ABSTRACT
The mythical founder of Orchomenus in Boeotia; he gave his name to the Boeotian or Thessalian clan of Minyans, to whom the Argonauts were said to belong. He was said to have been a rich man, and to have built a treasury. He had three daughters, Alcithoe, Leucippe, and Arsippe, who refused to participate in the rites of Dionysus. On the god’s feast-day, however, as they wiled away the time telling each other stories, all of a sudden the looms at which they were working sprouted grape-vines and their threads tendrils. The room was filled with smoke and the glow of fire, and the house with the sound of unseen revellers, so that the girls fled in terror to remote corners where they turned into bats. According to some accounts Dionysus himself appeared and drove them mad, so that they killed Leucippe’s son Hippasus as a sacrifice and then joined in the revels. The Maenads, in horror at the girls’ murderous deed, put them to death. Another daughter, Clymene, married Cephalus after the death of Procris.
