Adrastos

Family: Phrygian · Role: son of Gordias · First appears: Book 1 · §34–43

In Book 1, Adrastos arrived at Sardis after his father had exiled him for unintentionally killing his brother. He identified himself as “the son of Gordias, the son of Midas,” and Croesus cleansed him and welcomed him into his household. At Croesus’s request, Adrastos protected Atys on a boar hunt, but his spear missed the boar and killed Atys; after Croesus grieved, Adrastos killed himself on his brother’s grave.

Book 5 relates Adrastos’s connection to Sikyon: it calls him the son of Talaos and grandson of Polybos, who gave him the kingdom when he died without sons. Cleisthenes (Sikyon) sought to expel Adrastos because he was Argive, but the oracle refused; Cleisthenes then brought Melanippos to Sikyon and transferred Adrastos’s sacrifices and festivals to him, while assigning Adrastos’s tragic choruses to Dionysos.