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 CONTENTS

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Illustrations
Introduction

PART ONE
GODS, GODDESSES, SPIRITS, AND NYMPHS

PART TWO
HEROES, HEROINES, AND PEOPLES

PART THREE
MONSTERS, PRODIGIES, AND HYBRID CREATURES

PART FOUR
PLACES AND LANDMARKS

Discover More
Appendix of Gods
Glossary of Ancient Sources
Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

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 ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE I
Aphrodite: Goddess of fertility and lust, born of sea foam

PLATE II
Dionysus: God of wine, born of Zeus’s thigh

PLATE III
Poseidon: God of the sea, punisher of Odysseus

PLATE IV
Andromeda: Princess and daughter of Cassiopeia and Cepheus

PLATE V
Daphne: Daughter of Peneus, god of the river Peneus

PLATE VI
Romulus and Remus: Twin brothers and founders of the city of Rome

PLATE VII
Cerberus: “The hound of Hades” that guards the gates of the Underworld

PLATE VIII
The Sirens: Hybrid female monsters who lure sailors to their deaths

PLATE IX
The Elysian Fields: A prophesied paradise of the afterlife
 PLATE X
The Parthenon: Greek temple dedicated to the goddess Athena
 INTRODUCTION

This book is a collection of the gods, heroes, and monsters that populate
Classical mythology as well as of the places that feature in stories told
about them. The number of myths that have been preserved in the works of
ancient authors is enormous, and the numbers of characters and places
appearing in them vast. While Classical Mythology A to Z is an
encyclopedia of myth, it is not comprehensive. Rather, it is limited to those
Greek and Roman characters and places that appear in Edith Hamilton’s
classic work, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, for which it
has been designed as a companion. In her own words, it was Hamilton’s
hope that by reading her book, those unfamiliar with the Greco-Roman
world would “gain in this way not only a knowledge of the myths, but also
some little idea of what the writers were like who told them—who have
been proved, by two thousand years and more, to be immortal” (Preface,
Mythology, 1942). She indisputably achieved her goal, doing so by telling
the myths of Classical antiquity in a manner that was faithful to the original
sources and, at the same time, fresh, relatable, and timeless in terms of
language and expression. For this reason, Hamilton’s work continues to
serve as an authoritative and accessible introduction to Classical mythology
in all its complexities over three quarters of a century beyond its original
publication.
While Hamilton’s Mythology established this book’s scope, its contents
will be useful to all those wishing to dig more deeply into the world of myth
out of curiosity about individual characters’ genealogies, their exploits, and
places they inhabited. Greco-Roman mythology has persisted for millennia
beyond its origins, retaining its ancient meanings and accruing new ones
while serving as a foundation of cultural memory that has been alluded to in
myriad ways and in all manner of creative media. For this reason, Classical
Mythology A to Z will be indispensable to anyone looking to verify, clarify,
or connect mythological characters and places to any number of literary,
musical, artistic, or even pop culture references. This is a companion to
Hamilton, but also so much more.
Entries in this collection have been grouped into four basic categories:
deities, humans, monsters, and places. The first category includes immortal
gods and goddesses as well as mortal ones. Nymphs, for example, were
spirits that were believed to inhabit trees, bodies of water, and other
components of the natural world, but they were subject to decline and
death. The second category, which focuses on humans, encompasses
individual heroes and heroines as well as groups of people, such as the
female warriors called the Amazons. Characters of prodigious size and
hybrid creatures are here all classed as monsters, regardless of whether they
were benign or fearsome; in this case, “monster” is conceived of in the
sense of its Latin etymology, monstrum, a thing or person that is strange but
not necessarily evil. Landmarks, regions, bodies of water, mountains, and
cities are naturally categorized as places. One particularly interesting aspect
of mythological characters and places is the degree to which they resist
strict categorization. Inevitably, the categories overlap, as in cases where a
human hero becomes divine, or a river is conceived of both as a geographic
feature and as a divine personification of the river. Hercules and Asclepius
are examples of the former; the Peneus and Achelous rivers are examples of
the latter. Gaia was the earth and also the earth goddess. The hunter Orion
was a giant, being in this respect a prodigy or monster, but he was neither
entirely mortal nor was he entirely divine. Satyrs, hybrid creatures that most
would classify as monsters, were, at the same time, woodland spirits. And
so on. A system of cross-referencing ensures that entries appropriate to
multiple categories can be found in all of them.
Just as categorization poses challenges, so too does the spelling of
names. The spellings here follow those used in Hamilton’s work, although
an effort has been made to indicate alternate spellings as well. The issue of
spelling is complicated by several factors. One of them is the transmission
of names from the original Greek to Latin and then to English, at least in
many cases. An example is Ouranos, Greek god of the heavens. For the
Romans, he was Uranus, and this is the spelling with which most speakers
of English will be familiar. The Greeks had no letter “c,” but the Romans
used “k” only infrequently; as a consequence, the Greek god Kronos
became Cronus in Latin. Another factor influencing spelling is
inconsistency among the ancient authors, even those writing in the same
language.
Varying spellings of a given character’s name went hand in hand with
varying, sometimes conflicting traditions concerning their lives and
exploits. The myths themselves, as well as the characters in them, evolved
over millennia. When confronted with variants and conflicts, it is important
to remember that many or most myths were transmitted orally at some
stage, being influenced by cultural shifts and factors such as depictions in
art. One example is the cycle of myths surrounding the Trojan War. It has
long been known that these tales had their origins in the Bronze Age (very
roughly 1800–1150 BCE), the time of the Trojan War itself—and, yes, there
was a Trojan War, or, more properly, a number of Trojan wars. Aspects of
the story of Achilles, as well of his comrades and adversaries, so familiar
from Homer’s Iliad, were, at the time when it was committed to writing—
perhaps 750 BCE or later—hundreds of years old, having been passed on
orally previously, and doubtless altered at least to some degree with each
telling. In those hundreds of years, the Greek world had changed
dramatically, witnessing the flowering and fall of powerful kingdoms, a
Dark Age, and the birth of city-states no longer governed by monarchs.
Not all variants of the myths surrounding the characters and places
featured in this book have been documented here. The particular details
included are derived from what today are the best-known sources of Greek
and Roman myths, among them Homer, Hesiod, Apollonius of Rhodes,
Virgil, and Ovid, all of them authors of epic poetry; the lyric poets Sappho,
Stesichorus, Pindar, and Bacchylides; the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides; the historian Herodotus; the geographer Strabo; the travel
writer and ethnographer Pausanias; the natural historian Pliny the Elder;
and the mythographers Apollodorus and Hyginus. All of the ancient sources
referenced in this book, complete with biographical details, have been
assembled in a bibliography for quick reference. A number of these authors
recorded more than one version of a given myth, even when they
themselves were skeptical about some of them. In the spirit of Diodorus
Siculus (first century BCE), who relates several alternate versions of the
origins of the Pillars of Hercules—namely that Hercules created them to
memorialize his extraordinary journey to the edges of the world, as a means
by which to prevent sea monsters from penetrating the Mediterranean from
the ocean beyond, or to create a channel allowing ships to pass between the
seas—I invite readers of this book to select the versions most entertaining,
credible, or far-fetched.
ACHELOUS Achelous was a river and, at the same time, the god of that
river, which was one of the longest and most voluminous in Greece. While
on the one hand associated with a specific river, this god could be invoked
when making reference to rivers (and their gods) in general. In other words,
he could be invoked as the god of all rivers. According to the Greek poet
Hesiod, Achelous, along with a host of other rivers, was a child of the
elemental Titan gods Oceanus and Tethys. His own children included the
lovely voiced but monstrous Sirens as well as a number of Nymphs who
were said to draw their water from him. These included Castalia, spirit of
the Castalian Spring near Delphi, a fount sacred to the Muses; and Pirene,
spirit of the Corinthian spring Pirene, whose waters Pegasus caused to burst
from the earth when he struck it with his hoof.
Achelous is perhaps best known for his involvement with the hero
Hercules, who wrestled with him for the hand of Deianeira, daughter of
Oeneus, king of Calydon. Although Achelous changed his shape into a
serpent and then a bull, Hercules prevailed nonetheless and broke off one of
his horns. This horn, according to the Roman poet Ovid, became the Horn
of Plenty, for the Naiad nymphs took it and filled it with fruits and flowers,
the bounty of the earth made possible by Achelous’s waters. According to
an alternate tradition, Hercules returned Achelous’s horn, and Achelous, in
exchange, gave him the horn of Amaltheia, a goat that had provided milk
for baby Zeus, and it was this that became the Horn of Plenty.
(See also Achelous [place], Calydon, Castalian Spring [the], Corinth,
Deianeira, Delphi, Muses [the], Naiads [the], Nymphs [the], Oceanus,
Oeneus, Pirene, Sirens [the], Titans [the], and Zeus.)

ADRASTEA The nymph Adrastea (also spelled Adrasteia or Adrastia)

inhabited the Dictaean Cave on the island of Crete. The mythographer
Apollodorus reports that since Cronus had swallowed all of his children at
their birth so as to avoid a prophecy that he would be overpowered by one
of his own progeny, Rhea, his consort and sister, went clandestinely to Crete
when on the verge of delivering Zeus, her last child by Cronus. There Rhea
entrusted her newborn child to Adrastea and her sister Ida, as well as to the
Curetes, semi-divine beings who sang and clashed their weapons to hide the
baby’s cries.
(See also Cronus, Curetes [the], Nymphs [the], Rhea, and Zeus.)

AEGINA The nymph Aegina was a daughter of Asopus, a Sicyonian river

god, and Metope, a daughter of the river Ladon, who together produced two
sons and twenty daughters, of whom Aegina was one. The lovely Aegina
was carried off by Zeus to the island Oenone, where he bedded her. When
Asopus went in search of his daughter, he came to Corinth and learned from
Sisyphus, who ultimately received terrible punishment for offering this
information, that Aegina’s abductor was Zeus. Asopus went in pursuit of
the god, who hurled thunderbolts at him and drove him back to his own
streams. Meanwhile, Aegina gave birth to a son named Aeacus, and Zeus
renamed the island Oenone—now called Aegina—after her.
(See also Aeacus, Aegina [place], Corinth, Nymphs [the], Sisyphus, and
Zeus.)

AEOLUS When Aeolus, “Lord of the Winds,” first appeared in the literary
tradition, he was a mortal favored by the gods and living on the island of
Aeolia with his family. It was there that the hero Odysseus encountered
him, according to Homer. In the passage of time, however, Aeolus came to
be viewed as a god who controlled all of the winds.
(See also Aeolus [hero] and Odysseus.)

AESCULAPIUS Aesculapius is a variant spelling of Asclepius, name of

the Greek god of healing.
(See Asclepius.)

AGLAIA Aglaia (or Aglaea), whose name means “Gleaming One” or

“Resplendent One,” was one of the three (or more) Charites (“Graces”),
who were generally said to be daughters of Zeus and were embodiments of
beauty, joy, and grace. Aglaia (or Aglaea) was the youngest of the three
Charites and, according to the Greek poets Hesiod and Pindar, was married
to the god Hephaestus. This Aglaia is to be distinguished from the mortal
Aglaia, who was the mother of the twins Acrisius and Proetus.
(See also Acrisius, Aglaia [heroine], Charites [the], Graces [the],
Hephaestus, and Zeus.)

AIDOS Aidos was a female personification of the Greek aidos, which

connotes modesty, shame, reverence, and respect for others. The poet
Pindar refers to her as a daughter of the second-generation Titan
Prometheus and the source of joy and valor. In his description of the
devolution of humanity from a virtuous Race of Gold to one of iron that
was prone to all manner of vices, the poet Hesiod writes that the age of
Iron–Race humans would be marked by the flight of Aidos and Nemesis
from the earth so that they might reside instead with the deathless gods.
Consequently, bitter sorrows were left for us humans, and there was no
remedy for evil.
(See also Nemesis, Prometheus, and Titans [the].)

ALECTO Alecto (or Allecto), “The Implacable One,” was one of the
Erinyes, or Furies, as they were known to the Romans. She played a
significant role in Virgil’s epic the Aeneid, where she is described as a
denizen of the Underworld “born of Night,” a shape-shifter, an instigator of
violence and wars, and a creature so awful that she is hated even by her
father, Pluto. Under orders from an angry Juno, she caused Queen Amata to
fly into a rage and incite the populace of the Italian town of Laurentum to
war against Aeneas and his band of Trojans, who had recently arrived in
Italy. Amata had already been upset that her husband, Latinus, was
considering giving their daughter Lavinia in marriage to Aeneas and not to
Turnus, prince of the Italian Rutulians; the queen became more maddened
still when Alecto cast a serpent into her breast. Alecto dealt similarly with
Turnus, whom she inflamed by hurling a firebrand at him. Turnus
consequently marched on Latinus. Alecto next incited the dogs of Ascanius,
Aeneas’s son, into frenzied pursuit of a prize stag that had been a pet to the
maiden Silvia; when Ascanius killed it, Silvia summoned the countryside’s
farmers to arms against the Italians, Alecto herself broadcasting the call to
arms.
(See also Aeneas, Amata, Ascanius, Erinyes [the], Furies [the], Juno,
Latinus, Lavinia, Pluto, Rutulians [the], Silvia, Turnus, and Underworld
[the].)
ALPHEUS Alpheus (or Alpheius) was both a river and god of the river
Alpheus, which he personified. The Alpheus, the longest and most
voluminous river in the Peloponnese, flows through Arcadia and Elis. As a
mythological character, Alpheus is best known for his pursuit of the nymph
Arethusa from Arcadia all the way to Sicily, where she fled, emerging there
as a spring that bears her name.
(See also Alpheus River [the], Arcadia, Arethusa, and Sicily.)

AMMON Ammon was the Greek iteration of Amun, the chief god of the
Egyptians, god of the sun as well as a creator and fertility god. As king of
the gods, Ammon became identified with Zeus and was known as Zeus
Ammon. It was the oracle of Ammon in Libya that Cepheus, the father of
Andromeda, consulted before offering her as a sacrifice to the sea monster
that was plaguing his kingdom of Ethiopia. The same oracle reputedly
declared Alexander the Great to be the son of Zeus. As regards appearance,
Zeus Ammon was represented as a mature, bearded male, like Zeus, but
with the ram’s horns of Amun.
(See also Andromeda, Cepheus, Ethiopia, and Zeus.)

AMPHITRITE Amphitrite was a sea goddess whose name was often used
as a metonym for the sea. She was said to be a daughter of Tethys and the
river Oceanus (an Oceanid), or a Nereid, daughter of the sea god Nereus
and the Oceanid Doris. The mythographer Apollodorus writes that Poseidon
married her and that she bore to him both the sea god Triton and Rhode, a
personification of the island of Rhodes, an important center of Sun worship.
According to the mythographer Hyginus, Amphitrite did not willingly
become Poseidon’s consort, instead fleeing the god’s pursuit to take shelter
with Atlas. Poseidon sent a certain Delphinus to plead his cause, a task that
he carried out so effectively that the god rewarded him by transforming him
into a star. The travel writer Pausanias describes a painting in the Theseion,
or Theseus-sanctuary, in Athens that depicted an episode in the life of the
Athenian king Theseus: the king Minos of Crete had challenged Theseus to
prove that he was Poseidon’s son, and threw his signet ring into the sea in
the expectation that Theseus would not be able to recover it from the briny
depths. But Theseus did retrieve the ring and emerged from the waves
wearing a golden crown from Amphitrite, further proof of his divine
parentage. According to a late, post-classical source, twelfth-century CE
Byzantine Greek writer John Tzetzes, it was Amphitrite who turned the
once-lovely maiden Scylla into a monster out of jealousy of Poseidon’s
interest in her.
(See also Atlas, Athens, Minos, Nereids [the], Nereus, Oceanids [the],
Oceanus, Poseidon, Scylla, Theseus, and Triton.)

ANTEROS Anteros, “Reciprocated Love,” was the god of requited love

and, as a consequence, he also punished those who scorned love and
avenged unrequited love. Anteros, like his brother and companion Cupid
(or Eros), was called both the son of Venus alone or, alternatively, of Venus
and Mars.
(See also Cupid, Mars, and Venus.)

APHRODITE Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of erotic love, sexuality,

and beauty. One of the twelve Olympian gods, she was associated with the
fertility of humans and animals, the fertility of the soil, and the
productiveness of plants. To the Romans she became known as Venus.
There are two accounts of Aphrodite’s birth. Homer reports that she was
the child of the relatively obscure Titan goddess Dione by Zeus. The poet
Hesiod, meanwhile, recounts a very different and dramatic tale of her birth
in his Theogony (Origin of the Gods). Seeking to take vengeance upon his
father Uranus for mistreating his mother, Gaia, Cronus castrated him, and
Uranus’s severed genitalia fell from the heavens into the sea, causing the
waters to churn and froth. Reflecting the etymology of her name, which
means “gift of the foam,” Aphrodite arose fully grown from the waves’
froth. Roses were said to have sprung from the sand, suffusing the earth
with color, when Aphrodite first stepped ashore, and the Graces offered her
branches of fragrant myrtle to hide her nakedness. Some believed that the
location where this took place was the island of Cythera, which earned the
goddess the title “Cytherean” or “Cytherea.” Others, meanwhile, claimed
her “birthplace” to have been Cyprus, whence the goddess was also called
“Cyprian” or “Cypris.”
Aphrodite was one of the most important deities in the Greek pantheon,
her worship being extremely widespread in the Greek world. Material
evidence of her cult has been found in Northern Greece, especially Thebes;
in Attica, both in the city of Athens and in the city’s territory; and in
Megara and Corinth. It has been found, too, in the Peloponnese—Sicyon,
Hermione, Epidaurus, Argos, Arcadia, Elis; in the islands, including
Cyprus, Crete, and Cythera; at Greek colonies in Asia Minor; and in other
places with close ties to Greece, including Sicily, Italy, Naucratis in Egypt,
and Saguntum in Spain. Nonetheless, it was suspected even in antiquity that
Aphrodite was not actually native to Greece. While the origins of Aphrodite
and her cult are less than clear, it is generally conceded that Cyprus played a
significant role in her genesis, likely the result of fusing Greek and Near
Eastern influences. Through migrations and trade the region was exposed to
new forms of fertility cult from Anatolia and the Levant during the Bronze
Age (roughly 2500–1050 BCE): cults of the goddesses Ishtar and Astarte,
both descended from the Mesopotamian Inanna. Aphrodite was likely a
syncretization of these and, as such, adopted by the Greeks into their
pantheon. The early importance of her sanctuaries on the Cyprus and
Cythera in particular certainly influenced tales of the goddess’s birth.
Being the goddess of love and desire, Aphrodite was not only
responsible for the romantic entanglements of numerous gods and mortals
but also had a number of love affairs herself. Aphrodite was married to
Hephaestus, god of the forge, but in his absence, she repeatedly sought the
embrace of Ares, god of war. To the latter she bore Eros, who was known to
the Romans as Amor or Cupid; Deimus (“Fear”); Phobus (“Panic”); and
Harmonia (“Harmony”), who would later marry Cadmus, king of Thebes.
To the god Hermes, whose advances she long rejected, Aphrodite bore
Hermaphroditus. By some accounts Aphrodite was also the mother of the
fertility deity Priapus by the god Dionysus and of the Sicilian king Eryx by
the god Poseidon. Among the best known of her mortal loves was the
handsome Adonis, who was the product of an incestuous relationship
between the princess Myrrha and her father, King Cinyras of Cyprus.
Notably, that relationship was the result of Aphrodite’s punishment of the
young princess, one of several incidents demonstrating that Aphrodite’s
gifts were not always a blessing and could, instead, be a formidable
punishment.
 Those whom the goddess assisted in their amatory pursuits included the
heroes Hippomenes, who was smitten with the swift-footed huntress
Atalanta; Jason, who so badly needed the help of the sorceress Medea to
secure the Golden Fleece; and the Trojan prince Paris, who awarded her the
golden apple that in turn earned him the beautiful Helen and thus became
the cause of the Trojan War. Aphrodite’s victims, on the other hand,
included Theseus’s son Hippolytus and his stepmother Phaedra, whom
Aphrodite caused to fall tragically in love with him; Tyndareus, king of
Argos, whose daughters—most infamous of them Clytemnestra, who killed
her husband Agamemnon in his bath—all betrayed their husbands; the
Cretan queen Pasiphae, who was overcome with lust for a bull; and the
women of Lemnos, who would murder their male relatives.
 PLATE I

Aphrodite: Goddess of fertility and lust, born of sea foam

 As for Aphrodite’s attributes and symbols, these included plants that
featured in her mythology: the fragrant rose and myrtle; the apple, a fleshy
fruit associated with love and procreation; and the poppy (or poppy
anemone), which was the flower that sprang from the blood of Adonis. In
the animal kingdom, doves, sparrows, swallows, geese, swans, hares, goats,
rams, dolphins, and even tortoises were sacred to her, some being symbols
of love or fertility and others being associated with her watery birth.
(See also Adonis, Aeneas, Agamemnon, Anchises, Arcadia, Argos,
Atalanta, Athens, Cinyras, Clytemnestra, Corinth, Crete, Cronus, Cupid,
Cyprus, Dione, Dionysus, Gaia, Graces [the], Harmonia, Helen,
Hephaestus, Hermes, Hippolytus, Hippomenes, Jason, Lemnian Women
[the], Medea, Megara, Myrrha, Olympus [Mount], Paris, Pasiphae, Phaedra,
Priapus, Thebes, Theseus, Titans [the], Troy, Tyndareus, Uranus, Venus,
and Zeus.)

APOLLO Apollo was the Greek god of prophecy, healing, archery, music,
and poetry. By the fifth century BCE, he also became equated with the sun
god Helios, whose functions he assumed. While Apollo was one of the most
important of the gods and was well established by the time of Homer and
Hesiod in the eighth century BCE, his origins are obscure. Among his many
names and cult titles were Phoebus, “Bright One,” a name that is not well
understood; Hekebolos, “He Who Strikes from Afar,” which highlights his
role as archer-god; Pythian, an allusion to his slaying of the monstrous
Python; Hiator (“Healer”); Mousagetes (“Leader of the Muses”), a title
underscoring his close ties with the Muses; and Daphnephoros (“Laurel-
Bearer”), a reference to the bay laurel, a plant that was sacred to him.
Apollo was worshipped throughout Greece, but his sanctuary at Delphi,
which was the site of his most important oracle, as well as that on the island
of Delos were the most significant.
One of the twelve Greek Olympian gods, he was the son of Zeus and the
second-generation Titan goddess Leto. Artemis, goddess of the wild and of
hunting, was his twin sister. Apollo and Artemis (but by some accounts,
only Apollo) were born on the island of Delos, their mother clutching a
palm tree during delivery. It was not Leto, however, who nursed the infant
Apollo, but rather the goddess Themis, who fed him ambrosia and nectar.
According to the so-called Homeric Hymn in his honor, he established his
oracle at Delphi upon slaying the serpent Python that resided there. The god
had many loves and many children. Those who spurned his advances were
the nymph Daphne and the Trojan princess Cassandra. Daphne became a
laurel tree in order to escape him, but he remained devoted to her,
designating laurel as his most sacred plant. As for Cassandra, she had been
offered the gift of prophecy in exchange for accepting the god’s affection,
but when she rejected him, he ensured that although she could foretell the
future, nobody would believe her. His best-known children were Asclepius,
to whom he taught the art of healing, as well as the divine bards Orpheus
and Linus. As was usual in the Greek world, Apollo had both male and
female love interests, his notable attachments having been to Hyacinth,
whom he accidentally killed with a discus, and to Cyparissus, who pined
away in grief over the death of his beloved deer. Apollo allowed Cyparissus
to grieve forever by transforming him into a cypress, the tree of mourning.
Where Hyacinth died, there grew the flower that thereafter bears his name.
Those who incurred Apollo’s wrath included the Satyr Marsyas and Pan,
both of whom challenged the god to music contests. Marsyas himself
suffered a terrible punishment, but in the case of the contest with Pan, it was
Midas, the judge, who was punished. The Trojans, too, were subjected to
Apollo’s enmity during the Trojan War because their earlier king Laomedon
had failed to pay the god for building the city’s walls. The Thessalian king
Admetus, on the other hand, enjoyed Apollo’s favor, for he had treated the
god with kindness when, as punishment for slaying the Cyclopes, Zeus
made him Admetus’s indentured servant.
Apollo’s cult was introduced to Rome by the fifth century BCE at the
incidence of a plague, and he was accordingly called upon specifically as a
healer. Although his mythology was certainly known and exploited by
Roman authors and artists, healing remained his main cultic function in the
Roman world. While Apollo was ultimately overshadowed by Asclepius as
healer, he assumed particular importance during the age of Augustus, since
the emperor adopted him as his personal deity.
In terms of identifying characteristics, Apollo was represented as
youthful, athletic, and unbearded. The lyre and cithara were his favored
instruments, and his weapons of choice were the bow and arrow. His sacred
trees were above all the bay laurel and palm but also cypress.
(See also Admetus, Artemis, Asclepius, Cassandra, Cyclopes [the],
Cyparissus, Daphne, Delos, Delphi, Helios, Hyacinth, Laomedon, Leto,
Linus, Marsyas, Midas, Muses [the], Orpheus, Pan, Python, Rome, Satyrs
[the], Thessaly, Titans [the], Troy, and Zeus.)

AQUILO Aquilo is the Romans’ name for the Greek god Boreas, the
personified north wind. His best-known exploits include the abduction of
the Athenian princess Orithyia and the near-destruction of the Trojan
Aeneas’s ships at the behest of an angry Juno, who had bribed the winds’
lord Aeolus to help her.
(See also Aeneas, Aeolus, Athens, Boreas, Juno, Orithyia, and Troy.)

ARES Ares was the Greek god of war and, as such, was associated with the
violence of war, bloodlust, panic, and the screams of the dying. He was
attended by Phobos (“Fear”) and Deimos (“Dread”), two of his children,
according to the Greek poet Hesiod. Athena, too, was a war deity, but of a
different sort: her particular realm was defensive war waged in the interest
of safeguarding the city. Accordingly, Ares was feared as well as revered
and had a limited presence in religion and cult in comparison with his
siblings. One of the twelve Olympian gods, Ares was the son of Zeus and
Hera. He himself fathered a number of children with a variety of partners.
His most famous liaison was with the goddess Aphrodite, wife of
Hephaestus, who used his skills as god of the forge in order to trap the
lovers while in bed. With Aphrodite, he reputedly became father not only to
Deimos and Phobos but also to Eros (“Love”), Anteros (“Requited Love”),
and Harmonia (“Harmony”). His other children included the warlike
Cycnus, the Thracian Diomedes, the godless Tereus, the Amazon
Penthesileia, and Parthenopaeus, one of the Seven Against Thebes.
As for artistic representations of Ares, these are relatively few, and,
logically, he is shown armed with helmet, shield, and sword or spear. In the
Roman world, Ares was identified with the Italian war god Mars.
(See also Amazons [the], Anteros, Aphrodite, Athena, Cycnus,
Diomedes, Eros, Hera, Mars, Olympus [Mount], Parthenopaeus,
Penthesileia, Seven Against Thebes [the], Tereus, and Zeus.)
ARETHUSA Arethusa was a nymph who would give her name to a spring
on the island of Ortygia in the Sicilian harbor of Syracuse. While there were
in reality a number of springs and nymphs by this name, it is the Sicilian
Arethusa whose mythology is best known; her dramatic tale is vividly told
by the Roman poet Ovid. The exceedingly lovely Arethusa was born in
Arcadia and spent her days at the hunt. One hot day on her way home, she
decided to refresh herself in the streams of the river Alpheus. When the
river’s god, Alpheus, saw her, he desired her fervently. Arethusa leaped out
of the water and ran, and Alpheus ran in pursuit. At last, when she was
exhausted, Arethusa cried out to the goddess Artemis for help, and the
goddess obliged, surrounding her in a mist. Then, suddenly, she became
liquid—a stream of water—and the river found her in this new form;
changing his shape from that of a human to a river, he tried to mingle his
waters with hers. Now Artemis caused the earth to split, and Arethusa dove
through the crack to re-emerge in Sicily. Even there, however, Alpheus
found her, plunging under the earth’s surface after her.
(See also Alpheus [god and place], Artemis, Nymphs [the], and Sicily.)

ARISTAEUS Aristaeus was a rustic deity credited with instructing humans

in agricultural pursuits. The Greek poet Apollonius of Rhodes writes that he
was the son of the shepherdess Cyrene, who was abducted and impregnated
by Apollo. The god rewarded her by transforming her into a nymph and
making her immortal. Apollo then took the baby Aristaeus to be reared by
the wise Centaur Chiron. When he was grown, the Muses found him a
bride, taught him in his father’s arts of healing and prophecy, and made him
shepherd of their extensive flocks. In Virgil’s Georgics, he is presented as a
practitioner of agriculture, viticulture, and the keeping of bees (apiculture)
whose bees have suddenly and inexplicably died. When this occurred,
Aristaeus went to his mother’s spring, the spring Cyrene that feeds the
Peneus River, to ask for her assistance. She instructed him to seek out the
changeable sea deity Proteus, and Aristaeus learned from him that the bees’
death had been caused by Orpheus and the Dryad sisters of the nymph
Eurydice, whose death he had inadvertently caused. Cyrene then told her
son that he must make sacrifice to the nymphs, Orpheus, and Eurydice in
atonement. Then, from the carcasses of the sacrificed oxen there emerged
bees that repopulated Aristaeus’s hives.
Aristaeus was also named as the father of Actaeon by the Theban king
Cadmus’s daughter Autonoe, and according to the poet Pindar, it was the
Horai (“Hours”) and Gaia who made him immortal.
(See also Actaeon, Apollo, Autonoe, Cadmus, Centaurs [the], Chiron,
Cyrene [heroine], Dryads [the], Eurydice, Gaia, Muses [the], Orpheus,
Peneus, Proteus, and Thebes.)

ARTEMIS Artemis was the Greek goddess of the wild, residing in the
mountains and glens where she kept the company of Nymphs. She was a
huntress, a protector of animals and also of hunters, who were fully aware
that they were taking lives of other creatures in order to sustain their own,
their activities requiring thanks to animal and goddess alike. Artemis, who
was one of the twelve Olympian gods, also presided over childbirth among
animals and humans, protecting birthing mothers and also their offspring.
At the same time, she could bring sudden death during childbirth with her
golden arrows. While herself a virgin, she was a goddess of transitions,
presiding over rites of passage to adulthood for young women but also
young men. Insofar as their powers and realms of influence overlapped,
especially with respect to childbirth, the Greek goddesses Eileithyia,
Hecate, and Selene became identified with her, as did the Roman goddess
Diana, who adopted Artemis’s mythology.
Artemis was a daughter of Zeus and the second-generation Titan
goddess Leto, whose pregnancy Hera cruelly extended in jealousy of Zeus’s
affair with her. By some accounts, both Artemis and her twin brother,
Apollo, were born on the island of Delos, where Leto clung to a palm tree
while giving birth. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, however,
Artemis was born in a cypress grove at Ortygia near Ephesus, which would
become an important site of her worship and the location of a temple built
in her honor that was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient
world. Other authors, meanwhile, cite Crete as her birthplace. As for the
historical origin of this goddess, this is less than clear. There is some
evidence to suggest that she may have been an import to Greece from
Anatolia, but in any event, she was known since the Bronze Age, a period
extending from circa 3000 to 1150 BCE. Sanctuaries of Artemis could be
found throughout the Greek world, some of the most prominent being at
Brauron in the territory of Athens and at Sparta: the first was the site of
initiation ceremonies for young girls, who dressed as bears, and the second
was linked with the ritualized process by which Spartan boys became
warriors and citizens.
The many mythological tales involving Artemis featured various aspects
of her complex persona. She and her brother, Apollo, armed with bow and
arrows, avenged their mother when the Lydian princess Niobe boasted that,
on the grounds that she had more children than Leto, she was more
deserving of worship than that goddess. Artemis’s other victims included
the hunter Actaeon, whose hunting dogs she turned upon him in
consequence of his catching sight of her naked. According to the
mythographer Hyginus, it was not Hera but Artemis who transformed her
companion Callisto into a bear as punishment for becoming pregnant by
Zeus, although the pregnancy was the result of rape. The hunter Orion she
killed for challenging her at quoits (ring toss), and with Apollo, she set
upon Tityus for his unwanted pursuit of their mother. Her best-known
devotee was the chaste but tragically flawed Hippolytus, son of the Amazon
queen Hippolyta, and she demanded the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s
daughter Iphigeneia in compensation for that king’s killing of a deer sacred
to her. By some accounts, Iphigeneia met her end on Artemis’s altar, but by
others, the goddess saved her, bringing her to the barbarian land of the
Taurians, where she became Artemis’s priestess, being tasked with
preparing the victims of human sacrifice.
As for distinguishing attributes, Artemis was represented in Greek art as
armed with a bow, quiver, and arrows. She sometimes also, like Hecate and
Eileithyia, carries a torch or torches. All animals were sacred to her, but
deer, bear, and boar especially. As was the case with her brother, Apollo, the
palm and cypress were among her most sacred plants.
(See also Actaeon, Agamemnon, Amazons [the], Apollo, Athens,
Callisto, Delos, Diana, Eileithyia, Hecate, Hera, Hippolyta, Hippolytus,
Iphigeneia, Leto, Niobe, Olympus [Mount], Orion, Ortygia, Selene, Sparta,
Taurians [the], Titans [the], Tityus, and Zeus.)

ASCLEPIUS Asclepius (or Aesculapius) was a son of Apollo and a

healing hero who became divinized, thus being known more generally as
god of healing and medicine. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, his
mother was a mortal woman named Arsinoe, a daughter of Leucippus, but
the more usual tale of his origins names his mother as Coronis, daughter of
the Thessalian Phlegyas. Of his birth there are also several versions. Either
Coronis gave birth to Asclepius while in Epidaurus with her father, who
was unaware of her pregnancy, and exposed the infant in the wild. There
Asclepius was suckled by goats and guarded by the dog of a herdsman who
later came upon him. As lightning flashed from the child upon his
approach, the terrified herdsman left him where he lay. Alternatively, the
pregnant Coronis took a mortal lover, and an enraged Apollo (or his sister
Artemis) killed her. However, Hermes was instructed to snatch the baby
from his mother’s womb as her body lay on the lit funeral pyre. Asclepius
was given to the noble Centaur Chiron to rear and educate in the arts of
healing. The mythographer Apollodorus writes that Asclepius became so
skilled in his profession that he not only saved lives but even revived the
dead by use of Gorgon’s blood given him by Athena. Hyginus offers a
different account of Asclepius’s ability to raise the dead, a tale also told of
the seer Polyidos: when Asclepius was ordered to restore Glaucus, son of
Minos, to life and was considering what to do, a snake wound its way up
the staff that he was holding. Asclepius killed the snake, but soon afterward
another snake appeared, this one with an herb in its mouth, which it placed
on the head of its deceased mate. Both snakes then fled the place, and
Asclepius used the same herb on Glaucus to bring him back to life. Fearing
that the distinction between the immortal gods and mortal humans would
forever be compromised, Zeus struck Asclepius with a thunderbolt, and an
angry Apollo killed the Cyclopes, makers of the thunderbolts, for which
vengeful crime he was required to be servant to a mortal, Admetus, for a
year. Asclepius, for his part, was placed by Zeus among the stars at
Apollo’s request.
While the most important center of Asclepius’s worship was Epidaurus
in the northeastern Peloponnese, his sanctuaries—the so-called Asclepeia,
forerunners to modern hospitals, to which people made pilgrimages in order
to be healed—could be found throughout the Greek world and beyond; in
Rome the worship of Asclepius was introduced from Epidaurus in 293 BCE
in order to avert the plague. What was unique about Asclepius and his
worship was the relative uniformity of the layout of his sanctuaries and the
rituals practiced therein. The sanctuaries, which comprised a temple, an
altar, and a dormitory, tended to lie outside settlements and close to sources
of water. Asclepius’s sacred animals, snakes and dogs, were kept in
Asclepeia, and goats, sacred to the god insofar as they nursed him while a
baby, could not be sacrificed, nor could goat meat be consumed in the
sanctuaries’ confines. The actual “healing” took place during incubation,
while the patients were lying down and asleep. Asclepius, or one of his
representatives, would appear to patients in a dream and either perform
cures or communicate remedies for their ailments. As for representations of
Asclepius, he was generally shown wearing a long mantle and holding a
snake-entwined staff.
(See also Admetus, Apollo, Arsinoe, Athena, Centaurs [the], Chiron,
Coronis, Cyclopes [the], Gorgons [the], Hermes, Leucippus, Minos,
Polyidos, Thessaly, and Zeus.)

ASTRAEA Astraea (or Astraia) was a personification of Justice, who

became the constellation Virgo, according to the Phaenomena (Celestial
Phenomena) of Aratus and Roman authors influenced by this work on the
constellations. Astraea was thus acknowledged as both Virgo and Dike
(Justice), and she was variously known as the daughter of the second-
generation Titan god Astraeus with Eos, goddess of the dawn, and as
daughter of Zeus with Themis (“Sacred Law”). For the Roman authors
Ovid, Hyginus, and others, Astraea departed the earth for the heavens in
horror when humans became a wicked Race of Iron in the course of their
devolution from a Race of Gold, then of silver, and subsequently of bronze.
(See also Dike, Eos, Themis, and Zeus.)

ATE Ate was a feminized personification of reckless folly. According to the

poet Hesiod, she was the daughter of Eris, “Strife,” and Homer calls her a
daughter of Zeus. The goddess has no mythology to speak of but was
invoked in numerous sagas as the cause of a given character’s wildly
imprudent or delusional and ruinous actions. These characters include the
Mycenaean king Agamemnon, who blamed Ate for his decision to take the
lovely Briseis from Achilles, which deed caused the latter to withdraw from
fighting at a critical point in the Trojan War; Agamemnon’s wife,
Clytemnestra, who counted folly as one of the reasons why she murdered
her husband; and Orestes and Electra, who recklessly killed their mother in
vengeance for their father’s death.
(See also Achilles, Agamemnon, Briseis, Clytemnestra, Electra
[heroine], Eris, Mycenae, Orestes, and Zeus.)

ATHENA Athena was the Greek goddess of war, wisdom, and crafts, and
she was the protectress of cities, especially Athens. As a war goddess, her
character was very different from that of Ares, who represented aggression
and the violence of war. Athena, by contrast, was the goddess of wars that
were defensive, necessary, and not waged on impulse. As patroness of
crafts and craftspeople, she had particularly strong associations with
women’s crafts of spinning and weaving, but her oversight of crafts
extended to carpentry and metalworking, overlapping in this regard with
Hephaestus, with whom she was linked in cult. Prominent among her
numerous cult titles were Ergane (“Craftswoman” or “Maker”), Nike
(“Victorious”), Promachos (“Who Fights in the Front Lines”), Polias or
Poliouchos (“Protectress of Cities”), and Parthenos (“Maiden”), in which
guise she was housed in the Athenian Parthenon. Athena was also often
called “Pallas Athena” or simply “Pallas,” a name that ancient authors
derived from a close companion of the goddess whom she accidentally
killed or a giant whom she killed on purpose. As for the origins of Athena
and of her name, there is no consensus, though it appears that an early form
of her name was known in Greece in the Bronze Age, the period extending
from roughly 3000 to 1150 BCE. It is also not known whether the name of
Athens, the city most sacred to her, predated her own.
Regarding Athena’s mythology, she was the daughter of Zeus and his
first wife, Metis, a personification of wisdom. As the Greek poet Hesiod
recounts, Zeus swallowed Metis when she was about to give birth, for he
had learned from the gods Gaia and Uranus that she was destined to bear
children who would threaten his position as king of the gods: first a wise
and mighty daughter and then a bold and strong son. In due course, Zeus
developed a terrible headache and requested the assistance of Hephaestus,
who struck his head with an axe. From the cleft in his skull sprang Athena,
fully grown and fully armed. Athena remained unmarried and a virgin, but
she did become the foster mother of the legendary Athenian king
Erichthonius, the snake-man born from semen spilled on the earth when
Hephaestus attempted to rape her. A number of heroes enjoyed her support
and protection, among them Perseus, to whom she gave a polished shield
with which he could locate Medusa without having to look at her directly.
In thanks for helping him, Perseus gave her Medusa’s head, which she fixed
to her breastplate. The clever Odysseus, too, was a favorite of hers, for, as
Homer writes, of all humans, he was the closest to her in terms of mental
acuity. Athena was also a defender of the Mycenaean prince Orestes,
acquitting him of matricide. Those who came to feel the full brunt of the
goddess’s anger included Arachne, the skilled weaver who arrogantly
claimed to be more talented than the goddess, her teacher. And although
their city contained one of her sanctuaries, Athena hated the Trojans, for
she, like the goddess Hera, remained angry over the Trojan prince Paris’s
judgment of Aphrodite as the fairest of the three goddesses.

The most important myth involving Athena, apart from the tale of her
miraculous birth, was the account of her contest with Poseidon for
patronage of Athens. Poseidon struck the Acropolis with his trident to
produce a saltwater spring, a symbol of naval power, and Athena produced
an olive tree. The goddess won this contest, as the olive, which became a
mainstay of the Athenian economy, was judged the more valuable gift.
 As for Athena’s attributes, she was depicted armed, wearing a helmet as
well as a snake-fringed breastplate, the so-called aegis (“goatskin”) that had
the head of Medusa affixed to it, and carrying a shield and lance or spear.
Animals sacred to her were the snake and owl, a symbol of wisdom, and her
most sacred plant was the olive.
The Romans equated their goddess Minerva with Athena.
(See also Acropolis [the], Aphrodite, Arachne, Athens, Erichthonius,
Gaia, Hephaestus, Medusa, Metis, Minerva, Mycenae, Odysseus, Orestes,
Pallas, Paris, Perseus, Poseidon, Troy, Uranus, and Zeus.)

