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[709] Μολίονε, the same as the “Ἀκτορίωνε” Kteatos and Eurytos, 2.621; see 750 below. They played a great part in the Epic stories of Herakles, according to which they were slain in the campaign against Augeias. See Pindar O. x. 2638; Paus.v. 1. 11-2. 2. The Homeric poems know them only as twin sons of Poseidon, and leaders of the Epeians. The two names “Ἀκτορίων” and “Μολίων” are both obscure. In form they are of course patronymics, but they cannot both be so in reality, for they appear together in 750, and Homer never uses two patronymics together. The ordinary explanation is that Aktor was their nominal father, as Herakles is called son of Amphitryon, and that “Μολίων” is a metronymic from their mother “Μολιόνη” or “Μολίνη” (so Pausan. v. 2. 2). This is unlikely; the form “Μολίονε” is against it (though we may perhaps compare “Δευκαλίδης” = son of “Δευκαλίων”), and metronymics are almost unknown in Greece (Nessos, however, is “Φιλυρίδης” from his mother in Hesiod and Pindar). Others have proposed to derive both “Μολιόνη” and “Μολίων” from a supposed “Μόλος”, ancestor of the mother. For this there is no ground. The name Aktor is itself derived from “Ἀκτορίων”, not vice versa; the grandfather of Patroklos (785) is of course a different person. Later mythology made of the two brethren a pair of Siamese twins, “διφυεῖς”, with two heads and four legs and arms, but only one body (so Schol. A here and on 23.638, and apparently as early as Ibykos; see fr. 16, Bergk, where they are called “ἑνίγυιοι”). Welcker ingeniously, but not very probably, explained them as a personification of the two mill-stones (mola, “μύλη”), and hence sons of Aktor ‘the crusher.’ Others have seen in the name “Μολίων” an appellative meaning ‘the warlike,’ “ὁ μετὰ μῶλον ἰών”, and Hesych. explains the word as “μαχητής”. So also Eustath. Others, including W.-M. Her. ^{2} 13, more wisely abandon etymological interpretations, and recognise another instance of the divine twin brethren worshipped elsewhere as “Ἄνακες, Διὸς κοῦροι”, Tyndaridai, Apharetidai, etc.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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  • Commentary references from this page (2):
    • Homer, Iliad, 2.621
    • Pausanias, Description of Greece, 5.1.11
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