Baby bouys.

Caburus

Active Member
Sargon in a basket, cast into the river by his mother. Grew up to be a great leader and law giver.
Moses in a basket, cast into the river Nile by his mother. Grew up to be a great law giver and leader.
Taliesan in a sack, cast into the Irish sea by his mother. Grew up to be a great and powerful Bard.
Sceaf in a small boat, cast into the sea by unknown hands. Grew up to be a great king and law giver.
Are there any other great leaders/speakers in myth/legend that were found floating in the waters as babies (and how many were left there by their mothers?). Does their being found in water have any symbolic connection to their later power - as law givers or speakers (Moses did supposedly have a speech impediment, but he still delivered the Laws of God to the Israelites).
 

Alejandro

Active Member
In Greek mythology Eumolpos is the result, it seems, of Poseidon raping Boreas' daughter Khione. When Eumolpos is born, Khione wishes to conceal him from her father Boreas, and so casts the newborn into the sea. Eumolpos is, however, received there by his father Poseidon, who places his baby son in the charge of one of his legitimate daughters, namely the sea-nymph Benthesikyme, who is therefore Eumolpos' half-sister, and is also queen of Aithiopia. Eumolpos grows up to have some crazy adventures in different capacities as a king, musician, and priest, in Aithiopia, Thrake [Thrace] and Greece, and eventually dies in battle against his own great-grandfather King Erekhtheus of Attika.

In Eumolpos' case his connection to water is obvious, as the son of the king of the sea, and may be the only reason he survived in the first place, since his mother [unwittingly?] threw him into his divine father's domain. The powers and authority he possesses in his lifetime, however, seem to derive from his devotion to certain other deities, namely Demeter and Korē-Persephone, the so-called Megalai Theai, "Great Goddesses," and perhaps also Dionysos and Apollon.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Perseus is another character from Greek myth who travelled through seawater as a baby and grew up to become a renowned adventurer and king. He was cast not by his mother Danai, but together with her, into the sea, on the orders of Danai's own father - Perseus' grandfather - King Akrisios of Argolis. Both he and Danai survived the journey across the waves before ending up on the shores of an island where they were found by a fisherman whose name, Diktys, literally means "netter," i.e., "fisherman," :rolleyes: and whose brother Polydektes was the island's king.

(Incidentally Perseus' mother was a seventh-generation descendant of Poseidon, though that's perhaps not as significant as the version of Diktys' and Polydektes' parentage which has them as Poseidon's sons themselves, essentially making Perseus [both] their cousin [and great-great-great-great-great-great-nephew :eek:]. Not that this kinda thing is a unique familial relationship in the mythology, since almost all the main characters are ancestrally traceable to some deity or other...)
 
Top