Characters in Greek mythology
In Greek mythology, Melissa (Ancient Greek: Μέλισσα) may refer to the following women:
- Melissa, a nymph who discovered and taught the use of honey,[1] and from whom bees were believed to have received their name, μέλισσαι.[2] Bees seem to have been the symbol of nymphs, whence they themselves are sometimes called Melissae, and are sometimes said to have been metamorphosed into bees.[2][3] Hence also nymphs in the form of bees are said to have guided the colonists that went to Ephesus;[4] and the nymphs who nursed the infant Zeus are called Melissae, or Meliae.[5][6][7]
- Melissa, daughter of the Cretan king Melissus, who, together with her sister Amalthea, fed Zeus with goats' milk.[8] She may be the same as the above Melissa.
- Melissa, daughter of Epidamnus and mother of Dyrrhachius by Poseidon. Her father and son gave their name to the town in Illyria which was called Epidamnos and later on Dyrrhachium.[9]
The name Melissae was transferred to priestesses in general, but more especially to those of Demeter,[2][10] Persephone,[11] and to the priestess of the Delphian Apollo.[12] According to the scholiasts of Pindar and Euripides, priestesses received the name Melissae from the purity of the bee.[13]
- ^ Col. 9.2.3
- ^ a b c Scholia ad Pindar, Pythian Odes 4.104
- ^ Hesychius s.v. Ὀροδεμνίαδες; Columell. 9.2; Scholia (ad Theocritus 3.13.)
- ^ Philostr. Icon. 2.8
- ^ Antoninus Liberalis, 19
- ^ Callimachus, Hymns to Zeus 47
- ^ Apollodorus, 1.1.3
- ^ Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.22.19 sq
- ^ Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Dyrrhakhion
- ^ Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo 110; Hesychius s.v. Μελισσαι
- ^ Theocritus, Idylls 15.94 with scholia
- ^ Pindar, Pythian Odes 4.106; Scholia ad Euripides, Hippolytus 72
- ^ Compare a story about the origin of bees in Servius, Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid 1.434