Inachus

Inachus is presented in Greek myth as the eldest king of Argos and in many sources as a river-god born of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. As an eponymous ancestor he gives his name to the Inachus River and the land (the country was frequently called the land of Inachus). Ancient commentators sometimes euhemerized or etymologized his name, treating him as an early immigrant ruler (compared to an Oriental term Enak) or as the founder who reestablished habitation after a deluge and divided territory among his sons.

Literary sources do not supply a fixed anthropomorphic portrait of Inachus. As a literary river-divinity he belongs to the general iconographic category of Greek river-gods, which ancient art often represents as a bull-bodied figure with a human head or face; as a king/priest he is described by office and action rather than consistent physical detail. Sources therefore treat his appearance variably as a numinous river-personification or as an ancestral human ruler.

Inachus functions primarily as an eponymous river-personification and founding king: mythically implicated in the regulation of waters (he is part of the account explaining why certain rivers flow only in rainy seasons after Poseidon removed their waters in anger), credited with confining waters after a deluge to make Argolis habitable, and regarded as first priest and king of Argos who performed sacrifices to Hera. He also acts in judicial and mediatory capacities with the other river-gods in the contest between Poseidon and Hera and is father to key Argive figures (Io, Phoroneus, Aegialeus/Phegeus, Mycene, Amymone, etc.).