Μακαρευς

  1. The son of Aeolus who had an incestuous affair with his sister CANACE. When this became known he committed suicide. This Macareus has sometimes been confused with MACAR, king of Lesbos.

  2. The name of a priest of Dionysus at Mytilene, who suffered a series of catastrophes because he committed an act of sacrilege. A stranger had enstrusted gold to the god and had deposited it in the temple. Macareus seized the treasure and when the stranger came to reclaim it, Macareus killed him in the sanctuary itself. Macareus' two sons were playing shortly after the festival of Trieterides. They amused themselves by imitating the sacrifice which their father had just offered. The elder took the sacred knife and stabbed his brother in the neck. Then in spite of his brother's screams he burned him on the altar which was still hot. In anger his mother struck him down. Macareus killed his wife with a blow of a thyrsus.

{E2 DICTIONARY OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY}

Table of Sources:
- Apollod. Bibl. 1,7,3;
- Serv. on Virgil, Aen. 1,75;
- Hyg. Fab. 238; 243;
- Euripides, lost tragedy Aeolus (Nauck, TGF, edn 2, p. 365ff.; fragments 14ff.);
- Ovid, Heroides II;
- Sostratus Tyrrhenica fragment quoted in Plutarh, Parall. 26,312c and Stobaeus, Flor. 4,20b,72 W-H.
- Aelian, Hist. Var. 13,2.

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