Melampus, the seer who understood the language of animals
Melampus, seer of Greek myth: the snakes that cleansed his ears, the woodworms in Phylacus' prison, the daughters of Proetus and the cult of Dionysus.
Among the oldest seers of Greek myth, Melampus holds a special place. Son of Amythaon and brother of Bias, from the region of Pylos, he was regarded as the founder of a true dynasty of seers, the Melampodidae, to whom genealogies also linked Amphiaraus. The Odyssey already recalls his story in its fifteenth book, in connection with his descendant Theoclymenus, a sign that the legend was circulating at a very early date.
The snakes and the language of birds
The account of his prophetic origins is preserved above all in the Library attributed to Apollodorus. Melampus lived in the countryside, and in front of his house stood an oak with a nest of snakes. When his servants killed the adult serpents, he burned their bodies on a pyre and raised the young. Once grown, the snakes came to him while he slept and licked his ears.
On waking, the young man discovered with astonishment that he understood the voices of the birds flying around him. From them he learned the future and announced it to mankind. Later, according to the same account, he met Apollo by the river Alpheus and received from him the art of reading the entrails of sacrificial victims as well, thus becoming the most complete of seers.
The cattle of Phylacus and the woodworms
The best-known episode concerns his brother Bias, who wished to marry the beautiful Pero, daughter of Neleus. Her father would give her only to whoever brought him the cattle of Phylacus, kept at Phylace by a dog that no one could outwit. Melampus, though he knew he would be caught and imprisoned for a year, undertook the task out of love for his brother.
In prison, towards the end of the year, he heard two woodworms telling each other that they had almost finished gnawing through the roof beam. He asked to be moved to another cell, and shortly afterwards the beam collapsed. Phylacus, struck by the portent, realised he had a great seer before him and asked him about his son Iphiclus, who could not father heirs. Melampus consulted the birds and discovered the cause, and as a reward he received the cattle, which he handed to Neleus for Bias' wedding.
The daughters of Proetus and the cult of Dionysus
Another exploit took Melampus to Argos. The daughters of King Proetus, according to the myth, had been struck with madness for offending a god, Dionysus or Hera depending on the source, and were wandering the mountains. Melampus offered to free them but asked for part of the kingdom in return. When he was first refused, the madness spread to other Argive women, and Proetus ended up accepting harsher terms: a third of the kingdom for Melampus and another for Bias.
Herodotus, in the second book of his Histories, regards Melampus as the man who introduced to the Greeks the name of Dionysus, his sacrifices and the ritual procession, having learned them, according to the historian, from Egyptian traditions. It is Herodotus' own interpretation, but it testifies to the religious prestige that surrounded the seer's name in the fifth century BC.
To the Greeks Melampus appeared as the model of the purifying seer, able to read the signs of nature and restore an order disturbed by divine anger. A lost poem attributed to Hesiod, the Melampodia, gathered the stories of the great seers under his name, and the son of Amythaon remained for centuries the ideal ancestor of a prophetic wisdom handed down from father to son.