Epidotes

In Greek mythology, Epidotes (Ancient Greek: Ἐπιδώτης) was a divinity who was worshipped at Lacedaemon, and averted the anger of Zeus Hicesius (Greek: Ζευς Ικέσιος) for the crime committed by the Spartan general Pausanias.^[1]

Epidotes, meaning the "liberal giver" or "bountiful", occurs also as an epithet of other divinities, such as Zeus at Mantineia and Sparta,^[2] and of Hypnos and Oneiros at Sicyon, who had a statue in the temple of Asclepius there, which represented them in the act of sending a lion to sleep,^[3] and lastly of the beneficent gods, to whom a second-century senator, Antoninus, built a sanctuary at Epidaurus.^[4]

Notes

1. Pausanias, 3.17.8 (cited by Schmitz)
2. Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio 8.9.1; Hesychius s.v. (cited by Schmitz)
3. Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio 2.10.3 (cited by Schmitz)
4. Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio 2.27.7 (cited by Schmitz)

References

• Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. ISBN 0-674-99328-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
• Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio. 3 vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Leonhard Schmitz (1870). Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)