ARISTEITS (from a Greek word signifying the best), an ancient divinity whose wor ship in the earliest times was widely diffused throughout Greece, but whose myth is remarkably obscure. According to the common tradition, he was the son of Apollo and Cyrene, the latter the granddaughter of Peneius, a river-god of Thessaly. She is said to have given birth to A. on the coast of Libya, in Africa, whence the region is alleged to have derived its name of Cyrenaica. Hermes placed the child under the protection of the Horn, the fosterers of cities, culture, and education. According to another tra dition, A. was the son of the nymph Melissa, who fed the infant with nectar and ambro sia, and afterwards intrusted his education to Chiron. The great diversities in the legend were probably caused by the fusion into one of separate local divinities, whose functions were similar, and whose histories were, in consequence, carelessly commin gled. After A. left Libya, he went to Thebes, in Bceotia, where he was taught by the muses the arts of healing and prophecy, and where he married Autonoe, the daughter of Cadmus, by whom he had several children. After the unfortunate death his son
Action (q.v.), he went to Ceos, where he liberated the inhabitants from the miseries of a destructive drought by erecting an altar to Zeus Icm.rus—i.e., the rain-maker. He now returned to his native land; but shortly after, set out a second time on a voyage of beneficence. He visited the islands of the .rEgean sea, Sicily, Sardinia, and Magna Groccia, leaving everywhere traces of his divine benignity. At last he went to Thrace, where he was initiated in the mysteries of Dionysus: and after a brief residence in the vicinity of Mt. Iheinus, lie disappeared from the earth.
This myth is one of an extremely pleasing character, from the invariable beneficence which is attributed to A. It is less disfigured by anthropopathic errors than most of the myths of Greek divinities. A. was especially worshiped as the protector of vine and olive plantations, and of hunters and herdsmen. He also trained men to keep bee hives, and averted the burning heats of the sun from the open fields. Later mythology often identified A. with the higher gods Zeus, Apollo, Dionysus.