress; lion-slayer; Libyan queen; mother of Aristaeus
- Hypseus — Lapith king; father of Cyrene
- The Hours — nurse and nurture the child
Places
- Chiron’s cave — prophecy scene
- Ethiopia — allotted land and future city
- Thessaly — Cyrene’s hunting ground; Apollo’s sighting
Themes
Narrative
Pindar tells that Cyrene, daughter of Hypseus the Lapith king, scorned indoor weaving and hunted wild beasts on Pelion’s slopes. Apollo saw her wrestle a lion alone; Chiron, questioned, foretold that the god would carry her over the sea to Libya, make her queen of a land in which a city would bear her name, and that she would bear him a son. Hermes and the Horae received the child; Gaia and the Seasons made him immortal in nurture. He was called Aristaeus (and Agréus / Nomios in cult epithets)—hunter, shepherd, and culture-hero of flocks, olives, and bees.
Zeus and Apollo settled Cyrene in Libya among the world’s choicest gardens; the Pythian ode frames the myth as charter for the Cyrenaean kings. Catalogue this as Apollo’s huntress-bride and Aristaeus’s birth, distinct from Vergil’s later Aristaeus–Eurydice bee aetiology.