Arethusa (Ithaca)



In Greek mythology, Arethusa (Ἀρέθουσα) is a minor figure from Ithaca who is transformed into a fountain bearing her name. Her story survives in scholia on Homer's epic poem the Odyssey.

Mythology
Arethusa was a woman from the island of Ithaca; other than a son, no other family or lineage of hers is preserved. According to an anonymous scholiast on Homer, Arethusa had a son named Corax (meaning "raven") who was a hunter. One day while hunting a hare, Corax accidentally fell off a cliff and died. Out of grief for losing her son, the inconsolable Arethusa was transformed into a fountain bearing her name on the spot Corax died, while the rock there took the name of the dead son thereafter.

In the Odyssey, after returning home following a long ten-year long journey, the disguised king Odysseus finds his slave Eumaeus tending the swine which graze next to the rock of Corax and the fountain of Arethusa.

Arethusa was a common name for springs in antiquity; today a spring with the same name in Pera Pigadi on Ithaca can be potentially identified with the mythological one, but much of this is speculative.