Eurotas
Εὐρώτας
The Spartan river that dug a channel to drain the marsh to the sea, and left its name on the stream that remained.
It is the river that flows through the Spartan plain.
Pausanias records him not as a god but as a king. He dug a channel to drain the stagnant, rotting water of the plain into the sea, and gave his own name to the stream that was left flowing — a rare case of a public works project becoming a myth.
Dying without a son, he passed the throne to Lacedaemon, husband of his daughter Sparta. The river kept the father-in-law's name, the city the wife's, the land the husband's.
SourcesPausanias, Description of Greece