Telchines

The sickle that opened the sky was made on an island, by hands that may not have been hands at all. Rhodes carried the name Telchinis long before it carried the name Rhodes, and the people it was named for worked bronze and iron in the first forges anyone in the Greek world could remember. They also poisoned crops for sport. Both things sit side by side in the ancient accounts, and not one writer who reports them seems entirely comfortable about it.

Their parentage is a mess, which is usually a sign that a figure is old. Diodorus makes them children of Thalassa, the sea itself. A commentary on Bacchylides gives them to Nemesis and Tartarus. Others say Pontus and Gaia, and one tradition has them springing from the blood that fell when Cronus unmanned his father, which would make them siblings of the Furies and would explain a great deal. Nonnus, writing at the far end of antiquity, simply calls them sons of Poseidon. Every version puts them in salt water and close to violence.

What they looked like is harder. The clearest description comes late, from Eustathius, who says they were sea beings without feet, the place of the hands taken by fins. The same passage offers an alternative that is stranger still: that they began as the hounds of Actaeon and were changed into men. Finned, footless, sometimes dog-headed, and the earliest Greek poets who mention them do not trouble to describe them at all. Three of their names do the work instead. Chryson, Argyron, Chalcon. Gold-worker, silver-worker, bronze-worker. Whatever shape they had, it was a shape that could hold a hammer.

In the workshop at Lindos the charcoal glows low and orange, and one of them leans in with a rag across its face against the sulphur reek of hot metal. A figure is coming up out of the bronze, the first god anyone has attempted in solid form. When it cools they will call it Apollo Telchinios, and it will still be standing there generations later.

That is not a claim the tradition makes lightly. Diodorus credits them with fashioning the first statues of the gods, and the cult titles bear him out: an Apollo Telchinios at Lindos, a Hera Telchinia at Camirus, a Hera and nymphs called Telchinian at Ialysus, and far off in Boeotia a sanctuary of Athena Telchinia at Teumessus that Pausanias found standing without any statue in it. Strabo says they were the first to work iron and brass, and that they fabricated the scythe for Cronus. Callimachus puts the trident in their hands as well, the three-forked sword with which Poseidon struck the mountains, levered the islands loose from their lowest foundations and rolled them into the sea. Statius sets them at Hephaestus’s shoulder helping to forge the cursed necklace of Harmonia, working in what he calls friendly rivalry of skill, which is very nearly the only warm sentence anyone writes about them.

They were trusted with children, too. Rhea handed the infant Poseidon into their care, and they raised him together with Capheira, a daughter of Oceanus. Strabo reports that nine of the Rhodian Telchines went with Rhea to Crete to rear the infant Zeus in his cave, and that those nine were the ones afterwards called Curetes. Their sister Halia caught Poseidon’s eye once he was grown, and bore him six sons and a daughter named Rhodos, who gave the island the name it still carries. For a while the Telchines were foster-family to half the sky.

Then the accounts turn, and they turn hard. The same Diodorus who praises their workmanship says they could summon cloud and rain and hail at their will and could even bring snow, exactly as the Magi of Persia could, that they could change their natural shapes, and that they were jealous of teaching their arts to others. Strabo says they drew the water of the Styx, mixed it with sulphur, and poured it over animals and growing things to destroy them. Ovid says the eyes were enough on their own, that everything their gaze fell on was defiled. Nonnus has them drenching the fields of fruitful Rhodes with the water of Tartarus until the soil went barren.

Strabo, to his credit, preserves the other reading. Some say the Telchines were maligners and sorcerers. Others say that because they excelled in workmanship they were maligned by rival workmen, and the bad name stuck. The record does not settle it. A guild of incoming smiths with unmatched skill and no interest in apprentices is precisely the kind of neighbour a community invents stories about, and the Greek vocabulary of spite sits close enough to their name that the joke more or less wrote itself.

Pindar puts the ending in the mouth of a king of Ceos who is still frightened decades afterwards. Thunderbolt and trident together, the sea shouldering up over the fields, a countless host going down into the depths of Tartarus in a single afternoon, and one house left standing with its walls dry.

