DRYOPE

a daughter of king Dryops, or, according to others, of Eurytus. While she tended the flocks of her father on Mount Oeta, she became the playmate of the Hamadryades, who taught her to sing hymns to the gods and to dance. On one occasion she was seen by Apollo, who, in order to gain possession of her, metamorphosed himself into a tortoise.

The nymphs played with the animal, and Dryope took it into her lap. The god then changed himself into a serpent, which frightened the nymphs away, so that he remained alone with Dryope. Soon after she married Andraemon, the son of Oxylus, but she became, by Apollo, the mother of Am-phissus, who, after he had grown up, built the town of Oeta, and a temple to Apollo.

Once, when Dryope was in the temple, the Hamadryades carried her off and concealed her in a forest, and in her stead there was seen in the temple a well and a poplar. Dryope now became a nymph, and Amphissus built a temple to the nymphs, which no woman was allowed to approach. (Ov. Met. ix. 325, etc.)

Virgil (Aen. x. 551) mentions another personage of this name. [L. S.]

DRYOPS, a son of the river-god Spercheius, by the Danaid Polydora (Anton. Lib. 32), or, according to others, a son of Lycaon (probably a mistake for Apollo) by Dia, the daughter of Lycaon, who concealed her new-born infant in a hollow oak tree (Spyy; Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 1283; Taetz. ad Lycoph. 480). The Asinaeans in Messenia worshipped him as their ancestral hero, and as a son of Apollo, and celebrated a fes­tival in honour of him every other year. His heroum there was adorned with a very archaic statue of the hero. (Paus. iv. 34. § 6.) He had been king of the Dryopes, who derived their name from him, and were believed to have occupied the country from the valley of the Spercheius and Thermopylae, as far as Mount Parnassus. (Anton. Lib. 4; Horn. Hymn. vi. 34.)