Galinthias

Galinthias, in Greek mythology, a friend (or servant) of Alcmene, the mother of Zeus’s son Heracles (Hercules). When Alcmene was in labour, Zeus’s jealous wife, Hera, sent her daughter Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to sit outside Alcmene’s bedroom with her legs crossed and held together by both hands with intertwined fingers—thus by magic delaying the delivery in order to foil Zeus’s plans for the boy (see Ate). Alcmene’s labour continued for days until Galinthias, in some accounts aided by the Furies, tricked Eileithyia by announcing the baby’s birth. The goddess, startled, unclasped her hands and jumped to her feet, allowing Hercules to be born. As punishment for this act, Hera transformed Galinthias into a weasel. The goddess Hecate, however, took pity on her and made her an attendant, and Heracles later built her a temple.

The story of Galinthias is told by the 2nd-century-bc Greek poet Nicander—whose version was preserved in a prose summary by the 2nd-century-ad mythographer Antoninus Liberalis—and by the 1st-century-ad Roman poet Ovid in Book IX of Metamorphoses. A different version of Heracles’ birth appears in the 2nd-century-ad work of the Greek geographer and historian Pausanias; in this telling, it was Tiresias’s daughter Historis who fooled Eileithyia.