The Magnetes (Greek: Μάγνητες) were an ancient Greek tribe. In book 2 of the Iliad, Homer includes them in the Greek Army that is besieging Troy, and identifies their homeland in Thessaly, in a part that is still known as Magnesia.[1] They later also contributed to the Greek colonisation by founding two prosperous cities in Western Anatolia, Magnesia on the Maeander and Magnesia ad Sipylum.

Mythology

According to the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (fr. 7), Thyia, a daughter of Deucalion, lay with Zeus and bore two sons: Magnes and Makednos, the eponyms of the Magnetes and Macedones, respectively. Within Thyia's extended family in the Catalogue are found the progenitors of several of the other early Greek tribes. Her sister Pandora II (named after her grandmother, the famous Pandora) bore Graecus (also to Zeus). And their brother Hellen, along with his three sons Dorus, Xuthus (with his sons Ion and Achaeus) and Aeolos, filled out the set of progenitors of the ancient tribes that formed the Greek/Hellenic nation.

Family tree

DeucalionPyrrhaZeus
Hellen
(hellenes)		ThyiaPandora II
Dorus
(dorians)		XuthusAeolus
(aeolians)		Magnes
(magnetes)		Macedon
(macedones)		Graecus
(graeci)
Achaeus
(achaeans)		Ion
(ionians)
The genealogical relation between the early Greek tribes within the family of Deucalion.[2]

References

  1. ^ Kirk, G.S. (1985). The Iliad : a commentary (Repr ed.). Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press. p. 187. ISBN 0521237092. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
  2. ^ After M.L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Its Nature, Structure, and Origins (Oxford, 1985) 173. Hellen is a son of Pyrrha and Zeus ( frr. 2–5.; cf. West (1985) 52, 56); Graecus, a son of Pandora II, Deucalion's daughter, and Zeus ( fr. 5).; Magnes and Macedon, sons of Thyia, Deucalion's daughter, and Zeus ( fr. 7).; Dorus and Aeolus are sons of Hellen by the nymph Othreis ( fr. 9)., as is Xuthus, who, marrying Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, sired Achaeus and Ion (fr. 10(a)23 OCT).


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