According to
Pausanias, Aetolus' mother was called
Asterodia,
Chromia, or
Hyperippe.[3] He was married to
Pronoe, by whom he had two sons,
Pleuron and
Calydon. His brothers were
Paeon,
Epeius, Eurycyda,[4] and
Naxos.[5] In one account, Aetolus was the son of
Protogenia by
Zeus and the brother of
Aethlius,[6]Opus[7] and possibly
Dorus.[8] Other sources also described Aetolus as the son of
Amphictyon and father of
Physcius, the father of
Locrus.[9] In this account, Aetolus was a king of
Locris after his father Amphictyon. Then, the kingdom was passed on to Physcus and eventually Locrus who name the land after himself.[10]
Mythology
Aetolus' father compelled him and his two brothers Paeon and Epeius to decide by a contest at
Olympia as to which of them was to succeed him in his kingdom of
Elis. Epeius gained the victory, and occupied the throne after his father, and on his demise he was succeeded by Aetolus. During the funeral games which were celebrated in honor of
Azan, he ran with his chariot over
Apis, the son of
Jason or
Salmoneus, and killed him, whereupon he was expelled by the sons of Apis. The kingdom then passed to
Eleius, son of his sister
Eurycyda.[11][12] After leaving
Peloponnesus, he went to the country of the
Curetes, between the
Achelous and the
Corinthian gulf, where he slew
Dorus,
Laodocus, and
Polypoetes, the sons of
Apollo and
Phthia, and gave to the country the name of
Aetolia.[11] This story is only a mythical account of the colonization of Aetolia.[13]
Conon, Fifty Narrations, surviving as one-paragraph summaries in the Bibliotheca (Library) of Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople translated from the Greek by Brady Kiesling.
Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Stephanus of Byzantium, Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum quae supersunt, edited by August Meineike (1790-1870), published 1849. A few entries from this important ancient handbook of place names have been translated by Brady Kiesling.
Online version at the Topos Text Project.