Alpheus (deity)

[5] Through him, Alpheus was the grandfather of Diocles, and great-grandfather of a pair of soldiers, Crethon and Orsilochus, who were slain by Aeneas during the Trojan War.

[10] This story is related somewhat differently by the Roman writer Ovid: Arethusa, a beautiful nymph, once while bathing in the river Alpheus in Arcadia, was surprised and pursued by the river god; but the goddess Artemis took pity upon her and changed her into a well, which flowed under the earth to the island of Ortygia.

Once, it is said, when pursued by him she fled to Letrini in Elis, and here she covered her face and those of her companions (nymphs) with mud, so that Alpheus could not discover or distinguish her, and was obliged to return.

[14] In these accounts two or more distinct stories seem to be mixed up together, but they probably originated in the popular belief that there was a natural subterranean communication between the river Alpheios and the well Arethusa.

[3] Alpheus was also the river which Heracles, in the fifth of his labours, rerouted in order to clean the filth from the Augean Stables in a single day, a task which had been presumed to be impossible.

A tetradrachm of Gelon , tyrant of Syracuse , minted c. 485 BC. The obverse depicts Alpheus, referring to the foundation myth of Syracuse. [ 1 ]
An engraving by Bernard Picart depicting a scene from Ovid 's Metamorphoses in which Alpheus attempts to capture the nymph Arethusa .
La Ninfa Aretusa by Alexandre Crauk