ATLAS Atlas was a second-generation Titan god, from a patrilineal

perspective. He was the child of the first-generation Titan Iapetus and
Clymene, a daughter of Iapetus’s brother Oceanus (an Oceanid). With his
Oceanid aunt Pleione he sired the Pleiades, the Hyades (whose mother is
also named as Aethra, another Oceanid), and Calypso. With Hesperis,
daughter of the Evening Star Hesper, he produced the Hesperides. Atlas’s
brothers were Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius.
The mythographer Hyginus reports that as a consequence of his
leadership role in the power struggle between the Olympian gods and the
Titans, Zeus punished him by placing the heavens on his shoulders. Atlas
was said to live by the garden of the Hesperides, on the westernmost shores
of the river Oceanus, in Libya, or in the distant North (or East), where the
Hyperboreans resided.
Hercules enlisted Atlas’s assistance when he went to fetch the apples of
the Hesperides: Hercules asked Atlas to retrieve the apples in exchange for
giving Atlas a break from holding up the heavens by shouldering the burden
himself. But Atlas, apples in hand, attempted to protract the reprieve from
his onerous task by offering then to deliver the apples to Eurystheus, at
whose behest Hercules was performing the task. Hercules tricked him into
taking the heavens back by asking him to hold up the burden momentarily
while he looked for a pillow to cushion his shoulders. Needless to say,
Hercules did not resume the burden. Atlas also played a role in the saga of
the hero Perseus. As retribution for not having offered him hospitality,
Perseus, holding up Medusa’s severed head, transformed Atlas into the
mountains that still bear his name.
 (See also Calypso, Clymene, Epimetheus, Eurystheus, Hercules, Hesper,
Hesperides [the], Hyades [the], Hyperboreans [the], Oceanids [the],
Oceanus [place], Perseus, Pleiades [the], Prometheus, and Titans [the].)

ATROPOS Atropos, the “Unturnable One,” was one of the three Fates, or
Moirae, goddesses that portioned out or allotted a person’s destiny. As
Atropos’s name suggests, it was generally the case that the Fates’
determination could not be altered once they had spun and cut the thread of
an individual’s life.
(See also Fates [the] and Moirae [the].)

AURORA Aurora is the Roman name for Eos, goddess of the dawn.
(See Eos.)

AUSTER Auster was the Roman equivalent of Notus (or Notos), the south
wind.
(See Notus.)

BACCHUS Bacchus was another name for the god Dionysus. This name
was originally used as a title or descriptor of Dionysus, with particular
reference to his being a god inducing ecstatic frenzy. The name Bacchus
could also be used to designate a male worshipper of Dionysus who was in
such an ecstatic state or was an initiate of the mysteries of the god,
however. Similarly, Bacchantes were celebrants of the god.
(See also Bacchantes [the] and Dionysus.)

BELLONA Bellona, whose name was derived from bellum, the Latin word
for war, was the Roman goddess of war and was identified with the Greek
war goddess Enyo. Representations of her in art show her wearing a helmet.
Her other attributes include a shield, a sword or spear, and a trumpet, with
which to sound the call to battle, as well as Gorgon-like snake-hair. Because
she personified the destructive aspects of war, her temple “in” Rome was
located outside the city’s pomerium, its religious and legal boundary.
(See also Enyo and Gorgons [the].)
BOREAS Boreas was the personification of the north wind and the deity of
that wind. He, along with Notus, the south wind, and Zephyr, the west
wind, were children of Eos, goddess of the dawn, and Astraeus, a second-
generation Titan. His home, according to the Greek poet Pindar, was
beyond the land of the Hyperboreans, who were untouched by his frozen,
wintry breath. Boreas’s bride, whom he abducted as she was gathering
flowers by the Ilissus River, was Orithyia, daughter of the legendary
Athenian king Erechtheus. With her he became father to twin sons, Zetes
and Calais, who would accompany Jason and the Argonauts on their quest
for the Golden Fleece, and to two daughters, Chione and Cleopatra. His
children collectively were known as Boreads.
Boreas and his brothers were depicted as winged and sometimes even as
horses. Indeed, there were legends to the effect that Boreas and his siblings
sired particularly swift horses. Among them were colts born to the mares of
the Trojan king Erichthonius. The Romans identified Boreas as Aquilo.
(See also Aquilo, Argonauts [the], Athens, Erechtheus, Erichthonius,
Hyperboreans [the], Ilissus River [the], Jason, Notus, Orithyia, Troy,
Zephyr, and Zetes.)

BROMIUS Bromius (or Bromios) was a name used for Dionysus and is
translated as the “Thunderer” or “Loud/Boisterous One.” This name
describes the loud and boisterous nature of the god’s worship, which
involved ecstatic dancing and ritual shouting. This title is also a nod to the
thundering Zeus, Dionysus’s father, and, at the same time, to the fact that
Dionysus could change his shape at will into that of a roaring beast, among
others.
(See also Dionysus and Zeus.)

CALLIOPE Calliope, the “Beautiful-Voiced” goddess, was one of the

Muses and was sometimes described as their leader. She became known as
the Muse of epic poetry but was also considered a patroness of poetry more
generally. According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Calliope bore two
sons to the Thracian king Oeagrus (or to Apollo): the famed musician
Linus, whom his pupil Hercules killed, and another son, Orpheus, who with
his music could move trees and stones. Even Homer was called her son,
though likely in a symbolic sense.
(See also Apollo, Hercules, Linus, Muses [the], Orpheus, and Thrace.)

CALYPSO Calypso, whose name means “I will hide you,” was, according
to Homer in his Odyssey, a goddess and a daughter of the second-generation
Titan Atlas. Calypso was a nature or earth goddess who lived in a cave
surrounded by luxurious vegetation: trees, burgeoning vines, and thick
meadows. By the time Odysseus arrived on her island of Ogygia, he was
alone, his ships having been destroyed and all his companions lost. The
goddess loved and cared for him for seven years and offered to make him
immortal, but Odysseus missed his wife and home. While Calypso was
nurturing, she also posed a threat to Odysseus and his homecoming, which
was intimated by the presence of particular species of plants and animals
surrounding her cave: black poplars, alders, cypresses, violets, owls, gulls,
and hawks, all mentioned by Homer, had symbolic associations with death.
Knowing the threat Calypso posed, the goddess Athena prevailed on Zeus
to send Hermes to convince Calypso to release Odysseus. This she did and,
with her perhaps surprising knowledge of technology, assisted him in
making a raft.
(See also Athena, Atlas, Hermes, Odysseus, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

CAMENAE, THE The Camenae were four (or three) Roman goddesses
who became identified with the Greek Muses, goddesses presiding over the
sciences, poetry, and the arts. The nymph or goddess Egeria was sometimes
included in their number. According to the ancient biographer Plutarch, the
legendary second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, established a sacred
grove for them in Rome and also declared as holy the spring that watered
this location, designating use of its waters by the Vestal Virgins (priestesses
of Vesta) for the purpose of purifying their temple.
(See also Egeria, Muses [the], Numa, Nymphs [the], and Vesta.)

CASTOR Castor (or Kastor) and his brother Pollux (or Polydeuces) were
known as the Dioscuri, twin “Sons of Zeus.” According to some Classical
sources, Castor’s father was actually the Spartan king Tyndareus while
Pollux’s was Zeus, both of whom had lain with Leda, queen of Sparta, on
the same day. While both brothers were associated with horses, it was
Castor who was called an expert horseman and a tamer of horses by the
Greek poet Alcman. His brother, by contrast, excelled at boxing. Following
a number of adventures, the twins were transformed into stars central to the
constellation Gemini.
(See also Dioscuri [the], Gemini, Leda, Pollux, Sparta, Tyndareus, and
Zeus.)

CEPHISSUS Cephissus was the name both of several rivers in Greece and
of the gods of those rivers, one in Boeotia, two in the territory of Athens,
and one in the territory of Argos. The deity personifying the Boeotian
Cephissus was said to be the father of the lovely youth Narcissus, who
pined away out of love for himself. The deity of the Argive Cephissus, for
his part, was reputedly one of the judges in the contest between Hera and
Poseidon for patronage of Argos, a contest in which Hera prevailed.
(See also Argos, Athens, Boeotia, Cephissus River [the], Hera,
Narcissus, and Poseidon.)

CERES Ceres, whose name could be used as a word for grain or bread,
was an ancient Italian goddess of agriculture upon whom the growth of
crops depended. Her origins are obscure, but early on, she became
identified with the Greek goddess Demeter, to whom she was inherently
similar and whose mythology she assumed. In Roman cult, Ceres was
associated with Liber, the ancient Italian god of fertility and wine who was
the Roman counterpart of Dionysus, and with Tellus, the Roman goddess
Earth.
(See Demeter, Dionysus, and Liber.)

CHAOS In his Theogony (Origin of the Gods), the earliest surviving

account of the origin of the Greek gods, the poet Hesiod writes that Chaos,
a great Void, was first to come into being, followed by Gaia, the Earth;
Tartarus, the earth’s deepest recess; and Eros, Desire. Thereafter, the
Darkness of Erebus and Night came to being from the elemental Chaos, and
Night then gave rise to Aether, the bright upper atmosphere, and Day, both
of whom she conceived by lying in love with Erebus. Gaia, for her part,
first bore Uranus (or Ouranos), the Heavens, and then the mountains
(Ourea) and sea (Pontus) that “shaped” her physically. Gaia and Uranus
then produced several groups of children between them, and so on. This
theogony is clearly also a cosmogony, an account of the origins of the
universe and its components; the first deities to come into being are
elemental, but they are also to some degree personified, with
personification increasing the narrative progresses.
(See also Erebus, Eros, Gaia, Tartarus, and Uranus.)

CHARITES, THE The Graces, goddesses embodying beauty, joy, and

grace, were called Charites (“Graces”) by the Greeks. According to the poet
Hesiod, they were the children of Zeus and the lovely Eurynome, a
daughter of Oceanus, and their names were Aglaia (“The Resplendent
One”), Euphrosyne (“Good Cheer”), and Thalia (“Blooming One”).
(See also Graces [the], Oceanus [god], and Zeus.)

CHARON In Greco-Roman mythology, Charon was the ferryman of the

dead. He conveyed those who were deceased and had received proper burial
across the river Acheron (or Styx) in his skiff and thus from the world of
the living to the Underworld. The god Hermes was responsible for leading
the souls of the dead to the Acheron’s banks, where they were met by
Charon. The fare of an obol (an ancient Greek coin having the equivalent
weight of a cooking spit) secured passage across the river, and for this
reason the dead were buried with a coin in their mouths. Only a few had
been able to persuade Charon to ferry them into the land of the dead while
alive: the heroes Theseus, Pirithous, Hercules, and Aeneas. The most vivid
description of Charon is the poet Virgil’s in the Aeneid, where he is grim,
aged, fearsome, and squalid, having a matted beard, a filthy mantle, and
eyes that blaze like fire.
It is thought that Charon, a minor deity, was originally a personification
of death. Interestingly, he was honored in cult as a healing deity, according
to the geographer Strabo.
(See also Acheron [the River], Aeneas, Hercules, Hermes, Pirithous,
Styx [the River], Theseus, and Underworld [the].)
CIRCE Circe was a goddess possessing a sorceress’s powers. She is
described by Homer as the sister of Aeetes, king of the barbarian people of
Colchis, and the daughter of the sun god Helios and Perse, a daughter of
Oceanus. Circe lived on the island of Aeaea in a house built of well-
polished stone. Her companions were nymphs as well as wolves and lions
that she had enchanted. She entertained those of Odysseus’s men who had
been sent to explore her island, offering them drugged wine. When she then
struck them with her wand, they turned into swine, a transformation that
Odysseus was later able to compel her to reverse. Odysseus himself escaped
transformation only because the god Hermes had supplied him with an
herb, moly, that served as an antidote to Circe’s potion, which he, too, was
served. Odysseus and his men stayed with Circe for a year, at which point
she instructed the hero to travel to the land of the dead at the ends of the
earth, there to consult the seer Teiresias about how to achieve his
homecoming. By Odysseus, Circe became the mother of Telegonus (or
Nausithous, Agrius, and Latinus), according to post-Homeric traditions.
Other heroes or mythological figures who had encounters with Circe
included the sea god Glaucus, who wanted to obtain a love potion from her
but whose love interest, Scylla, Circe turned into a monster out of jealousy.
Circe also featured in tales surrounding her niece Medea, who,
accompanied by the hero Jason, visited her in hopes (ultimately unrealized)
of being purified of the murder of Apsyrtus, Medea’s brother.
(See also Aeaea, Aeetes, Apsyrtus, Colchis, Glaucus, Helios, Hermes,
Jason, Medea, Oceanus [god], Odysseus, Scylla, and Teiresias.)
CLIO Clio (or Cleio), “The Praiser,” was one of the nine Muses, patron
goddesses of literature and the arts. Clio’s particular realm of influence was
rhetoric and history, especially works that recounted noteworthy deeds of
persons and achievements or initiatives of towns. The mythographer
Apollodorus records a disturbing episode in which Clio mocked Aphrodite
for her infatuation with Adonis. Aphrodite punished Clio by causing her to
fall in love with Pierus, to whom she bore the handsome Hyacinth, who in
turn was loved by the bard Thamyris and Apollo, and met a tragic end.
(See also Adonis, Aphrodite, Hyacinth, Muses [the], Pierus, and
Thamyris.)

CLOTHO Clotho, “The Spinner,” was one of the three Moirae, or Fates.
What Clotho spun was the “thread of life” that she and her sisters
subsequently measured and cut to a determined length.
(See also Fates [the] and Moirae [the].)

CLYMENE The best-known Clymene in the extant body of Classical myth

was an Oceanid (daughter of Oceanus) and a second-generation Titan, as
she was born of Oceanus and Tethys, who were first-generation Titan gods.
The Greek poet Hesiod calls her the mother of Atlas, Epimetheus, and
Prometheus; and according to the Roman poet Ovid, she was mother to the
tragic figure Phaethon by Helios (Apollo in the guise of sun god).
(See also Apollo, Atlas, Epimetheus, Helios, Oceanids [the], Oceanus,
Phaethon, Prometheus, Tethys, and Titans [the].)

COEUS Coeus was one of the Titans, a group of twelve gods born to Gaia
(“Earth”) and Uranus (“Heaven”). He was known primarily as joining with
his sister Phoebe to produce the second-generation Titan goddesses Asteria
(“the Starry One”), future mother of Hecate, and Leto, who in turn would
become mother to the divine twins Apollo and Artemis.
(See also Apollo, Artemis, Gaia, Hecate, Leto, Phoebe, and Uranus.)

CORA Cora (or Kora and Kore), translated as “The Maiden,” was a name
or title used for Persephone, daughter of the harvest goddess, Demeter.
(See also Demeter and Persephone.)

CORYBANTES, THE The Corybantes were divine beings who became

confused and conflated with the Curetes. They were variously said to be
children of the Muse Thalia with Apollo, as according to the Greek poet
Hesiod; sons of Helios and Athena; of Zeus and the Muse Calliope; or of
Cronus and Rhea. The Corybantes were priests and attendants of the
Phyrgian Great Mother Goddess Cybele, whom they worshiped in orgiastic
dance, and it was due to the identification of Cybele with Rhea that the
Corybantes in turn became identified with the Curetes. As the Curetes had
been guardians of the infant Zeus, so the Corybantes were said to have been
guardians of the infant Dionysus.
(See also Apollo, Athena, Calliope, Cronus, Curetes [the], Cybele,
Dionysus, Helios, Muses [the], Rhea, Thalia, and Zeus.)

CRONUS Cronus (or Kronos) was a son of the primeval elemental deities
Gaia (“Earth”) and Uranus (“Heaven”), whose children were the twelve
Titan gods, of whom Cronus was the youngest, as well as the monstrous
Hecatoncheires (“Hundred-Handers”) and Cyclopes. Uranus hated his
malformed offspring and pressed them back into their mother, causing her
much suffering. According to the Greek poet Hesiod in his account of the
origins of the gods, Gaia asked her remaining children for help, but only
Cronus was willing. She supplied him with a sickle of adamant as a
weapon, and at nightfall, when Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus
ambushed and castrated him. Uranus’s severed genitals yielded Aphrodite
and the Erinyes, spirits of vengeance. Cronus dethroned his father and
became king of the gods. Largely following Hesiod, the mythographer
Apollodorus writes that after releasing the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires,
Cronus again imprisoned them in the earth, deep in Tartarus, and took his
sister Rhea as wife. From his parents he learned that he, in turn, would be
dethroned by one of his children, and, as a consequence, he swallowed each
of them as they were born, apart from Zeus, whom Rhea saved by giving
Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow instead. A decade-
long battle between the older-generation Titan gods and Zeus and his
siblings, the so-called Olympian gods, raged until Zeus, with the aid of the
Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, prevailed. The Titans were then imprisoned
in Tartarus, and Zeus became king of the gods.
According to a different poem attributed to Hesiod, the Works and Days,
a golden race of mortals inhabited the earth while Cronus was king of the
gods, and this golden race would later be replaced by a race of silver and
then races of bronze and iron—the current, sinful race. The reign of Cronus
thus became viewed as a Golden Age, a notion that appears also in Roman
myths of Saturn, Cronus’s Roman equivalent. An additional detail about
Cronus is added by Plato, who presents the dethroned Cronus as a later king
of Elysium.
(See also Aphrodite, Cyclopes [the], Elysium, Erinyes [the], Gaia,
Hecatoncheires [the], Olympus [Mount], Rhea, Saturn, Tartarus, Titans
[the], Uranus, and Zeus.)

CUPID Cupid was the Roman name for the Greek god of love, Eros. As in
the case of Eros, he was a personification of desire, which in Latin is
cupido.
(See also Eros.)

CURETES, THE According to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, the

Curetes were divine beings, nine in number. By some accounts, they were
born of the earth, and they lived in mountainous, thickly wooded places that
offered them good shelter. They taught humankind animal husbandry,
beekeeping, hunting, and communal living, all being arts that they
discovered. They were also said to have invented swords and helmets, with
which they danced and made noise when they were entrusted by Rhea with
the safekeeping of the infant Zeus either on Mount Ida or Mount Dicte on
Crete. The Curetes became confused and conflated with the Corybantes,
attendants of the goddess Cybele.
These divine Curetes are to be distinguished from the people of the same
name who became embroiled with the hero Meleager in the course of the
hunt for the Calydonian Boar.
(See also Corybantes [the], Crete, Ida [Mount], Cybele, Meleager, Rhea,
and Zeus.)

CYBELE Cybele, who was also called the Great Mother (Meter Megale in
Greek, and Magna Mater in Latin), was a western-Asiatic fertility goddess
whose wide-ranging powers and realms of influence included healing,
prophecy, and the protection of settlements and cities. Acknowledged by
the Greeks and Romans as a foreign deity, she was introduced to Greece by
at least the sixth century BCE from Phrygia, but her roots extended deeper
still: to Mesopotamia. In Greece, Cybele was equated with the goddess
Rhea, mother of Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, and Hestia. She
also had close ties with the goddesses Demeter, Artemis, and Aphrodite
insofar as their realms of influence overlapped.
Cybele’s cult was ecstatic and orgiastic in nature, involving dancing and
chanting to the wailing of the flute and beat of cymbal and drum. Cybele’s
priests were called galli (“roosters”), and some of their number were
eunuchs, having undergone voluntary castration following the model of
Cybele’s mythological “consort” or love interest, Attis, who castrated
himself. As for the Romans, they imported the Great Goddess in the form of
her cult image, a great meteoritic stone, in the year 205/204 BCE, when they
were hard pressed by war with the Carthaginian general Hannibal. The
resolution to bring the goddess from Phrygia was made on the basis of
codified utterances of the prophetic Sibyl of Cumae, and, according to
Roman legend, it was through the efforts of the noble matron Claudia
Quinta that the stone entered Rome. The hull of the barge carrying this
stone had become stuck in the Tiber’s bottom at the river’s mouth. As the
Roman poet Ovid records, Claudia easily dislodged the barge with a gentle
tug on a rope affixed to it, this act serving as testimony to her chastity,
which a vicious rumor had put into question.
The best-known myth involving Cybele is the account of her birth and
love for Attis. According to the travel writer Pausanias, there was an
occasion on which a drop of Zeus’s semen fell upon the ground, and after a
time, the earth produced a deity called Agdistis, who had both male and
female reproductive organs. In fear of this most fortunate and powerful
daemon, the gods cut off the male organ, leaving their victim a female
goddess, Cybele. Meanwhile, an almond tree grew from the severed penis.
This tree’s fruit fell into the lap of Nana, daughter of a local river god, and
from its contact with her, Nana gave birth to a handsome baby boy called
Attis. When he was grown, Cybele fell in love with him, but her affections
were not returned. When, on Attis’s marriage day, Cybele appeared at the
wedding ceremony in place of his intended bride, a crazed Attis castrated
himself. At Cybele’s request, he became immortal and was transformed into
a pine tree. There were, of course, other legends associated with Cybele,
too. She played a role in the tale of the young lovers Hippomenes and
Atalanta, who thoughtlessly defiled her temple and whom she consequently
transformed into the lions that pulled her chariot. Another tradition made
Cybele the mother of the overly fortunate king Midas, known for his golden
touch. The ships of the hero Aeneas, who traveled from a fallen Troy to
Italy so as to found the Roman race, were reputedly from a pine grove
sacred to her on Mount Ida.
Given the orgiastic nature of her worship, she became linked with
Dionysus and his entourage. As a counterpart to the Greek goddess Rhea,
who called upon the Curetes to care for the infant Zeus, Cybele’s mythical
celebrants included warrior Corybantes, with whom the Curetes were
confused.
As regards Cybele’s appearance and attributes, she was regularly
represented seated on a throne flanked by lions or in a chariot drawn by
them. On her head she wore a basket or a crown in the shape of a turreted
city wall, while holding a bowl for the pouring of liquid offerings or a ritual
drum.
(See also Aphrodite, Artemis, Atalanta, Carthage, Corybantes [the],
Curetes [the], Dionysus, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Hippomenes, Ida [Mount],
Midas, Phrygia, Poseidon, Rhea, Rome, Sibyl of Cumae [the], Troy, and
Zeus.)

CYNTHIA Cynthia, which literally means “of or relating to Mount

Cynthus,” was an epithet of and name for Artemis, the goddess of the wild,
who was said to have been born on the island of Delos, where Mount
Cynthus is located. However, in cult, even the goddess Hera could be called
“Cynthia,” specifically in reference her worship at her temple on that
mountain.
(See also Artemis, Cynthus [Mount], Delos, and Hera.)

CYPRIAN GODDESS, THE The goddess Aphrodite was sometimes

called “Cyprian” or “Cypris,” which names or epithets were an allusion to
the island of Cyprus and its claim to have been the land where the goddess
first stepped ashore after her watery birth. The same claim was also made
by the island of Cythera, among other places.
(See also Aphrodite, Cyprus, and Cythera.)

CYTHEREA Cytherea was named for Aphrodite as a direct reference to

the island of Cythera’s claim to have been the place where the goddess first
stepped on land after her birth from the waves of the sea.
(See also Aphrodite and Cythera.)

DEMETER Demeter was the Greek goddess of grain, the harvest, and
agriculture more generally. The earth’s fertility depended on her good will
and that of her daughter, Persephone, with whom she was closely linked in
cult. Demeter’s origins as a goddess are disputed, as is the derivation of her
name, a combination of the word for mother (meter) and, perhaps, the word
for earth or barley. One of the Olympian gods, Demeter was, according to
the Greek poet Hesiod, a child of the Titan gods Rhea and Cronus, her
siblings being Hestia, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus. The most
significant myth relating to Demeter was the abduction of her daughter,
Persephone, by Hades, who wished to make her his bride and queen of the
Underworld. As detailed in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, when
Persephone was abducted, Demeter wandered the earth for nine days in
search of her until she learned that Hades was responsible. In anger at Zeus
and the gods of Olympus, she changed her form to that of an old woman
and was taken in by King Celeus of Eleusis, in whose palace she became
the nurse of his infant son Demophon. When the child’s mother, Metaneira,
saw that Demeter had placed him in the embers of a fire, she cried out in
terror, not knowing that the nurse was a goddess and placement in embers a
means to make her son immortal. Demeter dropped the boy and shed her
disguise, revealing herself in her full divinity. She commanded Celeus and
the people of Eleusis to build a temple and altar in her honor, which they
did. Demeter, however, did not relent from her despair and anger over the
abduction of Persephone, refusing the offer of all manner of gifts from the
gods. Instead, she remained in mourning for a full year, during which time
no crops of any kind grew. People starved, and the gods ceased to receive
sacrifices. At this point Zeus intervened, persuading Hades to release
Persephone. To this Hades agreed, but by tricking his bride into eating
pomegranate seeds, he ensured that she would be compelled to spend at
least a portion of the year—the months of winter—with him in the
Underworld.
Demeter’s mythology was closely tied to the rituals associated with her.
The most famous of these were the Eleusinian Mysteries, initiation into
which offered the promise of a felicitous afterlife and prosperity in the
present. While a great deal about the Mysteries is necessarily not known,
they involved ritual bathing and piglet sacrifice on the part of those
participating, a procession in which sacred objects were conveyed from
Athens to Eleusis, and a re-enactment of the abduction and search for
Persephone. Another of Demeter’s festivals was the Thesmophoria, an
autumn festival that was celebrated by women to ensure agricultural
fertility but that also was related to the establishment of law in conjunction
with the introduction of agriculture.
As for Demeter’s attributes, she was variously represented holding
poppy capsules, which were many-seeded and thus symbols of fertility;
sheaves of grain; a bowl for pouring libations; and torches, by the light of
which she sought her daughter. On her head, she could wear a wreath of
grain stalks or myrtle.
The Romans identified their goddess of agriculture, Ceres, with
Demeter.
(See also Athens, Celeus, Ceres, Cronus, Demophon, Eleusis, Hades,
Hera, Hestia, Metaneira, Olympus [Mount], Persephone, Poseidon, Rhea,
Titans [the], and Zeus.)

DIANA The Roman goddess Diana, the “Bright One,” was very early on
identified with the Greek goddess of the hunt and wild places, Artemis,
whose mythology and attributes she assumed.
(See Artemis.)

DIKE Dike was a personification of justice and the guarantor of the rights
upheld by custom and law in the human realm. The poet Hesiod describes
her as a daughter of Zeus and Themis, a Titan goddess who embodied
divinely established law and order. With Zeus in his capacity as a civic god
she sat in judgment over mortals. Her sisters were Eunomia, “Good Order,”
and Eirene, “Peace.” She is logically associated also with the Erinyes,
goddesses of retribution for blood crimes against family members, and
Nemesis, wrathful retribution.
(See also Erinyes [the], Nemesis, Themis, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

DIONE Not a great deal is known about the goddess Dione, although she
appears to have been an important deity. There is reason to believe that she
was the god Zeus’s original consort, as Homer and other sources name her
as the mother of Aphrodite, and she was worshipped alongside Zeus at his
famous oracular site of Dodona in northwestern Greece. According to
Homer, after being wounded by the hero Diomedes at Troy, Aphrodite went
to see Dione, who comforted and healed her daughter, brushing away the
ichor (divine blood) that had been drawn and making the injured arm whole
again.
(See Aphrodite, Diomedes, Dodona, Troy, and Zeus.)

DIONYSUS The god Dionysus was also called Bacchus. As the god of
wine, he was held in highest esteem, being paired with Demeter as
providing basic sustenance for humankind. Although Dionysus is known
primarily as the god of wine, he was a great deal more than that, however.
He was one of the oldest Greek gods, his name having been identified in
inscriptions dating to the Bronze Age, circa 1250 BCE. The tragedian
Euripides’s play The Bacchae offers the most comprehensive information
about Dionysus and the nature of his worship, especially in the earliest
period in Greece. While Dionysus was among Greece’s oldest identifiable
deities, he was not originally Greek. In all likelihood, he was a Near Eastern
deity, from Lydia or Phrygia, who made his way to Greece via Thrace and
Macedonia or via the Greek islands. He was originally, and first and
foremost, a god of liquid life, in particular of the life-sustaining fluids in
plants. It was he who was responsible for plant growth and, for this reason,
was called Dendrites (“Tree God”), Anthios (“Bloom-Producing”), and
Karpios (“Bringer of Fruit”). By extension, he became the god of liquids
made from plants as well as issuing from other sources in nature, including
wine, milk, and honey. Dionysus enjoyed great popularity in Greece, his
worship spreading like wildfire—reasonably so, as he was the most
democratic god of all. He was the god of blurred distinctions, an effeminate
shape-shifter, doubtless to some degree an effect of his sacred wine. As
such, he was the opposite of his half brother, Apollo, the god of order, but
with whom he shared the sacred mountain of Parnassus. Everyone was
equal in Dionysus’s eyes: male and female, young and old, slave and free,
even human and animal. His worship was most popular among women,
whose place was in the home and whose movements were greatly restricted
in Greek society. The worship of Dionysus was considered an essential
release from daily routine, and in the case of women, who constituted the
greater number of his worshippers, it provided a welcome opportunity to
leave behind the shuttle and loom. Partly by consuming him in the form of
wine and partly through ecstatic dancing, Dionysus’s celebrants would
achieve communion with the god, becoming enthusiastic Bacchant(e)s and
maenads (“manic ones”), literally having the god inside them, en-theos in
Greek. They headed for the mountain wilderness, there to be “one” with
nature. Small or young animals would be seized, torn apart, and consumed
raw, their blood being viewed as another incarnation of the deity. While
such rituals continued into historic times, especially in rural areas, the city
of Athens transformed the worship of Dionysus into performances in the
theater, which were staged in his honor. Dionysus thus also became the
patron god of the theater.
As regards Dionysus’s own mythology, he was a son of the philandering
Zeus and the Theban princess Semele. As was so often the case, Hera was
jealous of her husband’s roving eye and caused Semele to doubt that it was
a god with whom she was sleeping. When Zeus next visited her, Semele
asked for a favor, which Zeus was bound to grant; she asked him to appear
to her in his full divinity, and as a result, she was incinerated. Zeus rescued
the unborn Dionysus and placed him in his thigh. After nine months,
Dionysus emerged and was taken to the Nysaean Nymphs to raise.
According to an alternate myth, Dionysus was raised by his mother’s sister
Ino. When grown, Dionysus took a sea voyage, wishing to travel to Naxos,
but was taken captive by pirates, who wrongly believed that their princely
cargo would yield a handsome ransom. Only the pirates’ captain, Acetes,
acknowledged that they were in the presence of divinity and was
deferential. Dionysus caused the ship to become immobile, covered with
grapevines, eerie flute music filling the air. Next to Dionysus appeared
phantom tigers, lynxes, and panthers, causing the pirates, apart from Acetes,
to jump overboard in fear. The god and his attendants faced more
challenges when he arrived in Thrace, there being attacked by Lycurgus,
who was duly punished. When he reached Thebes, his “birthplace,”
Dionysus met resistance from his cousin, Pentheus, the young regent, who
refused to acknowledge his divinity. As a consequence of his arrogance,
Pentheus was torn to pieces by his own mother and her sisters while they
were in a Bacchic trance on Mount Cithaeron, mistaking Pentheus for a
young lion. Not all of Dionysus’s exploits were violent, however: his bride
was King Minos of Crete’s daughter Ariadne, whom he rescued from
Naxos, where she had been abandoned, and made immortal.
As for Dionysus’s attributes and symbols, the grapevine and ivy, a plant
emblematic of eternal life, were especially sacred to him. His typical
companions were Satyrs and Silens, lusty hybrid creatures, as well as
Maenads, his female followers. The god and his followers appear frequently
in Greek art, especially on cups and pitchers used for wine. There Dionysus
is depicted regularly with long hair, bearded, wreathed with ivy, wearing the
skin of a fawn, and holding a wine cup in his hands.
The Romans identified Dionysus with their wine god Liber.
(See also Acetes, Apollo, Ariadne, Athens, Bacchantes [the], Bacchus,
Cithaeron [Mount], Crete, Hera, Ino, Liber, Lycurgus, Lydia, Maenads
[the], Minos, Naxos, Nysaean Nymphs [the], Parnassus [Mount], Pentheus,
Phrygia, Satyrs [the], Semele, Silens [the], Thebes, Thrace, and Zeus.)

DIOSCURI, THE There were two primary sets of Dioscuri, twin “Sons of
Zeus,” in Classical myth and thought: Castor and Pollux of Sparta, and
Zethus and Amphion of Thebes. The more important of these were Castor
and Pollux (or Polydeuces), and it is they who are typically known as “the”
Dioscuri. Castor and Pollux are variously described as sons of Tyndareus,
king of Sparta (by Homer, for example), and, more frequently, as having
mixed parentage, their mother, Leda, having lain with both the god Zeus
and her husband on the same day, the result being children sired by different
fathers: Castor and his sister Clytemnestra by Tyndareus, therefore being
mortal; Pollux and the beautiful Helen by Zeus, thus being immortal. Their
adventures were numerous, among them the rescue of their sister Helen
when she was abducted by the Athenian hero Theseus. The Dioscuri
reputedly took part in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar, and also joined
Jason and the Argonauts in the quest for the Golden Fleece; in the course of
this second undertaking, Pollux, availing himself of his skills as a boxer,
defeated and killed the hostile Amycus, king of the Bebryces, a tribe that
lived near the eastern end of the Sea of Marmara. When Castor and Pollux
attended the wedding of their cousins Idas and Lynceus to the daughters of
Leucippus (the Leucippides), who were also their cousins, they carried off
the brides. This infamous episode became known as “the rape of the
Leucippides.” The Dioscuri were pursued by the bridegrooms, and a fight
ensued in which Castor and Lynceus were slain, while Idas was killed by
Zeus with a thunderbolt. According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Zeus
wished then to transport Pollux to the heavens, but he refused to accept
immortality while his brother Castor was dead. Consequently, Zeus
permitted them both to be among the gods and among mortals every other
day. By some accounts this meant that the brothers would take turns being
on Olympus or among humans (on earth or in Hades, where deceased
mortals normally went). There was an alternate tradition according to which
Castor and Pollux came to blows with their cousins over a collaborative
cattle raid in which they felt they did not receive their fair share.
 As deities, the Dioscuri Castor and Pollux were often represented as
horsemen. When they were transported to the heavens, they became stars,
specifically those of the constellation Gemini. They were called upon to
bring help to those in distress at sea and appeared as stars or as the
atmospheric phenomenon known as St. Elmo’s fire. Their power as saviors
extended beyond the sea to battles fought on land.
(See also Amphion, Calydon, Castor, Clytemnestra, Gemini, Hades
[place], Helen, Leda, Leucippus, Olympus [Mount], Pollux, Sparta, Thebes,
Tyndareus, Zethus, and Zeus.)

DIS Dis, or Dis Pater (“Father Dis”), was the Roman equivalent of the
Greek god of the Underworld, Hades, who was also called Pluto. As in the
case of Pluto, his name was derived from the word for wealth, divitiae, or
its adjectival form, wealthy (dives). The lord of the Underworld was
considered wealthy, since all things and everyone came to him eventually
but also, and perhaps more importantly, because the earth was the source of
bounty, especially agricultural. As was the case with Dis’s Greek
counterpart, his name became a toponym, thus being synonymous with the
Underworld itself.
(See also Hades [god and place], Pluto, and Underworld [the].)

DORIS Doris was a sea nymph and one of the Oceanids, daughters of the
Titan god Oceanus and his sister Tethys. With the sea god Nereus, she
became mother to the fifty Nereid nymphs, the best known of whom were
Galatea, whom the Cyclops Polyphemus loved; Thetis, who became mother
to the hero Achilles; and, by some accounts, Amphitrite, who was pursued
by the god Poseidon and bore his children Triton and Rhode.
(See also Achilles, Amphitrite, Cyclopes [the], Galatea, Nereids [the],
Nereus, Oceanids [the], Oceanus [god], Polyphemus, Poseidon, Rhode,
Tethys, Titans [the], and Triton.)

DRYADS, THE Dryads were a specific kind of nymph, nymphs being

female nature deities or “spirits” who were thought to inhabit and animate
various parts or components of the natural world, including bodies of water
(Naiads), mountains (Oreads), and trees. Nymphs could possess powers of
prophecy and, unusually for deities, were mortal. Dryads were tree nymphs,
often associated with oaks in particular, though the Greek word drys was
used to designate trees in general as well as oaks. Dryads were
distinguished from Hamadryads, who were also tree nymphs, but in the
latter’s case, the nymphs’ lives were dependent on and “one with” the life
of their trees.
(See also Hamadryads [the], Naiads [the], Nymphs [the], and Oreads
[the].)

ECHO The nymph Echo became nothing but a disembodied voice that
repeated only the last words that someone else had spoken. How this
occurred is explained by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses. It had
been Echo’s task to divert Juno’s attention when Jupiter was dallying with
various mountain nymphs, and this she did by chatting with her. For this
Juno punished her by limiting her speech to repetition of snippets of others’
words. It was Echo’s further misfortune to fall in love with Narcissus, who
spurned her along with all others. As a result of her lovesickness and his
inattention, she wasted away to become nothing but her voice.
(See also Juno, Jupiter, Narcissus, and Nymphs [the].)

EGERIA Egeria was a nymph or goddess of springs and was associated

both with prophecy and childbirth. In Roman tradition she was best known
as lover, wife, and/or counselor of Numa Pompilius, the legendary second
king of Rome, the dates of whose rule are given as 715–673 BCE. The
Roman historian Livy recounts that, on assuming the crown, Numa set out
to provide Rome with a set of laws and customs whereby to subdue and
civilize its bellicose people. Importantly, this effort involved establishing
cults, priesthoods, and religious rites. In order to lend credence to these
cultic institutions and to instill in the populace fear of the gods, Numa made
it known that he had been meeting with the nymph Egeria at night, and that
his actions were based on her advice. From the poet Ovid we learn that,
grief-stricken upon Numa’s death, a despondent Egeria fled from the City to
the forests of Aricia and dissolved in a flood of tears. Taking pity on her, the
goddess Diana transformed Egeria into a spring near her sanctuary near
Aricia in Latium.
 In cult, Egeria was associated both with Diana and the Camenae, at
whose grove in the city of Rome she was worshipped.
(See also Camenae [the], Diana, Latium, Numa, Nymphs [the], and
Rome.)

EILEITHYIA Eileithyia (or Ilithyia), “The One Who Comes to Help,” was
the Greek goddess who assisted women with childbirth. She is described by
the poet Hesiod as a child of Zeus and Hera, but there are mentions of two
aspects of her, or even multiples of her, in other sources: one Eileithyia who
brought relief and hastened childbirth and another who delayed it, causing
discomfort and pain. These two iterations (or functions) of the goddess,
together with Eileithyia’s close relation to Hera, patron goddess of women
as wives, are illustrated by the well-known tale of Hercules’s birth, in which
instance she hastened the birth of Eurystheus to Nicippe, a daughter of
Pelops, and delayed that of Hercules to Alcmena. This she did at Hera’s
command, since it had been prophesied that a child of Zeus’s bloodline
would soon be born and become the ruler of all the territory of Argos. As
Hercules was her husband Zeus’ own child, while Eurystheus was more
distantly related, a jealous Hera wished to prevent this boon from falling to
Hercules.
Eileithyia was sometimes invoked as an aspect of the goddesses Artemis
and Hera in their function as goddesses of childbirth. Her Roman
counterpart was Lucina.
(See also Argos, Artemis, Eurystheus, Hera, Hercules, Lucina, Pelops,
and Zeus.)

ELECTRA Two minor deities were named Electra. One was a daughter of
the sea deities Oceanus and Tethys. With Thaumas, a son of Pontus and
Gaia, she became mother to Iris, goddess of the rainbow, and to the dread
Harpies. Another Electra was one of the Pleiades. She was pursued by Zeus,
who successfully made advances toward her, even though she had taken
refuge at a statue of Athena. Impregnated by the god, she bore Dardanus, an
ancestor of the Trojans, and Iasion, with whom the goddess Demeter would
fall in love.
These Electras are to be distinguished from the daughter of the
Mycenaean king Agamemnon of the same name.
(See also Agamemnon, Athena, Dardanus, Demeter, Electra [heroine],
Gaia, Harpies [the], Iris, Oceanus [god], Pleiades [the], Tethys, Thaumas,
Troy, and Zeus.)

ENYO Enyo was a Greek goddess and personification of war, especially of

close combat. In Homer’s Iliad, she accompanied both Ares, god of war and
its horrors, and Athena, goddess of defensive war. In the work of later
authors, she is named as the mother, nurse, and even sister of Ares, and is
described as blood-covered, grim, torch-bearing, and, like the Erinyes,
snake-haired. The Romans conflated and identified her with their war
goddess Bellona.
(See also Ares, Athena, Bellona, and Erinyes [the].)

EOS Eos was the goddess of the dawn and, by extension, of daylight. To
the Romans, Eos was known as Aurora. Homer famously describes her as
“rosy-fingered,” “saffron-robed,” “golden-throned,” and “early-born.”
According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Eos was a second-generation Titan,
being the child of the Titan gods Theia and Hyperion. Her siblings were
Helios (“the Sun”) and Selene (“the Moon”), and her original consort was
said to be another second-generation, Astraeus, to whom she bore the wind
gods Zephyr, Boreas, and Notus as well as the other stars in the heavens,
including Eosphorus (Lucifer), the Morning Star.
Eos had human lovers as well, however, and she abducted those mortals
who caught her fancy. One of them was the newly married Cephalus, who
prayed to be released and restored to his young wife, Procris. In anger, Eos
set in motion the tragic events that caused Procris’s death at Cephalus’s
hands. Another was the hunter Orion. A third was the handsome Tithonus, a
son of the Trojan king Laomedon and brother of the later king of Troy,
Priam. According to the so-called Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Eos asked
Zeus that he make Tithonus immortal, a request that the god readily
granted, but she had forgotten to ask that Tithonus also remain eternally
youthful. So long as he remained young, Eos and her beloved lived happily
beside the river Ocean (Oceanus), but as soon as he began to age, she no
longer permitted him inside her bedroom, though she fed him ambrosia, the
food of the gods, and gave him lovely clothes. When, in the passage of
time, he became so feeble that he could no longer move and only babbled
endlessly, she locked him in a chamber. By a tenth-century, post-classical
account, he became a cicada.
Eos’s sons by Tithonus were Emathion, a king of Arabia whom Hercules
killed, and Memnon, whom Achilles slew at Troy and at whose death Eos
reputedly left the earth in darkness for a day.
(See also Achilles, Boreas, Cephalus, Helios, Hercules, Laomedon,
Notus, Oceanus [place], Orion, Priam, Procris, Selene, Titans [the],
Tithonus, Troy, and Zephyr.)

