Caanthus

According to Pausanias and later summaries of Theban tradition, Caanthus is counted among the offspring of Oceanus and Tethys and is brother to the nymph Melia. In the mythic generation contemporary with Cadmus and other early Theban figures, Oceanus ordered Caanthus to seek out his sister Melia after she had been carried off by Apollo. That mission and its consequences compose the core of Caanthus' recorded origin-narrative, preserved in literary and topographical descriptions of Thebes.

Surviving sources do not provide an iconographic or detailed physical description of Caanthus. He is presented in the literary and topographical record as a humanlike mythic actor and as a named tomb-owner in the Theban landscape rather than as a described statue or pictorial type. Pausanias reports the location of his burial 'near a spring above the Ismenion' (the Temple of Apollo at Thebes), and later compilers treat him primarily through his actions, genealogy, and the visible tomb that marked him in Thebes rather than through bodily attributes or costume.

The sources portray Caanthus as a mortal/semidivine actor (a son of Oceanus and Tethys) with no attendant catalogue of supernatural powers; his recorded deeds are filial questing, an act of arson, and consequent lethal retribution. Specifically, he obeyed Oceanus' command to look for his sister Melia, attempted to recover her from Apollo, and when unable to remove her from the god, set fire to Apollo's sanctuary. Apollo then shot and killed Caanthus. Because the tradition describes him as vulnerable to Apollo's divine power and provides no independent magical capacities, he functions in the sources as a local heroic/cult figure rather than a powerful divine or monstrous force.