Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

When Danaus reached Argos with his fifty daughters, the land was dry—Poseidon had withheld water in anger at Inachus (or at the Argives’ judgment for Hera). Danaus sent his daughters to seek water. Amymone, hunting or searching near Lerna, cast a dart at a deer and struck a sleeping satyr; the satyr assaulted her. She cried out to Poseidon, who appeared, drove the satyr off, and lay with her himself. As a lover’s gift—or in answer to the drought—Poseidon struck the rock with his trident, and the Amymonian waters of Lerna burst forth: a perennial spring and streams associated with the Lernaean marsh. By Poseidon Amymone bore Nauplius. The spring’s aetion joins Danaid arrival, Poseidon’s claim on Argive water, and the dangerous fertility of Lerna—the same marsh later tied to Heracles’ Hydra—while Amymone stands apart from her sisters’ crime as a daughter favored by the sea-god before the wedding-night murders.