ERATO Erato was one of the Muses and, as her name “The Lovely One”
(who is thus desired) suggests, her sphere of influence was lyric poetry
focusing on the theme of love. Given her realm, it is especially striking that
the poet Virgil calls on her for inspiration at the midpoint of his epic poem
the Aeneid, the latter half of this poem being given over to war incited by
love and lovers wronged, central to which are the Carthaginian queen Dido,
the Rutulian prince Turnus, and the Italian princess Lavinia.
(See also Carthage, Dido, Lavinia, Muses [the], Rutulians [the], and
Turnus.)

ERINYES, THE The Erinyes were spirits of vengeance whose greatest

concern was blood crimes against family members. In his account of the
origin of the gods, Hesiod writes that the Erinyes, together with the Giants,
were produced by Gaia (“Earth”), when drops of blood from the castration
of Uranus fell on her; in the sense that she, too, resulted from this violence
against Uranus, Aphrodite was their sister. According to the mythographer
Apollodorus, the Erinyes were named Megaera (“Envious One”), Tisiphone
(“Avenger of Murder”), and Alecto (“Implacable One”). The Erinyes play a
large role in the myths of Oedipus and of the matricide Orestes, son of King
Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, whom he killed in vengeance for
Agamemnon’s death. The tragedian Aeschylus describes the Erinyes, who
pursued Orestes until he was purified of his crime by Apollo and by
Athena, as similar in appearance to the Gorgons and Harpies, having snakes
as hair but having no wings. They dripped gore from their eyes, were
dressed in squalid garments, and their snores emitted fetid breath. At the
culmination of Orestes’s tribulations, the goddess Athena transformed the
fearsome Erinyes into Eumenides (“Kindly Ones”), spirits that promoted
the fertility of flocks, fields, and humans alike and went to live beneath the
Areopagus (“sacred Hill of Ares”) in Athens. It is as the Eumenides that
Oedipus, blinded and exiled from Thebes for his crimes, encountered them,
having accidentally stepped into an area sacred to them at Colonus in the
territory of Athens. This trespass compounded Oedipus’s guilt, but he was
expiated of this recent crime by the Athenian king Theseus, in
compensation for which favor Oedipus would protect Athens from his place
of burial at Colonus even after his death.
For the Romans, the Erinyes were known as Furies.
(See also Agamemnon, Alecto, Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena, Athens,
Clytemnestra, Colonus, Eumenides [the], Furies [the], Gaia, Giants [the],
Gorgons [the], Harpies [the], Oedipus, Orestes, Thebes, Theseus, and
Uranus.)

ERIS Eris, the personification of strife, was a goddess chiefly known for
her role in the Trojan War. It was, in fact, she who was that war’s ultimate
cause. All the gods had been invited to the wedding of the hero Peleus and
the sea goddess Thetis, except the disagreeable Eris. For this slight she
would have her revenge. Eris appeared at the wedding to deliver a gift: a
golden apple inscribed with the words “for the fairest.” Three goddesses
came forward to claim this prize: Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite. The
individual thought best qualified to judge this beauty contest was Paris, the
prince of Troy, handsomest of men, who was tending a flock of sheep on
Mount Ida. The goddesses did not leave his decision to chance, each of
them offering him a bribe. Hera offered him wide rulership, Athena offered
him success in war, and Aphrodite, knowing him best, offered him the most
beautiful woman in the world. Paris chose Aphrodite and set sail for Sparta
to claim his prize, Helen, wife of the Spartan king Menelaus. By some
accounts, Helen left for Troy with Paris willingly, by others not. In any
event, Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, assembled
a fleet of 1,000 ships manned by the best warriors that Greece had to offer
and headed for Troy, where they would battle over Helen for a decade.
 (See also Agamemnon, Aphrodite, Athena, Hera, Ida [Mount],
Menelaus, Mycenae, Peleus, Sparta, Thetis, and Troy.)

EROS Eros, who was known as Cupid and Amor to the Romans, was the
Greek personification of sexual desire. He was originally conceived of as a
primeval, physical, and elemental force that was absolutely essential to the
genesis of the gods and the various components of the universe. In the
Theogony, the Greek poet Hesiod’s account of the origins of the gods, Eros
arose out of the great Void (Chaos) together with Gaia (“Earth”) and
Tartarus (“earth’s depths”), and he is there characterized as the most
beautiful or handsome of the gods, with the ability to overpower humans
and gods alike. For the Greek lyric poets he was beautiful, young, golden-
haired and golden-winged, and wreathed with flowers, but, armed with a
bow and arrow with which to induce love, he was also capricious and
sometimes cruel. As the notion of him as an anthropomorphized fertility
deity prevailed over his guise as a cosmic “force of nature,” he was viewed
as the son of Ares and the love goddess Aphrodite, whom he accompanied
together with Pothos (“Longing”) and Himeros (“Desire”), the Charites
(“Graces”), and Peitho (“Persuasion”).
In terms of mythology, Eros played a role in a great many myths,
causing one character to fall in love with another: the sorceress Medea with
Jason, the god Apollo with Daphne, and the hard-hearted Hades with
Persephone. But Eros, too, could fall in love, as he did with the lovely
Psyche.
(See also Aphrodite, Ares, Chaos, Charites [the], Cupid, Daphne, Gaia,
Hades [god], Himeros, Jason, Medea, Persephone, Psyche, and Tartarus.)

EUMENIDES, THE The Eumenides, whose name means “Kindly Ones,”

were the benign counterparts of the Erinyes, Spirits of Vengeance. The
Eumenides, who were responsible for the fertility of flocks, fields, and
humans, were worshipped at a range of sites in Greece, among them the
Athenian sanctuary at Colonus. That site was made famous by Oedipus,
who, prior to being absolved of his sins, accidentally trod on the
Eumenides’s sacred ground, thereby polluting it.
(See also Athens, Colonus, Erinyes [the], and Oedipus.)
EUPHROSYNE Euphrosyne, whose name means “Joy” or “Good Cheer,”
was one of the three Graces, or Charites as they were known in Greece,
goddesses embodying beauty, joy, and grace.
(See Graces [the].)

EURUS Eurus, or Euros in Greek, was a personification and deity of the

east wind. In his account of the origin of the gods, in which he describes the
birth of the winds Boreas, Notus, and Zephyr, Hesiod makes no mention of
Eurus. The Roman architect Vitruvius writes that Eurus derives his name
from the fact that he develops from the morning breezes, and for
encyclopedist Pliny the Elder, Eurus’s dry and warm properties are
conducive to beehives’ and vineyards’ productiveness if exposed to him.
(See also Boreas, Notus, and Zephyr.)

EURYDICE The best-known Eurydice was a Dryad nymph married to the

Thracian bard Orpheus. Her tale is told most vividly by the Roman poets
Virgil and Ovid. When the famed herdsman and beekeeper Aristaeus
pursued her, she fled and, as she ran, fell victim to a lurking snake’s
venemous bite. A grief-stricken Orpheus sang of his love for her day and
night, and entered the Underworld in search of her. There, even the shades
of the dead were mesmerized by his song, and Proserpina, Hades’s queen,
granted Eurydice’s release to the world above on the condition that, while
leading her back, Orpheus did not look back. But, overcome by worry that
she may have fallen behind, he did look back, and Eurydice vanished from
sight, returning to the dead. For nine months Orpheus wandered, lamenting
all the while. When, at last, he was seen and desired by some Thracian
Bacchantes, he repulsed their advances, and they tore him limb from limb.
Orpheus’s remains were swept along the currents of the Hebrus River, and
as it was carried along, his severed head continued to lament Eurydice.
The nymph Eurydice is to be distinguished from the wife of the Theban
regent Creon, who committed suicide upon the death of Antigone and her
son Haemon.
(See also Antigone, Aristaeus, Bacchantes [the], Creon, Dryads [the],
Eurydice [heroine], Hades, Haemon, Hebrus River [the], Orpheus,
Proserpina, Thebes, and Thrace.)
EURYNOME Eurynome, “Good Cheer,” was the mother of the three (or
more) Graces, goddesses who embodied beauty, joy, and grace.
(See also Graces [the].)

EUTERPE Euterpe, “Bringer of Delight,” was one of the Muses, daughters

of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Euterpe’s particular realm of responsibility
became the music of the flute. She and her sisters Calliope and Clio were all
three named as mothers of the Thracian king Rhesus.
(See Calliope, Mnemosyne, Muses [the], Rhesus, Thrace, and Zeus.)

FATES, THE The Fates were goddesses of prophetic destiny. Their name,
as well as the word “fate,” is derived from the Latin word “to speak”: for,
fari, fatum (I speak, to speak, it has been spoken). Thus speech, taking the
form of decreeing or foretelling what will happen, is central to the concept
of fate. For the Greeks, the Fates, generally thought of as being three in
number, were known as Moirae, and for the Romans, Parcae. In both Greek
and Roman traditions there is tension between the Fates and the gods:
sometimes the gods could influence fate, and at other times it appears they
could not.
(See also Moirae [the] and Parcae [the].)

FAUNS, THE Fauns were woodland spirits of hybrid form, predominantly

anthropomorphic but having goats’ tails, ears, and horns.
(See Fauns [Hybrid Creatures].)

FAUNUS Faunus was an Italian nature deity who was associated with
forests and wild places and was responsible, too, for the fertility of flocks
and fields. He became conflated or identified with the Greek god Pan, as a
consequence borrowing the latter’s goatlike physical features. In addition to
being a nature and fertility deity, Faunus possessed prophetic powers. In
Virgil’s epic The Aeneid, for example, Latinus, the king of Latium in Italy,
goes to consult the oracle of Faunus, which is located in a sacred grove: he
needs to know the true meaning of the sudden presence of a swarm of bees
in his citadel’s sacred laurel and of his daughter’s hair bursting into flames.
The oracle reveals to him that Latinus’s daughter is not destined to marry
the Rutulian prince Turnus but rather someone from afar. This foreigner
was the hero Aeneas. For Virgil, Faunus is a son of the agriculture god
Picus and a grandson of Saturn.
(See also Aeneas, Latinus, Latium, Pan, Picus, Rutulians [the], Saturn,
and Turnus.)

FAVONIUS For the Romans, Favonius was a personification and deity of

the west wind, who was also known as Zephyr. Favonius, a warm and
gentle wind, was considered a god of spring responsible for the rebirth of
dormant plant life.
(See also Zephyr.)

FLORA Flora was the goddess of flowering crops and plants, and as such,
a fertility goddess. She appears to have been a native Italian deity, not an
import from Greece. She was closely linked with Ceres, goddess of the
harvest, and with Ceres’s daughter Proserpina (Persephone), with whom she
was sometimes identified. A festival in her honor, the Floralia, was
celebrated annually from April 28 to early May.
In the Roman poet Ovid’s Fasti, Flora herself describes the divine
powers given her and why. She was once a nymph called Chloris
(“Greenery”) who was pursued and seized by the god of the west wind,
Zephyr. This god subsequently made her his bride, and she became Flora,
“mistress of flowers,” who lived in perpetual spring and surrounded with
gardens burgeoning with all manner of blossoms. The Horae (“Hours”)
came to pick her flowers, and with these flowers, the Graces plaited
garlands for their hair. The earth, she says, had been only one color until she
scattered varied seeds. It was she, by her account, who transformed the
youths Hyacinth, Narcissus, Attis, Crocus, and Adonis into the flowers that,
apart from the violet (formerly Attis) and anemone (Adonis), still bear their
“human” names. She was responsible, too, for the birth to Hera of the god
Mars, an ancient god of agriculture. Her speech concludes with a summary
of flowering plants over which she wields power: grain, grapes, olives,
beans, lentils, clover, violets, and thyme all fall under her sway.
(See also Adonis, Ceres, Graces [the], Hera, Hyacinth, Mars, Narcissus,
Persephone, Proserpina, and Zephyr.)
FURIES, THE The Furies were Roman deities known also as Dirae,
“Dreadful Ones,” and were equated with the Greek Erinyes. The name of
the Furies, Furiae in Latin, reflected their fearsome nature: ancient authors
derived the name from furere (“rage”) and furia (“fury, anger”). Like the
Erinyes, the Furies were spirits of vengeance. In literature and art, they are
variously represented as Gorgon-like, having snakes as hair, or as having
snakes wrapped around their arms and bodies. They could also be shown as
winged and bearing torches and whips. Of the three Furies, Tisiphone and
Alecto are the best known. Tisiphone guarded the portals of Tartarus, the
region of the Underworld where sinners resided, while Alecto played a
significant role in ensuring that there would be armed conflict between the
people of Italy and the Trojan Aeneas when he arrived from Troy.
(See also Aeneas, Alecto, Erinyes [the], Gorgons [the], Tartarus,
Tisiphone, and Troy.)

GAEA Gaea, also written Gaia or Ge, was the goddess of the earth and a
personification of the planet Earth.
(See Gaia.)

GAIA Gaia (also called Ge and Gaea) was the goddess of the earth, a
primeval elemental deity personified to varying degrees. To the Romans she
was known as Tellus. Both Gaia’s antiquity and her importance in religious
thought cannot be overemphasized. She is the Greek incarnation of an
earth-mother goddess that had been widely worshipped in Greece, the Near
East, and elsewhere for millennia by the time that she made her appearance,
complete with a mythology, in the works of Homer and Hesiod. In the so-
called Homeric Hymn in her honor, Gaia is the mother of all living things
and the oldest of all the gods. She is the source of nourishment, too, for all
creatures, and as such, she is the mainstay of human civilization and
prosperity. It is the case that all or most goddesses are refractions of her in
her omnipotence: she was the first, and those who came after each had a
portion of her powers.
Given her importance, it is not surprising that Gaia was honored in cult
throughout the Greek world. The travel writer Pausanias makes particular
mention of a sanctuary of Gaia in Achaia and a Gaia-altar consisting of
ashes at the earlier site of her oracle within the sacred precinct of Olympia.
With respect to the oracle, it should be noted that Gaia’s powers extended to
the realm of prophecy: her prophecies, it was thought, issued from within
the earth, through clefts in the rock or otherwise. While there are a number
of stories around how the god Apollo acquired, or seized, control of the
famous oracle at Delphi, these are in agreement that the oracle first
belonged to Gaia solely or in part. It was she who established the dragon
Pytho (or Python) as the oracle’s guardian.
As for Gaia’s own origins and offspring, Hesiod’s Theogony, which
describes the birth of the universe, offers the earliest account: in the
beginning Chaos, a great Void, was first to come into being, followed by
Gaia, the Earth; Tartarus, the Earth’s deepest recess; and Eros, Desire.
Thereafter, the Darkness of Erebus and Night arose from the elemental
Chaos, and Night produced Aether, the bright upper atmosphere, and Day,
both of whom she conceived with Erebus. Gaia, for her part, first bore
Uranus (or Ouranos), the Heavens, to surround and protect her, and then she
produced the mountains (Ourea) and Pontus, the sea, that “shaped” her
physically. Gaia and Uranus together became the parents of the twelve Titan
gods, among whom were Oceanus, Coeus, Hyperion, Iapetus, Rhea,
Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, and Cronus, the youngest of these.
Gaia’s next children by Uranus were two sets of monsters. The first of these
were the Cyclopes, giants who each had a single eye on their foreheads.
They were named Brontes (“Thunderer”), Steropes (“Lightning”), and
Arges (“Brightness”) and, when Zeus later became king of the gods, they
crafted lightning bolts and thunder for him. The second set of monster-
brothers were the three Hecatoncheires (“Hundred-handers”), each having
one hundred arms and fifty heads. They were Cottus, Briareos, and Gyes,
all three being arrogant, violent, and terribly strong. These six monsters
were so hateful to their father, Uranus, that he thrust them back inside their
mother after their birth, causing her great pain—pain she would not bear.
Gaia made a sickle and asked her Titan children to avenge her for the
violence she had suffered. Only the youngest, Cronus, came forward.
Armed with the sickle, he waited until his father came to lie with Gaia at
night and, ambushing Uranus, castrated him. Drops of blood fell on the
earth, and from them were born the Erinyes, spirits of vengeance; the
Giants, fully armed; and the Meliae nymphs. From the foam that arose
where Uranus’s severed genitalia fell into the sea was born Aphrodite,
goddess of sexuality and desire. His father now emasculated, Cronus
became king of the gods, a station he enjoyed until he himself was later
overthrown by his son Zeus.
(See also Aphrodite, Apollo, Chaos, Cronus, Cyclopes [the], Delphi,
Erebus, Erinyes [the], Eros, Giants [the], Hecatoncheires [the], Hyperion,
Iapetus, Mnemosyne, Oceanus, Olympia, Phoebe, Python, Rhea, Tartarus,
Tellus, Tethys, Themis, Titans [the], Uranus, and Zeus.)

GALATEA The sea nymph Galatea was one of the Nereids, the fifty
daughters of the Oceanid Doris and the sea god Nereus. The principal story
associated with her involves the Cyclops Polyphemus, who fell desperately
in love with her and wooed her with melodies that he played on a reed pipe
large enough to fit into his rough, ungainly giant’s hands. He promised her a
wealth of rustic delights: his cave; a flock of sheep; and ample harvests of
golden apples, berries, and grapes. Her father-in-law, he proudly sang,
would be Poseidon. All this did not move Galatea, who was as enamored of
young Acis, a son of the rustic god Faunus, as she was revolted by the
Cyclops. In a jealous rage at the lovers’ dalliance, Polyphemus struck and
killed the youth with a rock torn from a mountain. As the poet Ovid writes,
in answer to Galatea’s prayers, where Acis fell the earth split open to reveal
him reborn as river god, larger now than in his previous life, with horns
newly grown upon his head and his body blue-green in hue.
The nymph Galatea is to be distinguished from the “animate” statue of
the same name sculpted by Pygmalion.
(See also Acis, Cyclopes [the], Doris, Faunus, Nereids [the], Nereus,
Oceanids [the], Polyphemus, Poseidon, and Pygmalion.)

GE Ge is another commonly used name for the Greek earth goddess Gaia.
(See also Gaia.)

GEMINI Gemini is the name of the constellation into which the Divine
Twins or Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, were transformed. Castor and Pollux
were the brothers of Helen of Troy and of the faithless Clytemnestra.
(See also Clytemnestra, Dioscuri [the], Helen, and Troy.)
GLAUCUS Glaucus had been a mortal and a fisherman until he ate a bit of
grass that caused his transformation into a sea deity with a fish’s tail in
place of legs. As a god, he was a patron of sailors. He pursued Scylla, and it
was he who inadvertently caused her transformation into a monster by the
sorceress Circe.
(See also Circe and Scylla [monster].)

GRACES, THE The Graces, or Charites as they were known in Greece,

were goddesses embodying beauty, joy, and grace. According to the Greek
poet Hesiod, they were born of Zeus and the lovely Eurynome, a daughter
of Oceanus (and thus an Oceanid), and their names were Aglaia (“The
Resplendent One”), Euphrosyne (“Good Cheer”), and Thalia (“Blooming
One”). Thalia the Grace was distinct from the Muse of the same name.
Love and beauty, Hesiod reports, streamed from their eyes. We also learn
from Hesiod that they lived with Himerus (“Desire”) beside the Muses on
Mount Olympus, and they took part in the creation of the first mortal
woman, Pandora. In the works of later authors, they are sometimes more
numerous, one of their number being called Charis (“Grace”), and their
parents are variously said to be Zeus and Eunomia (“goddess of good
order”), the sun god Helios and the Naiad nymph Aigle, Hera and
Dionysus.
The Graces are best known as attendants of other female goddesses,
especially Aphrodite, whom they were said to have clothed with branches
of myrtle when she first stepped ashore after her birth from the sea’s foam.
(See also Aphrodite, Dionysus, Helios, Hera, Muses [the], Naiads [the],
Oceanus, Oceanids [the], Olympus [Mount], Pandora, Thalia, and Zeus.)

HADES Hades was the god of the Underworld, Lord of the Dead, the god
of death, and even death personified. The Underworld was sometimes
called the House of Hades, but the god’s very name also became
synonymous with the Underworld and was accordingly used as a toponym.
Though encountering Hades was unavoidable, even calling upon him by
name was a frightening prospect. For this reason it was avoided by resorting
to circumlocutions such as “Cthonian Zeus” or “Lord of Underworld.” The
etymology of the name Hades is disputed, but it may mean the “Invisible
One.” Called by Homer “hateful” and “implacable,” Hades was not prayed
to or worshipped in cult. He did, however, also have a more benign side,
and as such was known as Pluto, “Wealthy One,” who was a source of all
good things that rise from the earth. As Pluto, he was worshipped alongside
his wife, Persephone, queen of the dead, and her mother, the goddess
Demeter.
In mythology, Hades was the son of the Titan gods Cronus and Rhea.
His siblings were Zeus, Poseidon, Hestia, Hera, and Demeter. When
Cronus’s children overpowered him, it had not yet been determined what
part of the world each of the gods would take control of. In order to
establish this, the brothers drew lots from a helmet, and it was in this way
that Hades was awarded the Underworld as his realm of influence. Given
the nature of this god and his kingdom, it is not surprising that he took his
bride, Persephone, by force, abducting her as she was picking flowers in a
meadow. As Demeter was despondent over the loss of her daughter, Hades
did eventually concede to allowing Persephone to return to the world above,
but for a limited time; he obliged Persephone to return for a portion of
every year by tricking her into eating the seeds of a pomegranate. The
abduction of his bride is his best-known myth.
As a deity who was feared, depictions of him in art were few. In a fresco
painting from a Macedonian royal tomb, he is represented as a mature male
with a full beard and driving a chariot, a wailing, gesticulating Persephone
in his arms. Hades/Pluto could also be depicted holding a cornucopia, a
pomegranate, or a scepter.
(See also Cronus, Demeter, Hades [place], Hera, Hestia, Persephone,
Pluto, Poseidon, Rhea, Titans [the], Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

HAMADRYADS, THE Hamadryads were particular tree nymphs whose

lives were intertwined with the lives of the trees that they inhabited. While
they appear to be a subset of Dryads, who were tree nymphs of all varieties,
they were sometimes indistinguishable from them.
(See also Dryads [the] and Nymphs [the].)

HARMONIA Harmonia, the personification of harmony, was generally said

to be a daughter of Aphrodite and Ares, with whom Aphrodite,
Hephaestus’s wife, was having an affair. It was Zeus’s wish that Harmonia
should wed the hero Cadmus, and the historian Diodorus Siculus writes that
the wedding of Harmonia to Cadmus, who would become the founder of the
city of Thebes, was the first for which the gods provided a marriage feast.
At this feast, the Muses sang, and Apollo played the lyre. Cadmus’s gifts to
his bride were a splendid robe and a necklace made by Hephaestus, and
though lovely, the necklace, created by Hephaestus in anger over his wife,
Aphrodite’s, infidelity, would be a source of woe for Cadmus’s family.
Harmonia and Cadmus became parents to a son, Polydorus, and four
daughters, Ino, Autonoe, Semele, and Agave, all of whom gained notoriety.
As for the necklace, Oedipus’s son Polyneices, who had inherited it, offered
it to Eriphyle as a bribe so that she might persuade her husband,
Amphiaraus, to join him in marching against his brother Eteocles, the
current regent of Thebes; Eteocles had refused to honor the terms of what
was to be a joint, alternating regency. Both Eteocles and Polyneices were
killed in the battle that ensued, as was Amphiaraus and five of the others
who had accompanied Polyneices (the Seven Against Thebes). The
necklace (or by some accounts, the robe) was again brought into play when
Eriphyle was bribed by Polyneices’s son to persuade her son Alcmaeon to
lead the sons of Polyneices’s cohort against Thebes in order to avenge the
deaths of their fathers. Alcmaeon was instructed by the oracle at Delphi to
kill his mother for causing his father’s death, which he did and,
consequently, was visited by madness as a matricide. To complicate his life
even further, Alcmaeon married Arsinoe (or Alphesiboeia), daughter of the
king of Psophis, to whom he gave Harmonia’s necklace as a wedding
present. Later, Alcmaeon married Callirrhoe, daughter of Achelous, who
wanted the necklace. Alcmaeon attempted to retrieve the necklace from his
first wife by employing a ruse but was discovered and killed. Alcmaeon’s
sons by Callirrhoe avenged his death by killing their father’s murderers and
dedicated the necklace at Delphi.
 PLATE II

Dionysus: God of wine, born of Zeus’s thigh

 Harmonia and Cadmus, for their part, left Thebes for Illyria as a
consequence of the tragedies that had befallen their children. According to
the playwright Euripides, both would be transformed into serpents, lead
armies of barbarians, and, at the end of their lives, go to live in the Lands of
the Blessed.
Alternate versions of the tale, of which there are many, record Zeus and
Electra, a daughter of the second-generation Titan god Atlas, as Harmonia’s
parents and assert that the fateful necklace was a gift from Athena or
Aphrodite.
(See also Agave, Alcmaeon, Amphiaraus, Aphrodite, Ares, Arsinoe,
Athena, Atlas, Autonoe, Cadmus, Delphi, Electra [nymph], Eriphyle,
Eteocles, Hephaestus, Ino, Oedipus, Polyneices, Semele, Seven Against
Thebes [the], Thebes, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

HARPIES, THE The Harpies, whose name means “Snatchers” or

“Grabbers,” were two or (according to some sources) three monstrous
female daimones, or spirits—technically deities—that personified the
demonic, unpredictable, grasping forces of storm winds. Early sources do
not describe them physically, but they came to be represented as hybrid
monsters having the heads of women and the bodies of birds.
(See Harpies [monsters].)

HEBE Hebe, whose name means “youth,” was the personification of

youthful beauty and vigor. She is described by the Greek poet Hesiod as a
daughter of Zeus and Hera and, according to Homer, she was an attendant
of the Olympian gods, whose tasks included filling their cups with nectar,
bathing and dressing Ares, and yoking Hera’s horses to her chariot. Hebe
was said to have been married to Hercules after he joined the ranks of the
gods. She was also a companion of the various deities associated with
weddings: Hera, Aphrodite, the Charites (“Graces”), and Harmonia
(“Harmony”).
The Romans to some degree identified their goddess of youth, Juventus,
with Hebe.
(See also Aphrodite, Ares, Graces [the], Harmonia, Hera, Hercules,
Juventus, and Zeus.)
HECATE Hecate (or Hekate) was the daughter of the second-generation
Titan gods Asteria and Perses. She was known to the poet Hesiod as a
beneficent goddess whom Zeus honored above all others, giving her wide-
ranging authority on earth and sea as well as in the heavens: she was
responsible for wealth and good fortune, victory in battle and in athletic
competition, bountiful fishermen’s catches, fertility of flocks, the growth
and health of the young, kings’ well-reasoned judgments, and sound
deliberations in the assembly. As a consequence, she was involved with
virtually every facet of family and political life. In spite of all this, Hecate is
generally remembered for her links with magic, necromancy, and the
witching hour, her darker aspects having been emphasized by later Classical
authors. She was also the goddess of crossroads and of transitions. In her
various guises, Hecate was associated with Artemis, Demeter, Hermes,
Selene, and Persephone, whose abduction by Hades she was said to have
witnessed, and in the Roman world, she could be known as Trivia,
“Goddess of the Three Ways,” a reference to Hecate as goddess of the
crossroads. She is often represented in art holding torches, with a dog, and
even having three bodies.
In mythology, this goddess played a critical role in the expedition of
Jason, who succeeded in his quest for the Golden Fleece only through
assistance he received from Medea, a priestess of the goddess. Medea had
received instruction from Hecate in witchcraft and in the handling of magic
herbs; with these herbs she could extinguish fire and change the course of
rivers as well as of the stars and moon. Medea supplied Jason with an
ointment that made him invulnerable to sword and fire; it was derived from
the root of a saffron-colored plant that had sprung from blood dropped by
the eagle eating the continuously regenerating heart of Promethus. In order
successfully to harvest this plant, Medea needed to cut its root at night and
only after cleansing herself ritually.
(See also Artemis, Demeter, Hades, Hermes, Jason, Medea, Persephone,
Prometheus, and Selene.)

HELIADES, THE The Heliades were nymphs and daughters of the son
god Helios with the second-generation Titan goddess Clymene. Their fate is
well known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: in grief over the death of their
young brother Phaethon, who had borrowed Helios’s chariot with tragic
results, the Heliades were transformed into poplar trees along the Eridanus
River (possibly the Po). Their tears, falling eternally, ooze from the trees’
boughs and, hardening in the sun, become amber.
(See also Clymene, Eridanus River [the], Helios, Phaethon, and Titans
[the].)

HELIOS Helios (or Helius) was the Greek sun god who, along with Selene
(“the Moon”) and Eos (“the Dawn”), was born of the Titans Hyperion and
Theia. His own children were numerous and resulted from liaisons with
several different consorts. For example, with Perse, a daughter of Oceanus,
he became parent to Aeetes, the sorceress Medea’s father; Circe, the
enchantress goddess who changed Odysseus’s men to swine; and Pasiphae,
King Minos of Crete’s wife, who, as a result of her union with a bull, gave
birth to the dread Minotaur. The Heliades were Helios’s daughters with
Clymene, mother also of the tragic figure Phaethon, who imperiled the
universe when he took the reins of his father’s chariot; upon the death of
Phaethon, his sisters, in their grief, became miraculously transformed. Less
important mythologically were the seven sons who resulted from Helios’s
union with Rhode, a daughter of Poseidon and namesake of the island of
Rhodes; descendants of these sons would become rulers of the island and
construct the statue of Helios known as the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
As for Helios’s appearance and agency, one of the earliest descriptions
of these appears in the so-called Homeric Hymn to Helios. There the god
rides in a chariot pulled by a team of four splendid stallions. He shines both
upon humans and the deathless gods, bright rays beaming dazzlingly from
him. His all-seeing eyes flash like fire, and his golden locks stream
gracefully around his face. He wears a golden helmet and a rich, finely spun
garment that glows and flutters in the wind. Later sources provide
additional details. From a lake or bog of Oceanus in the east—or, according
Ovid and other poets, from an ornate, golden palace—Helios would drive
his chariot up into the heavens, reaching the highest point at noon, and then
descend in an arc to the west. In the night, he made his journey on the tides
of Oceanus from the west back to the east in a golden skiff or “cup”
fashioned for him by Hephaestus.
Since, in the course of his journey through the heavens, he could see
everything that transpired on earth, he bore witness to a number of events,
whose course he could, by virtue of his knowledge, influence. He saw Ares
and Aphrodite lying together and informed Hephaestus, Aphrodite’s
husband, of the scandalous affair. Helios also witnessed the abduction of
Persephone by Hades. Those who felt his wrath included Odysseus, whose
men feasted on Helios’s 350 sacred cattle when they came ashore the island
of Trinacria, and those whom he assisted included Hercules, in spite of the
fact that the hero had taken aim at him with his arrows when plagued by
excessive heat.
Helios was confused or conflated with his father Hyperion as well as
with Apollo in his role as Sun god even in antiquity. His Roman equivalent
was Sol, “Sun” in Latin.
(See also Aeetes, Aphrodite, Ares, Circe, Clymene, Crete, Eos, Hades,
Heliades [the], Hephaestus, Hyperion, Medea, Minos, Oceanus [place],
Odysseus, Pasiphae, Persephone, Phaethon, Poseidon, Selene, Titans [the],
and Trinacria.)

HEPHAESTUS Hephaestus was the Greek god of volcanic fire as well as

of the forge, and thus the patron of blacksmiths and artisans more generally,
especially sculptors and potters who relied on the use of fire in the
production of their crafts. He was one of the twelve Olympian gods and, as
Homer writes, Hephaestus was the son of Zeus and Hera. While being one
of the chief gods, he was unlike the rest of them insofar as he engaged in
physical labor, at which he sweated, and, more notably, he was crippled. In
Homer’s Iliad, he is accordingly described as “the god of dragging
footsteps,” and it was for this infirmity that Hera cast him from the heavens.
Hephaestus fell into the waters of Oceanus, where he was rescued by the
sea goddesses Thetis and Eurynome, with whom he stayed for a full nine
years creating pins, necklaces, cups, and other things of beauty for them at
his forge. After being restored to Mount Olympus, he was again thrown
from the heavens, this time by Zeus in anger over his assistance to Hera
when she and Zeus had quarreled. Hephaestus now landed on the island of
Lemnos, where the island’s inhabitants cared for him until such time as
Dionysus brought him back to Olympus. In the Iliad, Hephaestus was
married to Charis, one of the Graces. In the Odyssey, however, it was
Aphrodite to whom he was wed, though she engaged in an infamous affair
with Ares, and, to the amusement of all the gods, the lovers were caught in
a snare devised by her skilled and crafty husband. Hephaestus, for his part,
made unwelcome advances on Athena, his spilled semen giving rise to
Erichthonius, who was born from the earth.
Among Hephaestus’s wondrous creations were the palaces of all the
gods on Mount Olympus: his own was made of bronze and decorated with
elaborate bronze tripods, all the work of his hands. He fashioned Pandora,
the first woman, at the behest of Zeus, and at the request of Thetis, forged
divine armor for Achilles. The palace of the Phaeacian king Alcinous,
beloved of the gods, was guarded by golden dogs of his creation, and he
made the splendid but cursed necklace that was given by the Theban king
Cadmus to his new wife, Harmonia. According to some authors, the
workshop in which these splendors were created was on Mount Olympus,
but according to others, his workshop was under the earth.
In the Roman world, Hephaestus became identified with the Italian god
Vulcan, who assumed Hephaestus’s physical traits and mythology. In the
works of Roman authors, it is also the case that the workshop of Hephaestus
is represented not on Mount Olympus but beneath a volcanic island called
Volcania, where he is assisted in his work by the Cyclopes.
As regards the representation of Hephaestus in works of art, he was
shown as bearded, wearing a cap, holding a smithy’s tongs and hammer,
and sometimes with misshapen feet.
(See also Achilles, Alcinous, Aphrodite, Ares, Athena, Cadmus,
Cyclopes [the], Dionysus, Erechthonius, Graces [the], Harmonia, Hera,
Lemnos, Oceanus [place], Olympus [Mount], Pandora, Phaeacians [the],
Thebes, Thetis, Vulcan, and Zeus.)

HERA Hera was the queen of the gods and wife of Zeus, their king. Hera,
along with Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, and Demeter, was a child of the
primeval Titan gods Cronus and Rhea, and like all of her siblings, apart
from Zeus, was swallowed upon birth by her father and later disgorged.
While she had wide-ranging spheres of influence, she had particular
responsibility as the protectress of women as wives and mothers, thus
having close ties with wedding ceremonies, marriage, and childbirth. As
such, her marriage to Zeus was the divine prototype for marriage between
humans. However, Hera was also the protectress of cities, settlements, and
their inhabitants. While her precise origins and the meaning of her name are
unclear, she likely evolved from a prototypical Aegean earth-mother
goddess, and she was associated with Zeus as early as the Bronze Age,
which endured from roughly 3000 to 1150 BCE. Hera’s sanctuaries are
among the oldest in Greece, and while she was worshipped throughout the
Greek world, the most important centers of her worship were at Argos and
on the island of Samos, at Perachora and Olympia, and at Paestum,
Metapontum, and Croton, which were Greek colonial cities in Southern
Italy. Both Argos and Samos claimed to be the site of her birth or, more
properly, of her emergence from the belly of Cronus. She and Poseidon
were said to have competed for control of Argos, and it was Hera who
prevailed.
As for her marriage with Zeus, the travel writer Pausanias reports that
this took place subsequent to Zeus’s seduction of her in the form of a tame
cuckoo that she caught and placed in her lap. As a wedding present, the
goddess Gaia (“Earth”) gave Hera a tree bearing golden apples that later
was planted at the ends of the earth and tended by the Hesperides in their
garden. Hera’s children by Zeus were the gods Hebe (“Youth”); Eileithyia,
goddess of childbirth; Ares, god of war; and Hephaestus, god of the forge,
though there was an alternate tradition according to which Hera produced
Hephaestus alone, with no father, by way of showing up Zeus for his giving
birth to the goddess Athena from his head. Hera was always troubled by her
husband’s numerous love affairs with goddesses, nymphs, and mortals
alike, and many of the myths relating to her describe her persecution of
Zeus’s lovers. Among these was the goddess Leto, whose pregnancy she
cruelly extended; the nymph Echo, who with her chattering had diverted
Hera’s attention at opportune moments; Callisto, whom she transformed
into a bear; Semele, mother of Dionysus, whom she tricked into causing her
own fiery death; and Io, a maiden in heifer’s form, whom she sent a gadfly
to chase and sting. Hera’s persecution of Hercules extended through his life,
from the cradle to the funeral pyre; it was she who engineered the
circumstances precipitating his famous Labors, doing so because Zeus had
lain with his mother, Alcmena. The Trojans, too, were subject to torment on
Hera’s part, as she did not forgive the Trojan prince Paris for failing to
award her with the golden apple marked “for the fairest,” and giving it to
Aphrodite instead. The goddess did, however, also exhibit fierce devotion to
her favorites, like the Greek warriors fighting at Troy. And for the hero
Jason’s kindness to her when, disguised as an old woman, he offered aid,
she watched over him in the course of his quest for the Golden Fleece,
ensuring, among other things, that the sorceress Medea fell in love with
him.
Regarding the goddess’s attributes, these included both animals and
plants that were sacred to her. Her famous ivory-and-gold cult statue at her
sanctuary (Heraion) in Argos, as described by Pausanias, depicted the
goddess holding a scepter topped by a cuckoo, the bird signifying her
seduction by Zeus, in one hand and, in the other, a pomegranate, a many-
seeded fruit symbolizing fertility. Other plants sacred to her included
myrtle, a symbol of marriage; the poppy, another many-seeded plant; and
the fragrant white madonna lily, which was said to have arisen from the
milk of her breast—all of these plants being sacred to the goddess of love,
Aphrodite, as well. In addition to the cuckoo, Hera’s sacred animals
included peacocks, horses, and cattle.
The Romans identified Hera with the Italian goddess Juno, who assumed
her mythology.
(See also Alcmena, Aphrodite, Ares, Argos, Callisto, Cronus, Demeter,
Dionysus, Echo, Eileithyia, Gaia, Hades, Hebe, Hephaestus, Hercules,
Hestia, Io, Jason, Juno, Leto, Medea, Olympia, Paris, Poseidon, Rhea,
Semele, Titans [the], Troy, and Zeus.)

HERMES Hermes, known as Mercury to the Romans, was a messenger

god who mediated between heaven and earth as he delivered
communications from the gods to humans. Importantly, this god, who was
known in Greece as early as the Bronze Age (circa 3000–1150 BCE), had a
wide range of powers and spheres of influence, and although he had special
ties with Arcadia, Hermes was worshipped throughout Greece. He was the
god of herdsmen, whom he protected, and of their flocks, whose fertility he
ensured. Hermes was also the protector of travelers, merchants, heralds, and
thieves. As Psychopompus (“Leader of Souls”), he guided the souls of the
dead from the earth to the Underworld. He was a god of boundaries,
embodied in the Herms (pillars topped with his bust) that marked city
limits, the borders of private property, and the entrances to houses. As a
bringer of culture, he was seen as the inventor of fire and of the lyre, but he
was also a mischievous trickster, many of these aspects being reflected in
the so-called Homeric Hymn in his honor. According to the hymn, Hermes
was born in an Arcadian cave to Zeus and the nymph Maia. On the very day
of his birth, he sprang up from his cradle, and venturing from the cave,
came upon a turtle, which he quickly hollowed and strung, creating from it
a lyre, which he began to play. On the same day, he set off to Pieria, where
he stole five of the cattle of his half brother Apollo and drove them off
sideways and backward so that they could not easily be tracked. Covering a
great distance with the cattle, he invented sandals as protection for his feet
and also discovered how to make fire. When, at long last, he was compelled
to return the cattle, Apollo made him keeper of his flocks in exchange for
the lyre, which then became his instrument. As a messenger of the gods and
intermediary between them and humans, he is inevitably involved in a host
of tales, among them the following. He led the goddesses Hera, Athena, and
Aphrodite to the Trojan prince Paris, who would make a fatal judgment of
the greatest beauty among them, and he accompanied Zeus when he visited
the humble home of the generous peasants Baucis and Philemon. As
messenger of Zeus, he traveled to the island of Calypso in order to convince
her to let Odysseus return home, and he provided the hero with the herb
moly, by means of which he was able to withstand the witchcraft of the
goddess Circe. Hercules and Persephone were both guided by him out of
the Underworld. Hermes was also the famed Argeiphontes, slayer of the
monstrous Argus who guarded Zeus’s beloved Io when she was transformed
into a cow, and he provided the hero Perseus with the sickle whereby to
sever the head of the Gorgon Medusa.
As for his attributes, Hermes was distinguished by the caduceus or
kerykeion (herald’s staff) that he carried, his wide-brimmed traveler’s hat,
and winged sandals, which enabled speedy travel.
(See also Aphrodite, Apollo, Arcadia, Argus, Athena, Baucis, Calypso,
Circe, Gorgons [the], Hercules, Hermes, Ida [Mount], Io, Maia, Medusa,
Mercury, Odysseus, Paris, Persephone, Perseus, Pieria, Underworld [the],
and Zeus.)

HESPER Hesper, or Hesperus, was the personified evening star, which

was the planet Venus at night. As such, he was the counterpart of the
morning star, Lucifer, the planet Venus in the morning. Hesper was called
father of the Hesperides and of King Ceyx, transformed after his death into
a sea bird.
(See also Ceyx, Hesperides [the], and Lucifer.)

