HYLAS

This article appears in Volume V14, Page 176 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HOR-I25

HYLAS , in

Greek

GREEK
GREEK, ETRUSCAN AND

legend

LEGEND (through the French from the med. Lat. legenda, things to be read, from legere, to read)

, son of Theiodamas, king of the Dryopians in Thessaly, the favourite of Heracles and his companion on the Argonautic expedition. Having gone ashore at Kios in Mysia to fetch water, he was carried off by the nymphs of the

spring

SPRING (from " to spring," " to leap or jump up," " burst out," O. Eng., springau, a common Teut. word, cf. Ger.
springer
- SPRINGER (Fr. rein)
- SPRINGER, ANTON HEINRICH (1825–1891)
, possibly allied to Gr. QnrFpxecOac, to move rapidly)

in which he dipped his

pitcher

PITCHER

. Heracles sought him in vain, and the answer of Hylas to his thrice-repeated cry was lost in the depths of the water. Ever afterwards, in memory of the threat of Heracles to ravage the

land

LAND

if Hylas were not found, the inhabitants of Kios every year on a stated day roamed the mountains, shouting aloud for Hylas (Apollonius Rhodius i. 1207;

Theocritus

THEOCRITUS

xiii.;

Strabo

STRABO (born c. 63 n.c.)

xii. 564; Propertius 20; Virgil, Ecl. vi. 43). But, although the

legend

LEGEND (through the French from the med. Lat. legenda, things to be read, from legere, to read)

is first told in Alexandrian times, the " cry of Hylas " occurs

long

LONG, GEORGE (1800-1879)
LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838– )

before as the " Mysian cry " in Aeschylus (Persae, 1054), and in Aristophanes (Plutus, 1127) " to cry Hylas " is used proverbially of seeking something in vain. Hylas, like Adonis and Hyacinthus, represents the fresh vegetation of

spring

SPRING (from " to spring," " to leap or jump up," " burst out," O. Eng., springau, a common Teut. word, cf. Ger.
springer
- SPRINGER (Fr. rein)
- SPRINGER, ANTON HEINRICH (1825–1891)
, possibly allied to Gr. QnrFpxecOac, to move rapidly)

, or the water of a fountain, which dries up under the heat of summer. It is suggested that Hylas was a harvest deity and that the ceremony gone through by the Kians was a harvest festival, at which the figure of a boy was thrown into the water, signifying the dying vegetation-spirit of the year.
See G. Turk in Breslauer Philologische Abhandlungen, vii. (1895) ; W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen (1884).

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