TFBT: Turned into a Fabulous Island

 Over at the Kosmos Society,  Maya and I discussed goddesses who escaped Zeus’ amorous clutches.  We couldn’t figure out why the Titaness Asteria was able to turn herself, into an island (Delos) and a similar escape wasn’t available to most others. I suggested that she, her sister Leto and nephew and niece Apollo and Artemis were Anatolian deities, a different divine clan than the Olympian, not under the dispensation at Mecone.  So like Hypnos she could escape Zeus because she wasn’t under his authority.  (Iliad 14. 231 ff)

The whole time I am thinking I recall a goddess in a similar situation, but I had to look it up.  Found it;  

“Aea; a huntress who was metamorphosed by the gods into the fabulous island bearing the same name in order to rescue her from the pursuit of Phasis, the river god.”  (Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology)

Aea is also the name of the capital of Colchis.  This is the distant and mysterious land where King Aeetes and his daughter Medea lived.  It is near here that Aeetes’ father Helios rested each morning on his couch before the sun-god and his sister Eos, the Dawn launch into the sky. In “The East Face of Helicon” M.LWest (1997) argues Aea was tied to the Akkadian dawn goddess Aya.   “It seems impossible to separate this Aea from the name of the Babylonian goddess Aya, who is the Sun-god’s wife and the goddess of sexual love” (p. 407).  (Thanks to  Jason Colavito  for this insight. 

So here we have it a goddess with a situation very comparable to Asteria, Aea was able to escape a amorous pursuer by turning herself into a rock at the mouth of the river. 

Only problem is I can find no primary source saying Aea turned herself into a rock.  The Dictionary’s reference did not support the idea.  Neither has anyone ever compared Aea to Asteria. 

One little aside Aeetes’ first wife was named Asterodeia. [i]  Hmm

 

 

---

[i] Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 3.240ff