HESPERIDES, THE The Hesperides were nymphs entrusted with tending

the trees that yielded the golden apples so famous in classical mythology.
The Hesperides’ trees were guarded by the hundred-headed serpent or
dragon, Ladon.
The Hesperides were between four and seven in number, and their
names are variously given as Aegle, Erytheia, Hestia, Arethusa, Hespere,
Hesperusa, and Hespereia. Accounts of their birth and the location of their
garden, the Garden of the Hesperides, are also various. The poet Hesiod, an
early source, names the elemental deities Nyx (“Night”) and Erebus
(“Darkness”) as their parents, but later accounts state that their parents were
either the sea god Phorcys and his sister Ceto; or Zeus, king of the
Olympian gods, and Themis, the personification of justice; or the second-
generation Titan god Atlas, who supported the heavens on his shoulders,
and Hesperis, daughter of Hesper, the evening star. The location of the
Hesperides’ garden, equally difficult to pin down, was said to be in Libya
(in antiquity, North Africa) near the Atlas mountains (modern Morocco); in
the westernmost Mediterranean on the shores of the river Oceanus; or in the
lands of the Hyperboreans, in the far east or to the far north, all of these
locations being at the “ends of the earth” as it was then conceived.
As for the golden apples, the trees that produced them were presents
made by the earth goddess Gaia to Hera, queen of the gods, on the occasion
of her marriage to Zeus. The apples were sources of immortality, and thus
highly prized. One of these apples ostensibly caused the Trojan War: the
goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena all desired a golden apple inscribed
with the words “for the fairest.” The Trojan prince Paris was selected to
decide who the fairest was—an impossible choice to make objectively. He
chose Aphrodite, who had also offered him the most desirable bribe. This
was Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. The challenge was that
Helen was married to Menelaus, the Spartan king. When Paris absconded
with her to Troy, a thousand Greek ships sailed in hostile pursuit. The
golden apples that Aphrodite supplied to Hippomenes in order to help him
win the hand of Atalanta were also said to be from the Hesperides’ trees.
As his eleventh Labor (or the twelfth, according to Diodorus Siculus),
Hercules was told by Eurystheus to bring him apples from the Hesperides’
garden. Not knowing the garden’s location, Hercules first consulted the
nymphs of the river Eridanus, who in turn directed him to the sea god
Nereus. Hercules seized Nereus, who possessed prophetic powers, while he
was asleep and held him fast while the latter repeatedly changed shape;
Nereus would only prophesy under compulsion. Directed by Nereus,
Hercules commenced his journey and, on the way, came upon the Titan god
Prometheus, whom he released from the torment of having his liver eaten
away eternally by vultures. From Prometheus Hercules received further
advice regarding the accomplishment of his labor: he should ask Atlas, the
Hesperides’ neighbor, to fetch the apples in his stead. This Hercules did,
asking Atlas to bring the apples in exchange for relieving him, temporarily,
of the heavens’ burden. Not surprisingly, Atlas was not keen to resume the
onerous task of supporting the heavens on his shoulders, but Hercules
tricked him by asking for a temporary reprieve in order to place a pillow on
his shoulders as a cushion. According to a variant of this story, Hercules
slew the guardian serpent Ladon and retrieved the apples himself.
Eurystheus ultimately returned the sacred apples to Hercules, who in turn
gave them to Athena to return to the Hesperides.
The Hesperides also figure in the related tale of another hero: Jason and
the Argonauts, his crew on the ship Argo. According to the epic poet
Apollonius of Rhodes, the Argonauts, having accomplished their mission to
obtain the Golden Fleece—and with Medea in tow—were driven off course
to the Libyan shores by a storm. After carrying their ship over the Libyan
desert, the Argonauts, desperate with thirst, encountered the Hesperides,
who were lamenting Ladon’s slaughter and the golden apples’ theft. Out of
fear of the men, the Hesperides turned themselves to dust, but Orpheus, one
of Jason’s band, pleaded with them, promising reverence and offerings of
thanks. The Hesperides were moved in pity at the men’s suffering and,
through their divine powers, caused a lush meadow to spring up in which
they, three in number, each stood rooted as a tree: a poplar, elm, and willow.
Miraculously, the tree “embodying” Aegle spoke and pointed to a spring
created by Hercules himself when, parched from his own labors, he kicked
the rocky ground near Triton’s lake to reveal a source of water. This was a
doubly good omen, as Hercules had been among the Argo’s sailors.
(See also Aphrodite, Argonauts [the], Atalanta, Athena, Atlas, Eridanus
River [the], Eurystheus, Gaia, Helen, Hera, Hercules, Hippomenes,
Hyperboreans [the], Jason, Ladon, Medea, Menelaus, Nereus, Oceanus
[place], Orpheus, Paris, Phorcys, Prometheus, Sparta, Themis, Titans [the],
Triton, Troy, and Zeus.)

HESTIA Hestia was a personification and goddess of the hearth in the

Greek world. Her central importance to Greek civilization and culture is
reflected in the story of her birth: in the poet Hesiod’s account of the gods’
origins, Hestia was the firstborn child of the Titan gods Rhea and Cronus.
In Classical sources she is represented as a virgin goddess, although both
Poseidon and Apollo pursued her, to no avail, as she refused both of them.
Since her decision to choose neither suitor was critical to preserving peace
among the gods on Mount Olympus, Zeus awarded her the highest honors:
a place at the center of every house and receipt of the richest portion of
sacrifices made there. Further, she would receive sacrifices in the temples of
all the gods and would be deemed the most important of all goddesses.
For the Greeks, the hearth represented and ensured the physical security
and continuity of the family and, by extension, of any “political” union of
families. It was life-giving and life-sustaining, a source of heat, cooked
food, weaponry, and tools. As a locus of sacrifice, the hearth also served as
a necessary link between vulnerable humans and invulnerable, omnipotent
deities. The hearth was the symbolic center of the household and of the
clusters of families that constituted a town’s populace. For this reason a
hearth with Hestia’s fire was maintained both in private houses and in the
prytaneion, an official building that constituted the sacred center of Greek
towns.
(See also Apollo, Cronus, Olympus [Mount], Poseidon, Rhea, and
Zeus.)

HIMEROS Himeros (or Himerus) was the personification of desire. The

Greek poet Hesiod speaks of him, along with Eros, as attending the birth of
Aphrodite and proceeding with her to join the assembly of the gods.
(See also Aphrodite and Eros.)

HYADES, THE The Hyades were seven nymphs who, like their sisters the
Pleiades, were transformed into stars forming a cluster that still bears their
name. The Hyades’ parents are variously reported as Oceanus and his sister
Tethys and as Atlas and Pleione or Aethra, both daughters of Oceanus. As
in the case of their parentage, divergent tales of their metamorphosis
existed. Hyginus reports that the Hyades were transported to the heavens as
a result of their grief over the untimely death of their brother Hyas, who had
been killed by a wild boar or lion. Brother and sisters became part of the
constellation Taurus, the Hyades forming the bull’s face. Hyginus and
Apollodorus, following the pre-Socratic philosopher Pherecydes, provide
another explanation for the Hyades’ starry transfiguration as well, this tale
being linked to the god Dionysus, who was born of Semele, a Theban
princess and a mortal lover of Zeus. As Semele had met a tragic end, being
consumed by fire while still pregnant, Zeus rescued the unborn child and
sent him to the nymphs who lived at Nysa to be raised so that the infant
could avoid the jealous wrath of Zeus’s wife, Hera. These Nysaean nymphs
were the Hyades, and as a reward for their service to him, Zeus transformed
them into stars.
The Hyades’ name (“The Rainy Ones”) was linked both to that of their
brother, Hyas, and to their stellar “marking” of the rainy season.
(See also Atlas, Dionysus, Nymphs [the], Nysa, Oceanus [god], Pleiades
[the], Semele, Tethys, Thebes, and Zeus.)

HYGEA Hygea (or Hygeia) was the daughter of Asclepius and the
personification of good health. According to some accounts, however, she
was Asclepius’s consort. As a personification of health, she was honored
with Asclepius in cult, and the travel writer Pausanias notes that statues of
the god were often accompanied by statues of this goddess in his
sanctuaries.
(See also Asclepius.)

HYMEN Hymen (also Hymenaios or Hymenaius) was the god of weddings

and, more properly, a personification of the wedding song itself. For the
Roman poet Catullus, he is a son of Urania, one of the Muses. In literature
he appears wreathed and bearing nuptial torches, and in Classical art, he is
often shown with Eros or Erotes (multiple deities of love).
(See also Eros and Muses [the].)

HYPERION Hyperion (“The One on High” or “He Who Walks Above”)

was one of the group of twelve Titan gods born to the elemental deities
Gaia (“Earth”) and Uranus (“Heaven”). His sister Theia, “The One Who
Sees” (also called Euryphaessa “Far-Shining”), was his spouse, and
together they became parents to Eos (“Dawn”), Helios (“Sun”), and Selene
(“Moon”). As for Hyperion’s identity and powers, he was a sun god and
thus identified with Helios and later also with Apollo in his capacity of sun
deity. It may have been the case that Hyperion’s original “role” was to
determine the cycles of his “children” the sun, moon, and dawn, thereby
establishing the cyclical rhythm of days, nights, and months.
(See also Apollo, Eos, Gaia, Helios, Selene, Titans [the], and Uranus.)

HYPNUS Hypnus (or Hypnos) was the Greek god of Sleep and its
personification. For the Greek poet Hesiod, he is a child of Night, and thus
one of the oldest gods. Some of the most memorable stories involving
Hypnus appear in Homer’s Iliad. There the goddess Hera bribes Hypnus to
help her ensure that Zeus is out of commission long enough to let the
fighting in the Trojan War turn in favor of the Greeks. In return for his
assistance, she promises him one of the Graces as bride. With his brother
Thanatos (“Death”), Hypnus comes to retrieve the corpse of Zeus’s son
Sarpedon from the battlefield outside the walls of Troy and returns it to his
native Lycia. The Roman poet Ovid reports that Hypnus had a thousand
sons, among them Morpheus, a god of dreams. Hypnus’s Roman
counterpart was the god Somnus.
(See also Graces [the], Hera, Lycia, Morpheus, Sarpedon, Somnus,
Thanatos, Troy, and Zeus.)

IACCHUS Even in antiquity, the name Iacchus was used for Dionysus, the
god of wine and liquid life, but in origin, Iacchus was a distinct deity. He
may have been a personification of the ritual cry “Iacche” that was part of
the cultic activities performed in the course of the Eleusinian Mysteries,
which centered on worship of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone.
Alternatively, he was perhaps an agricultural deity. In the context of the
Mysteries, Iacchus came to be viewed as a son of Demeter or Persephone.
(See also Demeter, Dionysus, Eleusis, and Persephone.)

IAPETUS Iapetus (or Iapetos) was a Titan god who reportedly assisted his
brother Cronus in the castration of their father Uranus. Iapetus married
Clymene, daughter of his brother Oceanus, and together, according to the
Greek poet Hesiod, they bore Prometheus (“Foresight”), the bold benefactor
of human-kind; foolish Epimetheus, who was given Pandora as wife; Atlas,
who held the heavens on his shoulders; and Menoetius, blasted by Zeus
with a thunderbolt for participating in the battle between the Titans and the
Olympian gods. As a result of his own role in that battle, Iapetus,
Menoetius, and Cronus were among the Titans imprisoned by Zeus in
Tartarus.
(See also Atlas, Clymene, Cronus, Epimetheus, Oceanus [god],
Olympus [Mount], Pandora, Prometheus, Tartarus, Titans [the], Uranus, and
Zeus.)

IDA According to the mythographer Apollodorus, the goddess Rhea gave

her newborn son Zeus to the Curetes and to the nymphs Adrastea and Ida,
daughters of Melisseus, to nurse in a cave at Dicte on the island of Crete.
An alternate tradition, as reported by the poets Callimachus and Ovid,
suggests that Zeus was raised in a cave on Mount Ida on Crete and solely by
the Curetes.
(See also Adrastea, Crete, Curetes [the], Ida [Mount], Rhea, and Zeus.)

ILITHYIA Ilithyia is a variant spelling of Eileithyia, the Greek goddess who

assisted women with childbirth.
 (See Eileithyia.)

INACHUS Inachus was the god of the chief river in the Argolis—the
eastern region of the Peloponnese. He was a child of the Titan gods Tethys
and Oceanus, for which reason he was called an Oceanid (“child of
Oceanus”). With the nymph Melia, he fathered the lovely Io, who was later
pursued by Zeus and, consequently, was transformed into a white heifer by
a jealous Hera.
The travel writer Pausanias, among others, writes of Inachus’s role in a
contest between the gods Poseidon and Hera for control of the Argolis.
Inachus and two other local river gods, Cephissus and Asterion, were tasked
with judging who should win this land. They chose Hera, and, as a
consequence, Poseidon dried up their waters, which henceforth flowed only
after a rain. Pausanias also reports a variant tradition that viewed Inachus
not as a god but rather a king of Argos who named the river after himself.
(See also Argos, Cephissus [god], Hera, Io, Oceanids [the], Oceanus,
Poseidon, Tethys, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

INO Ino, also known as Leucothea (“The White Goddess”), was a protector
of sailors. She was originally a mortal woman who became divine through
the providence of the gods. In myth, she played an important role in
preserving the life of the hero Odysseus.
(See also Ino [heroine], Leucothea, and Odysseus.)

IRIS Iris was the goddess of the rainbow and the messenger of the gods,
whose job it was to convey communications between mortals on earth and
the gods in the heavens. In authors writing after Homer, however, this
function is chiefly assumed by Hermes, and the swift-footed Iris, sometimes
described as traveling on golden wings, becomes a messenger for the
goddess Hera. According to Hesiod, she was the daughter of Thaumas
(“Marvel” or “Wonder”) and Electra, one of the daughters of Oceanus. She
was sister to the birdlike, monstrous Harpies, who flew as swiftly as the
wind and whom the heroes Jason and Aeneas encountered. By some
accounts Iris bore the goddess Pothos (“Desire”) to Zephyr (or Zephyrus),
the personified west wind.
 Because it flowers in a variety of colors, the goddess gave her name to
the iris, which belongs to a genus of some 260–300 species of herbaceous
perennial plants.
(See also Aeneas, Electra [nymph], Harpies [the], Hermes, Jason,
Oceanus [god], and Zephyr.)

JANUS Janus (more properly Ianus, as the Romans had no letter “j”),
whose name is derived from the Latin word ianua, door, was the god of
doors and gateways and thus a deity of “passage” and beginnings in a
physical, temporal, and metaphoric sense. Ancient sources reveal that
offerings were made to him on the occasion of all sacrifices and that the
first month of the year was sacred to him. As a deity of passage, looking
backward and forward at once (or inward and outward, as the case may be),
he was represented with two faces oriented in opposite directions. His most
important cult building (place of worship) was a double gate in the Roman
Forum, which was converted into a shrine with one door that opened to the
east and one to the west, so that the god’s statue—dedicated, according to
encyclopedist Pliny the Elder, by the legendary early king Numa—could
look out in both directions. This Gate of Janus was closed in times of peace
and open in times of war.
In terms of myth, there was a tradition that Janus was an early king in
Italy who ruled over aboriginal peoples. As king, he welcomed the god
Saturn, who brought with him the knowledge of agriculture, and thereby
also civilization, to primitive Italy.
(See also Numa and Saturn.)

JOVE Jove, an anglicized form of Latin Iovis, is an alternate name for

Jupiter, supreme deity of the Romans.
(See also Jupiter and Rome.)

JUNO For the Romans, Juno was the queen of the gods, consort of Jupiter,
and daughter of Saturn. Though she became identified with the Greek
goddess Hera and assumed her mythology, Juno was an important and
established native Italian goddess in her own right. Similar to the Greek
Hera, she was both a civic deity and a protectress of women as wives and
mothers. In her role as the goddess of birth, she was called Juno Lucina, and
in state cult, Juno Regina (“Queen”). As protectress of young men of
military age, she was called Juno Curitis (“Goddess of the Lance”), Sospita
(“Safe-Keeper”), and Moneta (the “One Who Warns”). As the Roman
counterpart of Hera in myth, Juno had a deep-seated hatred of the Trojans
for several reasons: Jupiter’s abduction of the handsome Trojan prince
Ganymede to serve as his cup bearer and Paris’s infamous judgment that
Aphrodite was to receive the golden apple marked “for the fairest.” Her
hatred of the Trojans extended to Aeneas, who fled from Troy to Italy, and
whose mission to found a new city she attempted strenuously to derail. She
did, however, favor Dido, the noble founder of Carthage, whom Aeneas
ignobly loved and left, but Juno could not save her from an awful fate.
(See also Aeneas, Carthage, Dido, Hera, Jupiter, Lucina, Paris, Saturn,
and Troy.)

JUPITER Jupiter (or Juppiter or Jove) was the chief god of the Romans,
and like Zeus, he was the god of the sky and atmospheric phenomena as
well as the supreme civic and political god, ensuring political and social
order. Also, as in the case of Zeus, the name Jupiter (“Celestial or Heavenly
Father”) is derived from the Indo-European word for “brightness,”
designating the brightness of the sky; the word for father, pater, has in
Jupiter’s case been appended to “sky.” As god of the Roman state, Jupiter
was worshipped as Jupiter Optimus Maximus (“Best and Greatest”), his
most important temple being located on Rome’s Capitoline Hill and shared
with Juno and Minerva as the so-called Capitoline Triad of deities.
Although Jupiter was a deity distinct from Zeus, he did assume Zeus’s
mythology as well as his attributes when represented in artistic media.
(See also Capitoline Hill [the], Juno, Minerva, Rome, and Zeus.)

JUTURNA Juturna was a Roman water nymph associated with fountains,

springs, and other sources of water. According to Virgil’s Aeneid, she was
mistress of pools and rivers who had received the gift of immortality as well
as her “realm” from Jupiter as compensation for the loss to him of her
virginity. Her name is a combination of the Latin word for helping, iuvare,
and the name Turnus, the Rutulian hero whose sister (and helper) the poet
Virgil presents her as; it was she, at the command of Juno, who caused the
truce between the Trojans and Latins to be broken, and she took the place of
Turnus’s charioteer in an effort to save him, all to no avail. Turnus would be
killed by the Trojan Aeneas, whose destiny it was to marry Turnus’s
beloved princess Lavinia.
There was a pool sacred to Juturna in the Roman Forum close to the
Temple of Castor and Pollux, where, as the historian Dionysius of
Halicarnassus records, the divine twins appeared to water their horses after
helping the Romans in the legendary battle at Lake Regillus (said to have
taken place circa 496 BCE) against the Latins.
(See also Aeneas, Castor, Juno, Jupiter, Latins [the], Lavinia, Pollux,
Rome, Rutulians [the], Troy, and Turnus.)

JUVENTUS Juventus/Iuventus (or Juventas/Iuventas) was a Roman

goddess and personification of youth who, while retaining her original
Italian cultic associations, over time accrued aspects of Hebe, the Greek
goddess of youth. Testimony to her importance in Roman religion, Juventus
was worshipped in various prominent places inside the city of Rome,
among them the sacred Capitoline Hill, where she had a space inside the
Temple of Jupiter, and a temple built in her honor at the Circus Maximus.
Her particular sphere or realm of agency was a boy’s rite of passage
whereby, having reached manhood, he was deemed fit for military service
and received the white toga virilis (“men’s toga”).
(See also Capitoline Hill [the], Hebe, Jupiter, and Rome.)

KORA Kora (also spelled Cora or Kore), “The Maiden,” was a name or
epithet used for Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, goddess of the
harvest. It was this maiden whom Hades, god of the Underworld, abducted
to be his queen.
(See also Demeter, Hades, Persephone, and Underworld [the].)

KRONUS Kronus is an alternative spelling of Cronus, a Titan and father of

the Olympian gods.
(See Cronus, Olympus [Mount], and Titans [the].)
LACHESIS Lachesis, “The Caster of Lots,” was one of the three Fates, or
Moirae, as the Greeks called them. The Moirae determined the “lot” of
every person born by various means, including spinning the thread of their
life, singing their fate, or inscribing their determination on a tablet or other
medium.
(See also Fates [the], and Moirae [the].)

LARES, THE The Lares, whose precise origins are disputed, were native
Roman deities that may have evolved from deified ancestors or farmland
guardians. Their domain extended from the house to the city and from the
private to the public sphere. The Lar familiaris (“family Lar”) became
synonymous with the home that he protected. Roman houses each had a
shrine called a lararium into which offerings were placed daily and that
contained statuettes of the Lar and Penates, another set of protective deities,
with whom the Lares could be conflated (consequently being called
collectively either Lares or Penates). The public Lares had guardianship
over districts of the city, villages, roads and crossroads, and military
expeditions. In terms of mythology, the Lares and Penates of the hero
Aeneas are best known, as he carried these, along with his aged father
Anchises, out of a flame-ensconced Troy and set sail with them to Italy.
(See also Aeneas, Anchises, Penates [the], and Troy.)

LATONA Latona was the Roman name for the goddess Leto, mother of
Apollo and Artemis.
(See Leto.)

LETO Leto, or Latona for the Romans, is best known as the mother of
Apollo and Artemis. She was a second-generation Titan born of the union
between Coeus and Phoebe and became either wife or consort to Zeus, the
father of her children. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo details the challenges
faced by Leto in her pregnancy: when the time of delivery was near, she
was forced to wander extensively, from island to island, as none would
allow her to stay, fearing as they did a prophecy that she would bear a son
of great might. When, at last, she came to Delos, she promised the island
that it would become the site most sacred to the son she would bear. Delos
(which was also known as Ortygia) then welcomed her, but Leto’s birth
pains endured for nine days and nights before Eileithyia, goddess of
childbirth, came, as she had been detained by a jealous Hera. In the end,
Eileithyia had to be bribed by the other goddesses with a beautiful necklace
to attend to Leto in her time of need. At last Leto gave birth to Apollo and
to Artemis while clutching the trunk of a palm tree, which thereafter was a
plant sacred to Apollo. Holding her newborns, Leto made her way to Lycia,
where she succumbed to the heat and asked for water from a small lake at
whose banks some peasants were at work. When a drink was denied her and
her babies, she changed the evildoers into frogs so that they could forever
“enjoy” their water. At some later point, Niobe, daughter of the Lydian king
Tantalus, boasted that she was superior to Leto because she had more
children than the goddess: seven sons and seven daughters. For this prideful
boast, Leto enlisted Apollo and Artemis to slay all her children, the so-
called Niobids, with their arrows. Other stories associated with Leto were
the attempted rape of her at the hands of the giant Tityus, who, for this
crime, was punished both with death and with eternal torture in the afterlife:
his heart (or liver) was eaten eternally by vultures only continuously to
grow back.
(See also Apollo, Artemis, Coeus, Delos, Eileithyia, Niobe, Ortygia,
Phoebe, Tantalus, Tityus, and Zeus.)

LEUCOTHEA Leucothea, whose name means “White Goddess,” was

widely worshipped in Greece, according to the travel writer Pausanias.
What, precisely, she was worshipped for is more difficult to determine; she
appears to have been associated with coming-of-age rituals, and the
mythographer Apollodorus states that she assisted storm-besieged sailors at
sea. In myth, Leucothea is perhaps best known for having rescued the hero
Odysseus when a massive storm, brought on by a wrathful Poseidon, cast
him from the raft that he had built on the island of the goddess Calypso.
Leucothea, a sea goddess, emerged from the waves as a sea bird and, as
Homer recounts, instructed Odysseus to abandon his raft and to swim,
buoyed by her veil, to the island of the kindly Phaeacians.
Leucothea had not always been a goddess. Rather, she was originally a
mortal woman who became immortal. She began her existence as Ino,
daughter of Cadmus, king of Thebes. Accounts of Ino’s dramatic mortal life
and metamorphosis are various and, in part, conflicting. In brief, she raised
the god Dionysus; participated in the dismemberment of her nephew
Pentheus; conspired, out of jealousy, to have her stepchildren, Phrixus and
Helle, sacrificed; and escaped the murderous rage of her husband, Athamas,
by jumping off a cliff into the sea, at which point she was transformed into
a goddess either by Dionysus or Poseidon.
(See also Cadmus, Dionysus, Helle, Ino [heroine], Odysseus, Pentheus,
Phaeacians [the], Phrixus, Poseidon, and Thebes.)

LIBER Liber was an Italian god of nature, fertility, and wine. Liber, whose
name may be derived from the word for pouring libations or for freedom—
insofar as wine served as a liberator from one’s normal inhibitions—
became identified with the Greek Dionysus. As a fertility deity, Liber
naturally had close links with Ceres, goddess of grain and agriculture.
(See also Ceres and Dionysus.)

LOTIS Lotis is the name of one of the Naiads, who were nymphs of
springs, streams, and fountains. According to the Roman poet Ovid in his
Metamorphoses, Lotis was pursued by the lusty rustic god Priapus and was
transformed into a lotus plant to escape him. Ovid does not describe how
this occurred, nor is it clear what plant, exactly, the lotus he writes of was.
Ovid’s lotus had crimson flowers, produced berries, and is called “aquatic.”
Scholars have long thought that the jujube tree, Ziziphus lotus, could be
Lotis’s lotus, but it is not aquatic, nor does it have crimson flowers. There is
reason to believe that the lotus in question is in fact a lotus (Nymphaea
spp.), but this identification does not correspond with Ovid’s suggestion a
bit later that the lotus was a tree. In another work, the Fasti, Ovid relates a
variant of this tale: a drunken, ribald Priapus pursued Lotis and prepared to
rape her in her sleep, but the donkey of the elderly Silenus saw what he was
up to and brayed to alert Lotis, who consequently awoke and escaped
unscathed, without becoming a plant.
(See also Naiads [the], Priapus, and Silenus.)

LUCIFER Lucifer was a personification of the morning star, the planet

Venus in the morning, and he was also called Phosphorus (“Light-Bearer”)
or Eosphorus (“Morning-Light Bearer”). According to the Greek poet
Hesiod, Lucifer (Eosphorus) and his brother Hesper were children of Eos,
goddess of the dawn, and of the second-generation Titan Astraeus. In
Roman mythology, Lucifer was thought of as the star that Julius Caesar
became upon his deification, and in Late Antiquity, Lucifer came to be
equated with Satan.
(See also Eos, Hesper, and Titans [the].)

LUCINA Lucina (“Light-Bringer”) was a Roman goddess of childbirth,

who, as her name suggests, brought new life from the dark womb into the
light of day. She was not an independent deity but rather an aspect primarily
of the goddess Juno in her capacity as patron deity of women as wives. The
goddess Diana, goddess of the hunt and wild animals, was, however, also
called Lucina when offering protection over mothers in labor, whether
human or animal. Lucina’s Greek counterpart was Eileithyia, who existed
as an individual deity in addition to reflecting aspects of the goddesses Hera
and Artemis, themselves being counterparts of the Roman Juno and Diana
respectively.
Among the myriad births assisted by Lucina were several remarkable
ones described by the Roman poet Ovid: the birth to Pierus’s wife Euippe of
the nine daughters who would later challenge the nine Muses, and the birth
of Adonis to Myrrha, who, while pregnant, had become a myrrh tree.
(See also Adonis, Artemis, Diana, Eileithyia, Hera, Juno, Muses [the],
Myrrha, and Pierus.)

LUNA Luna, “Moon” in Latin, was the Roman equivalent of the Greek
moon goddess Selene. Although worship of her likely came to Italy via
Greece, there was a local tradition that the early Sabine king Titus Tatius,
who served as co-regent of the newly born city of Rome with Romulus,
instituted it.
(See also Rome, Romulus, Sabines [the], and Selene.)

LYAEUS Lyaeus, which means the “Deliverer” or “Releaser,” was an

epithet or descriptive name for the god Dionysus. One of the blessings that
this god offered humanity was a welcome release from care and the
hardships of everyday life. He also eradicated “normative” distinctions, all
people being equal in his eyes: young and old, male and female, slave and
free.
(See also Dionysus.)

MAGNA MATER Magna Mater (“Great Mother”) was the Latin name for
the Phrygian mother- and fertility-goddess Cybele.
(See Cybele and Phyrgia.)

MAIA The nymph Maia was one of the Pleiades, who were children of the
second-generation Titan Atlas and Pleione, a daughter of Oceanus. She is
chiefly known as the mother of the god Hermes. The Homeric Hymn to
Hermes characterizes her as shy and thus given to spending her days in a
cave in Arcadia, hidden from god and humans alike. In the course of his
nocturnal visits to her, Zeus sired the god Hermes, who was precocious
from the moment of his birth: he proved instantly to be shifty, cunning, and
thieving, but also musically gifted, becoming inventor of the lyre. Hermes
availed himself of all of these attributes in order to steal the cattle of Apollo
while still a newborn. To no avail, Maia tried to hide her son’s guilt from
Apollo by holding up the seemingly helpless baby Hermes for his
inspection, her argument being that a mere infant could not be responsible.
According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Maia later assisted Zeus in the
complicated matter of Callisto, one of the god’s mortal lovers who was
either transformed into a bear or was killed in consequence of that affair.
Her motherless baby, Arcas, was brought to Maia to raise.
In the Roman world, Maia appears to have become conflated with a
native Italian fertility deity and identified with the Bona Dea (“Goodly
Goddess”). Latin authors note that there was a feast in her honor that was
celebrated in the temple of Mercury (the Roman equivalent of Hermes) in
the Circus Maximus. This celebration took place annually in May—a month
to which, some authors state, she gave her name. Maia had ties in cult with
the god Vulcan as well.
(See also Apollo, Arcadia, Arcas, Atlas, Bona Dea, Callisto, Hermes,
Mercury, Oceanus [god], Pleiades [the], Titans [the], and Vulcan.)
MANES, THE In Roman religion and thought, the Manes, or, more
properly Di Manes (“Ancestral Spirits”), were deified souls of the dead.
The Manes were believed to reside in the Underworld but to have a close
relation with the living, whom they protected if they received the reverence
and sacrificial offerings—which included wreaths, salt, bread, and fruit—
that they were due. The Di Parentes, “Deified Ancestral Souls,” were
among the Manes. A festival known as the Parentalia, a festival of public
mourning, was celebrated annually in February, on which occasion the
Romans commemorated their deceased parents and other relatives, as was
also done privately on the anniversary of their deaths. According to the
Roman poets Virgil and Ovid, the hero Aeneas provided the model for the
Parentalia when he commemorated the anniversary of the death of his
father, Anchises, with offerings.
(See also Aeneas, Anchises, and Underworld [the].)

MARS Mars was one of the oldest and, with Jupiter, most important gods
in the Roman world. As the god of war and a warrior god, he was a fitting
representative of Roman military might and endeavors, but he appears to
have been a god of agriculture as well, called upon as the protector of fields
and flocks. Among other rituals, a series of festivals were celebrated in his
honor at the beginning of the military campaign season in March, the month
named after him. For example, prior to leaving the city of Rome,
commanders laid hands on the Spear of Mars, which was kept in a building
called the Regia, by way of waking the god. Roman emperors also invoked
the god on the heels of military victory, when realized or imminent.
In mythology, Mars became identified with the Greek war god Ares, and
as such, his consort was the Roman equivalent of Aphrodite, Venus. But
Mars had his own distinct mythology as well. In particular, he was known
as the father of Romulus and Remus, the sons of the Vestal Virgin Rhea
Silvia, and thus the legendary ancestor of the Roman people. Like Ares,
Mars was represented as armed, wearing a helmet, and wielding weapons.
(See also Aphrodite, Ares, Rhea Silvia, Remus, Rome, Romulus, Venus,
and Vesta.)

MEGAERA Megaera, “The Envious One or Grudging One,” was one of

the fearsome, snake-haired spirits of vengeance, who were known as the
Erinyes in the Greek world and as Furies among the Romans. Her sisters
were Alecto and Tisiphone.
(See also Alecto, Erinyes [the], Furies [the], and Tisiphone.)

MELPOMENE Melpomene, “The Singer,” was one of the Muses. She

became known as the patron deity of tragedy and is accordingly often
shown holding a tragic mask. For the mythographer Apollodorus, she was
the mother of the Sirens.
(See also Muses [the] and Sirens [the].)

MERCURY Mercury was a Roman god whose origins are disputed. Prior
to his identification with the Greek god Hermes, Mercury was established
as a deity with important commercial functions, being closely tied with
shopkeepers and those who transported goods. By the second century BCE,
however, Mercury increasingly assumed the persona and mythology of
Hermes, the messenger god whose many services included protection of
travelers and guiding the souls of the dead to the Underworld.
(See also Hermes and Underworld [the].)

MEROPE The nymph Merope was one of the seven daughters of the
second-generation Titan god Atlas and Pleione, a daughter of Oceanus.
Collectively, the seven sisters were called Pleiades. Merope, who is to be
distinguished from several human legendary heroines of the same name,
became the wife of Sisyphus, who attempted to cheat Death and was
consigned to eternal torture in the afterlife, being tasked with pushing a
stone uphill only to have it, time and again, roll back down. This Merope
was the grandmother of the hero Bellerophon, famed for taming the winged
horse Pegasus and slaying the hybrid monster known as the Chimaera.
(See also Atlas, Bellerophon, Chimaera [the], Merope [heroine],
Oceanus, Pegasus, Pleiades [the], Sisyphus, and Titans [the].)

METIS Metis, whose name means “wisdom” or “cunning,” was a second-

generation Titan goddess and one of the Oceanids, daughters of Oceanus
and his sister Tethys. According to the mythographer Apollodorus, the god
Zeus pursued Metis, and she tried to avoid his embrace by taking on many
shapes. Nonetheless, she did become pregnant. When Zeus later learned
from Gaia that his child would be more powerful than he, the solution that
he opted for was to swallow Metis with the unborn child still in her womb.
However, after a period of gestation, Zeus developed a terrible headache
and asked the god Hephaestus (or by another account Prometheus) to
relieve him of the pain. This Hephaestus did by striking the god’s head with
an axe, and from the cloven head sprang the goddess Athena, fully grown
and fully armed. The birth of Athena was vividly depicted on the eastern
pediment of the Parthenon in Athens. A less-known story about Metis is
also reported by Apollodorus: it was she, in her cleverness, who supplied
Zeus with a tonic that caused Cronus to disgorge Zeus’s siblings.
(See also Athena, Athens, Cronus, Gaia, Hephaestus, Oceanids [the],
Oceanus, Parthenon [the], Prometheus, Tethys, and Zeus.)

MINERVA Minerva was an Italian goddess of art and crafts who, very early
on, took on the functions of war goddess and protectress of the state
through a fusion of Italian and Greek traditions. As a result, she became a
Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena, with whom she was
identified. Mi-nerva’s origins remain disputed: she may have been a native
Italian deity or an import from Greece via Etruria. In the city of Rome
itself, Minerva shared a temple—the most important temple of the Roman
state religion—with Jupiter and Juno on the Capitoline Hill, and as such
was established as one of Rome’s major deities.
In terms of mythology, physical appearance, and attributes, she became
conflated with Athena.
(See also Athena, Capitoline Hill [the], Juno, Jupiter, and Rome.)

MNEMOSYNE Mnemosyne, whose name means “memory,” was a

personification and goddess of memory. She was a daughter of the
elemental gods Gaia (“Earth”) and Uranus (“Heaven”) and was one of the
older generation of deities collectively called the Titans. Mnemosyne was
said to have borne the nine Muses, patron goddesses of the arts, to Zeus,
with whom she lay for nine nights in Pieria.
 (See Gaia, Muses [the], Pieria, Uranus, and Zeus.)

MOIRAE, THE The Moirae (or Moirai) were Greek goddesses of fate. The
Moirae and their Roman equivalents, the Parcae, are all referred to as Fates.
According to the Greek poet Hesiod, the Moirae, whose name means
“Portions” or “Shares” of life, were children of Night and were goddesses
of great antiquity. Their names were Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, Hesiod
writes, and they were responsible for assigning people with portions of
good and evil at their birth. Elsewhere, contradicting this statement, Hesiod
calls the Moirae daughters of Zeus and the Titan goddess Themis. The
individual names of the Moirae are all related to how the allotment of fate
was conceived as functioning: Clotho was “The Spinner,” in reference to
spinning the “thread of life” that the sisters subsequently measured and cut
to a determined length; Lachesis, “The Caster of Lots,” cast lots that
determined a person’s fate; and Atropos, “The Unturnable One,” saw to it
that a person’s fate could not be altered. As goddesses associated with
death, they had close ties with the Erinyes, spirits of vengeance, and Keres,
spirits of death.
It was often, but not always, possible for the gods to influence the
Moirae, but humans could not. Some instances of their workings include
their determination of the length and course of the hero Meleager’s life.
According to the mythographer Hyginus, they sang the newborn Meleager’s
fate as follows: Clotho said that he would be noble, Lachesis that he would
be brave, but Atropos, spotting a log burning on the hearth, said, “He will
live only as long as this log keeps burning.” Hearing this, his mother
hastened to the fire, snatched out the log, and kept it hidden to preserve her
son’s life. Yet it was ultimately she, in a fit of anger, who retrieved the fatal
log. In this instance, the Moirae could not be thwarted. By contrast, the god
Apollo intervened on noble Admetus’s behalf, making it possible for him to
find someone to die in his place. Sadly for him, it was his wife, Alcestis,
who volunteered.
(See also Admetus, Alcestis, Erinyes [the], Meleager, Parcae [the],
Themis, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

MORPHEUS Morpheus, a personification of dreams, was believed to be

one of the thousand sons of Hypnus (Roman Somnus), the god of sleep.
Morpheus was associated with a particular type of dream, namely that in
human form, since he was best at imitating people’s gait, speech, and
gestures. According to the Roman poet Ovid, his brother Phobetor (or
Icelos), by contrast, assumed the form of animals, and Phantasos took on
the shape of rocks, trees, water, and all other inanimate things. Among
Morpheus’s notable appearances in myth is that in the tale of Ceyx and
Alcyone, devoted husband and wife. When Ceyx, a king of the city Trachis,
met his death at sea, the goddess Hera, wishing to put an end to Alcyone’s
ceaseless prayers for her husband’s safety, caused Morpheus to appear to
her in Ceyx’s form to tell her of his death. Recognizing the truth of the
dream, a despondent Alcyone ran to the seashore and flung herself into the
waves when she caught sight of her husband’s corpse floating there. In pity
for her the gods transformed her, and also the dead Ceyx, into sea birds so
that they could spend the rest of their days together in this new incarnation.
(See also Alcyone, Ceyx, Hera, Hypnus, and Somnus.)

MORS Mors was the Roman god of death and represented the state of
lifelessness as well as the force that causes death. He was the equivalent of
the Greek god Thanatos.
(See also Thanatos.)

MUSES, THE The Muses inspired human artistic activity and,

accordingly, were patron goddesses of literature and the arts. They were
generally said to be nine in number and to be the daughters of Zeus and the
Titan goddess Mnemosyne (“Memory”). In his account of the origins of the
gods, Hesiod establishes their names as follows: Clio (or Cleio), “Praiser,”
Euterpe, “Bringer of Delight,” Thalia (or Thaleia, a deity distinct from the
Grace of the same name), “Bounteous One,” Melpomene, “Songstress,”
Terpsichore, “Enjoying the Dance,” Erato, “The Lovely,” Polyhymnia,
“Many-Hymned,” Urania (or Ourania), “Celestial One,” and Calliope,
“Beautiful-Voiced.” They were collectively described as Pierian (or
Pierides) and Heliconian in reference to their haunts Pieria, at the foot of
Mount Olympus, and Mount Helicon in Boeotia, and they were convened or
“led” by the god Apollo in his role as god of music and poetry.
 While the Muses were not originally assigned to specific spheres of
influence, each of them came to be associated with a distinct art form over
time as follows: Clio, history; Euterpe, flute playing; Thalia, comedy;
Melpomene, tragedy; Terpsichore, dancing; Erato, lyric and love poetry;
Polyhymnia, sacred song; Urania, astronomy; and Calliope, epic poetry.
As regards myths that involve the Muses as protagonists, these are
relatively few in number and center on various characters’ challenging
them, always with tragic results. Thamyris, a skilled Thracian bard,
foolishly boasted that he could outperform the Muses. For his pridefulness
the Muses struck him blind and caused him to forget his art. Similarly, the
nine daughters of Pierus, who were called Pierides after their father (and
thus could be confused with the Muses), claimed that they could outsing the
heavenly sisters. For their affront they were transformed into chattering
magpies. Even the Sirens, according the travel writer Pausanias, competed
in singing with the Muses, having been persuaded to do this by Hera. As
always, the Muses won, and they proceeded to pluck out the Sirens’
feathers, using them to make crowns for themselves. And, according to the
mythographer Hyginus, the Muses judged the terrible flute contest between
the Satyr Marsyas and Apollo.
Some of the Muses also had individual mythologies to the extent that
they were pursued by various male deities or heroes and bore them
children: Clio bore Hyacinth to King Oebalus (or Pierus); Calliope bore the
musicians Orpheus and Linus to Apollo; either Calliope or Euterpe bore
Rhesus, who would become a king of Thrace, to the river god Strymon; and
Melpomene or Terpsichore bore the Sirens to the river god Achelous.
(See also Achelous [god and place], Apollo, Calliope, Clio, Erato,
Euterpe, Helicon [Mount], Hyacinth, Linus, Marysas, Melpomene,
Mnemosyne, Oebalus, Olympus [Mount], Orpheus, Pieria, Pierides [the],
Pierus, Polyhymnia, Rhesus, Sirens [the], Terpsichore, Thalia, Thamyris,
Urania, and Zeus.)

NAIADS, THE The Naiads were nymphs, specifically water spirits who
inhabited springs, fountains, rivers, lakes, and brooks. While the Naiads
were not usually named individually in mythology, instead featuring as a
group, there were certainly notable exceptions, among them Lotis, who was
pursued by the rustic god Priapus, and Syrinx, who was pursued by Pan;
both were ultimately transformed into plants as a means of escaping their
pursuers.
(See also Lotis, Nymphs [the], Pan, Priapus, and Syrinx.)

NEMESIS Nemesis was the goddess of retribution, and for the poet He-
siod, she was a daughter of Night, her siblings including Moros (“Doom”),
black Ker (“Violent Death”), Thanatos (“Death”), Hypnus (“Sleep”),
Oneiroi (“Dreams”), Momos (“Blame”), Oizys (“Misery”), the Moirae
(“Fates”), Apate (“Deceit”), and Eris (“Strife”). Nemesis was conceived of
as functioning in various capacities. She was an agent of retribution for
hubris (not knowing one’s limits as a human being) and an inhibitor of
actions that would earn retribution, thus being a counterpart to Aidos
(reverence or shame). Nemesis appears often in Classical literature, which
is filled with tales involving hubris, but plays a leading role in one
particular myth, the story of the Trojan War. According to the
mythographers Hyginus and Apollodorus, as well as fragments of a lost
epic poem entitled the Cypria, Nemesis was pursued by Zeus, who forced
himself upon her in the guise of a swan. The results of this union were the
divine twins, Castor and Pollux, and an egg that, after being given to Leda,
hatched the beautiful Helen. As an allegory of Nemesis, Helen would
become the cause of the Trojan War, which Zeus initiated so as to free the
earth from overpopulation and to punish humans for their lack of piety.
(See also Castor, Eris, Helen, Hypnus, Leda, Moirae [the], Pollux,
Thanatos, Troy, and Zeus.)

