Cercopes

In Greek mythology, the Cercopes (Greek: Κέρκωπες, plural of Κέρκωψ, from κέρκος (n.) kerkos "tail")Compare Cecrops. were mischievous forest creatures who lived in Thermopylae or on Euboea but roamed the world and might turn up anywhere mischief was afoot. They were two brothers, but their names are given variously, Passalus and Acmon, Basalas and Achemon, Olus and Eurybatus, or Sillus and Triballus, depending on the context, but usually known as sons of Theia and Oceanus, thus ancient spirits.
They were proverbial as liars, cheats, and accomplished knaves.Lucian, Alexander the false prophet. They once stole Heracles' weapons, during the time he was the penitent servant of Omphale in Lydia.Pseudo-Apollonius, Bibliotheke ii.6.3. He seized and bound them at EphesusBibliotheke eo. loc.. and punished them by tying them to a shoulder pole he slung over his shoulder with their faces pointing downwards, the only way they appear on Greek vases. The sight of Heracles' dark-tanned posterior set them both to laughing; when Heracles demanded to know what they were laughing at, he joined them in their laughter and let them go. This particular myth is depicted on a metope at Temple C at Selinus. In another myth, designed to explain their name ("tail-men" in Greek), Zeus changed the Cercopes into monkeys (from this we have the genus Cercopithecus, identified as the genus of monkeys depicted in Minoan frescoes). In a myth alluded to in a fragment of Pherecydes, Zeus turned them to stone for trying to deceive even him; the stone was shown to visitors to Thermopylae.
Monkeys figure in four Minoan frescos at Akrotiri, most famously in the crocus-gathering Xeste 3 fresco, where the monkey's ritual aspect, attending an enthroned female, is interpreted by Nanno Marinatos as servants of the divinity, acting as intermediary between humanity and the divine world.N. Marinatos, in R. Hägg and N. Marinatos, eds., The Function of the Minoan Palaces, Stockholm 1987 1987, 124-130); the representation of monkeys in Minoan and Theran art is summarized, with bibliographical references, by J. Vanschoonwinkel, "Animal Representations in Theran and Other Aegean Arts". Green monkeys appear in Crete itself in the "House of the Frescoes" at Knossos,Restoration illustrated by M.A.S. Cameron, "Unpublished paintings from the 'House of Frescoes' at Knossos", ''BSA 63 (1968:1-31 and fig. 13). Monkeys are absent from Greek art. In Minoan art, it is assumed that they were exotic pets: "...the monkeys, which were imported to Crete, were pets that would have been placed where they could be seen and used by their owners, rather than simply abandoned in the countryside," Maria C. Shaw concluded.Shaw, "The Aegean Garden" American Journal of Archaeology 97.4 (October 1993:661-685) pp. 668-70. When Greek mythographers attempted to account for the name Pithecusae (“Ape Islands”) given to Ischia and Procida by the Bay of Naples, where no monkeys had been seen within human memory, they were reduced to alleging that they must have been deceitful men whom Zeus punished by turning them into apes. When scholars attempted to account for this exotic image they have been forced to search farther afield:
E.H. Kline identified the monkey species in 1991Kline, "Monkey business in the Bronze Age Aegean", BSA 86 (1991:29-42). as guernons, or Green Monkeys, which have bluish fur over their green skins. Scholars generally assume that the appearance of the blue monkey in Aegean iconography was due to the import of the actual animal from north Africa; they were iconic religious animals in Egypt.
Further classical references to the Cercopes can be found in Diodorus Siculus 4.31.7; Nonnus, in Mythographi Graeci, ed. A. Westermann, Appendix Narrationum, 39, p. 375; Johannes Tzetzes, Chiliades ii.431, v.73ff.; Zenobius, Cent. v.10;
==Notes==
==References==
*Graves, Robert, 1955. The Greek Myths, section 136.c-d and references
*Probert Encyclopedia article on Cercopes
Category:Greek Mythology