Epaphus

Son of Zeus and Io, born at the mouth of the Nile when Zeus restored Io's human form with a touch — the name *Epaphos* ('he of the touch') is the Greek etiology (Aesch. *Prom.* 851–852 + *Supplices* 313–315; Apollod. *Bib.* 2.1.3). The Greek tradition identified him with the Egyptian Apis-bull cult and made him the founder of Memphis (Hdt. 2.153; Apollod. 2.1.4). Father of Libya (eponym of the African continent) by the nymph Memphis daughter of the Nile; through her his descendants are Belus, Danaus, and Aegyptus — the ancestral line of the Argolid Danaids who return west in the *Suppliants*. Ovid *Met.* 1.747–749 keeps him as the childhood friend of Phaethon whose taunt — 'you are only the son of a mortal' — sends Phaethon east to confront Helios.