NEPHELE Nephele, whose name means “cloud,” was literally a cloud to

which Zeus gave the shape of his wife, Hera. It was for a specific purpose
that Zeus did this: to verify Hera’s claim that Ixion, a Thessalian king, was
trying to seduce her. Zeus thus created Nephele in the likeness of his wife.
Ixion slept with her, begetting the monstrous Centaurs, hybrid creatures that
had the torsos of men and the bodies of horses, or, as the poet Pindar states,
Centaurus, who sired the Centaurs. Ixion, for his part, was punished by
being fastened to the spokes of a flaming wheel that would turn for eternity.
There was confusion among Classical authors about whether this
Nephele was the same Nephele who became the first wife of Athamas, a
king of Boeotia. If so, she would become mother to Phrixus and Helle,
whose death Athamas’s second wife, Ino, would plot but whom Nephele
was able to save from sacrifice by placing them on the back of a winged,
golden-fleeced ram.
(See also Athamas, Boeotia, Centaurs [the], Dionysus, Helle, Hera, Ino,
Ixion, Leucothea, Nephele [heroine], Phrixus, Thessaly, and Zeus.)

NEPTUNE Neptune was an ancient Italian water deity who became

associated and conflated with the Greek sea god Poseidon, assuming the
latter’s mythology.
(See Poseidon.)

NEREIDS, THE The Nereids were sea nymphs and fifty in number. They
were born of the sea god Nereus and Doris, a daughter of Oceanus. Among
their notable deeds were guiding Jason’s ship the Argo through the Clashing
Rocks on the hero’s return from his quest to obtain the Golden Fleece. In
this endeavor, one among them, Thetis, took the lead, according to
Apollonius of Rhodes. Apollodorus reports a less happy story. Andromeda’s
mother, Cassiopeia, queen of Ethiopia, had claimed to be more beautiful
than the Nereids and, consequently, Poseidon, taking up their cause, sent a
flood and sea monster to wreak havoc on the land in vengeance for the
queen’s insult. Jupiter Ammon prophesied that the monster could be
appeased only if Andromeda were left for it as a sacrifice, and thus it was
that the hero Perseus found the princess bound in fetters to a crag and,
Gorgon’s head in hand, came to her rescue. Some of the Nereids accrued
individual myths. Thetis, for example, is best known as the mother of
Achilles. Galatea, meanwhile, won the heart of the Cyclops Polyphemus,
and Amphitrite became mother to the sea deity Triton by the god Poseidon.
(See also Achilles, Ammon, Amphitrite, Andromeda, Argonauts [the],
Cassiopeia, Clashing Rocks [the], Cyclopes [the], Ethiopia, Galatea,
Gorgons [the], Jason, Medusa, Perseus, Polyphemus, Poseidon, Thetis, and
Triton.)

NEREUS Nereus was an ancient sea god often characterized, like his
brother Phorcys, as an “old man of the sea” capable of changing his shape
and possessing prophetic powers. The parents of Nereus and Phorcys were
said to be Pontus (“Sea”) and Gaia (“Earth”). As Hesiod recounts, with
Doris, a daughter of Oceanus, Nereus himself fathered fifty daughters,
known collectively as the Nereids.
Nereus played a role in Hercules’s completion of his eleventh Labor,
obtaining the golden apples of the Hesperides. It was Nereus who, when
constrained by Hercules, revealed the location of the Hesperides’ garden.
(See also Doris, Gaia, Hercules, Hesperides [the], Nereids [the],
Oceanus, Phorcys, and Pontus.)

NIKE Nike was the personification of victory. She was represented as

winged and holding a palm branch, garland, or other symbols of victory. In
his account of the origin of the gods, Hesiod writes that Styx, a daughter of
Oceanus, mated with the Titan god Pallas and gave birth to the slender-
ankled Nike as well as a group of other personified qualities that, generally
speaking, would be required for victory: Zelus (“Emulation”), Cratos
(“Strength”), and Bia (“Force”). Their place of dwelling, Hesiod adds, is
always with Zeus. Nike is certainly also well known as a companion to
Athena, judging from the monuments of the Athenian acropolis, especially
the temple of Athena Nike, which is in close proximity to the Parthenon,
and the small winged Nike that the Parthenon’s massive cult statue of
Athena held in her hand.
(See also Acropolis [the], Athena, Athens, Oceanus [god], Styx [the
River], Titans [the], and Zeus.)

NOTUS Notus (or Notos) was the personified south wind, and there is not
much mythology associated with him. Along with the wind gods Boreas
and Zephyr, he was said by the Greek poet Hesiod to be a son of the
goddess Eos and her consort Astraeus. According to Virgil, he, Boreas,
Zephyr, Eurus (the easterly wind), and Africus (the southwest wind) were
subject to control by Aeolus, Lord of the Winds. In a meteorological sense,
Notus was described as bringing rain and storms in late fall and winter.
(See also Aeolus, Boreas, Eos, Eurus, and Zephyr.)
NYMPHS, THE Nymphs were a class of minor deity or spirit that
inhabited features of and places in the natural world. Nymphs were
envisioned as young women, the word “nymph” being used in Greek to
designate human maidens as well as these spirits. There were several
varieties of nymph, among them being Naiads, who were nymphs of
springs, rivers, and other freshwater sources; Oreads, who were mountain
nymphs; Dryads, who were tree nymphs; and Hamadryads, tree nymphs
whose lives were very closely bound to those of the trees they inhabited.
The Oceanids, daughters of the deified river Oceanus, and Nereids,
daughters of the sea deity Nereus, feature prominently in mythology.
Notably, while nymphs were minor deities, they were not immortal.
(See also Dryads [the], Hamadryads [the], Naiads [the], Nereids [the],
Nereus, Oceanids [the], Oceanus, and Oreads [the].)

NYSAEAN NYMPHS, THE The Nysaean Nymphs, nymphs residing in

the mythical place called Nysa, were seven sisters also known as the
Hyades who nursed the infant Dionysus after his miraculous second “birth”
from the thigh of Zeus.
(See also Dionysus, Hyades [the], Nysa, and Zeus.)

OCEANIDS, THE The Oceanids were sea nymphs and the daughters—as
many as 3,000 in number—of the Titan god Oceanus and his sister Tethys.
Of these, only a few had personal mythologies: Doris, who with Nereus
became mother to the fifty Nereid nymphs; Amphitrite, who by some
accounts became wife to the god Poseidon; and Metis, who with Zeus
became mother to the goddess Athena.
(See also Amphitrite, Athena, Doris, Metis, Nereids [the], Nereus,
Oceanus [god], Poseidon, Tethys, Titan, and Zeus.)

OCEANUS Like his parents Gaia (“Earth”) and Uranus (“Sky”), the Titan
Oceanus was an elemental deity who was conceived of both as a geographic
feature, the river Oceanus, and as a personification of that feature, having
parents, a wife, and children. With his sister Tethys he became father to the
Oceanid nymphs, as many as 3,000 in number, the most notable of whom
were Doris, Amphitrite, and Metis. Oceanus and Tethys also produced all
the rivers in the world, which apart from the river Styx, were male. Oceanus
is variously depicted as a bearded, mature man, sometimes with horns and a
fish tail.
From an elemental perspective, Oceanus was early on envisioned as a
river that encircled, and thus was the outer boundary of, the flat, disk-
shaped world. This, for example, is how Oceanus is depicted on the Shield
of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad. Oceanus was believed to be the source of all
rivers. Helios (“Sun”) and Eos (“Dawn”) were thought to rise from
Oceanus’s eastern banks and then, having completed their daily journey, to
sink back into the river in the west. For Homer, the Elysian Fields and
Hades lay beyond Oceanus and thus beyond the limits of the world. Since
Oceanus was, in a sense, liminal and a place of transition between known
and unknown, real and unreal, a host of monsters and “exotic” human tribes
were said to live in proximity to it. These include the Hesperides, the
Gorgons, Geryon, the Hecatoncheires, and the Ethiopians.
As geographic exploration and speculation progressed in the course of
time, the conception of Oceanus as a river was questioned, and it was
increasingly thought of as a great sea beyond the Straits of Gibraltar or as a
“world sea” that encompassed all oceanic waters interconnected.
(See also Amphitrite, Elysian Fields [the], Eos, Ethiopia, Gaia, Geryon,
Gorgons, Hades, Hecatoncheires [the], Helios, Hesperides [the], Metis,
Oceanids [the], Oceanus [place], Tethys, Titans [the], and Uranus.)

OPS Ops, whose name means “help” or “resource,” was a Roman goddess
of the harvest and abundance who, in addition to ensuring the fertility of the
earth, assisted in military efforts and in childbirth. Ops had a close ritual
connection with Consus, god of the granary, and was known also as the
consort of Saturn, perhaps originally a god of seed-sowing but identified by
the Romans with the primeval deity Cronus, father of the Olympian gods.
As Saturn’s consort, Ops logically was sometimes identified with the Greek
goddess Rhea, the wife of Cronus.
(See also Cronus, Olympus [Mount], Rhea, and Saturn.)

ORCUS Orcus was a god of death and, at the same time, a lord of the
realm of the dead. He was the Roman counterpart of the Greek gods
Thanatos (“Death”) and Hades (“King of the Dead”), who was also called
Pluto. Like Hades, Orcus’s name could be used to designate the Underworld
itself.
(See also Hades [god], Pluto, Thanatos, and Underworld [the].)

OREADS, THE Oreads were mountain nymphs, their name being derived
from the Greek word for mountain (oros) and the related adjective oreios, -
a, -on (“mountain-dwelling”).
(See also Nymphs [the].)

OURANOS Ouranos is the Greek name of the god of the Heavens. His
Latinized name is Uranus. Ouranos was the consort of the earth goddess
Gaia, and with her produced the Cyclopes, Hecatoncheires, and the Titans,
the youngest of whom, Cronus, castrated him in vengeance for grievous
wrong done to Gaia.
(See also Cyclopes [the], Gaia, Hecatoncheires [the], Titans [the], and
Uranus.)

PALES Pales was a Roman deity who protected shepherds and sheep,
ensuring their fertility. The god was sometimes referred to as female and
sometimes male, and was associated with the rustic deities Pan and Faunus.
While there is much uncertainty about the nature of Pales and his/her
worship, it appears that the shepherds’ festival Palilia (or Parilia), which
was celebrated on April 21 both in the countryside and in the city of Rome,
was dedicated to this deity.
(See also Faunus and Pan.)

PALLAS Pallas was a name for Athena that was used either alone or as an
epithet: in other words, Athena could be called “Pallas” or “Pallas Athena.”
Relatedly, the ancient wooden statue of Athena that was housed in her
Trojan temple and stolen by Odysseus and Diomedes was called the
Palladium. The origins of the name Pallas are uncertain, though there are
possible etymological links with words designating a young person (in
Greek) or female ruler (Semitic). The mythographer Apollodorus mentions
two different sources for the name: a playmate of Athena’s whom the
goddess accidentally killed while they were practicing their fighting skills,
or a giant by that name whom she killed deliberately.
The goddess Pallas is to be distinguished from the young hero of the
same name, who was an ally of Aeneas and son of the Arcadian king
Evander.
(See also Aeneas, Arcadia, Athena, Diomedes, Evander, Odysseus,
Pallas [hero], and Troy.)

PAN Pan was a god of goatherds and shepherds, and his home was said to
have been the mountainous regions, forests, and pastures of Arcadia. His
name was derived from the root pa-, designating guardianship of flocks, a
root that is evident also in the Latin word pastor, shepherd. Originally an
Arcadian deity, his worship spread to other parts of Greece, cult sites sacred
to him having been found at Delphi and Athens, for example. Accounts of
his parentage were various. This rustic god was called a son of the god
Hermes with Dryope, and of Zeus with Penelope, the wife of Odysseus,
among others. Pan was represented as being of hybrid appearance, having
the body and arms of a human but the head, legs, and tail of a goat. In the
so-called Homeric Hymn in his honor, in which he is a son of Dryope and
Hermes, he is described as being a wonder to behold, having cloven hooves
and horns, as well as being noisy and prone to laughter. When his mother
saw his face and beard, she reputedly ran away in fear, so Hermes brought
him to Mount Olympus, wrapped in rabbit skins, and all the gods,
especially Dionysus, were delighted, thereafter calling him “Pan,” which is
here falsely linked to the word for “everyone” (pantes). In his rural haunts,
Pan kept the company of nymphs and satyrs, who were hybrid creatures like
himself, thus being himself absorbed into the entourage of the god
Dionysus. Pan’s instrument of choice was the reed pipe, which the Roman
poet Ovid describes as his invention: Pan became enamored of a nymph
called Syrinx, and when, in order to escape his advances, she became a
clump of reeds, he fashioned a pipe from them. When, pipes in hand, he
later challenged the god Apollo to a music contest, the Phrygian king Midas
declared him the winner and was punished by Apollo for his choice by
growing an ass’s ears.
(See also Apollo, Arcadia, Athens, Delphi, Dionysus, Hermes, Midas,
Nymphs [the], Odysseus, Olympus [Mount], Penelope, Satyrs [the], Syrinx,
and Zeus.)

PARCAE, THE The Parcae, also called Fates (Fata in Latin), were the
three Roman goddesses of fate or prophetic destiny and, as such, were
equivalents of the Greek Moirae. Their names were given as Nona
(“Ninth”), Decima (“Tenth”), and Parca (“Midwife”), all being names that
point strongly to an origin as deities of childbirth who, by extension,
determined the course of the newborn’s life. As far as how they operated,
the Parcae were variously represented as spinning the threads of fate,
reciting or singing a song of fate, and inscribing a person’s fate on a tablet.
Their attributes were the spindle and scroll.
(See also Fates [the] and Moirae [the].)

PARTHENOS Parthenos, “Maiden,” was an epithet or descriptor used

particularly with reference to Athena but also to other virgin goddesses, in
particular Hestia and Artemis.
(See also Artemis, Athena, Athens, and Hestia.)

PENATES, THE The Penates were Roman deities who protected the home
and homeland. Like the Lares, with whom they were linked, the Penates
could function in both the private and the public realm. In the domestic
sphere, the Penates’ particular responsibility was the interior of the home,
its provisions, and its storerooms. Functioning in a public capacity, they
protected the Roman state.
(See also Lares [the].)

PENEUS Peneus (also Peneius or Peneios) was the god of the Peneus
River that flows through the Vale of Tempe in the region of northern Greece
known as Thessaly. He was himself a child of the elemental Titan gods
Oceanus and Tethys. He is best known in mythology for being father to the
lovely maiden Daphne, who was relentlessly pursued by the god Apollo
although she wished ardently to remain a virgin huntress. Exhausted from
running to escape the god’s advances, Daphne begged her father to save her.
Her prayer was granted, and before Apollo’s very eyes, she became a laurel
tree.
(See also Apollo, Daphne, Oceanus [god], Peneus River [the], Tempe
[Vale of], Tethys, Thessaly, and Titans [the].)

PERSEPHONE Persephone, also known as Cora (“Maiden”), was the

wife of Hades and queen of the Underworld. She was the daughter of Zeus
and Demeter, goddess of grain and the harvest. As recounted in the so-
called Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hades fell in love with the lovely
Persephone and wished to marry her. In accordance with a plan contrived
by Zeus and executed with the help of Gaia (“Earth”), Hades took his bride
by force: Gaia caused a meadow in the valley of Nysa to bloom irresistibly
with roses, crocus, violets, iris, hyacinth, and narcissus, and as Persephone
lingered there picking flowers, Hades seized her into his chariot, later
plunging into the depths of the earth. A despondent Demeter wandered the
earth and ceased to concern herself with planting and the harvest.
Consequently, seeds did not sprout, people starved, and the gods did not
receive their habitual sacrifices. Zeus and all the gods attempted to console
Demeter, offering her all manner of wonderful gifts in order to convince her
to return to Mount Olympus. But she was inconsolable and insisted on the
return of her daughter. To this Hades eventually agreed, but first he tricked
Persephone into eating some pomegranate seeds, which compelled her to
spend a portion of the year—one third (or by some accounts, one half)—
with him. The months during which Persephone stayed in Hades were
months of mourning for Demeter, corresponding to the late autumn and
winter months when seed lay dormant in the soil. When Persephone re-
emerged in spring, her mother rejoiced, and planted seeds could sprout.
Persephone was worshipped in conjunction with her mother, Demeter, as
a fertility and culture-sustaining deity as well as guarantor of a felicitous
afterlife. Their most important festivals were the Thesmophoria and the
Eleusinian Mysteries, both of which required secrecy on the part of the
celebrants.
In art, Persephone, who was called Proserpina by the Romans, was
represented as a young woman bearing torches or stalks of grain.
(See also Demeter, Eleusis, Gaia, Hades [god and place], Nysa,
Olympus [Mount], Underworld [the], and Zeus.)
PHOEBE The Titan goddess Phoebe, “Shining One” or “Prophetic One,”
was known primarily as spouse of her brother Coeus and mother to the
second-generation Titan goddesses Asteria and Leto. Phoebe’s
grandchildren were the deities Hecate, Apollo, and Artemis. As a deity with
prophetic powers, Phoebe was said by the Greek playwright Aeschylus to
have been in control of the famous oracle at Delphi after her mother, Gaia,
and her sister Themis. Phoebe would later give the oracle to her grandson
Apollo.
(See also Apollo, Artemis, Coeus, Delphi, Gaia, Hecate, Leto, and
Themis.)

PHOEBUS Phoebus was a name for Apollo, being used alone or as a

forename for the god: Phoebus or Phoebus Apollo. The name has been
taken to mean “Bright One,” but it remains unclear whether it was assigned
to Apollo as a reference to his appearance, his divinity, his purity, or his
association with the sun.
(See Apollo.)

PHORCYS The sea god Phorcys was born of the primeval deities Pontus
(“Sea”) and Gaia (“Earth”). In Homer’s Odyssey, he is known as the Old
Man of the Sea, and there is a safe harbor on the island of Ithaca named
after him. It is the harbor of Phorcys, with its olive tree and sacred grotto,
that welcomes home a war- and travel-weary Odysseus after a twenty-year
absence. With his sister, Ceto, Phorcys became father to the monstrous
Graiae and Gorgons. By some accounts, the two also produced the serpent-
maiden Echidna and Ladon, the snake that guarded the Hesperides’ golden
apples. He was also said to have been the grandfather of the Cyclops
Polyphemus and to have sired the Sirens and Scylla, all of them monsters.
(See also Cyclopes [the], Echidna, Gaia, Gorgons [the], Graiae [the],
Hesperides [the], Ithaca, Ladon, Odysseus, Polyphemus, Scylla, and Sirens
[the].)
 PLATE III

Poseidon: God of the sea, punisher of Odysseus

PIERIDES, THE The Muses, goddesses who embodied artistic inspiration,
were sometimes called Pierides (as well as Pierian) after their birthplace
Pieria at the foot of Mount Olympus. Strictly speaking, Pierides is a
patronymic, and means “children of Pierus.” As there was a tradition,
recorded by the travel writer Pausanias, that Pierus, a king of Macedon,
established the worship of the Muses, they could, in a metaphorical sense,
be viewed as his daughters. According to the Roman poet Ovid, Pierus
happened himself to have nine daughters who had lovely singing voices.
His daughters made the fatal mistake of challenging the Muses to a singing
contest and, upon their inevitable loss, were changed into chattering
magpies.
(See also Macedon, Muses [the], Olympus [Mount], Pieria, and Pierus.)

PLEIADES, THE The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, were nymphs and

children of Atlas and Pleione, a daughter of Oceanus. Their siblings were
the Hyades, who were also nymphs, and Hyas, their only brother. The
Pleiades’ names are given as Alycone, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope,
Sterope (or Asterope), and Taygete. Almost all of them had children by
various gods. The most important of them are as follows: Oenomaus was
born to Sterope/Asterope by Ares; Dardanus to Electra, and Hermes to
Maia by Zeus. Merope, however, was impregnated by the mortal Sisyphus
and, consequently, bore Glaucus (the hero, not the god of this name). The
Pleiades became a star cluster, placed in the heavens by Zeus, either
because the giant Orion pursued them, and Zeus raised them to the heavens
to save them, or as compensation for their grief over the death of their
sisters the Hyades. Of the seven, only six are visible. It was said that one of
the sisters hid in shame or grief. If this was a grieving Electra, her sorrow
resulted from the fall of Troy, which her son Laomedon had founded. If, on
the other hand, this was Merope, she was ashamed at having borne a child
to a mortal.
 The name “Pleiades” is variously explained as derived from the Greek
word for sailing and that for weeping. Whatever the case, the rising of the
Pleiades corresponded with the beginning of sailing season and with spring
sowing. Their setting, in turn, coincided with the harvest.
(See also Atlas, Dardanus, Electra [nymph], Glaucus [hero], Hyades
[the], Laomedon, Maia, Merope [nymph], Oceanus, and Orion.)

PLUTO Pluto was another name for Hades, god of the Underworld.
Derived from the Greek word for wealth, ploutos, this incarnation of the
god emphasized a different aspect of his association with the Underworld,
namely the depths of the earth as a source of bounty.
(See also Hades and Underworld [the].)

POLLUX Pollux, known in Greek as Polydeuces, was one of the divine

twins, the Dioscuri, who ultimately became the constellation Gemini.
Pollux and his brother, Castor, were sons of the Spartan queen Leda, and
their sisters were Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, the faithless wife of king
Agamemnon of Mycenae. Though both brothers were represented as
horsemen, Pollux’s particular skill was boxing, in which art he
distinguished himself while particpating in Jason’s quest for the Golden
Fleece.
(See also Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Dioscuri [the], Gemini, Helen,
Jason, Leda, Mycenae, Sparta, and Troy.)

POLYHYMNIA “Many-Hymned” Polyhymnia, goddess of many songs

and/or of songs performed by many voices, was one of the Muses. Her
spheres of influence included choral song and pantomime and extended to
historiography and rhetoric, thus overlapping with Clio. There were obscure
legends according to which she was the mother of the hero Triptolemus; the
singer Orpheus, who was known also as the son of the Muse Calliope; and
even, according to Plato, Eros.
(See also Calliope, Clio, Eros, Muses [the], and Triptolemus.)

POMONA Pomona was the Roman goddess of fruit (Latin pomum).

According to the Roman poet Ovid, the beautiful Pomona had been devoted
to gardens and orchards, which she tended with care, watering and pruning
the plants. She had no interest in the world outside her garden, nor did she
have an interest in love, though she had many suitors, particularly among
the rustic deities and spirits: Priapus, Silenus, and Satyrs. When the god
Vertumnus saw her, he was instantly smitten and tried to approach her in
many guises: as a reaper, a herdsman, a vintner, an apple picker, a
fisherman, and a soldier. At last, he disguised himself as an elderly woman
and gestured toward an elm around which twined a burgeoning grapevine.
He pointed out how the vine would decline if separated from the tree. Like
the vine, he argued, she should not be alone. He told her the story of Iphis
and Anaxarete, too—a story of tragic love. In the end, he won her heart, and
she became his consort.
(See also Anaxarete, Iphis, Priapus, Satyrs [the], Silenus, and
Vertumnus.)

POSEIDON Poseidon was the Greek god of the sea and thus necessarily
the patron deity of navigation and maritime battles; as he had the ability to
calm and stir up the seas, he was both savior and potential nemesis of
sailors and fishermen. Poseidon was also the god of earthquakes, described
by Homer as the “Earthshaker” who caused the earth to tremble when he
struck it with his trident. Further, he was the god of horses, which he was
believed to have created, and he was closely associated with horse breeding
and racing. While the meaning of his name is uncertain, Poseidon was a god
of great antiquity in Greece, notations of his name dating to the Bronze
Age, a period extending from roughly 3000 to 1050 BCE. Given Poseidon’s
realm of influence, a great many temples and sanctuaries sacred to him
were located on coastal sites, as at Sunion in the territory of Athens and on
the Isthmus of Corinth, site of the Pan-Hellenic Isthmian Games that were
celebrated in his honor; however, sites sacred to him could also be found
inland at places where there were clefts in the earth or springs.
In terms of his mythology, Poseidon was a son of the Titan gods Cronus
and Rhea. His siblings were Zeus, Hades, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, all of
whom apart from Zeus were swallowed by their father upon their birth and
later disgorged. When Cronus’s children prevailed over him and the older
Titan gods, seizing rulership of the world from them, it was not a given that
Zeus would be king of the gods, nor was it predetermined which part of the
world each of the brothers would control. Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus
accordingly drew lots from a helmet. Hades became lord of the
Underworld, Zeus the lord of the heavens, and Poseidon lord of the sea,
with an underwater palace near Aegae on the island of Euboea. Poseidon
later became involved in a series of disputes with other Olympian gods over
territories in Greece. With Athena he vied for patronage of Athens,
engaging with her in a contest in order to win this land; Athena caused an
olive tree to grow, and Poseidon, smiting the rock of the Acropolis with his
trident, produced a saltwater spring, a symbol of naval power. Athena’s gift
was deemed more valuable, and she became the patron deity of Athens. As
a result of a dispute with the god Helios over Corinth, Poseidon was
assigned the Isthmus, while Helios was given the height of Acrocorinth.
Poseidon lost his bid for Argos to the goddess Hera.
While the sea goddess Amphitrite was called his consort, as well as
mother by him of Triton, Poseidon had numerous extramarital amorous
encounters. Among the best known of these was his pursuit of a grief-
stricken Demeter, whom he pursued while she searched for her daughter,
Persephone; in order to escape him, Demeter transformed herself into a
mare, but Poseidon could not be deceived and, in turn, became a stallion, in
this way fathering the immortal horse Arion, which would eventually pass
to the ownership of Hercules and, later, to the hero Adrastus. Poseidon
saved the lovely Danaid Amymone from assault by a Satyr, chasing it off
with his trident, but in the process, he fell in love with her and, taking her
by force, became father to her son Nauplius. Poseidon also impregnated
Medusa with Pegasus and Chrysaor, both of whom were born from her neck
when Bellerophon decapitated her. And on the same night that Aegeus slept
with Aethra, Poseidon slept with her as well, in this way becoming a second
father of the Athenian hero Theseus. With the nymph Thoosa, a daughter of
the sea deity Phorcys, he became father to the Cyclops Polyphemus.
Among those who felt Poseidon’s wrath were the Trojans and Odysseus.
The god’s hatred of the former stemmed from the period of his servitude to
the Trojan king Laomedon, who refused to pay him and Apollo for building
the city’s wall. As for Odysseus, he incurred Poseidon’s anger by blinding
the monstrous Polyphemus, and as a consequence, the god ensured that
Odysseus’s journey home from Troy would be both long and difficult, filled
with perils from the sea. Minos, king of Crete, also incurred the god’s
displeasure after asking Poseidon to ratify his claim to the throne by
producing a bull from the sea. Poseidon obliged him, but Minos
subsequently broke his promise to sacrifice the animal to the god. As a
result, Poseidon caused Minos’s wife, Pasiphae, to develop a passion for the
bull, an infatuation that resulted in the birth of the Minotaur.
As for Poseidon’s attributes and distinguishing characteristics, he was
represented as a mature, bearded male holding a trident. Animals sacred to
him included bulls, horses, and dolphins. As regards plants, he had a special
connection with pine, which was particularly well suited for the production
of ships’ masts.
The Romans identified their sea god Neptune with Poseidon.
(See also Adrastus, Aethra, Amymone, Apollo, Argos, Athena, Athens,
Chrysaor, Corinth, Crete, Cronus, Danaids [the], Demeter, Hades, Helios,
Hera, Hercules, Hestia, Laomedon, Medusa, Minos, Minotaur [the],
Neptune, Odysseus, Pasiphae, Pegasus, Persephone, Phorcys, Polyphemus,
Rhea, Satyrs [the], Theseus, Titans [the], Troy, and Zeus.)

PRIAPUS Priapus was a fertility god of Phrygian origin and thus an import
from northwestern Asia Minor, where he remained more popular than in
Greece and Italy. He was responsible for promoting the fertility of animals
and plants along with that of humans and, for this reason, was important to
the enterprises of animal husbandry and farming. As a fertility deity, he was
also a guarantor of good fortune. His statues were believed to promote a
bountiful harvest and, at the same time, protect sheep, goats, bees, vines,
and garden produce from thieves as well as from the envious evil eye.
This lusty god was distinguished physically by an oversize erect phallus,
and he was part of the entourage of the god Dionysus, along with Nymphs,
Satyrs, and Silens. Reflecting his “nature,” Priapus’s parents were generally
said to be the goddess Aphrodite and Dionysus, though the gods Hermes,
Zeus, and Pan are also mentioned as his father and a nymph as his mother.
(See also Aphrodite, Dionysus, Hermes, Nymphs [the], Pan, Phrygia,
Satyrs [the], Silens [the], and Zeus.)

PROMETHEUS Prometheus was a second-generation Titan god from a

patrilinear perspective. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, he was the son
of the Titan Iapetus and Clymene, daughter of Iapetus’s brother Oceanus,
and his siblings were Atlas, who would be compelled to carry the heavens;
the short-lived sinner Menoetius; and the thoughtless Epimetheus.
Prometheus, whose name means “forethought,” was known both for his
cunning and for his kindliness toward humans. On an occasion when the
gods and mortals were at odds, Prometheus prepared a joint meal for them,
asking Zeus to choose his own portion. The portion that Prometheus rightly
suspected Zeus would choose consisted of an animal’s bones wrapped in
glistening fat, which looked larger and richer than the portion consisting
solely of meat. In anger that he had been outwitted and that humans had
benefited from his choice of the less nutritious portion, Zeus decided to
withhold fire from humans. In this instance, too, Prometheus outwitted him
and stole fire for them, hiding some flames in a hollow fennel stalk. For this
infraction, Zeus contrived a more lasting punishment: he instructed He-
phaestus to create a woman, the first of her gender, as a gift not for Pro-
metheus, who would guess that the gift was a hidden danger, but for
Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus. The woman was Pandora, who brought
with her blessings of all kinds but also every kind of evil. As for
Prometheus, Zeus placed him in shackles and drove a shaft through his
body so as to anchor him to a rocky crag while an eagle (or vulture) ate
perpetually of his eternally regenerating liver. Prometheus was eventually
released from this torture by Zeus and Hercules. The latter consulted
Prometheus, whom he found in the Caucasus Mountains, when seeking the
Garden of the Hesperides, and as compensation for the guidance offered,
Hercules killed the eagle that had been tormenting him. Zeus, for his part,
released Prometheus from his shackles in exchange for advising him not to
pursue the goddess Thetis, for it had been prophesied that a son born to her
would be more powerful than her father. As the mythographer Hyginus
reports, Zeus compelled Prometheus to wear a finger ring of iron fitted with
a piece of the stone to which he had been chained as a reminder of his
earlier presumption.

Given the importance of fire to the advancement of human civilization

and culture, it is not surprising that Prometheus was not only presented as a
benefactor of humankind but also as a culture hero credited, according to
the tragedian Aeschylus, with introducing the arts of shelter-building,
agriculture, mathematics, writing, animal domestication, and navigation.
There was also a tradition that it was Prometheus who actually created
humans, fashioning them out of earth and water.
(See also Atlas, Caucasus Mountains [the], Clymene, Epimetheus,
Hephaestus, Hercules, Hesperides [the], Iapetus, Oceanus [god], Pandora,
Titans [the], and Zeus.)

PROSERPINA Proserpina was the Roman name for Persephone, who, to

the horror of her mother, Demeter, was abducted by Hades, King of the
Dead, to become his queen.
(See also Hades [god], Persephone, and Underworld [the].)

PROTEUS Proteus was a sea deity who, logically, had close ties with the
sea god Poseidon: he was said to be the herdsman of Poseidon’s flock of
seals, and the mythographer Apollodorus reports that the god Poseidon was
his father. Proteus was characterized as elderly and could change his shape
as well as foretell the future, attributes that he had in common with the sea
gods Nereus and Phorcys. Persons wishing to hear him foretell the future
were required to seize him and retain their grip while he assumed every
possible shape in order to escape the necessity of prophesying; if steadily
held, he resumed his normal appearance and told the truth. Those who
consulted Proteus successfully included the Spartan king Menelaus who,
after arriving at the island of Pharos on his way home from Troy, followed
guidance offered by Proteus’s daughter Eidothea: Menelaus, with the help
of three companions all disguised as seals, was to seize the god at midday
while he was napping in a cave with his seal flock. Proteus changed from a
lion to a serpent, leopard, boar, water, and an enormous tree, but the men
held fast. The god then revealed to Menelaus that he would need to make an
offering of a hundred head of cattle to the gods so they would grant him
safe passage home, and he disclosed the fate of Menelaus’s former
companions at Troy, among them his brother Agamemnon and Odysseus.
Another hero who consulted Proteus was the beekeeper Aristaeus, who
availed himself of the god to learn why his bees had died.
There was also an Egyptian king named Proteus who appears in
mythology and who may have become confused with the god and, as a
result, called by the same name. King Proteus is chiefly known for having
given sanctuary to Helen when the god Hermes, according to a variant of
Helen’s Trojan adventures, brought her to him during the Trojan War.
(See also Agamemnon, Aristaeus, Helen, Hermes, Menelaus, Nereus,
Odysseus, Phorcys, Poseidon, Sparta, and Troy.)

PSYCHOPOMPUS The name or epithet Psychompus (“Leader of Souls”)

was applied to the god Hermes when he served in this capacity. It was
Hermes who led the souls of the dead to the Underworld.
 (See also Hermes and Underworld [the].)

PYTHIAN Pythian was an epithet for Apollo, the god of prophecy, music,
archery, healing, and light. According to the so-called Homeric Hymn to
Apollo, this descriptor was directly linked with the god’s slaying of the
massive serpent, the Python, that once resided at Delphi and the slaying of
which allowed Apollo to take control of the oracle there. Apollo’s priestess
at Delphi, who served as mouthpiece of the god when he was consulted by
those seeking prophecies, was called the Pythia, and Pytho was another
name for Delphi.
(See Apollo, Delphi, and Python.)

QUIRINUS Quirinus was a Roman god who became identified with the
deified Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. He may originally have
been a Sabine war god and, when integrated into Roman state religion,
represented the Roman citizen body as their protector.
(See also Rome, Romulus, and Sabines [the].)

RHEA In mythology, Rhea was a Titan goddess and a daughter of Gaia

(“Earth”) and Uranus (“Heaven”). Her brother Cronus was her consort, and,
according to the Greek poet Hesiod, she bore to him Hestia, Demeter, Hera,
Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Having learned from his parents that he was
destined to be overpowered by his own son, Cronus swallowed each of his
children as they emerged from their mother’s womb, apart from Zeus. For,
by that time, Rhea had asked her parents what she could do to outwit
Cronus and save her youngest child. On their advice, she went to Crete,
where she hid her newborn child in a cave, and to Cronus she gave a stone
wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he swallowed, not guessing that he
had been tricked. When grown, Zeus, with the help of Rhea (or, by some
accounts, his first wife Metis), would trick Cronus into vomiting up both
the stone and his siblings and then successfully wage war against him and
the other Titan gods. The mythographer Apollodorus supplies additional
detail to the story of Zeus’s birth to Rhea: it was in the cave of Dicte that
Rhea hid Zeus, and she gave him to the Curetes and to the nymphs Adrastea
and Ida to nurse. In that cave the nymphs fed the child with the milk of a
goat called Amalthea, and the Curetes danced about clashing their spears
against their shields so that Cronus might not hear the baby crying.
In Greek religion and culture more broadly, Rhea was an earth-mother
goddess, of whom Hera, Demeter, and Aphrodite were also at least to some
degree incarnations or refractions. As a Great Mother, Rhea was inherently
a goddess of life and fertility who was associated, at the same time, with
death. As her mythology suggests, she appears to have enjoyed particular
prominence on the island of Crete, and her assimilation with the Phrygian
fertility goddess Cybele, whose worship was orgiastic and ecstatic in nature,
underscores the notion of a common Anatolian (western-Asian) origin of
the two. In Roman religion, Rhea was identified with the goddess Ops.
(See also Adrastea, Aphrodite, Crete, Cronus, Curetes [the], Cybele,
Demeter, Gaia, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Ida [nymph], Metis, Ops, Phrygia,
Poseidon, Titans [the], Uranus, and Zeus.)

SATURN Saturn was an Italian fertility god, possibly of Etruscan or Sabine

origin. As his name, which Roman authors derived from the word sator
(“one who sows”), indicates, his particular realm was the fertility of the
fields and, thus, agriculture. At the same time, he was viewed as a culture
hero who established both planting practices and other mainstays of good
social order, such as laws, writing, and coinage. Consequently, the temple
built at the foot of Rome’s Capitoline Hill in his honor served as an archive
for laws as well as the seat of the Roman treasury.
Saturn was identified with the Greek god Cronus, father of Zeus and the
other Olympian gods. As an equivalent of Cronus, his consort was Ops
(“Wealth” or “Resource”), who was herself viewed as the Roman
equivalent of the Greek mother-goddess Rhea. Saturn was thought to have
established himself as a ruler among the Italians when, partly on the
succession model of Cronus and Zeus, he was driven from the heavens by
his son. His rule constituted a Golden Age of peace and plenty. Saturn’s
son, according to the Roman poet Virgil, was Picus, grandfather of the
Laurentine king Latinus, whose daughter Lavinia the Trojan hero Aeneas
wed.
The originally seven-day December festival of the Saturnalia celebrated
in this god’s honor marked the wintertime end of work in the fields and
served as a model for aspects of the Christian observation of Christmas.
(See also Capitoline Hill [the], Cronus, Latinus, Lavinia, Olympus
[Mount], Ops, Picus, Rhea, and Zeus.)

SATYRS, THE Satyrs were woodland spirits who were originally

conceived of as part horse and part human. Over time, they assumed the
features of a goat.
(See Satyrs [Hybrid Creatures].)

SELENE Selene, goddess of the Moon and the moon’s personification, was
said by the Greek poet Hesiod to be a daughter of the Titan Hyperion, a sun
deity, her sisters being Helios (“Sun”) and Eos (“Dawn”). According to the
mythographer Apollodorus, she fell in love with the handsome Endymion,
the son of Aethlius, founder of Elis, or of Zeus. The gods granted
Endymion a wish, and what he chose was to sleep forever, remaining both
deathless and ageless.
(See also Endymion, Helios, Hyperion, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

SOL Sol, “sun” in Latin, was the Roman counterpart of the Greek sun god
Helios. In the religious and broader cultural thought of the Roman world,
Sol was a judge and champion of law, but also a deity of sun, fire, and light
as well as a rainmaker responsible for promoting the growth of plants.
(See also Apollo and Helios.)

SOMNUS Somnus was a personification and the Roman god of sleep. He

was identified with the Greek god Hypnus.
(See Hypnus.)

STEROPE Sterope was one of the Pleiades, seven nymphs born of Atlas
and Pleione, a daughter of Oceanus. The mythographer Apollodorus records
that she became mother to the bird-women known as the Sirens and, by the
war god Ares, of Oenomaus, a king of Pisa, who became enamored of his
own daughter and found a way to kill all of her suitors but Pelops, the last.
(See also Ares, Atlas, Oceanus [god], Oenomaus, Pelops, Pleiades [the],
and Sirens [the].)

SYLVANUS Sylvanus (or Silvanus) was Italian spirit of the woods but also
a god of agriculture, cultivated fields, and flocks who straddled and
negotiated the divide between nature and culture. His origins are debated,
and he has been variously called a particular manifestation of the god Mars,
in the guise of a deity of fields and farming, or of Faunus, as well as an
outright reflection of the derivation of his name: silva in Latin is the word
for “forest.” He was sometimes identified with the rustic god Pan, and
ancient images depict him as an elderly, bearded male wearing an animal
skin and holding pine cones, fruit, pine branches, or a sickle.
(See also Faunus, Mars, and Pan.)

SYRINX The Naiad (water nymph) Syrinx was the origin of, and gave her
name to, the reed pipe played by the nature god Pan. According to the
Roman poet Ovid, Syrinx, who lived in the mountains of Arcadia, was
spotted one day by Pan, who desired her. Syrinx, wishing to remain a virgin
like the goddess Artemis, fled the god’s advance and, upon coming to the
river Ladon, asked the water nymphs, her sisters, to help her. Her wish was
granted. The moment that the god laid hands on her, she became a handful
of reeds. As the god breathed upon them, the reeds rustled sweetly in
response. Captivated by the sound and wishing in this way to continue
communicating with her, Pan bound reeds of graduated lengths, fastening
them with wax. The result was the Pan pipe, syrinx in Greek.
(See also Arcadia, Artemis, Naiads [the], and Pan.)

TARTARUS Tartarus was the name given to the darkest, gloomiest depths
of the earth, and was the part the Underworld reserved for sinners. While
Tartarus was known primarily as a “place,” he is (at least to some degree) a
personified primordial deity in the poet Hesiod’s account of the origins of
the world and its gods. According to Hesiod, Tartarus and Gaia (“Earth”)
were the first components of the world to come into being from Chaos
(“Void”). With Gaia, a personified Tartarus became the father of the
monstrous Typhon and Echidna. According to later authors, he was also the
father of Zeus’s sacred eagle as well as of Thanatos (“Death”) and even the
sorceress-goddess Hecate.
(See also Chaos, Echidna, Gaia, Hecate, Thanatos, Typhon, Underworld
[the], and Zeus.)

TERMINUS Terminus was a personification of boundary markers (whether

stones or buried logs) and the tenacious Roman deity of property
boundaries, which were established and safeguarded not only by law but
also by this god. According to Roman lore, Terminus would not yield his
place on the Capitoline Hill in Rome even for the god Jupiter when
Jupiter’s temple was being built, this being the reason that the temple
enclosed Terminus’s sacred boundary stone. The legendary Roman king
Numa (or Titus Tatius) was credited with having established the worship of
Terminus, whose festival, the Terminalia, was celebrated on February 23.
(See also Capitoline Hill [the], Jupiter, Numa, and Rome.)

