Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Pindar tells how Poseidon’s granddaughter Evadne, loved by Apollo, bore a child in secret in the reeds of the Alpheus. She left the infant; Apollo sent two bright-eyed serpents to feed him harmless venom (bee-food / honeyed nurture in the poetic image). Aepytus, her guardian, returned from Delphi having learned the father was Apollo; they found the boy among rushes and violets and named him Iamus from the *ion* (violet) bed. When he came of age he waded the Alpheus and called on Poseidon and Apollo; Apollo gave him a double treasure—to hear the voice of prophecy and to found a line of seers, the Iamidai, whose altar-share would stand at Olympia when the games of Zeus began. Catalogue Iamus as the Olympian mantic charter-myth distinct from Pelops’s race and from Melampus’s Argive line.