Memnon- Greek HeroHero"King of the Ethiopians"

Son of the Dawn

Memnon was born to Eos, the rosy-fingered goddess of dawn, and Tithonus, a prince of the Trojan royal house. Tithonus was a son of Laomedon and brother to King Priam, making Memnon Priam's nephew. Eos had fallen in love with the beautiful mortal and carried him off to her palace in the east, as she had done with Cephalus and Orion before him.

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite preserves Tithonus's fate. Eos begged Zeus for immortality for her lover but forgot to ask for eternal youth. Tithonus lived on and on, growing ever older, his body withering, his voice fading to a thin whisper, until the goddess shut him away in a chamber where he babbled endlessly — immortal but ruined. Some traditions say he shriveled into a cicada, the insect whose ceaseless chirping echoes through the dawn.

King of the Ethiopians

Memnon ruled the Ethiopians, a people the Greeks placed at the edges of the world, where the Dawn arose each morning. Homer describes them as blameless folk with whom the gods themselves feasted.

Before he marched to Troy, Eos petitioned Hephaestus to forge divine armor for her son, just as Thetis would later do for Achilles. The smith god crafted a panoply that made Memnon nearly invincible.

The March to Troy

After Hector fell to Achilles, Troy needed a new champion. Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, came and died on his spear as well.

Then Memnon arrived with his Ethiopian host. As Priam's nephew, he had blood calling him to the city's defense. The Aethiopis, a lost epic of the Trojan Cycle, was built around his arrival and his duel with Achilles.

Champion of Troy

His divine armor turned blows that would have felled ordinary men, and his strength on the field recalled Hector's.

He killed Antilochus, the young son of Nestor. Memnon attacked the aged king of Pylos, whose chariot horse had been wounded, leaving him stranded on the battlefield. Antilochus rushed to shield his father, throwing himself between Nestor and the Ethiopian king. He gave his life to save the old man. Pindar holds this up in the Pythian Odes as the supreme example of a son's duty to his father. But Antilochus had been dearest to Achilles after the fallen Patroclus, and his death called up the same grief and fury that had driven Achilles against Hector.

The Weighing of Fates

Achilles sought out Memnon for single combat on the plain before Troy. Both were sons of goddesses, both wore armor forged by Hephaestus.

Before the duel, Zeus took up his golden scales — the Psychostasia, the weighing of souls. Eos and Thetis each pleaded before his throne for the life of their son. Greek artists returned to this scene again and again: Zeus with his scales, two mothers kneeling on either side, arms raised. Pausanias describes a painting of it by Polygnotus at Delphi, and the scene appears on Attic red-figure vases. Two mothers, two sons, and a balance that must tip. Memnon's fate sank downward.

Death and Immortality

Both fought with divine weapons, and the armies stood back to watch. Achilles drove his spear through Memnon, and the Ethiopian king fell on the plain of Troy, far from the eastern lands where his mother rose each morning.

Eos would not let her son vanish into Hades. She wept over his corpse and pleaded with Zeus, who granted Memnon immortality. From his funeral pyre sprang a flock of birds — the Memnonides — born from the ashes and smoke. Ovid describes how they returned each year to Memnon's tomb, divided into two groups, and fought among themselves until half fell dead: an eternal blood offering reenacting the war that claimed their progenitor.

The Tears of Dawn

Each morning, the dewdrops that appear at dawn were said to be the tears of Eos, still weeping for her son.

In later antiquity, two massive stone statues at Thebes in Egypt became associated with Memnon. The "Colossi of Memnon" actually depicted the pharaoh Amenhotep III, but Greeks and Romans claimed the Ethiopian king. One of the statues produced a musical sound at dawn when the first rays of sunlight struck it — Memnon greeting his mother. Strabo and Pausanias both record the phenomenon, and visitors from across the Roman world carved their names on the statue's base after hearing the sound. Repairs in the third century CE silenced the voice of Memnon for good.