Caranus

• King of Macedonia, Liv. 45, 9, 3; Vell. 1, 6, 5; Just. 7, 1, 7.—
• II General of Alexander the Great, Curt. 7, 3, 2; 7, 4, 32.

(Κάρανος or Καρανός). 1. A Heracleid of the family of the Temenidae, and according to some accounts, the founder of the Argive dynasty in Macedonia, about the middle probably of the eighth century B. C., since he was brother to Pheidon, the Argive tyrant. The legend tells, that he led into Macedonia a large force of Greeks, and, following a flock of goats, entered the town of Edessa in the midst of a heavy storm of rain and a thick mist, unobserved by the inhabitants. Remembing the oracle which had desired him "to seek an empire by the guidance of goats," he fixed here the seat of government, and named the place Aegae in commemoration of the miracle. Herodotus gives a different tradition of the origin of the dynasty, and his account seems to have been adopted by Thucydides, who speaks of Archelaus I. as the ninth king, and therefore does not reckon Caranus and the other two who come before Perdiccas I. in the lists of Dexippus and Eusebius. Müller thinks that the two traditions are substantially the same, the one in Herodotus being the rude native legend, while the other, of which Caranus is the hero, was the Argive story; and he further suggests that Κάρανος is perhaps only another form of Κοίρανος. (Diod. Fragm. ix. p. 637, ed. Wess.; Plut. Alex. 2; Just. 7.1, 33.2; Clinton, Fast. ii. p. 221; Müller, Dor. 1.7.15, App. 1.15, and the authorities there referred to; Hdt. 8.137_139; Thue. 2.100.) Pausanias, in mentioning that the Macedonians never erected trophies when victorious, records the national tradition by which they accounted for it, and which related, that a trophy set up by Caranus, in accordance with Argive custom, for a victory over his neighbour Cisseus, was thrown down and destroyed by a lion from Olympus; whereby, it was said, the king learnt that its erection had been of evil counsel, as deepening the enmity of the conquered. (Paus. 9.40.)

2. Mentioned by Justin (11.2) as a soil of Philip and a half-brother of Alexander the Great. The latter suspected him of aiming at the throne, and put him to death soon after his accession, B. C. 336.

3. A Macedonian of the body called ἑταῖροι or guards (comp. Plb. 5.53,, 31.3), was one of the generals sent by Alexander against Satibarzanes when he had a second time excited Aria to revolt. Caranus and his colleagues were successful, and Satibarzanes was defeated and slain, in the winter of B. C. 330. (Arrian, Arr. Anab. 3.25,28; Curt. 6.6.20, &c., 7.3.2, Freinsheim, ad loc., 7.4.32, &c.; comp. Diod. 17.81.) In B. C. 329, Caranus was appointed, together with Andromachus and Menedemus, under the command of the Lycian Pharnuches, to act against Spitamenes, the revolted satrap of Sogdiana. Their approach compelled him to raise the siege of Maracanda; but, in a battle which ensued, he defeated them with the help of a body of Scythian cavalry, and forced them to fall back on the river Polytimetus, the wooded banks of which promised shelter. The rashness however or cowardice of Caranus led him to attempt the passage of the river with the cavalry under his command, and the rest of the troops plunging in after him in haste and disorder, they were all destroyed by the enemy. (Arr. Anab. 4.3, 5; comp. Curt. 7.6.24, 7.31, &c.) [E.E]

(Κάρανος or Κάρηνος). A descendant of Heracles, and said to have settled at Edessa, in Macedonia, with an Argive colony, about B.C. 750, and to have become the founder of the dynasty of Macedonian kings.

• Paus. 9.40.8ff.