ABSTRACT

Son of Eos and Tithonus. His brother was Emathion. Their skin was black, supposedly because of their mother, the dawn-goddess, since in childhood they, like her, were constantly in company with the sun (Helios), whose chariot they accompanied every day across the sky. Memnon and his brother thus went to the hottest parts of the world, where in due course Memnon became king of Ethiopia, and Emathion king of Egypt. After a campaign in Persia, where he captured Susa, Memnon in the tenth year of the Trojan War came to Troy with a force of Ethiopians to help his uncle Priam. Wearing armour made for him by Hephaestus, he killed Achilles’ friend Antilochus, son of Nestor, and many others. Finally Achilles attacked him and they fought with one another, while their two mothers, both goddesses, pleaded with Zeus for their lives. However Memnon fell; and Eos asked Zeus to show him some special honour. Some versions declared that Zeus made him immortal; others that the god caused the smoke from Memnon’s pyre to turn into birds, which, dividing into two groups, circled the flames and killed each other, falling into the fire as offerings to the hero’s ghost. Then, every year thereafter, fresh flocks of these birds, called Memnonidae, came to his tomb and performed the same death-ritual, falling dead upon the mound.