Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Leucippus of Messenia (or of Laconia in local stems) had daughters Phoebe and Hilaeira—the Leucippides—betrothed or already claimed by their cousins Idas and Lynceus, the Apharetidae. The Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces, carried the maidens off to Sparta as brides. The Apharetidae pursued; the quarrel over the women (or, in the alternate strand, over stolen cattle divided unfairly) erupted into the fatal fight in which Castor fell, Polydeuces slew Lynceus, and Zeus blasted Idas. Spartan cult and art (the Amyclaean throne, sanctuary of the Leucippides) commemorate the seizure as a founding Dioscuric marriage myth. Catalogue the abduction itself—the bridal cause—apart from the death-and-immortality outcome already entered under the Dioscuri’s shared fate.