Lelex

🗡 heroΛέλεξ

Autochthony, Civilization, Laconia

Earth-born first king of Lacedaemon and ancestor of the pre-Spartan Leleges people.‌‌‌‍‍‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‍‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌‍‍‍

The Legend of Lelex

Lelex was said to have been the first man to inhabit Lacedaemon, sprung from the earth itself rather‌‌‌‍‍‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‍‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌‍‍‍ than born of mortal parents — a claim to autochthony that gave the pre-Dorian inhabitants of the Peloponnese their name, the Leleges. He became the first king of Sparta's region, ruling even before Lacedaemon or Sparta themselves were founded. From him descended a sequence of local kings who preceded the arrival of the Dorians and the Spartan royal houses. His son Myles was said to have invented the mill (hence his name), and his grandson Eurotas drained the central valley and gave the Eurotas river its name. In Megara and elsewhere, separate traditions also named local Leleges after this progenitor, creating a pan-Hellenic pattern of earth-born first men who gave their names to the pre-Greek populations of the various regions. Lelex is the mythological expression of the Greeks' awareness that they had not always lived in Greece.

Parents

Earth (autochthonous birth)

Children

Myles, Polycaon, Bomolochus

Symbols

plowed fieldsoilmill

Fun Fact

The word "Leleges" — used by Greeks to describe the mysterious pre-Hellenic inhabitants of mainland Greece — derives from this single earth-born king, making him the mythological label for an entire lost civilization.