Characters
- Artemis — warns Bacchiads; encourages Eetion and later Cypselus
- Bacchiads — oligarchs who try to kill the infant
- Cypselus — baby hidden in a chest; later tyrant of Corinth
- Eetion — father; of Petra; recipient of the eagle-oracle
- Labda — lame Bacchiad daughter; mother who hides the child
- Periander — son; harsher sequel (cross-ref)
- Ten assassins — soften at the baby’s smile; search the house in vain
Places
- Chest — hiding-place and name-source
- Petra — Eetion’s deme; “rocks” of the oracle
- Pytho — oracles and later Cypselid treasury
- Rock tomb — Bacchiad city; later Cypselid tyranny
Themes
Narrative
Among the Bacchiad oligarchs of Corinth, Amphion’s daughter Labda was lame and therefore married outside the clan to Eetion of Petra. Delphi told Eetion that a stone would fall on the ruling Bacchiads and set Corinth right; an earlier oracle to the Bacchiads had warned of an eagle breeding among rocks (*petra*) who would loose a lion. The Bacchiads sent ten men to kill Labda’s newborn; divine chance made the child smile, and the killers passed him from hand to hand until all had refused the deed, then left. Labda heard and hid the baby in a chest (*kypsele*); when the killers returned they did not find him. From the chest he was named Cypselus. Grown, he consulted Delphi, received a promising tyranny-oracle, and seized Corinth, ruling mildly compared with his son Periander and dedicating a treasury at Delphi.
The logos is Corinth’s foundation-myth of tyranny: deformity, oracle, failed exposure, chest-name, and rule. Catalogue it apart from Periander’s necromantic cruelty.