According to
Hesiod, the Meliae (probably meaning all tree-nymphs) were born from the drops of blood that fell on
Gaia [Earth] when
Cronus castrated
Uranus.[2] In Hesiod's Works and Days, the ash trees, perhaps meaning the Melian nymphs, are said to have been the progenitors of the generation of men belonging to Hesiod's
Bronze Age.[3]
The Meliae were nurses of the infant Zeus in the Cretan
Dikti mountains, according to the 3rd century BC poet
Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus, where they fed him on the milk of the goat
Amalthea and honey.[4]
Callimachus appears to make the
Theban nymph
Melia, who was, by
Apollo, the mother of
Tenerus and
Ismenus, one of the "earth-born" Meliae.[5] Elsewhere, however, this Melia is an
Oceanid, one of the many daughters of
Oceanus and
Tethys.[6]
Notes
^Caldwell, p. 38 n. 178–187: "The nymphs called Meliai are properly "ash-tree" nymphs; the Greek word for ash-trees is meliai also", and according to Larson, p. 29: "most commentators agree" that "the Meliai are ash-tree nymphs", although according to West, p. 221 n. 187 Μελίας, in
Callimachus, Hymn 4—To Delos79–85, and
Nonnus' Dionysiaca, and probably in Hesiod as well, the Meliae are simply "tree-nymphs, probably without distinction of the particular kind of tree".
^Hesiod, Works and Days140–155 (Evelyn-White): "Zeus the Father made a third generation of mortal men, a brazen race, sprung from ash-trees [meliai]", here interpreting meliai as the common noun ash-trees, as did
Eustathius. However
Proclus thought it meant ash-tree nymphs (see Evelyn-White's
note; Larson, p. 29), cf.
Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica4.1641–1642, which makes it simply "ash-trees". According to Most, p. 19 n. 9, "It is unclear what exactly the relation is between the Melian nymphs, the ash trees with which they are closely associated, and human beings, who may have originated from one or the other of these".
Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, Massachusetts., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.