TERPSICHORE Terpsichore, “She Who Delights in the Choral Dance,”

was one of the nine Muses. She became viewed specifically as the patron
goddess of choruses, groups that sang and danced, and of choral song, her
attributes being the flute and lyre. Like her sisters Calliope, Euterpe, and
Urania, she was named as a mother of the famed bard Linus, and both she
and Urania were identified as mothers of the marriage god Hymen. Either
she or her sister Melpomene was said to have given birth to the Sirens.
(See also Calliope, Euterpe, Hymen, Linus, Melpomene, Muses [the],
Sirens [the], and Urania.)

TETHYS Tethys was one of the Titan gods, the first set of children born to
Gaia and Uranus. To her brother Oceanus, Tethys bore the 3,000 Oceanid
nymphs, as well as the river gods, all of them male. She is sometimes
described as a sea goddess but was also known as the source of Oceanus’s
sweet waters. She and her consort, Oceanus, took the goddess Hera into
their care when Zeus was at war with his father, Cronus.
(See also Cronus, Gaia, Hera, Oceanids [the], Oceanus [god], Tethys,
Titan, Uranus, and Zeus.)

THALIA There were several deities called Thalia (or Thaleia), “Blooming
One.” The most prominent of these was the Muse of that name who became
the patron deity of comedy and other light literary genres (versus tragedy
and epic, for example). The comic mask was her attribute.
The other Thalias were a Nereid nymph, one of the three Graces, and a
nymph who bore the Sicilian gods called the Palici.
(See also Graces [the], Muses [the], and Nereids [the].)

THANATOS Thanatos was the personification of death in Greek

mythology. He was the son of Nyx (“Night”) and the brother of Hypnus
(“Sleep”). He was early on depicted as a winged youth but, over time, was
thought of as a grizzled elderly man.
(See also Hypnus.)

THEMIS Themis, whose name means “custom” or “sacred law,” was,

logically, a personification of custom and law as established by nature or
the gods versus human law created through legal proceedings. She was one
of the Titan gods who were offspring of Gaia (“Earth”) and Uranus
(“Heaven”). According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Themis became Zeus’s
second wife after Metis, and she bore to him the Horae (“Seasons”),
Eunomia (“Good Order”), Dike (“Justice”), Eirene (“Peace”), and the
Moirae (“Fates”), who determine what good things and what misfortunes
will come to humans in the course of their lives. All of these children reflect
principles or mechanisms that ensure an orderly existence. According to the
tragic poet Aeschylus, Themis was given control of the famous oracle at
Delphi by Gaia, its original owner; Themis would pass it on to Phoebe, who
in turn would pass it on to Apollo. Themis had close ties with Zeus in his
role as guarantor of righteousness and good governance; as the poet Pindar
writes, she sat on a throne next to him. Themis also had very close ties with
her mother, Gaia, as a result of which she was regarded as an earth or
fertility goddess and also as a deity having prophetic powers. Among those
mythological characters that she helped in her capacity as a prophetic deity
were Deucalion and Pyrrha, the sole survivors of the Great Flood; Atlas,
who was forewarned of a future attempt to steal the apples of the
Hesperides; and Zeus, who ceased to pursue Thetis when he learned that her
child would be more powerful than its father. With her Titan brother
Iapetus, Themis was also said to be mother to the second-generation Titan
Prometheus, the benefactor of humankind.
(See also Atlas, Delphi, Deucalion, Dike, Gaia, Hesperides [the], Metis,
Moirae [the], Phoebe, Prometheus, Pyrrha, Thetis, Titans [the], Uranus, and
Zeus.)

TISIPHONE Tisiphone, whose name means “Avenger of Murder,” was one

of the Erinyes (or Furies, in Latin), who were fearsome, snake-haired spirits
of vengeance. Her sisters were Megaera (“Envious One”) and Alecto
(“Implacable One”). For the Roman poet Virgil, Tisiphone was guardian of
the gates to Tartarus, a region in the Underworld reserved for sinners, and
she, together with her sisters, was tasked with executing punishments
allotted by the Underworld’s judge Rhadamanthus.
(See also Alecto, Erinyes [the], Furies [the], Rhadamanthus, Tartarus,
and Underworld [the].)

TITANS, THE As the universe and its gods were born, Gaia (“Earth”)
produced Uranus (“Heaven”) to cover her on every side, and with this
elemental male deity, she produced several groups of children, among them
the three one-eyed Cyclopes, the Hecatoncheires (“Hundred-Handers”), and
the twelve Titans, six male and six female: the brothers Oceanus, Coeus,
Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus; and the sisters Theia, Rhea, Themis,
Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. The best known of the Titans, some of
whom are elemental and/or personifications, are the world-river Oceanus;
Rhea, who married her brother Cronus and gave birth to Zeus and his
siblings; Themis (“Divine Law”); Mnemosyne (“Memory”), who became
the mother of the Muses; Tethys, who married Oceanus and bore the
Oceanids; and Iapetus, who became father to Atlas, Prometheus, and
Epimetheus.
The origins and power struggles of the Titans were described in some
detail by the Greek poet Hesiod. Uranus detested the Hecatoncheires and
Cyclopes at first sight, and pressed the newborn monsters back inside their
mother, Gaia, causing her enormous distress. Gaia called upon the Titans to
help her, and only one was bold enough to volunteer. This was Cronus, the
youngest of the group, who lay in hiding until Uranus came to lie with Gaia
at night and castrated his father. This act resulted not only in the birth of
Aphrodite and the fearsome Erinyes but also in Cronus’s becoming the king
of the gods. Cronus then married his sister Rhea and with her produced
Zeus and his siblings, who would become known as the Olympian gods.
Having heard that one of his sons was destined to overpower him, Cronus
swallowed each of his children as they were born, with exception of Zeus,
whom Rhea saved by handing Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling
clothes. A ten-year power struggle between the Titans and the Olympian
gods, which was called the Titanomachy (and was even in antiquity
confused with the Gigantomachy, “battle between the gods and Giants”),
ensued. So intense was the fight that heaven, earth, and sea were shaken.
Zeus enlisted the aid of the Hecatoncheires and prevailed over the Titans,
whom he imprisoned in Tartarus, with the Hecatoncheires as guards. Later
sources specify that not all the Titans were involved in the Titanomachy
and, as a result, not all were imprisoned.
The children and grandchildren of the Titans are also often called
“Titans,” though they are technically a second or, in some cases, third
generation of this group of deities.
(See also Aphrodite, Atlas, Coeus, Cronus, Cyclopes [the], Epimetheus,
Erinyes, Gaia, Giants [the], Hecatoncheires [the], Hyperion, Iapetus,
Mnemosyne, Muses [the], Oceanids [the], Oceanus, Olympus [Mount],
Phoebe, Prometheus, Rhea, Tethys, Themis, Uranus, and Zeus.)

TRITON The sea god Triton was the son of the god Poseidon by the
Oceanid Amphitrite and resided in the depths of the sea. He was also
known to spend time in Lake Tritonis (hence the lake’s name) in Libya,
where Jason and the Argonauts encountered him. Triton was hybrid in form,
having the torso of a human and the tail of a fish. The Roman poet Ovid
describes the bearded Triton has being blue-green in color, having barnacle-
clad shoulders, and possessing a shell on which he blew to cause the Great
Flood’s waters to recede when the world had, due to humanity’s evil,
become one great ocean.
The travel writer Pausanias mentions not one but several Tritons and
recounts two strange tales that he heard in Boeotia. A Triton was said to
have stolen cattle and to have attacked small ships in the region until the
local populace plied him with wine and, when he was asleep, beheaded him.
This beheaded Triton, Pausanias opines, appears to have inspired a local
headless statue of the creature, who clearly was no longer considered
immortal. The second story involves local women who wished to purify
themselves in the sea to prepare for worshipping Dionysus. A Triton
attacked them, and the creature was driven off by Dionysus himself when
the women called for help. In Rome, Pausanias adds, he saw a Triton that
had green, matted hair, with the appearance of marsh frogs. His body,
ending in a dolphin’s tail, was covered with scales like a fish, and he had
gills beneath the ears, but he had a human nose. His mouth was broad and
bestial; his eyes blue; his hands, fingers, and fingernails like murex shells.
(See also Amphitrite, Argonauts [the], Boeotia, Dionysus, Jason,
Oceanids [the], Poseidon, and Rome.)

URANIA Urania (or Ourania), “The Heavenly One,” was one of the Muses,
deities who inspired artistic expression. She became identified as the
patroness of astronomy and astrology and, as a result, was associated with
the natural sciences and philosophy. She was described as the mother both
of the famed singer Linus (as, incidentally, was her sister Calliope) and of
Hymen, the personification of marriage hymns.
There were several other Uranias in Classical mythology. One was an
Oceanid nymph, a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. The goddesses Hera,
Hecate, Hebe, Artemis, and Nemesis were also referred to as Urania in the
sense that they were “heavenly” and resided on Mount Olympus. Urania as
a cult title of Aphrodite appears to be a reference to her role as a fertility
goddess and offspring of Uranus.
(See also Aphrodite, Artemis, Hebe, Hecate, Hera, Nemesis, Oceanids
[the], Oceanus [god], Olympus [Mount], Tethys, and Uranus.)

URANUS Uranus, known in Greek as Ouranos, was a personification of

the Heavens or sky as well as the sky itself. According to the poet Hesiod’s
account of the origin of the gods and the universe, Gaia, the elemental
goddess Earth, produced Uranus to cover her on all sides and to be a place
of residence for the gods (who were not yet born). Together Gaia and
Uranus had several groups of children: the twelve Titan gods, the three one-
eyed Cyclopes, and the three Hecatoncheires (“Hundred-Handers”). The six
newborn monsters were so distasteful to Uranus that he pressed them back
inside their mother, causing her terrible pain. For this outrage she sought
vengeance, and she persuaded Cronus, the youngest of the Titans, to carry
out her plot. When Uranus next came to lie with her at night, Cronus crept
out of his place of hiding and castrated his father, whereby Uranus ceased
also to be the most powerful male deity. Uranus’s severed genitalia fell into
the sea, and from the foam arising around them was born Aphrodite. From
the blood that fell on the earth sprang the Giants and the Erinyes, spirits of
vengeance. Cronus would, in turn, be overpowered by his own son Zeus,
who ultimately became king of all the gods. This succession myth (Uranus-
Cronus-Zeus) has Near Eastern parallels that point strongly to a common
origin of these stories.
(See also Aphrodite, Cronus, Cyclopes [the], Erinyes [the], Gaia, Giants
[the], Hecatoncheires [the], Titans [the], and Zeus.)

VESTA Vesta was the Roman counterpart of the Greek Hestia, goddess of
the hearth. There is no mythology associated with Vesta per se. In the
Roman world, Vesta presided over both the family hearth and also the
central hearth of the city and state, thus being the symbolic heart of the
family and collaborative groups of families. In the city of Rome, the six
priestesses of Vesta tended her sacred fire, which resided unextinguished in
a circular temple in the Roman forum. These priestesses, six in number,
were appointed between the ages of six and ten and served the goddess for a
period of thirty years, at which point they were free to marry. Vestals who
were discovered to have broken their vows of chastity, a rare occurrence,
were buried alive.
(See also Hestia and Rome.)

VULCAN Vulcan (or Volcanus) was a Roman god of fire, especially of its
destructive aspects. He was called upon as Mulciber (“Mitigator”), Quietus
(“Peaceful One”), and Mitis (“Gentle One”) in his capacity to control
conflagrations and their outbreak. Vulcan was a god of great antiquity in
Rome, but his origins are unknown; it has been posited that he was
originally an Etruscan deity who arrived in Italy via the eastern
Mediterranean. His consort was a goddess named Maia, who was distinct
from the daughter of Atlas and mother of Hermes. Being a deity of
importance to the Romans, Vulcan had a shrine, the Volcanal, at the base of
the Capitoline Hill in the Roman Forum and a temple in the Campus
Martius that was constructed later. The Volcanalia, a festival celebrated
annually in his honor on August 23, involved the sacrifice of live fish from
the Tiber that were thrown on the god’s flames.
Vulcan was identified with Hephaestus, the Greek god of the forge as
well as of volcanoes and subterranean fires, as early as the fourth century
BCE and, accordingly, assumed the latter’s characteristics and mythology. As
an equivalent of Hephaestus, the god Vulcan could be represented wearing
a workman’s cap and equipped with a smithy’s tongs, anvil, and hammer.
(See also Atlas, Capitoline Hill [the], Hephaestus, Hermes, Maia, Rome,
and Tiber River [the].)

ZEPHYR Zephyr, also known as Zephyrus or Zephyros, was a

personification and god of the west wind, which was both warm and gentle,
harbinger of welcome spring and the rebirth of vegetation. The Romans
identified him with Favonius. Along with the winds Boreas and Notus, he is
described by the Greek poet Hesiod as being a child of Eos, goddess of the
dawn, and her consort Astraeus.
We learn from Homer that Zephyr mated with stormy Podarge, “She of
the Swift Feet,” as she was grazing along the river Oceanus. Their union
resulted in the birth to Podarge of Achilles’s immortal horses, Xanthos and
Balios. Podarge, it should be noted, is known from other sources as one of
the Harpies, bird-women who appear, at least originally, to have personified
the sudden, grasping nature of wind blasts. Winds were sometimes
represented as horses, and it would make sense that she and Zephyr, both in
horse form, would produce swift, immortal horses.
A different tale involving Zephyr is preserved by the mythographer
Apollodorus: Zephyr and Apollo both vied for the affection of the
handsome Spartan youth Hyacinth. Sensing Hyacinth’s preference for
Apollo, a jealous Zephyr caused a discus thrown by his rival to hit
Hyacinth’s head, killing him. As a memorial to him a hyacinth flower, with
words of mourning inscribed on its petals, sprang from the ground where he
had fallen. Another related story of flowers was Zephyr’s pursuit of the
nymph Chloris (“Greenery”), whom he married and appointed the goddess
of flowers, known thereafter as Flora. It was Flora, according to the poet
Ovid in his Fasti, who actually created the hyacinth.
(See also Achilles, Apollo, Boreas, Favonius, Flora, Hyacinth, Notus,
Oceanus [place], and Sparta.)

ZEUS Zeus was the supreme god of the Greeks in both religion and myth,
having precedence over the gods who lived with him on Mount Olympus
and all others as well. He was “Hypatos” (the “Highest”), and as Homer
describes him, he was the omnipotent “father of gods and men.” Zeus’s
origins are indisputably Indo-European, his name being derived from the
root dieu “to gleam.” He was, first and foremost, the bright god of the sky
and of atmospheric phenomena, including rain, thunder, and lightning. As
mountains are the geologic features of Earth closest to the sky, mountains
were sacred to him, particularly the lofty Mount Olympus. Importantly,
Zeus was also a civic god, deeply concerned with the establishment and
maintenance of the city as an ordered community as well as with the order
of individual households and their members. As the deity sustaining
interpersonal relationships, he was the protector of suppliants, guarantor of
oaths, and sponsor of hospitality. As a reflection of his many functions, he
possessed many epithets and epikleseis (names by which he was called
upon in prayer and cult), among them Ombrios (“Rainmaker”),
Nephelegeretes (“Cloud-Gatherer”), Keraunios (“Thunderer”), Olympios
(“of Mount Olympus”), Agoraios (“God of the Assembly”), Xenios (“God
of Hospitality”), Hikesios (“God of Suppliants”), and Horkios (“God of
Oaths”). Zeus was worshipped throughout Greece and protected all cities
equally; for this reason, he was not the patron deity of any particular city.
His most important cultic festival, complete with Panhellenic games, was
held at Olympia in the Peloponnese, and it was the temple built there in his
honor that contained his best-known cult statue, the colossal gold-and-ivory
creation of the famed sculptor Phidias. In addition to being the supreme
weather and civic god, Zeus possessed prophetic powers, his oldest and
most prominent oracle being located at Dodona in Epirus, where his
utterances were believed to have been conveyed through the fluttering of
his sacred oak’s leaves and through the flight or calls of doves settling in
this tree.
In mythology, Zeus was the son of the Titan gods Cronus and Rhea, and
his siblings were Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Hera, and Demeter. Having
learned that he would be dethroned by one of his children, Cronus
swallowed each of them as they were born, apart from Zeus, whom Rhea
saved by giving Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow in
Zeus’s place. The infant Zeus, for his part, was taken to Mount Ida (or
Dicte) on the island of Crete, where he was nursed by the nymphs Adrastea
and Ida while the Curetes hid his cries by clashing their weapons. When
Zeus reached maturity, a decade-long battle between the older-generation
Titan gods and Zeus and his siblings, the so-called Olympian gods, raged
until Zeus, with the aid of the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, prevailed. The
Titans were now imprisoned in Tartarus, and it was left to Zeus and his
brothers to divide the world between them. To this end, they drew lots, Zeus
in this way becoming lord of the heavens, Hades lord of the Underworld,
and Poseidon lord of the sea.
Zeus married his sister, Hera, and with her became father to Ares, god of
war; Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth; and Hebe, goddess of youth. Zeus
also had a great many other consorts and lovers, divine and mortal, among
them the goddess Metis, whom he swallowed while she was pregnant and
with whom he became the father of Athena. The twin gods Apollo and
Artemis were his children with the second-generation Titan goddess Leto;
Hermes with the nymph Maia; Dionysus with the Theban princess Semele;
Persephone with Demeter; and the nine Muses with Mnemosyne. By some
accounts, he was the father of Aphrodite with Dione. His best-known
mortal child was Hercules, whom he co-fathered with Amphitryon, both
god and mortal having slept with Alcmena, Hercules’s mother, on the same
night. In two spectacular instances, Zeus himself gave birth to the children
he had fathered: Athena, who sprang from his head; and Dionysus, whose
pregnant mother, Semele, Zeus had killed with a thunderbolt and who, after
a period of gestation, emerged from his thigh.
Zeus was known to resort to unorthodox means of seduction, notably
transforming himself into a shower of golden rain in order to gain access to
an imprisoned Danae, who by him became mother of Perseus. He abducted
the Tyrian princess Europa in the form of a lovely, tame white bull, and
assumed the appearance of the goddess Artemis in order to approach
Callisto, that goddess’s chaste devotee. In order to seduce Leda, who would
bear to him Helen of Troy, Zeus disguised himself as a swan. However, it
was the god’s sacred eagle, and not the god himself, that carried off the
handsome Trojan prince Ganymede.
Those who incurred his wrath included the second-generation Titan
Prometheus, Lycaon, and the entire human Race of Iron, as the current,
wicked race of mortals was known. Zeus felt that Prometheus was too great
a benefactor of humankind and for that reason he was placed in chains, his
liver eternally eaten by vultures. The evil king Lycaon was transformed into
a wolf as a consequence of his bestial behavior, and humankind, which
Zeus had determined to be utterly evil, was extinguished by a great flood
apart from the devout Deucalion and Pyrrha.
Zeus’s distinguishing characteristics and attributes were his scepter,
lightning bolts, and his sacred bird, the eagle. Among plants, it was the
regal oak that was most sacred to him.
The Romans identified their supreme god Jupiter with Zeus.
(See also Alcmena, Amphitryon, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis,
Athena, Callisto, Crete, Cronus, Curetes [the], Cyclopes [the], Danae,
Demeter, Deucalion, Dione, Dionysus, Dodona, Eileithyia, Europa,
Ganymede, Hades, Hebe, Hecatoncheires [the], Helen, Hera, Hercules,
Hermes, Hestia, Ida [Mount], Jupiter, Leda, Leto, Lycaon, Maia, Metis,
Mnemosyne, Muses [the], Olympia, Olympus [Mount], Persephone,
Perseus, Poseidon, Prometheus, Pyrrha, Rhea, Rome, Semele, Titans [the],
Troy, and Underworld [the].)
ABAS Abas was a king of Argos and father of future kings of that city and
its territory. According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Abas was the son
of the King Lynceus and his wife Hypermnestra, one of the Danaids. Abas,
in turn, had twin sons, Acrisius and Proetus, by Aglaia, daughter of
Mantineus. The twins reputedly quarreled with each other even while still
in the womb, and later waged war for their father’s kingdom, in the course
of which conflict they became the inventors of shields. Acrisius gained the
upper hand and drove Proetus from Argos. The latter went to the court of
the Lycian king Iobates, whose daughter Anteia (or Stheneboea) he married.
With the support of Iobates, Proetus returned to Argos, and the brothers
divided the whole of the city’s territory between them, Acrisius reigning
over Argos and Proetus over Tiryns, which city he founded.
(See also Acrisius, Aglaia [heroine], Argos, Danaids [the],
Hypermnestra, Lycia, Lynceus, Proetus, and Tiryns.)

ACESTES Acestes (or Aegestus) was king in the Sicilian town of Eryx.
Acestes himself was of Trojan ancestry; according to the Roman poet
Virgil, he was the son of the local Sicilian river god Crinisus and a Trojan
mother, though an alternate tradition named his mother as a Trojan nymph
named Egesta. Acestes welcomed Aeneas and his band of Trojan refugees
when they stopped in Sicily on their way to Italy after the fall of Troy.
Aeneas ultimately left those who were weary of travel to live with Acestes
in Sicily.
(See also Aeneas, Nymphs [the], Sicily, and Troy.)

ACETES Acetes (or Acoetes) was captain of a Tyrrhenian ship whose

crew, according to the Roman poet Ovid, had taken a sleepy child Dionysus
captive; the young god had, apparently, asked the sailors for conveyance to
the island of Naxos, and they pretended to grant this request. As the youth
had a princely appearance, the sailors entertained high hopes for ransom or
other gain. Only the ship’s captain, Acetes, sensed immediately that he was
in the presence of divinity, uttered a prayer, and did all he could to prevent
his crew from setting sail with the young god. Suddenly the ship was stayed
in its course, becoming immovable and covered with branches of twining
ivy. At the god’s feet lay tigers, lynxes, and panthers, all of them phantoms.
The ship’s crew were terrified and leaped overboard into the sea, where
they were transformed into dolphins. Dionysus urged Acetes not to be
afraid, however. He thus delivered the god to Naxos, which had been his
destination, and became both his follower and his priest.
(See also Dionysus and Naxos.)

ACHAEANS, THE The Greek poet Homer refers to all of the Greeks as
Achaeans (from Achaea), Hellenes (from Hellas), or Argives (from Argos).
Technically, Achaea was only the northern coast of the Peloponnese, and
the Achaeans were descended from Xuthus, a son of Hellen, and Creusa,
daughter of the Athenian king Erechtheus. There were several branches of
Achaeans descended from Xuthus: one in Thessaly, where Achaeus,
Xuthus’s son, became king, and another in the Peloponnese, since
Achaeus’s sons emigrated to Argos and ultimately settled in the northern
Peloponnese, naming it Achaea.
(See also Argos, Athens, Creusa, Erechtheus, Hellen, and Xuthus.)

ACHATES Achates appears in the Roman poet Virgil’s epic the Aeneid as
the most loyal companion of Aeneas in the course of his travels from Troy
to Italy.
(See also Aeneas and Troy.)

ACHILLES Achilles, the best warrior among the Greeks at the time of the
Trojan War, was a son of Peleus, King of Phthia in Thessaly, and the sea
goddess Thetis. While Achilles was still an infant, Thetis took measures to
make him immortal, an effort in which she did not succeed. Thetis was said
to have placed him in the embers of a fire at night and to have anointed him
with ambrosia at day, in the course of which Peleus, fearing for his son,
interrupted her. According to an alternate tradition, she dipped him in the
waters of the river Styx while holding him by the ankles, as a result of
which he was vulnerable only at his “Achilles heel.” While a young child,
Achilles was raised and received tutelage from the wise Centaur Chiron,
and later, back at Phthia, Patroclus, who would be his most cherished
companion, became his squire. When his mother learned that Achilles was
destined to meet his end at Troy, she, hoping in this way to avoid his
recruitment for the war effort, sent him away to the court of King
Lycomedes on the island of Scyros, where he remained hidden among
Lycomedes’s daughters, disguised as one of them. With one of their
number, Deidamia, Achilles became father to a son, Neoptolemus, who like
his father, would ultimately join the fighting at Troy. Achilles was
ultimately discovered on Scyros by Odysseus, who had been sent by the
Greeks to find him. The clever Odysseus relied on a trick to get Achilles to
reveal himself: he laid out presents for the girls, jewels and other feminine
adornments, but also a sword and shield. When a trumpet sounded, this
being the usual signal of attack, Achilles leaped for the weapons, thus
revealing himself. According to Homer’s Iliad, after arriving at Troy,
Achilles, leader of the Myrmidons, and the other Greeks engaged in a
number of forays in the vicinity of Troy. In the course of these, Achilles
took captive Briseis, whose husband, brothers, and parents he had slain and
who became his concubine. As Briseis was a war prize and a symbol of his
bravery, Achilles withdrew from the war effort when Agamemnon, leader
of the combined Greek forces, took her for himself. As a consequence of
this grievous slight to Achilles’s honor, the Greek forces suffered at the
hands of the Trojans; indeed, this was the outcome that Achilles had
requested of his mother. The Greeks attempted to persuade Achilles to
return to the fighting, and Agamemnon offered a wealth of gifts to tempt
him, but he remained steadfast in his resolve. It was only when his beloved
comrade Patroclus was killed by the Trojan hero Hector that Achilles
rejoined the war effort. His motivation was vengeance, not the victory of
the Greeks. Achilles did succeed in killing Hector, whereupon he stripped
him of his armor, and the surrounding Greeks all brutally stabbed the
corpse. Possessed by an inhuman rage, Achilles fastened the body of Hector
to his chariot and dragged it around the city of Troy for twelve days until
the gods intervened. Thetis was summoned to persuade Achilles to allow
King Priam to ransom the body of his son Hector, and this Priam did,
bravely entering the tent of fierce Achilles. Face to face with Priam,
Achilles thought of his own father, and the two joined in grief, Achilles’s
humanity now having been restored.
 After the death of Hector, Achilles battled at Troy with the Amazon
queen Penthesileia, and, tragically, at the moment when he had mortally
wounded her, they fell in love. Achilles himself died at Troy. He was slain
by Helen’s abductor, the Trojan prince Paris, whose arrows struck him at
the only point where he was vulnerable, his heel. Achilles’s corpse was
retrieved by the greater of the two Ajaxes, who then engaged with Odysseus
in a contest for the fallen hero’s coveted armor, which had been made for
him by the god Hephaestus. Odysseus prevailed, and Ajax committed
suicide. After Achilles’s burial, his ghost appeared above his tomb and
demanded the sacrifice of the Trojan princess Polyxena.
(See also Agamemnon, Ajax [the Great], Amazons [the], Briseis,
Centaurs [the], Chiron, Deidamia, Hector, Helen, Hephaestus, Lycomedes,
Myrmidons [the], Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Paris, Patroclus, Peleus,
Penthesileia, Polyxena, Priam, Scyros, Styx [the River], Thessaly, Thetis,
Troy, and Zeus.)

ACIS Acis, a handsome son of the woodland deity Faunus and an otherwise
unknown sea nymph Symaethis, was pursued by the Nereid nymph Galatea
when he was just sixteen years of age. At the same time, Galatea was
herself being pursued by the Cyclops Polyphemus, whom she detested as
much as she was enamored of Acis. In a jealous rage, Polyphemus crushed
Acis with a massive rock. In answer to Galatea’s prayer that Acis be saved,
the earth split open to reveal Acis, larger now than he had been,
reincarnated as a blue-green river god whose waters still bear his name.
(See also Cyclopes [the], Faunus, Galatea, Nereids [the], and
Polyphemus.)

ACRISIUS Acrisius and Proetus were twin sons born of Aglaia to Abas,
king of Argos and possessor of a fear-inspiring shield that deterred all
potential foes. Acrisius and his twin were great-grandsons of Danaus, father
of the Danaids, who were notorious for the murder of their husbands.
Relations between the twins were contentious, reputedly even in the
womb. Their father had wished that his sons would rule alternately after his
passing, but Acrisius refused. A battle ensued. Subsequently, Acrisius ruled
Argos, and Proetus nearby Tiryns, which he had founded.
With Eurydice (or Aganippe), Acrisius fathered Danae, whom he
confined in an impenetrable room (or, by some accounts, a tower) so as to
prevent the fruition of an oracle that had foreseen his death at the hands of
his grandson. These measures were no deterrent to Zeus, who visited Danae
as a shower of gold, fathering Perseus. Wishing to avoid the pollution of
blood guilt, Acrisius set mother and child adrift at sea in a chest. Saved by a
fisherman on the island of Seriphus, whom Danae later married, Perseus
grew to manhood and, after accomplishing the task given him to behead the
Gorgon Medusa, returned to Argos. Acrisius, however, had left the kingdom
for the city of Larissa in Thessaly, having heard that his grandson was alive
and still fearing the oracle. In Larissa, Perseus, who was participating in the
local regent’s funeral games, caused Acrisius’s accidental death with an ill-
aimed discus.
(See also Aglaia, Argos, Danae, Danaids [the], Danaus, Eurydice
[heroine], Gorgons, Larissa, Medusa, Perseus, Seriphus, Thessaly, Tiryns,
and Zeus.)

ACTAEON The hero Actaeon was a son of Autonoe, a daughter of the

Theban king Cadmus, and Aristaeus, who was skilled in husbandry and was
himself a child of the god Apollo. Actaeon was cousin to the god Dionysus
and Pentheus, who would become regent of Thebes and prove hostile to
Dionysus’s worship. Actaeon himself was a hunter, having been instructed
in this art by the wise Centaur Chiron. The Roman poet Ovid vividly
describes his gruesome death. While out hunting with his dogs and seeking
respite from midday’s heat, Actaeon came upon a pool in which Diana (the
Roman equivalent of Artemis) and her companion nymphs were bathing.
Though his discovery of them in their nakedness was accidental, Diana, in a
rage, splashed water on him, thus transforming him from a man into a stag.
His dogs, stirred into a frenzy, no longer recognized their master and bit
him to death, whereby Diana’s anger was satisfied. A less usual explanation
for his punishment is recorded by mythographer Apollodorus, according to
whom Zeus could have been to blame, jealous over Actaeon’s attention to
Semele, who would become mother to Dionysus by Zeus.
(See also Apollo, Aristaeus, Artemis, Autonoe, Cadmus, Chiron, Diana,
Dionysus, Pentheus, Semele, Thebes, and Zeus.)

ADMETA Admeta (or Admete) was a daughter of Eurystheus, the king of

Argos (and/or Mycenae and Tiryns) for whom Hercules performed his
twelve Labors. Among those labors was bringing Admeta the belt of the
Amazon queen Hippolyta.
(See also Amazons [the], Argos, Eurystheus, Hercules, and Hippolyta.)

ADMETUS Admetus was a son of Pheres, king and founder of Pherae in

Thessaly, and Periclymene, a daughter of Minyas, eponymous ancestor of
the people known as the Minyans. When Admetus succeeded his father as
regent, Zeus sent Apollo to him as a servant by way of punishing Apollo for
killing the Cyclopes, itself an act of vengeance for Zeus’s killing of his son
Asclepius. Admetus was so kind a master that Apollo came to his aid
repeatedly. According to the mythographer Apollodorus, when Admetus
sought the hand of Alcestis, daughter of King Pelias of Iolcos, the latter
would only concede to give his daughter to that man who could yoke a lion
and boar to a chariot. Apollo completed this task on Admetus’s behalf, and
Admetus thus won Alcestis as bride. The god also obtained a special favor
for Admetus from the Fates: if Admetus should be faced with death, another
person would be allowed to volunteer to be a surrogate. When, while still a
young man, Admetus fell gravely ill, he asked both his parents if they
would save him, but they would not. His devoted wife, Alcestis, however,
did volunteer, and when Thanatos (“Death”) came to fetch her, Admetus
was despondent. Fortunately, it so happened that Hercules passed through
Pherae at this point and repaid Admetus for his hospitality by wrestling
Thanatos for Alcestis, whom he was able to restore to her husband. The
story of Admetus and his wife Alcestis is the subject of the tragedian
Euripides’s Alcestis.
(See also Alcestis, Apollo, Asclepius, Fates [the], Hercules, Iolcos,
Minyans [the], Minyas, Pelias, Pherae, Thanatos, Thessaly, and Zeus.)
ADONIS The mythology and cult of the Greek hero Adonis was
inextricably linked with Aphrodite, who loved him, and like the goddess, he
appears to have had Near Eastern origins. In particular, Adonis is thought to
be a Greek adaptation of an eastern nature deity who was the consort of an
earth goddess and embodied the cycle of seasonal growth, wilting, and
death or dormancy in the plant world. According to the mythographer
Apollodorus, Adonis was the son of Smyrna, the beautiful daughter of
Assyria’s king Theias. Smyrna had refused all of her many suitors, thus
dishonoring Aphrodite, and for this she paid a heavy price: the goddess
caused Smyrna to fall in love with her own father. The Roman poet Ovid
also tells this story, but calls Smyrna “Myrrha,” making her a princess of
Cyprus. In this version, it is not Aphrodite but one of the Fates who
inflames the girl with passion for her father, King Cinyras. Not knowing
that it was his daughter who came to share his bed, Cinyras impregnated
Myrrha, who fled the kingdom—and her father’s murderous rage—in
shame once her sin was discovered. Believing herself to be a source of
pollution for the dead and the living alike, she asked the gods for salvation.
In answer to her prayers, she was transformed into a myrrh tree that
eternally sheds resinous tears, the source of precious myrrh. With the help
of the goddess Lucina, Myrrha would bear the child Adonis from her bark-
clad belly.
Of Aphrodite’s attraction to Adonis there are various accounts. Whether
regretting that she had punished Myrrha too harshly or immediately
enamored of Adonis at his birth, Aphrodite brought the baby to Persephone,
queen of the Underworld, to safeguard. Yet Persephone, too, was smitten
with Adonis and, when asked to do so, refused to give him up. Zeus or the
Muse Calliope ultimately settled the goddess’s custody dispute, judging that
Adonis should spend a third of his time with each goddess and a third on his
own. Ovid’s well-known version is different: grazed by one of Cupid’s
arrows, Aphrodite became so enamored of the grown youth that she
abandoned her accustomed comforts and, like the huntress Artemis,
followed him into the wilderness where he went to hunt. To no avail she
warned him of hunting’s dangers. He was gored by a boar that he himself
had wounded.
The Adonis myth provides the basis for tales regarding the origins of
several plants and flowers. These include not only myrrh but also the red
rose and the poppy anemone. Originally white, roses were dyed red by
blood from Aphrodite’s thorn-grazed foot as she ran to a wounded Adonis.
Thereafter, in her grief, the goddess sprinkled his blood with divine
perfumed nectar, and from it grew a blood red poppy anemone, a flower
with a lovely but short-lived bloom. From her tears, too, there sprang red
roses.
Although, according to myth, Adonis was a mortal, the Greeks
venerated him as a god and celebrated him at a midsummer festival called
the Adoneia. In the course of the festivities, small images of Adonis were
carried in procession and small pots or baskets were planted with the seeds
of quick-sprouting grain, lettuces, and herbs. These so-called “Adonis
gardens” were carried to rooftops and terraces where the seedlings quickly
sprouted and just as quickly wilted, occasioning a renewal of ritualized
grief.
(See also Aphrodite, Artemis, Calliope, Cinyras, Cupid, Cyprus, Lucina,
Muses [the], Myrrha, Persephone, Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

ADRASTUS Adrastus was a king of Argos who became a pivotal figure in

the fate of the city of Thebes. Polyneices, son of Oedipus, and Tydeus, son
of Oeneus, had both gone in exile to Argos and, when there, began to fight
one another. Adrastus came upon them and, remembering the words of a
prophet who had instructed him to yoke his daughters in marriage to a boar
and a lion, he offered them his two daughters as brides; this he did because
he saw that the shield of one of the youths bore a boar as emblem and the
other’s a lion. Adrastus then promised that he would restore to them the
lands from which they had come. In order to help Polyneices take the
Theban throne from his brother Eteocles, who was to have relinquished it
after a year, Adrastus organized the contingent of seven captains, the so-
called Seven Against Thebes, to march on that city. This he did in spite of
the fact that the seer Amphiaraus had foretold a disastrous outcome. Among
these Seven, Adrastus alone survived, and when the sons of the fallen
Seven later attacked Thebes to avenge the death of their fathers, his son was
the only one of the leaders of that campaign to die.
(See also Amphiaraus, Argos, Eteocles, Oedipus, Polyneices, Thebes,
and Tydeus.)
AEACIDES, (THE) Aeacides is a patronymic meaning “descendant(s) of
Aeacus.” The name was applied to the Greek hero Peleus as well as his son
Achilles and grandson Neoptolemus.
(See also Achilles, Aeacus, Neoptolemus, and Peleus.)

AEACUS Aeacus was the son of Aegina, daughter of the river god Asopus,
and Zeus, who had abducted Aegina and brought her to the island of
Oenone, which was then renamed Aegina. There Aegina gave birth to
Aeacus. According to the Roman poet Ovid, the goddess Juno, in anger
over Zeus’s infidelity to her with Aegina, decimated the island’s population
with a terrible plague. Consequently, Aeacus prayed to Zeus for help by
way of acknowledging his paternity; he asked that he should either himself
die alongside his countrymen or that Zeus repopulate the island with as
many men as there were ants climbing up a nearby oak. The tree quivered,
and the ants were transformed into people, who then declared Aeacus their
king. These people were called Myrmidons after the Greek word for ant,
myrmex, and they were as frugal and industrious as the ants from which
they originated.
With Endeis, sometimes called a daughter of Chiron, Aeacus became the
father of Telamon, later the father of Ajax the Great, and of Peleus, later the
father of Achilles.
(See also Achilles, Aegina [goddess and place], Ajax [the Great],
Asopus, Chiron, Juno, Peleus, Telamon, and Zeus.)

AEETES Aeetes was regent of the kingdom of Colchis on the eastern coast
of the Black Sea, and he ruled from the city of Aea, where the god
Hephaestus had reputedly built him a palace. Aeetes was the son of the sun
god Helios and Perse, one of the Oceanids. His siblings were the sorceress
Circe and Pasiphae, mother of the Minotaur, and his best-known children
were his son Apsyrtus and his daughter Medea. It was to Colchis that the
hero Jason traveled in his quest for the Golden Fleece. After the miraculous
golden-fleeced ram bearing Phrixus had arrived in Colchis, Aeetes
sacrificed the ram, hung its fleece on a tree in a grove sacred to Ares, and
ensured that it was closely guarded by a dragon. He allowed Phrixus, a
refugee from Boeotia, to stay in Colchis and gave him his daughter
Chalciope in marriage. As for Jason, this hero was less hospitably received
by Aeetes, who, according to the Greek poet Apollonius of Rhodes,
responded to Jason’s request for the Fleece by stating that he would first
have to harness a pair of fire-breathing bulls, plow a field, sow dragon’s
teeth, and kill the armed men who would spring from the sown teeth.
Aeetes’s expectation was that Jason could not survive this task, but Jason
received help from Medea. When Jason made off with both the Fleece and
Medea, Aeetes sent his son Apsyrtus in pursuit, but Medea engineered the
latter’s murder.
(See also Apsyrtus, Ares, Circe, Colchis, Helios, Hephaestus, Jason,
Medea, Minotaur [the], Oceanids [the], Pasiphae, and Phrixus.)

AEGEUS Aegeus was a legendary king of Athens and a son (or adopted
son) of the king Pandion. Aegeus remained childless, although he married
repeatedly, and went to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi regarding this
situation. The oracle advised that he should not loosen his wineskin
(goatskin container for wine) until he returned home. Aegeus shared the
oracle’s response with his friend king Pittheus of Troezen, who immediately
understood the real meaning of the oracle and arranged for his daughter,
Aethra, to sleep with a drunken Aegeus. Before departing Troezen, Aegeus
told Aethra that, should she become the mother of a son by him, she should
send him to Athens once he was strong enough to retrieve the sword and
sandals that he had placed under a boulder. Aethra’s child was Theseus,
who, after his arrival in Athens, survived attempted poisoning by Aegeus’s
new wife, Medea, and volunteered (or was sent) to travel to Crete in order
to slay the Minotaur. Concerned that his son would be killed while
attempting to accomplish this feat, Aegeus instructed him to raise a white
sail upon his return to signal his safe return. But Theseus forgot to do what
his father had asked, and, in his grief, the old king threw himself from the
Acropolis where he had been standing watch.
(See also Acropolis [the], Aethra, Apollo, Athens, Crete, Delphi, Medea,
Minotaur [the], Pittheus, and Theseus.)

AEGISTHUS Aegisthus was the son of Thyestes by his own daughter

Pelopia and was the grandson of Pelops, all of whose descendants were
cursed. In Homer’s Odyssey, Aegisthus is presented as having seduced
Clytemnestra, King Agamemnon’s wife, and having plotted Agamemnon’s
murder while the best of the Greeks were away fighting at Troy. At a feast,
he, with the help of Clytemnestra, killed Agamemnon like an ox at the
manger. According to the tragedian Aeschylus, however, it was
Clytemnestra alone who slew her husband, a version of Agamemnon’s
death adopted by later authors. Aegisthus, for his part, was portrayed as
cowardly. After growing to maturity, Agamemnon’s son Orestes wrought
vengeance upon his mother and Aegisthus, killing them both.
(See also Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Pelops, and Theyestes.)

AEGYPTUS Aegyptus and his twin brother, Danaus, were sons of the
Egyptian king Belus, who gave Aegyptus Arabia and Danaus Libya to rule.
Aegyptus fathered fifty sons and sought to wed them to Danaus’s fifty
daughters. As Danaus suspected that this was a ploy on his brother’s part to
absorb more territory, he refused this alliance but later was compelled to
accept it. However, Danaus instructed his daughters to kill their husbands
on their wedding night. All of Aegyptus’s sons were killed but one:
Lynceus, who was spared by his bride Hypermnestra. Aegyptus ended his
days in the Peloponnese, where he was also buried.
(See also Belus, Danaids [the], Danaus, Hypermnestra, and Lynceus.)

