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[Meaning] a fiery [one].[1] Also [sc. attested is] a proverb: 'Lemnian evil'. For after the Lemnian men had abducted women from Athens and gotten children from them, they slaughtered the women together with the children. But then the women killed all the men, together with their Thracian wives, because they did not devote themselves to them due to the noxious odor. Myrsilos says the odor took hold because of Medea's rivalry with Hypsipyle;[2] but Kaukasos[3] says it was because of the Lemnian women's being contemptuous of Aphrodite.[4] Hence, big evils are called "Lemnian".[5]

Lêmnion kakon blepôn: purôdes. kai paroimia: Lêmnion kakon. ek gar Athênôn harpasantes gunaikas hoi Lêmnioi kai teknopoiêsamenoi ex autôn katesphaxan autas meta tôn teknôn. epei de pantas hai gunaikes tous andras, hoti autais ou proseichon, aneilon hama tais tôn Thraikôn gunaixin, epi têi dusôdiai, hên Mursilos men dia ton Mêdeias epi Hupsipulêi zêlon kataschein: Kaukasos de dia to oligôrêsai tês Aphroditês tas Lêmnias. enthen ta megala kaka Lêmnia legetai.

Same entry in Photius lambda271 Theodoridis (from Pausanias the Atticist) and similar ones in the paroemiographers.
Lemnos (see lambda 448 and the other cross-references there) was known for two different massacres, both referenced here, though in a greatly abbreviated way. The second massacre, of men by women (lambda 450), was the better known. See Apollodorus 1.9.17 at web address 1.
[1] cf. generally "Lemnian fire" (lambda 449) in (e.g.) Sophocles, Philoctetes 800, and Aristophanes, Lysistrata 299; it issued from the volcano on the island which was reputedly Hephaistos' forge. The present headword phrase itself is presumably a quotation, but unidentifiable.
[2] Myrsilos of Methymna (Lesbos), C3-BCE historian: FGrH 477 (where this fragment is F7b). Medea's rivalry with Hypsipyle would concern Jason, who slept with H. while visiting Lemnos.
[3] Sic, but actually Kaukalos (of Chios, C4-BCE historian: FGrH 38, where this fragment is F2).
[4] Morris Silver argues that the odor was "a mythological translation of the repulsive smell of murex-dye factories." See web address 2.
[5] cf. Herodotus 6.138.

Catharine Roth (modified translation) on 23 May 2002@19:27:01.
David Whitehead (augmented notes and keywords; cosmetics) on 24 May 2002@03:57:23.
David Whitehead (another keyword) on 16 November 2005@08:21:40.
David Whitehead (more x-refs; more keywords; tweaks and cosmetics) on 5 May 2008@09:24:52.
David Whitehead on 18 April 2013@05:13:49.
Catharine Roth (supplemented note) on 13 September 2013@09:21:33.
Catharine Roth (reordered links) on 16 May 2020@23:02:35.

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