Pluto (mother of Tantalus)

This article is about the mother of Tantalus. For the Oceanid nymph, see Plouto (Oceanid).

In Greek mythology, Pluto or Plouto (Ancient Greek: Πλουτώ) was the mother of Tantalus, usually by Zeus, though the scholion to line 5 of Euripides' play Orestes, names Tmolos as the father.[1] According to Hyginus, Pluto's father was Himas,[2] while other sources give her father as Cronus.[3]

According to the Clementine Recognitions, the mother of Tantalus, called either Plutis or Plute, was the daughter of Atlas.[4] Nonnus, calling her "Berecyntian Pluto", associates her with Berecyntus, a mountain in Phrygia sacred to Cybele.[5] Nonnus has Zeus, hurrying "to Pluto's bed", to sire Tantalus, hide his thunderbolts in a cave, which the monster Typhon found and stole, precipitating Typhon's cataclysmic battle with Zeus.[6]

  1. ^ Junk, s.v. Pluto 1; Gantz, p. 536; Hard, pp. 502, 674 n. 126; Bell, s.v. Pluto 2; Parada, s.v. Pluto 3; Smith, s.v. Pluto 2; Pausanias 2.22.3; Hyginus, Fabulae 82, 155; Antoninus Liberalis, 36 (Trzaskoma, Smith, and Brunet, p. 15); Nonnus, Dionysiaca 1.145–146, 7.119, 48.729-731.
  2. ^ Gantz, p. 536; Parada, s.v. Pluto 3; Hyginus, Fabulae 155
  3. ^ Junk, s.v. Pluto 1 (citing a scholion to Pindar, Olympian 3.41); Tripp, s.v. Tantalus 1; Grimal, s.v. Tantalus 1; Rutherford, p. 431.
  4. ^ Junk, s.v. Pluto 1; Clementine Recognitions 10.21, 10.23.
  5. ^ Junk, s.v. Pluto 1; Nonnus, Dionysiaca 48.729-731; Lewis and Short, s.v. Bĕrĕcyntus.
  6. ^ Nonnus, Dionysiaca, 1.145–164.