Crotopus (Κρότωπος)

Crotopus appears in the legendary past of Argive tradition as the eighth king of Argos. In the principal account summarized in the sources, his daughter Psamathe bears a child by Apollo; Crotopus condemns or executes Psamathe, and the exposed child (named Linus in the tradition) is later killed by the king's sheepdogs. Apollo punishes Argos with a plague. An oracle directs the veneration of the mother and child and prescribes remedies; in Conon's version the oracle further requires Crotopus to banish himself and found a city in the Megarid called Tripodiscium (Tripodiskion). Variant accounts (e.g., Pausanias, Statius) substitute a hero, Coroebus, who slays a monster called Poena that had been snatching babies, and in those versions the penance of founding the tripod city falls on the hero rather than the king.

The supplied sources give no physical or iconographic description of Crotopus. He is represented as a dynastic/royal figure in king-lists (identified as son of Agenor in some summaries and as successor in Argive lineage). One summary notes a reign-length of twenty-one years placed within mythic chronological markers (contemporaneous with accounts of Phaethon and Deucalion in some sources), but no bodily attributes are recorded in the provided materials.

No supernatural powers are attributed to Crotopus in the provided sources; he is portrayed as a human king exercising judicial and familial authority. His notable actions are punitive: he condemns his daughter Psamathe and thus sets in motion divine retaliation by Apollo. In at least one account he accepts oracle-imposed expiation by leaving Argos and founding Tripodiscium, acting as a penitent political agent rather than a supernatural actor.