AENEAS Along with Romulus, Aeneas was the most important of Rome’s
heroes. He was the son of the goddess Aphrodite and Anchises, who
became a king of Dardania and was a member of the royal family of Troy.
Aeneas was born on Mount Ida, where he was raised by the resident
nymphs, and later fought valiantly in the Trojan War. When the Trojans
were defeated by the Greeks and the city was in flames, Aeneas—at the
urging of the Trojan Hector’s ghost and Aphrodite, followed by an omen of
harmless flames appearing above his young son’s head—left Troy with his
aged father, Anchises, on his shoulders, his son by the hand, and his wife,
Creusa, walking close behind. Creusa soon was lost, prompting Aeneas to
turn back, but her ghost appeared to him urging him to carry on, as he was
destined for greater things. What he was destined for was to lead a group of
Trojan refugees to Italy, there to found a new city and, in the process,
become the ancestor of the Roman people. Importantly, it was not clear to
Aeneas when he set sail that Italy was his goal: he knew only that he was to
seek the ancient homeland of the Trojans. The journey was a long and
perilous one, not unlike Odysseus’s journey home from Troy and in this
sense being a Roman odyssey. The Trojans came first to Thrace, mistaking
this as the prophesied site of their new city, but soon departed, having been
warned of Thrace’s dangers by the ghost of the Trojan prince Poydorus.
Aeneas and his followers next came to Delos and then to Crete, where they
attempted to settle and experienced a devastating famine. Aeneas’s
household gods appeared to him in a vision instructing him again to set sail.
Along the way, the Trojans were attacked by the Harpies and then came to
Sicily, where Anchises died and where Aeneas later left those too feeble to
continue with the local king, his kinsman Acestes. Among those who
welcomed the Trojans was Dido, founder and queen of Carthage, who,
through the machinations of the goddess Aphrodite, fell in love with
Aeneas. Tragically for Dido, who ultimately committed suicide, Aeneas left
her in order to fulfill his destiny. It was at Cumae, home of the Sibyl, a
prophetic priestess of Apollo, that Aeneas first touched on Italian shores.
With the Sibyl as his guide, Aeneas next journeyed into the Underworld,
past Tartarus to Elysium, where his father, Anchises, now resided. There
Anchises revealed to him the glorious future of the Romans and warned
him of wars to come. Conflict soon ensued when Aeneas arrived in Latium,
where the king Latinus welcomed him and, in fulfillment of a prophecy,
offered Aeneas his daughter Lavinia in marriage. This angered Latinus’s
queen Amata as well as Turnus, the Rutulian prince to whom Lavinia had
been promised. Through the goddess Juno’s intervention, the Italian (Latin)
tribes rallied around Turnus against Aeneas, who in essence had become a
second Achilles. Aeneas sought an alliance with king Evander, whose
settlement lay on the future site of Rome, and eventually prevailed over the
Latins, slaying Turnus. Aeneas would then make peace with the Latins,
marry Lavinia, and found the city of Lavinium in Latium. Aeneas’s son,
Ascanius (also known as Iulus, ancestor of the Julian family and Julius
Caesar), would establish Alba Longa, which became the most powerful city
in Latium until the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus.
(See also Acestes, Achilles, Alba Longa, Amata, Anchises, Aphrodite,
Apollo, Ascanius, Carthage, Creusa, Cumae, Dardania, Dido, Elysium,
Harpies [the], Hector, Ida [Mount], Iulus, Juno, Latinus, Latium, Lavinia,
Nymphs [the], Odysseus, Polydorus, Sibyl of Cumae [the], Sicily, Tartarus,
Thrace, Trojans [the], Troy, Turnus, and Underworld [the].)

AEOLUS Aeolus was the “Lord of the Winds.” In Homer’s Odyssey,

Aeolus was the son of Hippotas and lived on a floating island called Aeolia,
which was encircled by a rampart of bronze. Aeolus, who was a favorite of
the gods, had six daughters and six sons, who were married to each other.
Aeolus offered Odysseus and his companions hospitality on their return
voyage from Troy and entertained them for an entire month. When
Odysseus set sail, Aeolus gave him a precious gift: a bag containing winds
to convey him rapidly home. However, as Odysseus’s ship approached
Ithaca, his companions, thinking that the bag contained gold and silver,
opened it, only to have the ship driven greatly off course by the emerging
winds and back to Aeolus’s island. Upon their return, Aeolus refused to
help the Greeks on the grounds that they must be hated by the gods. In the
case of the Trojan Aeneas, who was making his way to Italy, Aeolus,
having been bribed by Juno, released the winds that he kept imprisoned in a
cave so that they would destroy Aeneas’s ships: these winds were Eurus,
Notus, Zephyr, and Africus.
Aeolus, who became known as a wind god, also became confused and
conflated with another Aeolus, a son of Hellen and the nymph Orseis.
Aeolus had been assigned Thessaly when Hellen divided Greece between
him and his two brothers, Dorus and Xuthus. This Aeolus was the
eponymous ancestor (namesake) of the Aeolians, and his children included
Athamas, Salmoneus, Sisyphus, Canace, and Alcyone.
(See also Aeneas, Alcyone, Canace, Dorus, Eurus, Hellen, Ithaca, Juno,
Notus, Odysseus, Salmoneus, Sisyphus, Thessaly, Troy, Xuthus, and
Zephyr.)

AEPYTUS Aepytus was a son of King Cresphontes of Messenia, and

Merope, and was one of the numerous descendants of Hercules. When
Messenia was threatened by a rebellion in which her husband and her two
older sons were killed, Merope sent her infant son Aepytus away to
Arcadia, where he was raised by his maternal grandfather Cypselus, or, by
another account, to Aetolia. When he had grown to manhood, Aepytus
returned to Messenia in order to avenge himself on Polyphontes, the man
who had killed his father, married his mother, and assumed the kingship.
The mythographer Hyginus reports that Polyphontes had offered a reward
to anyone who should kill Aepytus (whom Hyginus calls Telephontes).
When Aepytus returned to the palace, he went unrecognized, which fact he
used to his advantage, claiming that he was the one who had killed Aepytus
and had come to collect the reward. A distraught Merope would have killed
him, had he not been recognized at the last minute. Mother and son then
plotted the murder of Polyphontes, which they accomplished while the
latter was making sacrifice. With the usurper dead, Aepytus reclaimed his
father’s kingdom and became regent.
(See also Arcadia, Cypselus, Hercules, Merope [heroine], Messenia, and
Polyphontes.)

AERO Merope, the daughter of Oenopion, king of Corinth, and his wife,
Helice, was known primarily as Merope but also as Aero. Merope is chiefly
known for the hunter Orion’s pursuit of her in marriage, as a result of which
he was blinded.
(See also Corinth, Merope [heroine], and Orion.)

AEROPE Aerope was daughter of the Cretan king Catreus, who had heard
a prophecy to the effect that he was destined to be killed by her child or,
according to a variant of the story, by one of his own children, Aerope or
her sister. Catreus consequently sent Aerope away to Nauplius, king of
Nauplia, to be killed or sold. Escaping both slavery and death, she married
Atreus, king of Mycenae, to whom she bore the heroes Agamemnon and
Menelaus.
(See also Agamemnon, Atreus, Crete, Menelaus, and Mycenae.)

AETHRA Aethra was the daughter of Pittheus, a son of Pelops and king of
Troezen, a city in the northeastern Peloponnese. Her father arranged for her
to sleep with the Athenian king Aegeus when he arrived at his kingdom;
Aegeus, who was childless and concerned about the fate of his kingdom,
had gone to Delphi to consult the oracle about this problem. The oracle
responded that he should not unloose his wineskin (goatskin used as a
container for wine) until he reached Athens. Aegeus did not understand the
oracle, but Pittheus did, and plied Aegeus with wine. In this state of
intoxication, Aegeus impregnated Aethra, who was visited the same night
by the god Poseidon. Before departing for Athens, Aegeus told Aethra that,
if she gave birth to a son, she should raise the boy without revealing his
paternity and send him to Athens when he was strong enough to retrieve a
sword and sandals that he had left under a heavy rock. Her son was
Theseus, who became Aegeus’s heir. Aethra was later taken captive by
Castor and Pollux, who conveyed her to Troy. When that city had fallen,
she was taken back to Greece, where she died.
(See also Aegeus, Athens, Castor, Delphi, Dioscuri [the], Pelops,
Pittheus, Pollux, Poseidon, Theseus, Troy, and Zeus.)

AETOLUS Aetolus was variously known as a descendant of Deucalion,

who with his wife, Pyrrha, survived the Great Flood, or the son of
Endymion, a king of Elis whom the goddess Selene loved. Aetolus
accidentally killed a man while competing in funeral games and, as a
consequence of his guilt, went in exile to the land by the Achelous River
and named it Aetolia after himself.
(See also Achelous [River, the], Deucalion, Endymion, Pyrrha, and
Selene.)

AGAMEMNON Agamemnon, son of Atreus, was the king of Mycenae at

the time of the Trojan War. Since he ruled the most populous and
presumably most powerful kingdom in Greece, he served as commander-in-
chief of the Greek kings and their armies who sailed to Troy, their numbers
so great that it took 1,000 ships to carry them. Importantly, Agamemnon
was also the brother of the Spartan king Menelaus, the husband of Helen,
whom the Trojan prince Paris had abducted, which was the cause of
hostilities. It was the case, too, that, as a descendant of Pelops, son of
Tantalus, Agamemnon could not escape the family curse.
It is Agamemnon’s role in the Trojan War and its aftermath for which he
is principally known. When the Greeks were gathering at the port of Aulis,
Agamemnon unknowingly killed a deer sacred to the goddess Artemis, a sin
for which the Greeks and Agamemnon himself paid dearly. In anger,
Artemis caused the winds to be unfavorable for sailing, and the assembled
Greeks became restless and hungry. Advice was sought from the prophet
Calchas, and the prescribed remedy was the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s
daughter Iphigeneia to the goddess. Agamemnon was torn, but, placing
country above family, tricked his wife, Clytemnestra, into sending
Iphigeneia to Aulis on the pretext that she would there wed the young
Achilles. The terrible deed was accomplished, and the Greeks set sail. But
Clytemnestra would never forgive Agamemnon and, in the course of his
long years of absence, took a lover, her husband’s cousin Aegisthus, with
whom she plotted her revenge. Meanwhile, in the tenth year of the Trojan
War, Agamemnon occasioned the withdrawal of Achilles from battle by
insisting on taking the latter’s war prize and concubine Briseis as
compensation for the loss of his own concubine Chryseis; returning
Chryseis to her father had been the only way to end the plague that Apollo
had sent upon the Greeks. Agamemnon’s slight to Achilles was the cause of
much suffering for the Greeks and the cause of much loss of life. Among
the casualties were Achilles’s beloved friend Patroclus, and it was the loss
of his friend alone that prompted Achilles to fight once more, now
motivated by the desire for vengeance. After the fall of Troy, in which the
hero Odysseus and his ruse of the Trojan Horse were instrumental,
Agamemnon returned home, only to be stabbed to death in the bath by his
wife, Clytemnestra, who was still angry about the killing of her daughter
and angry, too, about Agamemnon’s appearance in Mycenae with a
concubine from Troy, the priestess Cassandra, whose death Clytemnestra
also engineered. Agamemnon’s death would later be avenged by his son,
Orestes.
(See also Achilles, Aegisthus, Artemis, Atreus, Aulis, Briseis, Calchas,
Cassandra, Chryseis, Clytemnestra, Helen, Iphigeneia, Menelaus, Mycenae,
Odysseus, Orestes, Patroclus, Paris, Sparta, and Troy.)

AGAVE Agave was one of the daughters of Cadmus, founder of Thebes,

and his wife, Harmonia. She was married to Echion, one of the warriors
who sprang from the dragon’s teeth that Cadmus had sown, and became
mother to Pentheus, who as regent of Thebes made the fatal mistake of
failing to acknowledge Dionysus as a god. Since Agave, together with her
sisters Ino and Autonoe, had maligned their sister Semele when she became
pregnant with Dionysus, Zeus’s child, they were punished by Dionysus,
who made them complicit in Pentheus’s death: in a Bacchic trance that
affected all of them, they tore him to bits. Not knowing what she had done,
Agave, in the belief that it was a lion cub that she had killed, brought the
head of Pentheus to show Cadmus. For this crime she and her sisters were
exiled.
(See also Autonoe, Cadmus, Dionysus, Echion, Harmonia, Ino,
Pentheus, Semele, Thebes, and Zeus.)

AGENOR According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Agenor was a son

of the god Poseidon and Libya, daughter of Memphis and Nile. His twin
brother was Belus, who became a king of Egypt, while Agenor became king
either of Sidon or Tyre in Phoenicia. With Telephassa, Agenor became
father to a daughter, Europa, and three sons, Phoenix, Cilix, and Cadmus,
the future founder of Thebes. When Europa was abducted by Zeus, Agenor
sent his sons in search of her, instructing them not to return empty-handed.
None of them found her, so all eventually settled elsewhere.
(See also Belus, Cadmus, Europa, Poseidon, Sidon, and Zeus.)

AGLAIA The heroine Aglaia was a daughter of Mantineus and the wife of
King Abas of Argos, to whom she bore twin sons, Acrisius and Proetus.
Acrisius would become the father of Danae, whose prison Zeus breached by
taking the form of a golden shower. As for Proetus, his wife, Stheneboea,
developed a fatal attraction to the hero Bellerophon.
(See also Abas, Acrisius, Argos, Bellerophon, Danae, Proetus, and
Zeus.)

AGLAUROS Aglauros was a daughter of Cecrops, a snake-man and the

first king of Attica (the territory of Athens). According to the mythographer
Hyginus, when the miraculous infant Erichthonius was born from the earth,
Minerva placed him in a chest that she entrusted to Aglauros and her sisters
Pandrosus and Herse to guard, instructing them under no circumstances to
open the chest. Their curiosity got the better of them and, as punishment for
this, Minerva consequently drove them mad. In this altered state they threw
themselves into the sea.
(See also Athens, Attica, Cecrops, Erichthonius, and Minerva.)

AJAX THE GREAT Ajax, or Aias (also called Ajax the Great or
Telamonian Ajax), was the son of King Telamon of Salamis and Periboea
(or Eeriboea). Ajax was named after the eagle (aietos in Greek) that,
according to the mythographer Apollodorus, appeared as a sign when
Hercules prayed Telamon would be blessed with a son as a reward for
helping him in his assault on the Trojan king Laomedon. Having been one
of the suitors of Helen, Ajax was oath-bound to lead a contingent of twelve
ships from Salamis to Troy. After Achilles, he was the best fighter among
the Greeks at Troy, and he was the tallest. In Homer’s Iliad, Ajax, a skilled
defensive warrior equipped with a “tower” shield, is represented as fighting
valiantly, often next to the Lesser Ajax, son of Oileus. In the course of that
war, he met Hector in single combat and wounded him, but the two parted
at nightfall, calling a truce and exchanging gifts of friendship, as had been
the gods’ wish. It was later Ajax who protected the body of Achilles’s
companion Patroclus from depredation by the Trojans and, later still,
carried the body of his great friend Achilles from the battlefield. As the best
surviving warriors among the Greeks, both Ajax and Odysseus were well
positioned to receive the armor of Achilles. Odysseus prevailed, whether by
drawing lots or by being selected as the person who contributed most to the
defeat of the Trojans. As a consequence of this loss, and driven mad by
Athena, Ajax set upon the livestock taken as booty from Troy thinking that
the animals were Greeks. When his sanity was subsequently restored, his
shame was so great that he threw himself upon his sword.
(See also Achilles, Ajax [the Lesser], Athena, Hector, Helen, Hercules,
Laomedon, Odysseus, Patroclus, Salamis, and Troy.)

AJAX THE LESSER The so-called Lesser Ajax (or Aias) fought valiantly
at Troy alongside Ajax, son of Telamon, in Homer’s Iliad, together being
known as the Ajaxes (or Aiantes). The Lesser Ajax was a son of Oileus, a
king of Locris in Central Greece, and had come to Troy leading a
contingent of Locrians. He is perhaps better known in mythology for his
misdeeds and consequent punishment than for his heroism. When, upon the
fall of Troy, King Priam’s daughter Cassandra had taken refuge in Athena’s
temple, Ajax dragged her out, thus committing sacrilege by violating the
rights of suppliants to the gods. There are varying accounts of his
punishment. According to the tragedian Euripides’s Trojan Women, at
Athena’s request, Zeus and Poseidon caused the near-complete destruction
of the Greek contingent at sea, preventing most of the men from returning
to their homeland; the whole army accordingly suffered on account of
Ajax’s sin. Homer adds that Poseidon drove Ajax and his ship against some
rocks but saved the hero from drowning. He would have escaped with his
life had he not bragged of his survival in the face of the gods’ anger. In a
rage at this further affront, Poseidon smote the great rock upon which Ajax
stood with his trident, causing its top to fall into the sea, Ajax with it.
(See also Ajax [the Great], Athena, Cassandra, Poseidon, Priam,
Telamon, Troy, and Zeus.)

ALCAEUS Alcaeus was a son of the hero Perseus and the princess
Andromeda, whom Perseus had rescued from a sea monster. Alcaeus’s wife
was Astydameia, a daughter of Pelops. Among his children was
Amphitryon, who married Alcmena, the mother of Hercules by Zeus.
(See also Alcmena, Amphitryon, Andromeda, Hercules, Pelops, Perseus,
and Zeus.)

ALCESTIS Alcestis was the eldest daughter of King Pelias of Iolcos in

Thessaly and became the wife of Admetus, a king of Pherae. Admetus was
required by her father to accomplish what he believed to be an impossible
task to win her hand in marriage, but Admetus, with the help of Apollo,
succeeded. When Admetus was later faced with early death, the faithful
Alcestis alone volunteered to die in his place; the possibility of finding a
surrogate for his death was another favor that Apollo had secured for
Admetus. Alcestis did die, much to the horror of Admetus, but Hercules
was able to wrestle with Thanatos in order to restore her to Admetus.
(See also Admetus, Apollo, Hercules, Iolcos, Pelias, Pherae, Thanatos,
and Thessaly.)
ALCIDES The patronymic Alcides means “son” or “descendant” of
Alcaeus and is generally used as a name for Hercules, who was son of
Amphitryon and grandson of Alcaeus.
(See also Alcaeus, Amphitryon, and Hercules.)

ALCINOUS Alcinous was king of the Phaeacians, a people loved by the

gods, and he ruled on the mythical island of Scheria; technically, according
to Homer’s Odyssey, he was one of thirteen kings on the island. Alcinous
was the son of Nausithous, who had brought the Phaeacians to Scheria from
their home in Hypereia since that land lay close to that of Cyclopes, who
were a constant source of torment. As his name, which means “strength of
mind,” implies, Alcinous was both wise and generous. He hospitably
received Odysseus when the latter appeared at his palace alone, having lost
all of his companions in the course of his journey from Troy. And he
allowed Odysseus both the time and opportunity that he needed to fully
disclose who he was and what he had suffered up to that point. Alcinous’s
generosity extended to sending a ship to convey Odysseus home to Ithaca
even though he had long been aware of a prophecy to the effect that the god
Poseidon would punish the Phaeacians for offering conveyance to all who
needed it: one day, the god would stun a returning ship, transfixing it, and
pile a mountain over Alcinous’s city. When the ship that had carried
Odysseus returned to harbor, the prophecy came true, for Poseidon turned it
to stone.
 PLATE IV

Andromeda: Princess and daughter of Cassiopeia and

Cepheus
Alcinous’s well-ordered kingdom was clearly a utopia that contrasted
markedly with the other settlements that Odysseus had encountered
previously: those of the lawless Cyclopes, the cannibalistic Laestrygons, the
cave-dwelling earth goddess Calypso, the amnesic Lotus Eaters, and the
sorceress Circe among others.
(See also Arete, Calypso, Circe, Cyclopes [the], Ithaca, Laestrygons
[the], Lotus Eaters [the], Nausicaa, Odysseus, Poseidon, and Scheria.)

ALCMAEON Alcmaeon was a son of the seer Amphiaraus and Eriphyle,

sister of King Adrastus of Argos. Adrastus would lead a major campaign
against Thebes to instate Polyneices, son of Oedipus, as that city’s regent.
Using the infamous necklace of his great-great-great-grandmother
Harmonia, Polyneices had bribed Eriphyle to intervene when Amphiaraus,
foreseeing his own death, refused to join the cohort against Thebes.
Amphiaraus was bound by a promise to obey her wish but instructed
Alcmaeon and his brother to kill their mother for her treachery. This they
did not do, and Eriphyle was bribed a second time, now to urge her sons to
join a band of warriors marching against Thebes in order to exact
vengeance for the deaths of their fathers in the previous war. Alcmaeon
went to fight at Thebes, by some accounts killing the young Theban king
Laodamas. At this stage Alcmaeon did kill his mother after consulting the
oracle at Delphi and was driven mad by the Erinyes, who then pursued him.
Coming to Phegeia, he married Arsinoe, to whom he presented Harmonia’s
necklace. Later, again on the oracle’s advice, he went to the Achelous River
in Aetolia to be purified of murder. While in Aetolia, Alcmaeon took
Callirrhoe, the river god Achelous’s daughter, as a second wife. Regrettably,
Callirrhoe found out about Harmonia’s necklace, and Alcmaeon returned to
Phegeia in order to retrieve it for her, lying that he intended to dedicate it at
Delphi. When his ruse was revealed, he was killed by the Phegeian king’s
sons.
(See also Achelous [god and place], Adrastus, Amphiaraus, Arsinoe,
Delphi, Erinyes [the], Eriphyle, Harmonia, Oedipus, Polyneices, and
Thebes.)
ALCMENA Alcmena (or Alcmene) was a daughter of Electryon, a son of
the Gorgon-slayer Perseus and Andromeda. Alcmena became betrothed to
her cousin Amphitryon, and, while Amphitryon was away, Zeus, disguised
as Amphitryon, spent the night with her. Amphitryon soon returned and also
spent the night with her. As a consequence, Alcmena was impregnated both
by Zeus and Amphitryon, and the result was twins: Hercules, whose father
was Zeus, and Iphicles, whose father was Amphitryon. The goddess Hera
was angered over the fact that Zeus had yet again been unfaithful to her, and
she had heard that a son, descended from Zeus, would soon be born and
become king of Mycenae and Tiryns. For these reasons, Hera caused
Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to protract Alcmena’s labor for a
painful seven days, allowing Eurystheus, whose father was Perseus’s son
Sthenelaus (thus also being descended from Zeus), to be born earlier than
Hercules and his twin, Iphicles. Eurystheus would later become Electryon’s
successor and assign Hercules his twelve Labors. Alcmena survived her
famous son and was driven out of Tiryns by Eurystheus, consequently
ending her days in Thebes, where she married the Cretan prince
Rhadamanthus.
(See also Amphitryon, Andromeda, Crete, Eileithyia, Electryon,
Eurystheus, Hera, Hercules, Iphicles, Mycenae, Perseus, Rhadamanthus,
Tiryns, and Zeus.)

ALCYONE Alcyone was a daughter of Aeolus, Lord of the Winds, and she
was married to Ceyx, king of the city of Trachis. When Ceyx departed on a
sea journey to the oracle at Claros in Ionia, she prayed fervently to Hera for
his safe return, continuing to do so even after Ceyx, unbeknownst to her,
had already died at sea. The goddess sent Morpheus, the god of dreams, to
appear to Alcyone as Ceyx and reveal the truth of her husband’s tragic end.
When Alcyone ran to the sea and found her husband’s floating corpse, the
gods transformed them both into kingfishers and saw to it that their seven
days of nesting in winter, the so-called Halcyon Days, would be marked by
calm seas.
(See also Aeolus, Ceyx, and Hera.)

ALEXANDER Alexander (or Alexandros) was another name for Paris, a

son of King Priam of Troy and his wife, Hecuba. It was he who abducted
the beautiful Helen from Sparta, thus causing the Trojan War.
(See also Hecuba, Helen, Paris, Priam, Sparta, and Troy.)

ALOEUS Aloeus, son of the god Poseidon and Canace, a daughter of

Aeolus, Lord of the Winds, is best known as the father or, more properly,
stepfather of the giants Otus and Ephialtes who, among their outrageous
acts, attempted an assault on the gods.
(See also Aeolus, Canace, and Otus.)

ALTHEA Althea (or Althaea) was the wife of Oeneus, king of Calydon,
who brought the wrath of Artemis upon himself and his kingdom. Her most
notable children were Meleager and Deianeira, both of them tragic figures.
Deianeira was married to Hercules and unwittingly caused his death. Althea
herself caused the death of Meleager.
(See also Artemis, Calydon, Deianeira, Hercules, Meleager, and
Oeneus.)

AMATA Amata was the wife of Latinus, who was king of Latium in Italy
when Aeneas and his band of Trojan refugees arrived there. Amata, who
favored the Rutulian prince Turnus as a son-in-law, opposed her daughter
Lavinia’s proposed marriage to Aeneas, although omens suggested that a
Trojan union was Lavinia’s destiny. Since Amata was already ill-disposed
toward Aeneas, she became a perfect vehicle for Juno to stir up war
between the Italians and the newcomers. This Juno did by setting upon her
the Fury Alecto, whose weapon was a snake that wound its way over
Amata’s body, spreading its poison and inflaming her already seething
hatred. Amata consequently raged about the city maddened like a
Bacchante and calling upon the women of Laurentum, Latinus’s capital city,
to join her cause. Later, in the course of the conflict between the Trojans
and Latins, Amata killed herself when she believed that her favorite,
Turnus, had been slain.
(See also Aeneas, Alecto, Bacchantes [the], Furies [the], Latinus,
Latium, Lavinia, Rutulians [the], and Turnus.)
AMAZONS, THE The Amazons were a legendary tribe of female warriors
who were expert at archery and horsemanship. Their name was explained as
being derived from the word a-mazos, missing a breast, for they were said
to have removed their right breasts in order to eliminate interference with
the use of the bow and arrow. Since theirs was a counterculture to that of
the male-dominated society of the Greeks, they were believed to have
resided in the Caucasus region on the fringes of the civilized world, but the
historian Diodorus Siculus mentions Amazons from Libya as well. A
number of formidable Greek heroes had encounters with them, including
Bellerophon, Hercules, Theseus, and Achilles. Among their notable queens
were Hippolyta, Penthesileia, and Antiope. Penthesileia had come to Troy
in order to support Priam and the Trojans. She was slain by Achilles, who
fell in love with her at the moment of her death. Hercules was sent to fetch
the belt of Hippolyta and killed her in the process. According to the
tragedian Euripides, she became the mother of Hippolytus by the Athenian
king Theseus, who had accompanied Hercules, but some sources name
Antiope, Hippolyta’s sister, as Hippolytus’s mother. It was because Theseus
had abducted either Antiope or Hippolyta that the Amazons attacked
Athens, a battle that was depicted on the sculptural decoration of the
Parthenon.
(See also Achilles, Antiope, Athens, Bellerophon, Caucasus Mountains
[the], Hercules, Hippolyta, Hippolytus, Parthenon [the], Penthesileia, and
Theseus.)

AMPHIARAUS The hero Amphiaraus possessed the gift of prophecy and

was a descendant of the seer Melampus. His father was variously known as
Oicles, a king of Arcadia, or the god Apollo. Amphiaraus was married to
Eriphyle, sister of King Adrastus of Argos. Amphiaraus, Adrastus, and
Eriphyle would all become fatally entangled with affairs in the city of
Thebes. It so happened that Eteocles and Polyneices, the sons of Oedipus,
had agreed to share the kingdom of Thebes, each ruling alternately for a
year. Eteocles, who assumed the kingship first, refused to step down.
Consequently, Polyneices set out to raise an army to claim Thebes for
himself. Amphiaraus knew that his brother-in-law, Adrastus, alone would
survive if they joined Oedipus’s son Polyneices, and for this reason,
Amphiaraus refused. However, Polyneices successfully bribed
Amphiaraus’s wife, Eriphyle, to persuade her husband and brother to join
the march against Thebes. Both Eteocles and Polyneices were killed in the
battle that ensued, as were Amphiaraus and five of the others who had
accompanied Polyneices (the so-called Seven Against Thebes).
Polyneices’s son later bribed Eriphyle, this time to persuade her son
Alcmaeon to join a cohort that intended to avenge the deaths of their
fathers.
(See also Adrastus, Alcmaeon, Apollo, Arcadia, Argos, Eriphyle,
Eteocles, Harmonia, Oedipus, Polyneices, Seven Against Thebes [the], and
Thebes.)

AMPHION Amphion and his twin brother, Zethus, were children of the
Theban princess Antiope, whom Zeus had impregnated. To hide her shame,
Antiope fled—or, by some accounts, was brought by force—to Sicyon,
whose regent Epopeus she wed. Antiope’s father, Nycteus, killed himself
and appointed his brother Lycus his successor, instructing him to punish
both Epopeus and Antiope. Lycus slew the former and imprisoned Antiope,
who, on her way to Thebes, had given birth to Amphion and Zethus. Lycus
exposed the youths in the expectation that they would meet their end in the
wild, but they survived, having been rescued and raised by a kindly
herdsman. When Antiope later escaped, she was reunited with her sons,
who wrought vengeance upon Lycus and his wife, Dirce. For her ill
treatment of Antiope, Dirce was tied to the horns of a bull that dragged her
to her death, and Lycus was driven from his throne. Amphion and Zethus
now became joint regents of Thebes.
Amphion was said to have been an expert musician, having been taught
how to play the lyre by the god Hermes. The poet Hesiod reports that it was
by enchanting stones with his music that Amphion constructed the walls of
Thebes. He was also said to have married the hapless Niobe, daughter of the
Lydian king Tantalus. When Niobe boasted that she was more fortunate
than the goddess Leto, Niobe and Amphion’s fourteen children were slain
by Leto’s children, Apollo and Artemis. Amphion then either killed himself
or was driven mad and, when attacking Apollo’s temple, was killed by the
god for this affront.
 (See also Antiope, Apollo, Artemis, Dirce, Hermes, Leto, Lycus, Lydia,
Niobe, Tantalus, Thebes, Zethus, and Zeus.)

AMPHITRYON Amphitryon was a son of Alcaeus and grandson of the

hero Perseus. Sources do not agree on the identity of Amphitryon’s mother,
who, according to the mythographer Apollodorus, was either Astydamia,
daughter of Pelops; Laonome, daughter of Guneus; Hipponome, daughter of
Menoeceus; or Lysidice, another daughter of Pelops. Amphitryon’s wife
was Alcmena, daughter of his uncle Electryon, a king of Mycenae.
Electryon entrusted both Alcmena and his kingdom to Amphitryon in the
course of a matter involving the theft of his cattle. Amphitryon was able to
ransom and return the cattle to Electryon but accidentally killed him with a
club that he had thrown at a charging bull. Amphitryon was subsequently
purified of murder, and Alcmena agreed to marry him if he avenged the
death of her brothers, who had lost their lives to the cattle thieves. So
Amphitryon set off and, after a series of conquests, returned to Thebes. But
before Amphitryon reached Thebes, Zeus, in the guise of Amphitryon,
visited Alcmena and slept with her. When Amphitryon himself later arrived
and was not greeted enthusiastically by his wife, he asked why this was so;
much to his confusion, she responded that he had come to her on the
previous night. Amphitryon then learned from the seer Teiresias that it was
a disguised Zeus who had visited her. Alcmena bore twin boys: Hercules,
who was older by one night and was the son of Zeus, and Iphicles, the son
of Amphitryon.
(See also Alcaeus, Alcmena, Andromeda, Electryon, Hercules, Iphicles,
Mycenae, Pe-lops, Perseus, Teiresias, Thebes, and Zeus.)

AMYMONE Amymone was one of the fifty infamous, husband-murdering

daughters of Danaus, a Libyan king who had fled his homeland to Argos,
which the reigning king surrendered to his authority. At that time, the land
of Argos was suffering from drought, since the god Poseidon, angered that
Hera and not he had been named the city’s patron deity, had caused all the
springs to run dry. Danaus accordingly sent his daughters to find water.
While searching for water, Amymone pursued a deer and, taking aim at it
with her spear, accidentally hit a sleeping Satyr. The startled but ever lusty
Satyr immediately gave chase, but Poseidon came to the rescue, driving off
the Satyr with a throw of his trident. Amymone then lay with Poseidon,
who demonstrated his gratitude by pulling his trident from the earth, thus
producing the spring or river subsequently called “Amymone.” This river
was known also as the spring of Lerna, where the dread Hydra would later
reside. From her union with Poseidon, Amymone bore Nauplius, who
would establish the city of Nauplia in the Peloponnese.
(See also Argos, Danaids [the], Danaus, Hera, Hydra of Lerna [the],
Lerna, Poseidon, and Satyrs [the].)

ANAXARETE Anaxarete was a princess descended from Teucer.

According to the Roman poet Ovid, Anaxarete repeatedly spurned the
overtures of Iphis, a young man of humble origins. Her rejection of him
caused him to hang himself at her very door. The poor youth’s mother cried
out in despair asking the gods for vengeance. Consequently, Anaxarete was
turned to stone as she craned out her window to watch Iphis’s funeral
procession.
(See also Iphis.)

ANCAEUS Ancaeus was a son of Lycurgus, a king of Arcadia. He joined

Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece in spite of the fact that his
concerned grandfather had hidden his armor in hopes of preventing this. He
also participated in the hunt for the boar that was ravaging Calydon. It was
in the course of that hunt that Ancaeus lost his life, having been gored by
the boar.
(See also Arcadia, Calydon, and Jason.)

ANCHISES Anchises was a son of Capys, an early Trojan ruler descended

from Tros. His mother was variously known as Hieromnene, daughter of
the river god Simoeis, or Themiste, daughter of King Ilus of Troy and sister
of Laomedon, a future Trojan king. Anchises was thus descended from the
very founders of Troy. According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the
goddess fell in love with the young and handsome Anchises as he was
tending cattle on Mount Ida; falling in love with a human was Zeus’s
retribution for her ridiculing him and the other gods for their amorous
involvement with mortals. Aphrodite approached Anchises in disguise,
claiming that she was the daughter of the Phrygian king Otreus and that she
had been brought to Anchises as his bride by the god Hermes. Although
Aphrodite’s great beauty caused him to fear that she was one of the
immortals, this story satisfied him, and he received the goddess into his bed
happily. The next morning, however, Aphrodite revealed herself to
Anchises in her full divinity and disclosed that she was with child. She
explained that their son, Aeneas, would be raised by mountain nymphs and
that she herself would deliver him to Anchises. Aeneas, she said, was
destined to be a king. Anchises was to bring him to Troy but never disclose
the identity of his mother. The mythographer Hyginus records that Anchises
did, in a drunken state, reveal this information and that he was consequently
struck dead by Zeus’s thunderbolt. This account of his death does not,
however, correspond to the better-known story found in Virgil’s Aeneid:
when Troy was aflame, having been vanquished at long last by the Greeks,
Aeneas persuaded his father only with difficulty to leave the city with him.
Aeneas placed his aged father, who was holding statues of the household
gods, on his shoulders, took his son by his hand, and left the city. His wife,
Creusa, followed. In so doing, Aeneas became an icon of filial piety. With
Anchises and other Trojan refugees, Aeneas set sail for the Trojans’
ancestral land, which was Italy. In the course of this journey Anchises died,
succumbing to old age in Sicily. Even in death, however, Anchises
remained a guiding force for Aeneas: he appeared to his son in a dream,
convincing him to leave behind those of his followers too feeble to continue
to Italy. Aeneas famously later descended into the Underworld with the
guidance of Cumae’s Sibyl to visit Anchises in Elysium. There Anchises
revealed to him the full spectrum of his descendants and the glory that
would be Rome’s.
(See also Aeneas, Aphrodite, Creusa, Cumae, Elysium, Hermes, Ida
[Mount], Phrygia, Sibyl of Cumae [the], Sicily, Trojans [the], Tros, Troy,
Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

ANDROGEUS Androgeus was a son of Minos, king of Crete, and his

wife, Pasiphae. He was a skilled athlete who defeated all of his competitors
in the Athenaian Panathenaic Games (athletic contests in honor of Athena).
According to the mythographer Apollodorus, he met his end at the hands of
one of the men he had bested, but the travel writer Pausanias suggests that
the Athenians caused Androgeus to go hunt the dread Bull of Marathon,
which killed all who came upon it, including Androgeus. Whatever the
cause of his death, Minos held the Athenians responsible, attacked them,
and exacted a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to be fed to the
Minotaur every nine years.
(See also Athens, Crete, Minos, Minotaur [the], and Pasiphae.)

ANDROMACHE Andromache was the daughter of Eetion, king of the city

of Thebe (or Thebes) near Troy. She was married to the Trojan prince
Hector and bore him a son, Astyanax. Since Achilles had killed her father
and her seven brothers, Hector was her only remaining family, and she
begged him not to risk his life fighting the Greeks on behalf of Helen and
Hector’s faithless brother Paris. After Hector’s death, the fall of Troy, and
the murder of Astyanax, Andromache was taken captive and given as a
concubine to Achilles’s son Neoptolemus, to whom she bore three sons.
According to the tragedian Euripides, Neoptolemus’s wife, Hermione, was
jealous of her and unsuccessfully plotted against her life. Andromache was
subsequently given to Hector’s brother Helenus in marriage and returned to
Asia Minor.
(See also Achilles, Astyanax, Hector, Helenus, Hermione, Neoptolemus,
and Troy.)

ANDROMEDA The princess Andromeda was the daughter of Cassiopeia

and Cepheus, a king of Ethiopia. According to the mythographer
Apollodorus, Andromeda was shackled to the coast’s jagged cliffs as a
consequence of her mother’s boasting to be more lovely than the Nereid
nymphs. Alternatively, as the poet Ovid and Hyginus note, it was
Andromeda’s beauty that Cassiopeia bragged of. Taking action at this
affront to the Nereid nymphs, Poseidon sent a sea monster to ravage the
land of Ethiopia. Consequently, King Cepheus consulted the oracle of
Ammon and was instructed to sacrifice his own daughter, Andromeda, to
the monster. Reluctantly, Cepheus left Andromeda at the sea’s edge for the
monster.
 Andromeda had been betrothed to her father’s brother, Phineus, but he
was unable to save her. However, by a stroke of luck, the hero Perseus,
Medusa’s severed head in hand, happened to be flying overhead and caught
sight of her. Falling instantly in love, Perseus offered to rid Cepheus and his
kingdom of the monster in exchange for Andromeda’s hand. A bargain
struck, Perseus slew the monster and claimed Andromeda as his bride.
Phineus then launched an attack on Perseus to prevent the wedding, but the
hero, holding up the head of Medusa, turned his adversaries to stone.
Andromeda accompanied her new husband to Greece, where she bore him
three sons and three daughters. Upon her death, the goddess Athena placed
her among the stars as the constellation that bears her name.
(See also Ammon, Athena, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Ethiopia, Medusa,
Nereids [the], Perseus, and Phineus.)

ANTEIA Anteia (or Antea) was the name by which Homer knew
Stheneboea, wife of Proetus, a king of Tiryns. When a young Bellerophon
came to Tiryns, Anteia became enamored of him, but he spurned her
overtures. Embarrassed and seeking vengeance, she accused Bellerophon of
making improper advances upon her and demanded that her husband punish
the youth. Proetus consequently sent Bellerophon away for punishment to
Iobates, the king of Lycia, who in turn sent him on a quest for the head of
the Gorgon Medusa.
(See also Bellerophon, Gorgons [the], Lycia, Medusa, and Tiryns.)

ANTIGONE Antigone was a daughter of Oedipus and his wife, Jocasta.

Her sister was Ismene, and her brothers Eteocles and Polyneices.
Antigone’s story is well known from Greek tragedy. Upon discovering that
he had unwittingly married his mother and killed his father, Oedipus
blinded himself and left the city of Thebes as a polluted exile. Accompanied
by Antigone, Oedipus subsequently journeyed through Greece. When the
two arrived at the sacred site of Colonus in Attica, the territory of Athens,
Oedipus was welcomed by the Athenian king Theseus and found his final
resting place there at Colonus. Antigone now returned to Thebes. With
Oedipus gone, her brothers had decided to share the Theban kingdom, each
ruling in turn for a year. Eteocles was first to assume the throne but refused
to relinquish it. This caused Polyneices to enlist the help of Adrastus, king
of Argos, who came with any army led by seven captains, the so-called
Seven Against Thebes. The invaders were defeated, and both Polyneices
and Eteocles lost their lives in the combat. Queen Jocasta’s brother, Creon,
then became regent, and decreed that Polyneices, whom he considered an
enemy of the state, should not be buried. Eteocles, on the other hand, would
receive burial rites as a defender of the city. Antigone defied Creon’s
decree, even when threatened with public stoning, as she felt it her duty to
honor divine law (nomos), which dictated that the dead should be buried, or
their souls could never come to rest. When caught red-handed sprinkling
the body of Polyneices with soil in a ritual burial, Antigone was imprisoned
in a cave, a fate that Creon’s son Haemon, to whom she was betrothed, was
unable to prevent. While captive, Antigone hanged herself, and Haemon,
finding her dead, thrust himself upon his sword. News of the tragedy
reached Creon’s wife, Eurydice, who then took her own life, and as a
consequence of his imprudent intransigence, Creon was left a broken man.
(See also Adrastus, Argos, Athens, Colonus, Creon, Eurydice [heroine],
Haemon, Ismene, Jocasta, Oedipus, Polyneices, Seven Against Thebes
[the], Thebes, and Theseus.)

ANTILOCHUS According to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Antilochus was

the oldest son of the wise king Nestor of Pylos. Antilochus accompanied his
father to Troy, where he fought bravely. It was he who brought Achilles the
terrible news of his beloved friend Patroclus’s death. In the latter’s funeral
games, he resorted to trickery in order to win second prize, but later
apologized and offered to return his prize. Antilochus lost his life while
defending his father and was buried with Achilles and Patroclus.
(See also Achilles, Nestor, Patroclus, Pylos, and Troy.)

ANTINOUS Antinous, whose name is roughly translated as the

“thoughtless one,” was one of the most vocal and heinous of the men who
aspired to win the hand of Penelope, Ithaca’s queen, when they thought
Odysseus had died at Troy. As the suitors waited for Penelope to make her
selection, a thing that she did everything in her power to avoid, they
proceeded to eat Penelope and her son, Telemachus, out of house and home.
Antinous took the lead in plotting the death of Telemachus, threw a
footstool at Odysseus when he returned to his palace in the guise of a
beggar, and, deservedly, was the first of the suitors to be killed by
Odysseus.
(See also Ithaca, Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, and Troy.)

