BUTES

1. A son of Boreas, a Thracian, was hostile towards his step-brother Lycurgus, and therefore compelled by his father to emigrate. He accordingly went with a band of colonists to the island of Strongyle, afterwards called Naxos. But as he and his companions had no women, they made predatory excursions, and also came to Thessaly, where they carried off the women who were just celebrating a festival of Dionysus. Butes himself took Coronis; but she invoked Dionysus, who struck Butes with madness, so that he threw himself into a well.

2. A son of Teleon and Zeuxippe. Others call his father Pandion or Amycus. He is renowned as an Athenian shepherd, ploughman, warrior, and an Argonaut. (Apollodorus i.) After the death of Pandion, he obtained the office of priest of Athena and the Erechtheian Poseidon. The Attic family of the Butadae or Eteobutadae derived their origin from him, and in the Erechtheum on the Acropolis there was an altar dedicated to Butes, and the walls were decorated with paintings representing scenes from the history of the family of the Butadae.

The Argonaut Butes is also called a son of Poseidon and it is said, that when the Argonauts passed by the Sirens. Orpheus commenced a song to counteract the influence of the Sirens, but that Butes alone leaped into the sea. Aphrodite, however, saved him, and carried him to Lilybaeum, where she became by him the mother of Eryx. (Apollodorus i.) Diodorus (iv. 83), on the other hand, regards this Butes as one of the native kings of Sicily.

There are at least four more mythical persons of this name, respecting whom nothing of interest can. be said.