Megamēde, the wife of Thestius, mother by him of 50 daughters. Apollodorus, bk. 2.
Meganīra, the wife of Celeus king of Eleusis in Attica. She was mother of Triptolemus, to whom Ceres, as she travelled over Attica, taught agriculture. She received divine honours after death, and she had an altar raised to her, near the fountain where Ceres had first been seen when she arrived in Attica. Pausanias, bk. 1, ch. 39.——The wife of Arcas. Apollodorus.
Megapenthes, an illegitimate son of Menelaus, who, after his father’s return from the Trojan war, was married to a daughter of Alector, a native of Sparta. His mother’s name was Teridae, a slave of Menelaus. Homer, Odyssey, bk. 4.—Apollodorus, bk. 3.
Megāra, a daughter of Creon king of Thebes, given in marriage to Hercules, because he had delivered the Thebans from the tyranny of the Orchomenians. See: [Erginus]. When Hercules went to hell by order of Eurystheus, violence was offered to Megara by Lycus, a Theban exile, and she would have yielded to her ravisher had not Hercules returned that moment and punished him with death. This murder displeased Juno, and she rendered Hercules so delirious, that he killed Megara and the three children he had by her, in a fit of madness, thinking them to be wild beasts. Some say that Megara did not perish by the hand of her husband, but that he afterwards married her to his friend Iolas. The names of Megara’s children by Hercules were Creontiades, Therimachus, and Deicoon. Hyginus, fable 82.—Seneca, Hercules.—Apollodorus, bk. 2, ch. 6.—Diodorus, bk. 4.
Megāra (æ, and plural, orum), a city of Achaia, the capital of a country called Megaris, founded about 1131 B.C. It is situate nearly at an equal distance from Corinth and Athens, on the Sinus Saronicus. It was built upon two rocks, and is still in being, and preserves its ancient name. It was called after Megareus the son of Neptune, who was buried there, or from Megareus, a son of Apollo. It was originally governed by 12 kings, but became afterwards a republic, and fell into the hands of the Athenians, from whom it was rescued by the Heraclidæ. At the battle of Salamis the people of Megara furnished 20 ships for the defence of Greece, and at Platæa they had 300 men in the army of Pausanias. There was here a sect of philosophers called the Megaric, who held the world to be eternal. Cicero, Academica, bk. 4, ch. 42; On Oratory, bk. 3, ch. 17; Letters to Atticus, bk. 1, ltr. 8.—Pausanias, bk. 1, ch. 39.—Strabo, bk. 6.—Mela, bk. 2, ch. 3.——A town of Sicily, founded by a colony from Megara in Attica, about 728 years before the christian era. It was destroyed by Gelon king of Syracuse; and before the arrival of the Megarean colony it was called Hybla. Strabo, [♦]bk. 6, &c.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 3, li. 689.
[♦] ‘26’ replaced with ‘6’
Megareus, the father of Hippomenes, was son of Onchestus. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 10, li. 605.——A son of Apollo.
Megāris, a small country of Achaia, between Phocis on the west and Attica on the east. Its capital city was called Megara. See: [Megara]. Strabo, bk. 8.—Pliny, bk. 3, ch. 8.—Mela, bk. 2, chs. 3 & 7.
Megarsus, a town of Sicily,——of Cilicia.——A river of India.
Megasthĕnes, a Greek historian in the age of Seleucus Nicanor, about 300 years before Christ. He wrote about the oriental nations, and particularly the Indians. His history is often quoted by the ancients. What now passes as his composition is spurious.