Local variations occur in the use of the word as applied to people. In the West Indies it designates the descendants of any European race; in the United States the French-speaking native portion of the white race in Louisiana, whether of French or Spanish origin. The French Canadians are never termed creoles, nor is the word now used of the South Americans of Spanish or Portuguese descent, but in Mexico whites of pure Spanish extraction are still called creoles. In all the countries named, when a non-white creole is indicated the word negro is added. In Mauritius, Reunion, &c., on the other hand, creole is commonly used to designate the black population, but is also occasionally used of the inhabitants of European descent. The difference in type between the white creoles and the European races from whom they have sprung, a difference often considerable, is due principally to changed environment—especially to the tropical or semi-tropical climate of the lands they inhabit. The many patois founded on French and Spanish, and used chiefly by creole negroes, are spoken of as creole languages, a term extended by some writers to include similar dialects spoken in countries where the word creole is rarely used.
See G. W. Cable, The Creoles of Louisiana (1884); A. Coelho, “Os Dialetos romanicos on neo latinos na Africa, Asia e America,” Bol. Soc. Geo. Lisboa (1884-1886), with bibliography. For the Creole French of Haiti see an article by Sir H. H. Johnston in The Times, April 10th, 1909.
CREON, in Greek legend, son of Lycaethus, king of Corinth and father of Glauce or Creusa, the second wife of Jason.
CREON, in Greek legend, son of Menoeceus, king of Thebes after the death of Laius, the husband of his sister Jocasta. Thebes was then suffering from the visitation of the Sphinx, and Creon offered his crown and the hand of the widowed queen to whoever should solve the fatal riddle. Oedipus, the son of Laius, ignorant of his parentage, successfully accomplished the task and married Jocasta, his mother. By her he had two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, who agreed after their father’s death to reign in alternative years. Eteocles first ascended the throne, being the elder, but at the end of the year refused to resign, whereupon his brother attacked him at the head of an army of Argives. The war was to be decided by a single combat between the brothers, but both fell. Creon, who had resumed the government during the minority of Leodamas, the son of Eteocles, commanded that the Argives, and above all Polyneices, the cause of all the bloodshed, should not receive the rites of sepulture, and that any one who infringed this decree should be buried alive. Antigone, the sister of Polyneices, refused to obey, and sprinkled dust upon her brother’s corpse. The threatened penalty was inflicted; but Creon’s crime did not escape unpunished. His son, Haemon, the lover of Antigone, killed himself on her grave; and he himself was slain by Theseus. According to another account he was put to death by Lycus, the son or descendant of a former ruler of Thebes (Euripides, Herc. Fur. 31; Apollodorus iii. 5, 7; Pausanias ix. 5).
CREOPHYLUS of Samos, one of the earliest Greek epic poets. According to an epigram of Callimachus (quoted in Strabo xiv. p. 638) he was the author of a poem called Οἰχαλίας ἅλωσις , which told the story of the conquest of Oechalia by Heracles. Creophylus was said to have been a friend or relative of Homer, who, according to another tradition, was himself the author of the ῞Αλωσις, and presented it to Creophylus in return for the latter’s hospitality.
See F. G. Welcker, Der epische Cyclus (1865-1882).