Nauplius (mythology)

[8] This Nauplius was reputed to have been the eponymous founder of Nauplia (modern Nafplion) in Argolis,[9] and a famous navigator who discovered the constellation Ursa Major (Great Bear).

According to Apollodorus, the son of Poseidon and Amymone, and the father of Palamedes are one person who "lived to a great age".

The third is the story of Nauplius' revenge for the unjust killing of Palamedes, by the Greeks during the Trojan War.

According to the tradition followed by Euripides in his lost play Cretan Women (Kressai), Catreus, the king of Crete, found his daughter Aerope in bed with a slave and handed her over to Nauplius to be drowned, but Nauplius spared Aerope's life and she married Pleisthenes, who was the king of Mycenae.

[17] Sophocles, in his play Ajax, may also refer to Aerope's father Catreus finding her in bed with some man, and handing her over to Nauplius to be drowned, but the possibly corrupt text may instead refer to Aerope's husband Atreus finding her in bed with Thyestes, and having her drowned.

[18] However, according to another tradition, known to Apollodorus, Catreus, because an oracle had said that he would be killed by one of his children, gave his daughters Aerope and Clymene to Nauplius to sell in a foreign land, but instead Nauplius gave Aerope to Pleisthenes (as in Euripides) and himself took Clymene as his wife.

[19] A similar story to that of Aerope's, is that of Auge, the daughter of Aleus, king of Tegea, and the mother of the hero Telephus.

[20] Sophocles wrote a tragedy Aleadae (The sons of Aleus), which told the story of Auge and Telephus.

[21] The play is lost and only fragments remain, but a declamation attributed to the fourth century BC orator Alcidamas probably used Sophocles' Aleadae for one of its sources.

[24] Nauplius' son Palamedes fought in the Trojan War, but was killed by his fellow Greeks, as a result of Odysseus' treachery.

When Agamemnon's section of the Greek fleet was sailing home from Troy, they were caught in a great storm—the storm in which Ajax the Lesser died—off the perilous southern coastline of Euboea, at Cape Caphereus, a notorious place which later became known by the name Xylophagos ('Eater of Timber').

[41] Sophocles has Nauplius give a speech in defense of Palamedes, listing his many inventions and discoveries, which much benefitted the Greek army.