Гректің мифологиясындағы Быблис трагедиясы

Character in Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, Byblis or Bublis (Ancient Greek: Βυβλίς) was a daughter of Miletus. Her mother was either Tragasia, daughter of Celaenus; Cyanee, daughter of the river god Meander; Byblis acknowledged her love for Caunus, and despite her initial efforts to convince herself that her feelings were natural, she realized the inappropriateness of them. Unable to keep her love for Caunus a secret from him any longer, she sent him a long love letter through a servant giving examples of other incestuous relationships between the gods. Disgusted, he ran away. Believing that she could yet make him love her, she was determined to try to woo him once more. When she found out that he had fled, she tore her clothes and stripped naked in sorrow and was driven into madness. She followed him through much of Greece and Asia Minor until she finally died, worn out by her grief and the long journey. As she had been constantly crying, she was changed into a spring.

Antoninus Liberalis again portrays Byblis as overcome with unanswered love for her brother; after Caunus leaves, she rejects the proposals of numerous suitors and attempts to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff, but is saved by hamadryads, who cause her to fall asleep and transform her into a fellow nymph.

Nonnus depicts Byblis, Caunos and Miletus as the children of Asterius, son of Minos and Androgeneia. In this account, Caunus romantically pursues Byblis with a love song referencing the incestuous relationships between the gods. All the authors make mention of a spring which was believed to have appeared from Byblis' incessant tears. The city Byblos in Phoenicia was believed to have taken its name from Byblis.

Between 1706 and 1715, the sculptor Pierre Le Gros the Younger, working in Rome, was faced with the restoration of a fragmented antique group of Amor and Psyche for the Portuguese ambassador. Thriving on invention, he turned the love story on its head and depicted the theme of Caunus and Byblis in which Caunus vehemently defends himself against the sexual advances of his sister. While Le Gros' invention ended up in Germany and was purified back to Amor and Psyche before being destroyed in a fire in 1931, it triggered a rafter of drawings, reproductions and copies by for example Pompeo Batoni, Francesco Carradori, Martin Gottlieb Klauer and, best known of all, two marble versions by Laurent Delvaux. The most faithful impression of what Le Gros' invention looked like is a plaster cast in Tiefurt House near Weimar.