On the whole it is probable that Hyacinthus belongs originally to the pre-Dorian period, and that his story was appropriated and woven into their own Apollo myth by the conquering Dorians. Possibly he may be the apotheosis of a pre-Dorian king of Amyclae. J. G. Frazer further suggests that he may have been regarded as spending the winter months in the underworld and returning to earth in the spring when the “hyacinth” blooms. In this case his festival represents perhaps both the Dorian conquest of Amyclae and the death of spring before the ardent heat of the summer sun, typified as usual by the discus (quoit) with which Apollo is said to have slain him. With the growth of the hyacinth from his blood should be compared the oriental stories of violets springing from the blood of Attis, and roses and anemones from that of Adonis. As a youthful vegetation god, Hyacinthus may be compared with Linus and Scephrus, both of whom are connected with Apollo Agyieus.
See L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, vol. iv. (1907), pp. 125 foll., 264 foll.; J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris (1906), bk. ii. ch. 7; S. Wide, Lakonische Kulte, p. 290; E. Rhode, Psyche, 3rd ed. i. 137 foll.; Roscher, Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Myth., s.v. “Hyakinthos” (Greve); L. Preller, Griechische Mythol. 4th ed. i. 248 foll.
(J. M. M.)
[1] The word is probably derived from an Indo-European root, meaning “youthful,” found in Latin, Greek, English and Sanskrit. Some have suggested that the first two letters are from ὕειν, to rain, (cf. Hyades).
HYADES (“the rainy ones”), in Greek mythology, the daughters of Atlas and Aethra; their number varies between two and seven. As a reward for having brought up Zeus at Dodona and taken care of the infant Dionysus Hyes, whom they conveyed to Ino (sister of his mother Semele) at Thebes when his life was threatened by Lycurgus, they were translated to heaven and placed among the stars (Hyginus, Poët. astron. ii. 21). Another form of the story combines them with the Pleiades. According to this they were twelve (or fifteen) sisters, whose brother Hyas was killed by a snake while hunting in Libya (Ovid, Fasti, v. 165; Hyginus, Fab. 192). They lamented him so bitterly that Zeus, out of compassion, changed them into stars—five into the Hyades, at the head of the constellation of the Bull, the remainder into the Pleiades. Their name is derived from the fact that the rainy season commenced when they rose at the same time as the sun (May 7-21); the original conception of them is that of the fertilizing principle of moisture. The Romans derived the name from ὗς (pig), and translated it by Suculae (Cicero, De nat. deorum, ii. 43).
HYATT, ALPHEUS (1838-1902), American naturalist, was born at Washington, D.C., on the 5th of April 1838. From 1858 to 1862 he studied at Harvard, where he had Louis Agassiz for his master, and in 1863 he served as a volunteer in the Civil War, attaining the rank of captain. In 1867 he was appointed curator of the Essex Institute at Salem, and in 1870 became professor of zoology and palaeontology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (resigned 1888), and custodian of the Boston Society of Natural History (curator in 1881). In 1886 he was appointed assistant for palaeontology in the Cambridge museum of comparative anatomy, and in 1889 was attached to the United States Geological Survey as palaeontologist for the Trias and Jura. He was the chief founder of the American Society of Naturalists, of which he acted as first president in 1883, and he also took a leading part in establishing the marine biological laboratories at Annisquam and Woods Hole, Mass. He died at Cambridge on the 15th of January 1902.
His works include Observations on Fresh-water Polyzoa (1866); Fossil Cephalopods of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (1872); Revision of North American Porifera (1875-1877); Genera of Fossil Cephalopoda (1883); Larval Theory of the Origin of Cellular Tissue (1884); Genesis of the Arietidae (1889); and Phylogeny of an acquired characteristic (1894). He wrote the section on Cephalopoda in Karl von Zittel’s Paläontologie (1900), and his well-known study on the fossil pond snails of Steinheim (“The Genesis of the Tertiary Species of Planorbis at Steinheim”) appeared in the Memoirs of the Boston Natural History Society in 1880. He was one of the founders and editors of the American Naturalist.