page_title: Catalogue of Women
section_title: Agenorids
hierarchical_section_title: Catalogue of Women / Content / Book 3 / Agenorids
caption_attribution_description: English: P.Oxy. XI 1358 fr. 2 col. i: Hesiod, Catalogue of Women fr. 150 Merkelbach &amp; West
context_page_description: The Catalogue of Women — also known as the Ehoiai — is a fragmentary Greek epic poem that was attributed to Hesiod during antiquity. The "women" of the title were in fact heroines, many of whom lay with gods, bearing the heroes of Greek mythology to both divine and mortal paramours. In contrast with the focus upon narrative in the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, the Catalogue was structured around a vast system of genealogies stemming from these unions and, in M. L. West's appraisal, covered "the whole of the heroic age." Through the course of the poem's five books, these family trees were embellished with stories involving many of their members, and so the poem amounted to a compendium of heroic mythology in much the same way that the Hesiodic Theogony presents a systematic account of the Greek pantheon built upon divine genealogies.
  Most scholars do not currently believe that the Catalogue should be considered the work of Hesiod, but questions about the poem's authenticity have not lessened its interest for the study of literary, social and historical topics.
context_section_description: In the Catalogue and later mythographic tradition, the family of Belus' brother Agenor was something "like a repository for aliens and displaced persons." His son Phoenix was the eponym of Phoenicia, and if Cepheus and Cadmus were also his sons, the Agenorids would have been present in Aethiopia and Thebes as well. By one Alphesiboea Phoenix sired Adonis. Cassiepeia bore to him Phineus; she was perhaps also the mother of Phoenix's daughter Europa, but the girl's mother might have been Telephaassa, as in Moschus' Europa.
  Europa's tale, well known in later classical literature and beyond, appears in a largely familiar form in the Catalogue. She caught Zeus's eye while she and some friends were gathering flowers in a meadow. The god transformed into a bull with breath smelling of saffron, in the guise of which he abducted Europa, carrying her upon his back to Crete. There she bore Minos, Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon to Zeus, and he gave her a necklace made by Hephaestus that would figure in Theban saga as the Necklace of Harmonia. Sarpedon ruled Lycia, and was apparently granted a lifespan equal to three generations of men by Zeus. His death at Troy and the rain of blood it inspired Zeus to send is briefly described. Minos ruled Crete, succeeding his stepfather Asterion. Poseidon sent up from the sea a bull which had sex with Minos' wife Pasiphae, siring the Minotaur. To Minos she also bore Deucalion, Catreus, Androgeos and Eurygyes, though it is equally possible that these last two names referred to a single son. At least one daughter, Ariadne, was surely present, for the myth of Androgeos–Eurygyes' death in Athens and the subsequent sacrifice of Athenian youths to the Minotaur will presuppose Theseus' expedition to Crete and Ariadne's complicity in slaying the beast.
  Phineus was even better-traveled than his sister Europa, and his biography in the Catalogue was  apparently a "pièce de résistance" meant to conclude the geographically diverse Inachid stemma with an appropriate flourish. He ruled in Thrace, but was kidnapped by the Harpies. Zetes and Calais, the Boreads, pursued the tormentors and tormented to the ends of the earth. The poet catalogued many far-flung and remarkable races encountered during the chase, including: the Katoudaioi ("Subterranean Men"), Pygmies, Melanes ("Black Men"), Aethiopians, Libyans, "horse-milking" Scythians, Hemikynes ("Half-Dogs") and the Makrokephaloi, as well as griffins. Ephorus called the episode the Gês Períodos (Γῆς Περίοδος, "Journey Around the World"), and it was once thought that this title referred to an independent work, one erroneously attributed to Hesiod. This view was disproved conclusively in 1911 with the publication of an extensive papyrus fragment (pictured) of the episode which derived from the same bookroll that contained the myth of Europa described above.
caption: Part of the Gês Períodos (Cat. fr. 150 = P.Oxy. XI 1358 fr. 2 col. i, second century CE, Oxyrhynchus)
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