Hii sachi #2nd ask !! =D . my ask has to do with #bolina myth. usually the story says bolina fled to sea in an attempt to dismiss the advances of [Apollo] but this is wrong below is an extract of pussanias's description of greece book (doesn't) mentions apollo pursuing her whatsoever .
Apollon, says a legend, fell in love with a maiden called Bolina [who lived at Boline in Akhaia], who fleeing to the sea here threw herself into it, and by the favour of Apollon became an immortal."
the narrative of apollo trying to pursue her and to escape his advaces she fled to sea and on the spot where she fell the town bolina was formed is found on wiki only but geographically it ain't true .
because boline was a ancinet town in achae , greece and i-m gonna prove the town bolina was in existence long before bolina (mortal) was . so what wiki says is false and maybe you can spot some plotholes in pussanias descriptions :
The above text is from pussanias . it says town bolina stood by river volineous (roman bolinaeous) and next to the river juts out a cape (meaning sickle) drepanum and the story goes like : cronus dropped the sickle he used to castrate his father into the river volinaeous resulting in cape drepanum formation and cronus and his father are titans by this time apollo (Olympian) isn't born even at this time so bolina (mortal) isn't the reason behind the name of (boline) town and river (volineous/bolinaeous) .
on another hand , it could be possible apollo saved the mortal bolina (if there was one) and immortalized her but no , there's no pursuing very similar to the myth of him where he saved his lover sisters who were trying to fled from their abusive father and apollo saved them two and they were turned into goddessess.
Overall , this myth of bolina has so many plotholes becaue there are so many bolinas lol (town , river , mortal) .. maybe this myth was an attempt to explain how the town boline came into existance but it flopped . I love your blog ! It's a shame people invented these sort of false myths to paint him bad and not lucky in love . Keep up the great work !
Okay, I hadn't given much attention to this myth but now that I've reread it, it really seems like there's room for more kinds of interpretation of this passage!
I (and I'm sure a lot of people too) went with the "Apollo chased her and she threw herself off the cliff to escape him" narrative by default because of the Daphne myth, and also because nymphs and maidens trying to run away from the gods is a fairly common scenario in greek myths.
And you know what, your interpretation is very plausible too! It does seem similar to Hemithea and Parthenos myth. Apollo fell in love with Bolina, saw her trying to kill herself for whatever reasons and made her immortal. It's sweet! 😭
And regarding the timeline: inconsistencies in timeline happens often in greek myths. But in this case, maybe that river/sea had a different name when Kronos threw the sickle into it, and it got renamed after the Bolina town was built.
