Hyacinthus

Also known as: Son of Œbalus / the Tænarian youth / the youth · Role: youth · First appears: Fable 87

Life events

• A rebounding quoit strikes Hyacinthus in the face, fatally wounding him.(Fable87)
  • With: Apollo
  • “Immediately the Tænarian youth,[30] in his thoughtlessness, and urged on by eagerness for the sport, hastened to take up the circlet; but the hard ground sent it back into the air with a rebound against thy face, Hyacinthus.”
• Hyacinthus dies from the incurable wound, and Apollo accepts responsibility for his death.(Fable87)
  • With: Apollo
  • “His skill is of no avail. The wound is incurable.”
• Hyacinthus’s blood changes into a brilliant flower.(Fable87)
  • With: Apollo
  • “While such things are being uttered by the prophetic lips of Apollo, behold! the blood which, poured on the ground, has stained the grass, ceases to be blood, and a flower springs up, more bright than the Tyrian purple”
• Apollo inscribes his lamentations on the flower’s leaves.(Fable87)
  • With: Apollo
  • “He himself inscribed his own lamentations on the leaves, and the flower has ‘ai, ai,’ inscribed {thereon};”
• The Hyacinthian festival returns annually with prescribed ceremonies.(Fable87 · 📍 Sparta)
  • With: Apollo
  • “Nor is Sparta ashamed to have given birth to Hyacinthus; and his honours continue to the present time; the Hyacinthian festival[34] returns, too, each year, to be celebrated with the prescribed ceremonials”

Fable 87

• courtship with Apollo “Yet what is my fault? unless to engage in sport can be termed a fault; unless it can be called a fault, too, to have loved thee.”
• with Apollo (Apollo accepts responsibility for Hyacinthus's death.) “With thy death is my right hand to be charged; I am the author of thy destruction.”
• with Amycla (Amycla is identified as an ancestor of Hyacinthus.) “Phœbus would have placed thee too, descendant of Amycla,[26] in the heavens, if the stern Fates had given him time to place thee there.”
• parent: Œbalus (The footnote presents Œbalus as Hyacinthus's father in one version of the myth.) “Hyginus, Lucian, and Servius say that he was the son of Œbalus.”

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Extracted from the original text of The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Made with Rho MD.