Chrysopeleia

In the account preserved in later summaries of classical sources (notably the scholia on Lycophron attributed to John Tzetzes as reported in modern compilations), the tree in which Chrysopeleia dwelt was imperiled by the floodwaters of a mountain torrent. Arcas, hunting nearby, intervened: he rerouted the river and constructed a dam to secure the tree. Following this rescue Chrysopeleia became Arcas's lover and bore him two sons, Apheidas and Elatus. The narrative places her as an Arcadian hamadryad whose fate is tied to a specific tree and whose intimate relation with a mortal integrates her into human genealogical lines.

No specific, contemporary ancient description of Chrysopeleia's individual appearance survives in the provided sources. She is identified categorically as a hamadryad (a dryad bound to a single tree), and modern and secondary summaries of dryad imagery describe dryads generically as female nature-spirits often pictured with human form suffused with arboreal features (for example, hair like leaves or skin with bark-like aspects). Those general dryad attributes are descriptive conventions from the broader dryad tradition rather than attested physical details for Chrysopeleia herself; the primary attestations supplied name her role and fate but do not record a distinctive visual portrait.

The sources attest that Chrysopeleia is a hamadryad whose life is ontologically bound to the life of her tree: if the tree were to die, the hamadryad would die as well. In the narrative preserved in summaries, her agencies are largely relational and reproductive—after being rescued by Arcas she forms a sexual partnership with him and bears two sons, Apheidas and Elatus—demonstrating that nymphs in Greek myth can intermarry or couple with mortals and enter human genealogies. General dryad lore present in the same corpora also indicates that tree-nymphs as a class could punish or be offended by mortals who harmed trees without propitiation, but that punitive behavior is a customary attribute of dryads in general and is not a specific recorded action of Chrysopeleia in the surviving account.