Memnon
3 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Memnon. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
in Greek legend, an Ethiopian hero of the Trojan War. He is mentioned in the Homeric poems, and is thought by certain critics to typify "the eastern sun summoned to oppose the enemies of darkness from the west." Memnon, according to fable, was the son of Tithonus, and Eos, or Aurora, the Dawn. After the death of Hector, he led a host of Ethiopians to the aid of Troy. He wore bright armor made by Hephaestus, and performed prodigies of valor. He was slain at last by Achilles. Several stories are told of the disposition of his body, the most popular being that Aurora bore it through the air to Susa, where it was buried in the Acropolis. The scene of Aurora's journey with the body of her son is depicted on certain early Greek vases, and is supposed to typify the journey of the sun, offspring of the dawn, through the heavens to its resting place in the west.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A king of Ethiopia, son of Tithonus and Aurora . He came with ten thousand men to assist Priam in the Trojan war, where he behaved with great courage, and killed Antilochus, Nestor 's son, at which Nestor challenged Memnon to fight, but he refused on account of the great age of the challenger; but he fought Achilles , who killed him. A statue was erected in his honor, which had the property of uttering a melodious sound every day at sunrise. Tennyson, in his Palace of Art, alludes to this statue thus : "As morn from Memnon drew Rivers of melodies." 2026 Editor's Note: The 'statue' described was not a mythical creation but the northern of the two Colossi of Memnon , a 3,400-year-old ruined effigy of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Its famous 'melodious sound' at dawn, likely caused by evaporating dew in warming cracks, became a popular Roman tourist attraction, with visitors leaving over a hundred inscribed tributes on its legs. The Greeks mistakenly identified the statue with their mythological king Memnon, a misnomer that persists in the monument's name today. (Ed: BR 2026-06-19)
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in Greek mythology, a son of Eos (the morning) and Tithonis (= Titan, a name for the sun), represented in the legend as a son of Laomedon and brother of Priam. The famous statue called by the Greeks Memmon, in the sepulchral quarter of Thebes called Memnoneia, possessed the real or imaginary property of emitting a sound like that of a harp at the rising of the sun.