Note 173.1 — Chapter XXI · THE STORY AS A WHOLE. THE PROBLEM OF ITS PLACE OF ORIGIN. CONCLUSION.

The independence of the classical legend and most of the modern variants is confirmed by another test. There is no feature more marked in the modern stories than that of the Impostor and the Tokens. Of the Impostor we find a trace in antiquity, but none of the Tokens. It is true that another classical story, located at Megara, mentions both. It is preserved by the scholiast upon Apollonius Rhodius, who attributes it to Derichidas, the historian of Megara. Alkathoos, the son of Pelops, we are told, having been exiled for the murder of Chrysippe, encountered on the territory of Megara a lion which desolated the country, and which the king had commissioned some of his subjects to destroy. Alkathoos after a fight succeeded in killing the animal. Thereupon he cut out its tongue, which he placed in his wallet, and proceeded to Megara. But the men whom the king had sent against the brute claimed the honour of the victory; nor were they convicted of the imposture until Alkathoos in the king’s presence drew forth the tongue. The king offered the tongue in sacrifice to the gods, and gave his daughter Euaichme in marriage to Alkathoos, who ultimately succeeded him upon the throne.173.1 Now it is fairly certain that this striking incident could never have been part of the ancient legend of Perseus, otherwise it would have come down to us in one or other of the classical writers. But not only is it absent from the versions of Ovid and Lucian; another account, mentioned by the mythographer Hyginus, points in a diametrically opposite direction. He calls the betrothed of Andromeda, Agenor, and declares that when Perseus wished to take Andromeda away, her father, Cepheus, and Agenor, attempted secretly to murder him, and were turned with their followers to stone by the exhibition of the Gorgon’s head.173.2 This is more inconsistent with the modern variants than Ovid’s narrative.