Meliae

Greek deities series
Primordial deities
Titans and Olympians
Aquatic deities
Chthonic deities
Personified concepts
Other deities
Asclepius, god of medicine Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis Pan, shepherd god
Nymphs
Alseid Auloniad Crinaeae Dryads Hamadryads Hesperides Limnades	Meliae Naiads Napaeae Nereids Oceanids Oreads Pegaeae

In Greek mythology, the Meliae or Meliai (Ancient Greek: Μελίαι or Μελιάδες) were nymphs of the ash tree, whose name they shared. They appeared from the drops of blood spilled when Cronus castrated Uranus, according to Hesiod, Theogony 187. From the same blood sprang the Erinyes, suggesting that the ash-tree nymphs represented the Fates in milder guise (Graves 6.4). From the Meliae sprang the race of mankind of the Age of Bronze.^[1]

Description

The Meliae belong to a class of sisterhoods whose nature is to appear collectively and who are invoked in the plural, though genealogical myths, especially in Hesiod, give them individual names, such as Melia, "but these are quite clearly secondary and carry no great weight" (Burkert 1985 III.3.2). The Melia thus singled out is one of these daughters of Oceanus. By her brother the river-god Inachus, she became the mother of Io, Phoroneus, Aegialeus or Phegeus, and Philodice. In other stories, she was the mother of Amycus by Poseidon, as the Olympian representative of Oceanus.

Many species of Fraxinus, the ash trees, exude a sugary substance, which the ancient Greeks called méli, "honey". The species of ash in the mountains of Greece is the Manna-ash (Fraxinus ornus). The Meliae were nurses of the infant Zeus in the Cretan cave of Dikte, according to Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus. They fed him honey.

Of "manna", the ash-tree sugar, the standard 19th-century US pharmacopeia, The Dispensatory of the United States of America (14th edition, Philadelphia, 1878) said:

It is owing to the presence of true sugar and dextrin that manna is capable of fermenting...Manna, when long kept, acquires a deeper color, softens, and ultimately deliquesces into a liquid which on the addition of yeast, undergoes the vinous fermentation.

Fermented honey preceded wine as an entheogen in the Aegean world.

Argive genealogy in Greek mythology

Argive genealogy in Greek mythology

Uranus   Gaia                                                                                                       Cronus   Rhea   Oceanus   Tethys                                                                       Memphis     Libya   Poseidon       Nilus   Inachus   Melia                                                                                                                                   Belus   Agenor       Telephassa     Phoroneus   Io   Zeus                                                                                                                                           Cadmus   Cilix   Europa   Phoenix   Achiroe       Epaphus                                                                                                                                       Harmonia     Danaus   Aegyptus                                   Polydorus                                                                             Agave     Hypermnestra   Lynceus                                       Autonoë                                                                           Ino         Abas                                       Semele                                                                                       Acrisius                                                                                                                                         Danaë   Zeus                                                                                                               Perseus

References

1. ^ Hesiod. Works and Days, 143-45: 'Zeus the Father made a third generation of mortal men, a brazen race, sprung from meliai, "ash-trees" (Eustathius' reading) or "ash-tree nymphs" (Proclus' reading: see Works and Days, note 4; Apollonius of Rhodes. Argonautica, 4.164.2.

Sources

• Ruck, Carl A.P. and Danny Staples, The World of Classical Myth 1994, p. 140.
• Burkert, Walter, 1985. Greek Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
• Graves, Robert (1955) 1960. The Greek Myths.

External links

• Theoi Project - Nymphai Meliai
• Darl J. Dumont, "The Ash Tree In Indo-European Culture" from Mankind Quarterly 32.4 (Summer 1992), pp. 323-336.