Arcesius

In Greek Mythology, Arcesius (also spelled Arceisius, Arkeisios and Arcisius; Ancient Greek: Ἀρκείσιος) was the son of either Zeus or Cephalus, and king in Ithaca.

According to scholia on the Odyssey, Arcesius' parents were Zeus and Euryodeia;^[1] Ovid also writes of Arcesius as a son of Zeus.^[2] Other sources make him a son of Cephalus. Aristotle in his lost work The State of the Ithacians cited a myth according to which Cephalus was instructed by an oracle to mate with the first female being he should encounter if he wanted to have offspring; Cephalus mated with a she-bear, who then transformed into a human woman and bore him a son, Arcesius.^[3] Hyginus makes Arcesius a son of Cephalus and Procris,^[4] while Eustathius and the exegetical scholia to the Iliad report a version according to which Arcesius was a grandson of Cephalus through Cillus or Celeus.^[5]

Zeus made Arcesius' line one of "only sons": his only son was Laertes, whose only son was Odysseus, whose only son was Telemachus.^[6] Arcesius's wife (and thus mother of Laertes) was Chalcomedusa.^[7]

Arceisiades (Ancient Greek: Ἀρκεισιάδης) was a patronymic from Arcesius, which Laertes as well as his son, Odysseus, is designated by. ^[8]

Of another Arcesius, an architect, Vitruvius (vii, introduction) notes: "Arcesius, on the Corinthian order proportions, and on the Ionic order temple of Aesculapius at Tralles, which it is said that he built with his own hands."

• Homer. The Odyssey, Book XVI, in The Iliad & The Odyssey. Trans. Samuel Butler. p. 625. ISBN 978-1-4351-1043-4.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Arceisiades". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 253.

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