Phineus- Greek FigureMortal"Blind Seer of Salmydessus"
Also known as: Phineas and Φινεύς
Description
Thracian seer-king struck blind by Zeus for revealing too much of the future. The Harpies fouled every meal set before him, leaving him to starve amidst plenty, until the Argonauts arrived and the winged Boreads drove the creatures away. In gratitude, Phineus revealed the secret of navigating the Clashing Rocks.
Mythology & Lore
The Blind King
Phineus was a king of Salmydessus in Thrace who possessed the gift of prophecy. His parentage is disputed — some sources make him a son of Poseidon, others a descendant of the Phoenician king Agenor — but all agree on his extraordinary foresight and the ruin it brought him. He used his gift so freely, revealing Zeus’s plans to mortals, that the god struck him blind and sent the Harpies to torment him. These winged creatures descended whenever food was set before the king, snatching it away or fouling it with filth so that Phineus could never eat. He wasted away in his palace, starving amidst plenty.
Other traditions offer different causes for his blindness. In one, he chose long life over sight when Helios offered the choice. In another — the version Sophocles alludes to in his choral ode — Phineus blinded his own sons by his first wife Cleopatra after his second wife Idaea falsely accused them of assault. The gods punished this cruelty in kind, taking Phineus’s sight as he had taken his sons’.
The Argonauts at Salmydessus
When the Argonauts arrived at Salmydessus during their voyage to Colchis, they found Phineus emaciated and desperate. Among the crew were Calais and Zetes, the winged sons of Boreas — Phineus’s former brothers-in-law through his first wife Cleopatra, who was Boreas’s daughter. The Boreads pursued the Harpies across the sky, driving them far from Salmydessus. In some versions, Iris intervened to spare the Harpies’ lives, extracting a promise that they would never return.
The Secret of the Symplegades
In gratitude, Phineus shared his prophetic knowledge with Jason. He revealed how to navigate the Symplegades, the Clashing Rocks that guarded the entrance to the Black Sea and crushed any ship that tried to pass between them. Phineus instructed them to release a dove through the rocks first: if the bird survived, the Argo could follow at full speed before the rocks closed again. The Argonauts followed his advice. The dove passed through losing only its tail feathers, and the Argo scraped through with slight damage to its stern. After the Argo’s passage, the Symplegades became fixed in place forever.