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Ixion

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Ixion

In Greek mythology, a king of Thessaly who dropped his father-in-law into a pit of buring coals to avoid paying bridal dues for his wife Dia. Purified and carried to Olympus by Zeus, he embraced the cloud phantom Nephele, whom he believed to be the goddess Hera, and fathered the centaurs (creatures half man, half horse). The vengeful Zeus chained him to a fiery wheel moving perpetually in Tartarus, a place of punishment in the underworld.

In a variation by the Theban poet Pindar, Ixion's union with Nephele produced a son, Centaurus, who mated with the mares on Mount Pelion, Thessaly, and so fathered the centaurs.



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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
And now it is the time; from Hell's abyss Come thirsting Tantalus, come Sisyphus Heaving the cruel stone, come Tityus With vulture, and with wheel Ixion come, And come the sisters of the ceaseless toil; And all into this breast transfer their pains, And (if such tribute to despair be due) Chant in their deepest tones a doleful dirge Over a corse unworthy of a shroud.
Don Quixote by Cervantes, Miguel View in context
It was a modern parallel to the case of Ixion embracing a cloud, and was so much the more ridiculous as the Judge prided himself on eschewing all airy matter, and never mistaking a shadow for a substance.
House Of Seven Gables by Hawthorne, Nathaniel View in context
Never yet have I been so overpowered by passion neither for goddess nor mortal woman as I am at this moment for yourself--not even when I was in love with the wife of Ixion who bore me Pirithous, peer of gods in counsel, nor yet with Danae the daintily-ancled daughter of Acrisius, who bore me the famed hero Perseus.
The Iliad by Homer View in context
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