Pandarean

Füssli: The daughters of Pandáreo (Die Töchter des Pandareos, ca. 1795).

In Greek mythology, Pandareus (ancient Greek Πανδάρεως, Pandáreôs) was the name of two characters that some authors, like Pausanias, tend to merge into one.

The first, the son of Merope, was from Miletus, a Cretan city. He stole the golden dog which, at Rhea's wish, guarded the goat that suckled Zeus when he was still a child, and which he later guarded in the temple of Zeus at Dicte. He gave the dog to Tantalus to hide until the initial alarm passed, but when he asked her to return it, Tantalus swore that he knew nothing of the matter. Zeus punished both of them: he turned Pandareus into stone, and Tantalus he struck down with lightning, and placed Mount Sipylus on his head. Another version narrates that Pandareus and his wife, Harmotoe, managed to flee to Sicily, where Zeus he killed them. The goddesses Hera, Artemis, and Aphrodite took charge of Camiro and Clythie (or Cleotera), the two daughters of Pandareus and Harmotoe, but the Harpies seized the girls and later gave them to the Erinyes as slaves.

The second Pandareus, from Ephesus, had received the gift of Demeter that no matter how much he ate, his stomach would never feel full. He was the father of two daughters named Aedon and Quelidon (or Quelidonide). The first married Politecno de Colophon, and they lived so happily that they boasted of getting along better than Zeus and Hera. The gods, offended, sent Eris (discord) to ruin their marriage. Thus, in a visit that Politecno made to her father-in-law, he deceived her sister-in-law by telling her that Aedón wanted to see her, took her to a nearby forest and there raped her. The two sisters, to take revenge, cooked the only son of Politecnos, named Itis, and served him to eat. Realizing what had happened, Politecno chased the infanticides to his father's house, where they had hidden. However, Pandáreo's servants managed to tie Polytechnos in the middle of the field and smeared him with honey so that he would be devoured by insects. Aedon, out of compassion, came to help him, whereupon his parents and brother wanted to kill her, but Zeus, moved by the misfortunes of this family, turned them into birds: Aedon into a nightingale, Quelidon into a swallow, their brother into a hoopoe., Polytechnos as a woodpecker, Pandareus as a sea eagle, and Pandareus's wife as a halcyon.

In another version it is also said that Pandareus was the father of Aedon, but a different myth is narrated about him: in this story she was married to Zeto and jealous of the numerous offspring that her sister-in-law Niobe had, she decided to kill one of her nephews. By mistake, or by design of the gods, she killed her own son, Itilo, and her grief was so great that he turned into a nightingale.