Hellen

In Greek mythology, Hellen is the eponymous progenitor of the Hellenes. He is the child of Deucalion (or Zeus) and Pyrrha, and the father of three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus, by whom he is the ancestor of the Greek peoples. Family The Catalogue of Women (sixth century BC?) is a fragmentary poem attributed to Hesiod; the work is structured around a large genealogy of mortals, Hellen's family being described in Book 1 of the poem. According to a scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, Hellen, in the poem, is called the son of Pyrrha, by either Deucalion, or alternatively, by Prometheus (who is called the father of Deucalion in the same passage). The latter parentage, however, it seems was not a part of the Catalogue, but rather a mistake on the part of the scholion. A scholion on the Odyssey similarly calls Hellen a son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, giving his siblings as Amphictyon, Protogeneia, and Melanthea (Melantho). The scholion, however, also states that "some say that Hellen was the son of Zeus by birth but was said to be the son of Deucalion", leading M. L. West to consider Hellen's real father in the Catalogue to in fact be Zeus, and Deucalion only, in West's words, his "nominal father". Plutarch, in his Moralia, quotes a passage from the Catalogue in which Hellen is the father of three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus. He does not, however, give the source of the passage; it is instead the Byzantine poet John Tzetzes who attributes it to the Catalogue. Though no mother is specified in the passage, West suggests that she was one "Othryis", the nymph of Mount Othrys, based upon the mothers given by Apollodorus and a scholion on Plato's Symposium (see below).