That house belonged to Macelo, who had entertained Zeus and Apollo at her own table when they came to the island, and the gods left her and her daughter Dexithea unharmed when they overturned everything else. Every version of the end is a drowning of one kind or another. Ovid has Jupiter, in loathing, sink the Telchines of Ialysus beneath his brother’s waves. Servius says Apollo took the shape of a wolf and destroyed them. Diodorus, alone and oddly gentle about it, says they perceived Deucalion’s flood in advance, forsook the island before the water came and scattered; Lycus went to Lycia and dedicated the temple of Apollo Lycius beside the Xanthus, and the ones who had stayed behind drowned.

What outlasted them was the insult. Stesichorus was already using their name for death-spirits and darkenings, and by the classical period a telchin was simply a spiteful, carping person. Callimachus opened the Aetia by turning the word on his literary critics and telling the destructive race of maligners to be gone, which is how a Rhodian smith-god ended up as a term of abuse in a quarrel about poetry. Nonnus, centuries later still, dragged them back into service as sea-daimones in Dionysus’s Indian war, driving their father’s chariot across the surface of the Hydaspes without wetting the axle and tearing up fir trees by the roots to hurl at the enemy.

Their powers followed from what they were. Sea-born, they commanded weather and water and moved through both as easily as over land. Craftsmen of the first order, they made objects that carried divine force: a sickle that could unmake a sky god, a trident that could move islands. They could take any shape they pleased. Their gaze carried blight, and their hands could turn the underworld’s own river into a weapon.

Their limits followed from the same place. They were makers rather than fighters, and against the thunderbolt they had nothing at all. Their foresight was sharp enough to read a flood coming but not sharp enough to save more than a handful of them. Their secrecy, the flat refusal to teach, meant that when they went under the water there was no second generation to carry the craft anywhere. And hospitality beat them, which is the oddest detail in the whole cycle: an old woman set a table for two strangers, and her family walked out of a catastrophe that took everybody else.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who were the Telchines in Greek mythology?

The Telchines were sea-born smith-magicians who were the first inhabitants of Rhodes, an island once named Telchinis after them. Ancient sources make them children of Thalassa, of Pontus and Gaia, of Nemesis and Tartarus, or of Poseidon. They were credited with inventing metalworking and with a reputation for sorcery and malice that eventually got them destroyed by the gods.

What did the Telchines make?

The Telchines were said to be the first to work iron and bronze, and they forged two of the most consequential objects in Greek myth: the sickle Cronus used against his father Uranus, and Poseidon’s trident. They also fashioned the first statues of the gods, including an Apollo Telchinios at Lindos and a Hera Telchinia at Camirus. Statius has them assisting Hephaestus with the cursed necklace of Harmonia.

Why were the Telchines destroyed?

The Telchines were destroyed for using their magic to blight the land, mixing water from the river Styx with sulphur and pouring it over animals and crops to kill them. Ovid says their eyes alone defiled whatever they looked at, and that Jupiter sank them beneath the sea in disgust. Pindar describes Zeus and Poseidon sending the island and its population down into Tartarus with thunderbolt and trident.

What did the Telchines look like?

Ancient descriptions are late and sparse. Eustathius describes them as sea beings without feet, with fins in place of hands, and records a separate tradition that they were originally the hounds of Actaeon transformed into men, which is where the detail of dog-like heads comes from. The earliest Greek poets who name them give no physical description at all.

Why did Callimachus call his critics Telchines?

By the Hellenistic period the word telchin had become a Greek insult meaning a spiteful, fault-finding person, drawn from the Telchines’ reputation as maligners. Callimachus opened his Aetia by addressing his literary opponents as Telchines and telling the destructive race of maligners to be gone. Stesichorus had already used the name for death-spirits centuries earlier.

Related Entries

Halia, Poseidon, Rhea, Cronus, Uranus, Gaia, Pontus, Dactyl, Cabeiri, Cyclops, Hecatonchires, Hephaestus, Helios, Nemesis, Tartarus