ANTIOPE There were two mythical Antiopes of note. One was a daughter
of the Theban king Nycteus. By some accounts, this Antiope caught the
roving eye of Zeus, who impregnated her in the guise of a Satyr. In order to
hide her shame from her father, Antiope fled to Sicyon, whose king
Epopeus she married. According to an alternate tradition, Epopeus
kidnapped and impregnated Antiope, for which he incurred the wrath of her
father. In any event, Nycteus enjoined his brother Lycus, who succeeded
him as regent of Thebes, to avenge the insult done to him by exacting
punishment from both Epopeus and Antiope. Lycus killed Epopeus and
took Antiope captive. As the mythographer Apollodorus writes, Antiope
gave birth to twin boys, Zethus and Amphion, on the way to Thebes, and
Lycus exposed them in the wilds of Mount Cithaeron, where they were later
found and raised by a herdsman. In Thebes, Antiope was then imprisoned
and mistreated by Lycus’s wife, Dirce. When, in the passage of time,
Antiope managed to escape, she made her way to the mountain and the
herdsman’s hut. There she found Zethus and Amphion, to whom the
herdsman revealed that this was their mother. The youths now killed Lycus
(or drove him from the kingdom) and devised a terrible punishment for
Dirce: they tied her to a bull that dragged her to her death.
The other Antiope was a queen of the Amazons. Antiope (or Hippolyta,
as she is known in some sources) was abducted by the Athenian hero
Theseus and taken by him to Athens. She became the mother of Hippolytus,
for whom Phaedra, another of Theseus’s wives, developed a tragic lust.
(See also Amazons [the], Amphion, Athens, Cithaeron [Mount], Dirce,
Hippolyta, Hippolytus, Phaedra, Satyrs [the], Thebes, Theseus, Zethus, and
Zeus.)

APSYRTUS Apsyrtus was a son of Aeetes, king of Colchis, and brother

(or half brother) of Medea. Tales surrounding him focus on his death, which
is variously recounted. According to Apollonius of Rhodes, Apsyrtus
spearheaded the Colchian pursuit of Jason and the Argonauts when, with
Medea and the Golden Fleece in tow, they were making their way back to
Thessaly. Medea and Jason concocted a ruse whereby to entrap and kill
Apsyrtus. Medea asked to meet him in secret at a temple of Artemis and
sent him a false message stating that she intended to steal the fleece and
return with him to Colchis. Apsyrtus appeared at the temple, where he was
ambushed and killed by Jason, who then hid his body. The mythographer
Hyginus, however, writes that Aeetes pursued Jason and Medea, and when
Medea saw her father’s ship draw near, she herself murdered Apsyrtus,
cutting him limb from limb and throwing the pieces into the sea. This put an
end to Aeetes’s pursuit, as he stopped to retrieve all of his son’s remains and
then turned back to bury them.
(See also Aeetes, Argonauts [the], Artemis, Colchis, Jason, Medea, and
Thessaly.)

ARACHNE Arachne is described by the Roman poet Ovid as having been

a young woman of common birth, but of uncommon skill as a weaver. She
lived in the village of Hypaepa in Lydia. Her father was a humble wool
dyer, and her mother was deceased. Despite her lowly rank, Arachne
became famous throughout the towns of Lydia for her expert ability to spin
and weave wool. Even the local nymphs came to marvel at her. Though
spinning and weaving were specifically Minerva’s arts, Arachne would not
admit that the goddess had been her teacher. Instead, she made it known
that she would gladly challenge the goddess to a weaving contest. Minerva
could not bear this insult and, appearing to her in the guise of an old
woman, cautioned Arachne not to dishonor the gods with such arrogance.
Arachne still would not relent, so Minerva revealed herself to the girl in her
full divinity. The contest thus commenced. Minerva wove into her design
the contest in which she had prevailed over Neptune to win the stewardship
of the city of Athens by producing an olive tree. As a clear warning to
Arachne, she also depicted a host of mortals who had challenged the gods
and been punished terribly. Arachne, for her part, wove vignettes depicting
misdeeds of the gods, a twofold affront to the goddess. There appeared
Jupiter taking on the shape of a bull to seduce Europa, of a swan to make
advances on Leda, of her own husband to lie with Alcmena, of a golden
shower to penetrate the cell of Danae, and of a flame to approach Aegina.
Neptune, too, was shown. He assumed the shape of a dolphin in pursuit of
Melantho, of a bird to approach Medusa, and of a ram, river, and stallion to
make advances on other maidens still. Apollo, Bacchus, and Saturn, all
behaving ignobly, also found a place in Arachne’s design. Arachne’s work
was perfection, flawless even in Minerva’s eyes. So great was the goddess’s
anger that she tore apart Arachne’s weaving and struck Arachne on the head
until, unable to bear this assault, she hanged herself. Arachne did, however,
live on, now as a spider, misshapen but spinning for all time.
 (See also Aegina, Alcmena, Apollo, Athens, Bacchus, Danae, Leda,
Lydia, Medusa, Minerva, Neptune, and Jupiter.)

ARCAS Arcas was a son of Zeus and Callisto, daughter of the Arcadian
king Lycaon. Arcas was raised by the god Hermes’s mother, Maia, after his
own mother was transformed into a bear by a jealous Hera. After Arcas was
returned to his grandfather’s court, Lycaon cut him into pieces, using them
to cook a stew that he served to Zeus, who was visiting Arcadia in disguise.
Lycaon was punished for his barbarism by being transformed into a wolf,
but Arcas was reassembled and restored to life. The travel writer Pausanias
records that when Arcas succeeded to the throne of Arcadia, he introduced
the cultivation of crops, which he had learned from the culture hero (bringer
of civilization and culture) Triptolemus, and taught his subjects how to
make bread and weave clothes. It was in honor of Arcas that his kingdom
came to be known as Arcadia instead of Pelasgia and its inhabitants
Arcadians instead of Pelasgians. When, at a later time, Arcas was on the
verge of accidentally killing his own mother while hunting, Zeus came to
the rescue and transformed them both into the constellations Arctophylax
(“Guardian of the Bear”) and the Great Bear.
(See also Arcadia, Callisto, Hera, Hermes, Lycaon, Maia, Pelasgus,
Triptolemus, and Zeus.)

ARETE Arete, whose name means “virtue,” was the queen of the goodly
Phaeacians and wife of Alcinous. Her daughter was Nausicaa, who assisted
the shipwrecked Odysseus when he came ashore the Phaeacians’ island of
Scheria, showing him the way to his parents’ palace. Nausicaa also advised
Odysseus that, upon arriving at the palace, he should address Arete before
her husband Alcinous, a clear indicator of her influence. In an unrelated
myth, Arete advocated the Phaeacians’ protection of Jason and Medea
when, with the Golden Fleece in tow, they arrived at Scheria pursued by the
Colchians.
(See also Alcinous, Colchis, Jason, Medea, Nausicaa, Odysseus,
Phaeacians [the], and Scheria.)
ARGONAUTS, THE The Argonauts (“Argo-Sailors”) were the crew of
heroes who accompanied Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece. Their
ship was the Argo, which, by some accounts, was the first ship and, by
others, the largest and most miraculous because it had the ability to speak.
According to Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautica (Voyage of the
Argo), the Argonauts included Orpheus, Telamon, Admetus, Peleus,
Hercules, Hylas, Castor and Pollux, Meleager, and Zetes and Calais, among
others.
(See also Admetus, Castor, Hercules, Hylas, Jason, Meleager, Orpheus,
Telamon, and Zetes.)

ARIADNE Ariadne was a daughter of Minos, king of Crete, and his wife,
Pasiphae. Ariadne fell in love with the Athenian prince Theseus when he
arrived on the island as one of the fourteen youths and maidens to be fed to
her monstrous half brother, the Minotaur. Theseus intended to attempt to
kill the Minotaur, who was kept captive in a labyrinth. Ariadne, wishing to
do what she could to help the object of her affections, gave him a ball of
string to unroll as he entered the labyrinth. Theseus was able both to slay
the Minotaur and retrace his steps out of the labyrinth by following the
thread he had earlier unwound. For her assistance, Theseus agreed to take
Ariadne with him to Greece, though this did not occur. By some accounts,
Theseus abandoned Ariadne on the island of Dia (modern Naxos), where
she was found by the god Dionysus, who made her his bride; according to
Diodorus Siculus, by contrast, she was abducted by the god when Theseus
put her on the island. Upon her death, the god transferred her to the heavens
as the constellation Corona Borealis.
In his biography of Theseus, Plutarch relates that there were, in fact,
many divergent tales about the fate of Ariadne, among them the following:
she hanged herself because she had been abandoned by Theseus; she was
brought to Naxos by sailors and settled there with a priest of Dionysus; she
was abandoned by Theseus because he loved another woman; and she had
several sons by Theseus. Ariadne was worshipped in cult on the islands of
Naxos and Cyprus, where one tradition places her burial.
(See also Athens, Crete, Cyprus, Dionysus, Minos, Minotaur [the],
Naxos, Pasiphae, and Theseus.)
ARIMASPI, THE The Arimaspi were a mythical group of one-eyed people
who, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, lived in the extreme
north, beyond the Issedones (a Central Asian people) and near the land of
the Griffins, whose gold they repeatedly attempted to steal.
(See also Griffins [the].)

ARION The noted poet Arion of Lesbos was a historical personage, part of
whose life story became mythologized. The Greek historian Herodotus
credits Arion (late seventh century BCE) with having been the first person to
compose a dithyramb (a hymn to the god Dionysus), give it a name, and
perform it at Corinth. Since the dithyramb, according to Aristotle, was a
plausible forerunner to dramatic performances, Arion’s work was
significant to the development of the theater. In any event, Herodotus also
reports that he spent most of his life at the court of the tyrant Periander of
Corinth, but at some point traveled to Italy and Sicily, where he made a
great deal of money through his performances. Having most faith in
Corinthian sailors, Arion decided to return home on a Corinthian vessel.
The crew, however, had become aware of the riches that he carried and
ordered him either to kill himself or to jump overboard. Arion dressed to
perform one last song and, lute in hand, leaped into the sea, where a dolphin
came to his rescue and carried him safely to land. Arion related this
adventure to Periander, who put the ship’s crew to death. The mythographer
Hyginus adds that, because of Arion’s skill at playing the cithara, Apollo
placed him and the dolphin among the stars.
(See also Apollo, Corinth, and Dionysus.)

ARSINOE Arsinoe, a daughter of Leucippus, was named in some sources

as mother of the healing god Asclepius by Apollo. Most sources, however,
claim that Asclepius was born of Coronis.
(See also Apollo, Asclepius, Coronis, and Leucippus.)

ARUNS Aruns (or Arruns) was an Etruscan warrior who appeared in

Virgil’s epic Aeneid. He was responsible for the untimely death of Camilla,
a noble and skilled huntress. Camilla had formed part of the Italians’ armed
resistance to the Trojan Aeneas’s arrival in Italy and his proposed marriage
to Lavinia, princess of Latium.
(See also Aeneas, Camilla, Etruria, Latium, Lavinia, and Troy.)

ASCANIUS Ascanius was the son of Aeneas by his Trojan wife, Creusa. In
Virgil’s Aeneid, he was known as Ilus, after Ilium (another name for Troy),
as long as Troy remained undefeated. Subsequent to Troy’s fall, he was
known as Iulus, a name that highlighted his role as founder of the Julian
family, which would yield Julius Caesar and the emperor Augustus.
Ascanius accompanied his father in the journey from Troy to Italy. While in
Italy he became responsible for the outbreak of hostilities between the
Latins and the recently arrived Trojans by virtue of shooting the pet stag of
Silvia, daughter of Tyrrhus, chief herdsman for King Latinus. Ascanius was
destined, after the conflict’s subsidence, to rule in Lavinium for thirty years
and then to establish Alba Longa as capital, where his descendants would
rule for three hundred years until the founding of Rome by Romulus and
Remus.
(See also Aeneas, Creusa, Ilium, Iulus, Latinus, Latium, Remus, Rome,
Romulus, and Troy.)

ASCLEPIUS Asclepius (or Aesculapius) was a son of Apollo and healing

hero who became divinized, thus being known more generally as god of
healing and medicine.
(See also Apollo and Asclepius [god].)

ASTYANAX Astyanax, whose name means “Lord of the City,” was the son
of Hector, Troy’s brave defender, and his wife, Andromache. Hector called
him Scamandrius after the Trojan river Scamander. In Homer’s Iliad,
Astyanax was only a baby, and Andromache was justifiably concerned
about his fate should Hector die while fighting. Later authors describe
Astyanax’s death at the hands of the Greeks. The usual story is that
Astyanax was thrown from the walls of Troy, either by Odysseus or some
other Greek, in order to prevent the survival of any of Priam’s descendants.
(See also Andromache, Hector, Odysseus, Priam, Scamander River
[the], and Troy.)
ATALANTA Atalanta was an expert huntress and exceedingly fleet of foot.
Her father was variously said to be the Boeotian king Schoeneus (as in the
works of Ovid, Statius, Pausanias, and Theocritus) or Iasus, an Arcadian
king, whose wife was Clymene, daughter of Minyas, ancestor of the
Minyans (as in Callimachus, Propertius, and Apollodorus). Upon her birth,
Atalanta was taken to the wilderness and abandoned, since her father did
not want a daughter. By the providence of the goddess Artemis, a kindly
she-bear came upon her and raised her until she was taken in by some local
hunters. Artemis, for her part, provided Atalanta with instruction in hunting.
The poet Apollonius of Rhodes reports that, when grown, Atalanta aspired
to join Jason on his dangerous quest for the Golden Fleece, but that he
prevented her from doing so on the grounds of his affection for her.
Atalanta, did, however join Meleager, son of the Calydonian king Oeneus
and Althea, in hunting the terrible boar that the goddess Artemis had sent to
ravage the countryside; the goddess was angered that Oeneus, while a pious
man, had somehow overlooked her when making sacrifice to the gods in
thanks for the first fruits of harvest. All the strongest and bravest men
gathered for the hunt, but it was the maiden Atalanta who inflicted the first
wound, allowing Meleager to complete the task of killing it. In recognition
of this fact, Meleager presented her with the boar’s head as a trophy, an
action that drew the resentment of his mother’s brothers. A fierce battle, and
fulfilment of a prophecy foretelling Meleager’s untimely death, then
ensued.
Atalanta wished to remain a huntress, unmarried and a virgin like the
goddess Artemis, but numerous men pursued her. Conceding to her father’s
entreaties that she consider marriage, she agreed to marry whoever could
outrun her. Many unsuccessfully attempted to win her hand and paid the
penalty for loss with their lives. Still, one, undaunted, prevailed. Ovid calls
him Hippomenes, a great-grandson of Poseidon, although for Pausanias and
others he is Melanion. This youth called upon the goddess Aphrodite for
aid, and she responded, bringing him three golden apples from her
sanctuary on the isle of Cyprus. The race commenced, and Meleager threw
one apple after another out to the side of the racecourse. Atalanta could not
resist the apples, retrieving each of them in turn. Atalanta’s dash after the
last apple allowed the youth to win the race and so win her as bride.
Atalanta developed affection for her new mate, but the couple’s joy did not
last, for in his excitement over his victory, Hippomenes had forgotten to
thank Aphrodite. The angry goddess drove him wild with passion, and
consequently, they defiled a temple of the goddess Cybele with their
lovemaking. For this Cybele punished them by transforming them into
lions, which she then fastened to the yoke of her carriage.
(See also Althea, Aphrodite, Arcadia, Artemis, Boeotia, Calydon,
Clymene, Cybele, Cyprus, Hippomenes, Jason, Melanion, Meleager,
Minyas, Oeneus, Poseidon, and Schoeneus.)

ATHAMAS Athamas was a king of Orchomenus in Boeotia. His wives

were, in succession, Nephele, the Theban king Cadmus’s daughter Ino, and
the Thessalian king Hypseus’s daughter Themisto. Athamas’s numerous
troubles began with his marriage to Ino, who was jealous of Phrixus and
Helle, his chidren by his first wife, Nephele. Ino devised a stratagem
whereby to have the children killed, but they escaped her clutches by
spectacular means: a golden-fleeced ram that ultimately bore one of them,
Phrixus, to safety. Zeus later brought the infant Dionysus to Athamas and
Ino to raise, but an angry Hera saw to it that both were driven mad.
Athamas accidentally killed his son Learchus, believing him to be a deer (or
a lion), and Ino threw her son Melicertes into a boiling cauldron or, by some
accounts, leaped with him in her arms into the Saronic Gulf, where they
perished, only to be transformed into the sea deities Leucothea and
Palaemon.
(See also Boeotia, Dionysus, Helle, Hera, Ino, Leucothea, Nephele,
Phrixus, Thessaly, and Zeus.)

ATREUS Atreus was a son of Pelops, king of Pisa, and Hippodamia. He,
his siblings, and his descendants all suffered the consequences of a curse
uttered upon Pelops for his treachery. At his mother’s request, Atreus and
his brother Theyestes killed their half brother Chrysippus, and for this they
were exiled from Pisa. Atreus wed Aerope, a Cretan princess, and with her
became father to Agamemnon and Menelaus, the future kings of Mycenae
and Sparta respectively. His wife, Aerope, either developed a passion for
Theyestes or else was seduced by him. In any event, she betrayed Atreus
when the throne of Mycenae became available. According to the
mythographer Apollodorus, Atreus was in possession of a golden-fleeced
lamb that he should have sacrificed to Artemis but kept for himself instead.
With the help of Aerope, Theyestes obtained the lamb, killed it, stripped its
fleece, and suggested that the kingship of Mycenae should be awarded on
the basis of its possession. Atreus agreed and was surprised to discover that
he no longer had the lamb or the fleece. Crying foul, Atreus caused this
decision to be revisited and was awarded the kingship on the basis of being
able to reverse the course of the sun, which he did with the help of Zeus.
Atreus now contrived a means to punish Theyestes for taking up with his
wife and, after serving him his own children in a stew, drove him from the
land. While away, Theyestes impregnated his own daughter Pelopia, as he
had learned from an oracle that it was by this means that he could best
avenge himself upon his brother, and Aegisthus, the product of this union
did, when grown to manhood, indeed kill Atreus. Atreus was succeeded
briefly by Theyestes, but the latter was driven from Mycenae by Atreus’s
sons Agamemnon and Menelaus. It was Agamemnon, the elder of the two,
who became king of Mycenae, until he, too, was murdered, as the curse
against Pelops had dictated.
(See also Aerope, Agamemnon, Artemis, Hippodamia, Menelaus,
Mycenae, Pelops, Theyestes, and Zeus.)

AUGEAS Augeas (or Augeias) was a king of Elis in the Peloponnese

whose father was variously recorded as the god Helios or Poseidon, among
others. His claim to fame was his enormous herd of cattle and the even
greater mess that they made. As his fifth Labor, Hercules was sent to clean
Augeas’s stables, a seemingly impossible task, and to do so in the course of
one day. This Hercules accomplished by diverting the rivers Alpheus and
Peneus through the stables. Augeas then withheld the payment for which
Hercules had negotiated, a tenth of the cattle, and drove him from his
kingdom. Hercules would later return with an army in order to exact
vengeance for the wrong done to him by sacking the city of Elis. By some
accounts, Hercules killed Augeas in the conflict.
(See also Alpheus River [the], Helios, Hercules, Peneus River [the], and
Poseidon.)
AUTONOE Autonoe was one of the daughters of Harmonia and Cadmus,
founder of the city of Thebes. Her sisters, all of them tragic figures in their
own right, were Ino, Agave, and Semele. With the agricultural culture hero
Aristaeus, Autonoe became mother to Actaeon, who, as punishment for
catching sight of the goddess Artemis unclothed, was killed by his own
hunting dogs. Autonoe, Ino, and Agave later participated in the gruesome
dismemberment of Agave’s son Pentheus.
(See also Actaeon, Aristaeus, Cadmus, Harmonia, Ino, Pentheus,
Semele, and Thebes.)

BACCHANTES Bacchantes (or Bacchants and Bacchae) were the female

worshippers of the wine god Bacchus, who was also called Dionysus. The
Bacchantes were also known as Maenads after the mania (“madness” in
Greek) that overcame them while they were possessed by the god.
(See also Bacchus, Dionysus, and Maenads [the].)

BATTUS Battus was a poor herdsman and the servant of a wealthy man.
According to the Roman poet Ovid, he witnessed Mercury’s theft of
Apollo’s cattle, and, for a bribe, promised not to reveal what he had seen.
Mercury, however, disguised himself in order to make trial of Battus and
offered him a still greater reward for information. Battus did not hesitate to
accept his new offer and was instantly changed by the god into a stone. This
was the origin of the “touchstone,” a measure or criterion for judgment.
(See also Apollo and Mercury.)

BAUCIS The Roman poet Ovid tells the story of Baucis, “Tender One,”
and her husband, Philemon, “Friendly One,” elderly peasants living in
Phrygia. It happened that Jupiter and Mercury visited their village disguised
as mortals. Weary from travel, the gods knocked on a thousand doors in
hopes of being offered respite and refreshment. All the doors were shut on
them but one, that of Baucis and Philemon, who provided all they could by
way of hospitality in spite of their humble circumstances: a rustic bench
with a homespun cover; the remnants of a fire; a bit of long-saved bacon; a
grass-stuffed mattress; plates of olives, cherries, cheese, apples, and grapes;
and wine. Miraculously, the wine bowl filled each time it was drained, a
blessing from the gods. When the peasants even offered their only goose,
the gods intervened to spare the bird and revealed themselves in their
divinity. Baucis and Philemon were told to retreat to a nearby hilltop, and
the surrounding village and its inhabitants were flooded in retribution for
their wickedness. Baucis and Philemon’s hut, meanwhile, remained
untouched by the waters and was transformed into a temple. When asked
what they would most wish for, the couple responded that they would like
to spend the rest of their days as priests and guardians of the temple. They
also asked that neither should outlive the other. And so it came to pass.
They served the gods faithfully through their lives, and when they reached
an advanced age, they became an oak tree and a linden that stood adjacent
to each other.
(See also Jupiter, Mercury, and Phrygia.)

BELLEROPHON The hero Bellerophon is best known for taming the

winged horse Pegasus and slaying the Chimaera, a triple-headed monster
with the forequarters of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and at its midsection, the
fire-spewing head of a goat. The story of Bellerophon’s life is one of rise
and ignoble fall. He was the “stepson” of Sisyphus’s son Glaucus, a king of
Corinth, and son of a woman named either Eurymede or Eurynome; his
actual father was reputedly Poseidon. By accident, Bellerophon had caused
the death of another man. By some accounts, this was his own brother. By
others, it was a Corinthian tyrant called Bellerus, after whose death
Bellerophon, previously called Hipponous, reputedly was renamed killer (-
phontes) of Bellerus. With blood on his hands, Bellerophon fled Corinth
and took refuge with Proetus, king of Tiryns. While in Tiryns, the king’s
wife Stheneboea (or Anteia) became enamored of him, and Bellerophon
rejected her advances. In retribution for this slight, Stheneboea accused him
of having propositioned her and demanded that he be duly punished. Not
wishing to violate the bond between guest and host by punishing the youth
directly, Proetus sent Bellerophon to Lycia, where he was to deliver a letter
to King Iobates, Stheneboea’s father. Unbeknownst to Bellerophon, the
letter revealed his alleged violation of Stheneboea and contained a request
that the youth be killed. Iobates, too, wanted to avoid the stain of blood
guilt and sent Bellerophon to complete a task sure to prove fatal: slaying the
Chimaera, which was devastating the Lycian countryside. With the aid of
Minerva, Bellerophon was able to tame the winged horse Pegasus and,
borne aloft, to slay the Chimaera with his arrows. According to the
mythographer Apollodorus, a surprised Iobates next ordered him to defeat
the exceedingly warlike Solymi. Once Bellerophon had completed that task,
Iobates next commanded him to attack the Amazons as well. When
Bellerophon had prevailed in all these conflicts, Iobates set the bravest of
his own men to ambush and kill him, but they did not succeed. Now deeply
impressed by Bellerophon’s bravery and prowess, Iobates gave him his
other daughter, Philonoe, in marriage and declared him heir to his own
throne. At this news an anguished Stheneboea killed herself—or, according
to a variant tradition, Bellerophon pushed her from Pegasus’s back to fall to
her death. Of Bellerophon’s own end there are several different accounts. In
Homer’s Iliad, he is said to have become hated by the gods. This may have
been because, as the poet Pindar reveals, Bellerophon aspired to exceed
human limits. Spurring Pegasus on to reach the heavenly abode of Zeus,
Bellerophon was thrown so as to fall back to earth, being consigned,
thenceforth, to wander as an outcast, alone.
Bellerophon was worshipped both in Lycia and at the city of Corinth,
where travel writer Pausanias saw a grove of cypresses called Craneum, the
location of a precinct sacred to Bellerophon and a temple of Aphrodite.
(See also Amazons [the], Anteia, Aphrodite, Chimaera [the], Corinth,
Glaucus [hero], Iobates, Lycia, Minerva, Pegasus, Poseidon, Proetus,
Sisyphus, Solymi [the], Tiryns, and Zeus.)

BELUS Belus was a legendary king of Egypt. According to the

mythographer Apollodorus, Belus was the child of the god Poseidon with
Libya, daughter of Epaphus and Memphis. His twin brother was Agenor,
who became a king of Phoenicia. Belus, remaining in Egypt, became regent
of that country and married Anchinoe, daughter of the Nile, by whom he,
too, had twin sons, Aegyptus and Danaus. Belus gave regency of Libya to
Danaus and that of Arabia to Aegyptus. Aegyptus became father to fifty
sons and Danaus to fifty daughters. When Aegyptus proposed that his sons
should wed Danaus’s daughters, Danaus fled, suspecting that his brother
wished to annex his kingdom. Eventually, Danaus agreed to the union but
had instructed his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding night.
His daughters, the Danaids, consequently became infamous denizens of the
Underworld.
The Carthaginian queen Dido as well as the kings of Persia were said to
have been descended from Belus.
(See also Aegyptus, Carthage, Danaids [the], Danaus, Dido, Epaphus,
and Poseidon.]

BITON Biton and his brother Cleobis were strong and virtuous youths
whose act of selfless heroism in honor of their mother and the goddess Hera
earned them the highest honor that could be bestowed on a mortal: death
upon accomplishing his noblest achievement.
(See Cleobis and Hera.)

BRISEIS Briseis was the wife of Mynes, king of the city of Lyrnessus, near
Troy. The hero Achilles sacked this city and killed Briseis’s husband as well
as her three brothers during the ten-year period that the Greeks were
fighting at Troy. Briseis was consequently seized as a war captive and
became Achilles’s concubine. When, in the tenth year of the Trojan War,
Agamemnon was compelled to return his own concubine, Chryseis, to her
father, Chryses, a priest of Apollo, he demanded that Achilles give him
Briseis to replace his loss. Since Briseis constituted a measure of his valor,
Achilles was justifiably angered at this outrage. When Briseis was taken
from him, he withdrew from the fighting and asked his divine mother,
Thetis, to convince Zeus to let the Trojans prevail so that Agamemnon
would quickly see the results of his prideful folly. When Aga-memnon did,
eventually, return Briseis, many Greeks had died, among them Patroclus,
Achilles’s closest friend.
(See also Achilles, Agamemnon, Apollo, Chryseis, Patroclus, Thetis,
Troy, and Zeus.)

CADMUS Cadmus was a son of the Tyrian (or Sidonian) king Agenor.
When his daughter Europa was abducted by Zeus, Agenor sent his sons in
search of her. The brothers dispersed, each eventually establishing a colony
wherever he gave up his quest. Cadmus made his way to Boeotia and
thence to Delphi, where he sought the oracle’s advice. The oracle urged him
to abandon the search and to settle where a cow came to rest. At this place
he founded the city of Cadmeia, later known as Thebes. According to the
mythographer Apollodorus, who preserves a wealth of detail about the
city’s founding, Cadmus wanted to sacrifice this cow to the gods in thanks
and sent some of his men to fetch water for the ritual. When the men did not
return from the spring, Cadmus went to investigate and found a dragon
guarding the water’s source, which was sacred to the god Ares. Cadmus
slew this dragon and, with instruction from the goddess Athena, sowed a
portion of the dragon’s teeth. From them grew men, the so-called Sparti,
“Sown Ones,” fully grown and armed. Cadmus threw rocks into their midst,
and they, in confusion, turned upon each other, all but five perishing in the
fray. Zeus later gave Cadmus Harmonia, daughter of Aphrodite and Ares, as
a bride, and all the gods celebrated their union. As wedding gifts, Cadmus
gave Harmonia a fine robe and a wondrous necklace created by He-
phaestus; both gifts would become central to conflict among their
descendants. Cadmus and Harmonia had a son, Polydorus, and four
daughters, Autonoe, Ino, Semele, and Agave, all of whom would become
tragic characters. Ino was married to Athamas, Autonoe to Aristaeus, and
Agave to Echion. Semele was impregnated by Zeus and became the mother
of the god Dionysus. Agave, for her part, was the mother of Pentheus, who
became regent of Thebes when Cadmus relinquished the throne to him.
Pentheus met a horrific end at the hands of his mother and his aunts, all of
them in a Bacchic trance, because he had refused to recognize his cousin
Dionysus (also called Bacchus) as a god. Autonoe’s son Actaeon also met a
terrible end, having been torn to bits by his hunting dogs. In a bizarre turn
of events, Cadmus and Harmonia were banished to Illyria, a remote land in
the western Balkan Peninsula, where they led a barbarian horde in battle
and were turned into snakes, perhaps in retribution for Cadmus’s slaying of
Ares’s dragon. Cadmus and Harmonia were ultimately sent by Zeus to live
in the Elysian Fields.
(See also Actaeon, Agave, Agenor, Aphrodite, Ares, Aristaeus, Autonoe,
Boeotia, Delphi, Dionysus, Elysian Fields [the], Europa, Harmonia, Ino,
Pentheus, Polydorus, Semele, Thebes, and Zeus.)
CALAIS Calais and his twin brother Zetes were swift, winged sons of
Boreas, the north wind, and, being children of Boreas, were called
“Boreads.” The two are best known for their assistance to the king Phineus,
who had been endlessly tortured by the Harpies’ snatching away his food.
(See also Boreas, Harpies [the], Phineus, and Zetes.)

CALCHAS Calchas was the prophet or seer regularly consulted by the

Greeks in the course of the Trojan War. His many pivotal predictions
included disclosing to Agamemnon and the assembled Greek forces that it
was due to the wrath of Artemis that the winds had fallen and their ships
were unable to set sail from Aulis to Troy; the remedy that he disclosed was
the sacrifice to Artemis of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigeneia.
Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, never forgave Agamemnon for the death
of their daughter, a fact that led directly to her vengeful killing of him.
Calchas also revealed to the Greeks that the plague that they were suffering
while encamped outside the walls of Troy could be dispelled if
Agamemnon returned his concubine, Chryseis, to her father, the priest
Chryses. This, too, Agamemnon did, only to take Achilles’s concubine
Briseis from him, an affront that Achilles could not bear. Calchas is also
credited by sources including Apollodorus, Quintus of Smyrna, and Seneca
with predicting that Troy would not fall to the Greeks without the help of
Achilles’s son Neoptolemus and Philoctetes. He further proclaimed that the
Greeks could not return home before sacrificing Hector’s infant son
Astyanax and the Trojan princess Polyxena.
(See also Achilles, Agamemnon, Artemis, Astyanax, Aulis, Briseis,
Chryseis, Clytemnestra, Hector, Hercules, Iphigeneia, Neoptolemus,
Philoctetes, Polyxena, and Troy.)

CALLISTO Callisto was a beautiful maiden, or nymph, who lived in the

wilds of Arcadia as a companion of the virgin goddess Diana. Most sources
claim that Callisto’s father was the Arcadian king Lycaon, a savage tyrant
who, for his outrageous acts, was, fittingly, transformed by Jupiter into a
savage wolf. The Roman poet Ovid tells the best-known version of her fate.
Like so many lovely women, nymphs, and goddesses, Callisto did not
escape the roving eye of Jupiter, who happened upon her while she was
bathing. The god used an especially loathsome ruse to get close to her: he
disguised himself as the goddess Diana, and for this reason, Callisto was
not alarmed at his approach. The result was rape, and Callisto became
pregnant. She bore her shame as long as possible, but one day, when Diana,
hot and weary from hunting, urged all her companions to join her for a
refreshing plunge in a shaded stream, Callisto held back. The others
stripped her bare, and the shame of her growing belly exposed, Callisto was
banished by the goddess. Jupiter’s wife, Juno, too, was angered when she
bore a son, young Arcas, and in a rage at her husband’s infidelity,
transformed Callisto into a bear. When, in the passage of time, Arcas was
old enough to hunt, he encountered his bear-mother and was only just
prevented by Jupiter from killing her with a cast of his spear. The god lifted
mother and son into the heavens where they became the constellations
Arctos, “Bear” (Ursa Major, “Great Bear” in Latin, also called Bootes), and
Arctophylax (literally, “guardian of the bear” in Greek and Ursa Minor,
“Lesser Bear,” in Latin). Her rage unabated, Juno devised one last
punishment: neither constellation would be permitted to rest by setting in
the river Oceanus, and as a result, neither slips below the horizon. The
mythographer Apollodorus, writing in Greek and using the characters’
Greek names, provides other versions of the tale: either Hera persuaded
Artemis to shoot Callisto, or Artemis shot her of her own accord since
Callisto had not kept her vow of chastity. When Callisto perished, Zeus
quickly seized the baby, named it Arcas, and gave it to the nymph Maia to
raise.
(See also Arcadia, Arcas, Diana, Hera, Juno, Jupiter, Lycaon, Maia,
Oceanus [place], and Zeus.)

CAMILLA Camilla’s father, Metabus, a tyrannical king of the Volscians,

had fled his homeland when she was just an infant. Arriving at the river
Amisenus, he tied Camilla to an ash spear, pledging that he would dedicate
her to the goddess Diana if the spear could carry her safely across the river.
His wish was granted, and he subsequently kept his promise to the goddess:
Camilla grew up a virgin huntress in the forest. She would later join forces
with the Rutulian prince Turnus against Aeneas and his band of Trojans,
whose appearance in Italy occasioned a grievous war. In the course of this
conflict, Camilla was ignobly slain by a warrior named Aruns, and her
death caused widespread expressions of grief among the Latins.
(See also Aeneas, Aruns, Diana, Latins [the], Rutulians [the], Troy, and
Turnus.)

CANACE According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Canace was one of

the twelve children of Aeolus, Lord of the Winds. With the god Poseidon,
she became mother to five sons, who included Aloeus, later the stepfather
of the giants Otus and Ephialtes. The Roman poet Ovid records the
dramatic events surrounding Canace’s death. As a result of an incestuous
relationship with her brother Macareus, she became pregnant and, although
she and her nurse attempted to abort the child, a son by her brother was
born to her. An enraged Aeolus ordered the newborn child to be thrown to
the dogs and birds of prey, and he supplied Canace with a sword whereby to
take her own life.
(See also Aeolus, Aloeus, Otus, and Poseidon.)

CAPANEUS Capaneus was a prime exemplar of hubris (excessive pride)

and its consequences. He was one of the seven commanders who joined
forces with Oedipus’s son Polyneices to march on the city of Thebes.
Polyneices organized this campaign when, contrary to prior agreement, his
brother Eteocles refused to step down as Thebes’s regent. According to the
tragedian Aeschylus, Capaneus boasted that he would destroy Thebes with
or without the support of Zeus; he even claimed that conflict with the god
himself would be no deterrent, Zeus’s thunderbolts being no more harmful
than midday heat. For all his bravado, this blasphemer did not escape the
wrath of Zeus, who smote him with his divine fire as he scaled the walls of
Thebes.
(See also Eteocles, Oedipus, Polyneices, Thebes, and Zeus.)

CASSANDRA Cassandra was a daughter of the Trojan king Priam and his
wife, Hecuba. According to Homer, Cassandra was extraordinarily
beautiful, comparable in this regard even to Aphrodite. Her beauty,
however, was more curse than blessing. She attracted the attention of
Apollo, who gave her the gift of prophecy in the expectation that she would
yield to his advances. Yet she resisted him, and for this insult, Apollo made
it so that although she could foretell the future, nobody would believe her.
Thus, when she prophesied that her brother Paris would bring ruin upon
Troy, Priam nonetheless equipped him with a fleet to go fetch Helen from
Sparta, which then became the direct cause of the Trojan War. She also told
the Trojans to be wary of the Trojan Horse, knowing that it was filled with
Greeks and was not, as had been thought, an offering to Athena. Among the
outrages that Cassandra suffered was rape at the hands of the Greek hero
Ajax, son of Oileus (or the Lesser Ajax), though she had taken refuge at
Athena’s altar in Troy. For this sacrilege and affront to the goddess, Ajax
and the remaining Greeks were punished by Athena, Zeus, and Poseidon.
Ajax’s ship was wrecked on the return voyage from Troy, and he was struck
by lightning or, by some accounts, drowned at sea. As for Cassandra, she
was given to King Agamemnon of Mycenae, commander of the combined
Greek forces, as a concubine. When Agamemnon brought Cassandra back
home with him to Mycenae, her presence further angered an already irate
Queen Clytemnestra, who killed them both. Cassandra’s death and her
foreknowledge of it are vividly described in the tragedian Aeschylus’s play
Agamemnon.
In an alternate tradition, Cassandra and her twin brother, Helenus, both
received the gift of prophecy as babies by virtue of having their ears licked
by snakes in a temple of Apollo.
(See also Agamemnon, Ajax [the Lesser], Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena,
Clytemnestra, Hecuba, Helen, Helenus, Mycenae, Paris, Poseidon, Priam,
Sparta, Troy, and Zeus.)

CASSIOPEIA Cassiopeia was the wife of the Ethiopian king Cepheus and
mother of the lovely Andromeda. As a consequence of her prideful boast
that she—or by some accounts, her daughter—was more beautiful than the
Nereid nymphs, Poseidon sent a sea monster to ravage Ethiopia, and the
only remedy was the sacrifice of her daughter. Fortunately, Andromeda was
rescued by the hero Perseus, fresh from his encounter with Medusa. Upon
her death, Poseidon transformed Cassiopeia into a constellation, her body
arranged in an undignified position: on her back, feet in the air.
(See also Andromeda, Cepheus, Ethiopia, Medusa, Nereids [the], and
Poseidon.)

CECROPS Cecrops was known as the first king of Athens and its territory,
Attica, which in his time was called Cecropia. He was reputedly
autochthonous—literally being born from the earth—and hybrid in form,
his lower body being that of a snake. As the first king, he was also regarded
as a culture hero responsible for acknowledging Zeus as the supreme deity,
instituting monogamy and funeral rites, ending human sacrifice, introducing
the alphabet, and uniting the region’s communities as a city. When the gods
each decided to take possession of a city, Athena and Poseidon both
famously laid claim to Athens. By some accounts, Zeus appointed Cecrops
as judge in the contest between the two gods, but by others, it was all the
Olympian gods or even Cecrops’s short-lived son Erysichthon who made
the decision. Poseidon struck the rock of the Acropolis with his trident,
producing a salt spring, symbol of what would be the city’s power at sea.
Athena, for her part, caused an olive tree to grow. It was the olive that was
judged the most valuable gift, and the olive indeed became a mainstay of
the Athenian economy. As a result of her victory over Poseidon, Athena
became patron deity of the city and named it Athens after herself.
(See also Acropolis [the], Athena, Athens, Attica, Olympus [Mount],
Poseidon, and Zeus.)
CELEUS Celeus (or Keleos) was a legendary king of Eleusis who was
greatly rewarded for the hospitality that, upon the urging of his daughters,
he offered to the goddess Demeter as she, in the guise of an old woman,
wandered the earth in search of her daughter, Persephone. While in Celeus’s
palace, Demeter became nurse to the king’s infant son, Demophoon, whom
she attempted to make immortal by anointing him with ambrosia and
placing him in the embers of a fire. Celeus’s wife, Metaneira, saw her child
in the flames and cried out, afraid for the life of her son. Demeter then
revealed herself as a goddess and instructed the Eleusinians to build her a
temple at Eleusis; she herself would then instruct the populace in the rituals
to perform there. Celeus wisely acquiesced, thus becoming founder of the
Eleusinian Mysteries.
(See also Demeter, Demophoon, Eleusis, and Persephone.)

CEPHALUS Cephalus was the husband of Procris, an Athenian princess,

and was himself the son of Deion, a king of Phocis. Cephalus was abducted
by Aurora, goddess of the dawn, but as he was clearly miserable being
separated from his wife, Aurora released him. Tragedy ensued since
Cephalus, prompted by Aurora, had become jealous of his bride and made
trial of her faithfulness. He found her deficient, she fled, they were
reconciled, and he later killed her by accident.
(See also Aurora and Procris.)

CEPHEUS There were several heroes by the name of Cepheus in Classical

mythology. The best known of these appears to have been the father of the
princess Andromeda, whom the hero Perseus rescued from sacrifice to a sea
monster. This Cepheus was married to Cassiopeia, whose offense against
the Nereids nearly cost the life of her daughter. Although he was generally
known as a king of Ethiopia, he was also reported to have been a Persian, a
Babylonian, or a Phoenician, according to Herodotus, Hellanicus, and
Pausanias, respectively. Cepheus named Andromeda and Perseus’s son
Perses his heir. After their deaths, Cepheus, his wife, Cassiopeia, and his
daughter, Andromeda, all became constellations.
The lesser-known Cepheus was a king of Tegea, the most important city
in Arcadia. This Cepheus joined Jason and the Argonauts in their quest for
the Golden Fleece, and participated with the hero Meleager in the hunt for
the Calydonian boar. As the mythographer Apollodorus reports, the hero
Hercules asked Cepheus to join him in his vengeful march against Sparta.
Cepheus initially declined, fearing an attack on Tegea in his absence, but
Hercules gave Cepheus’s daughter Sterope a lock of Medusa’s hair as a
safeguard for the city. Although the city remained safe, Cepheus himself
perished in the Spartan conflict.
(See also Andromeda, Arcadia, Argonauts [the], Babylon, Calydon,
Cassiopeia, Ethiopia, Hercules, Jason, Medusa, Meleager, Nereids [the],
Perseus, and Sparta.)

CEYX Ceyx was a son of Hesper, the evening star (or of Lucifer, the
morning star), and became king in Trachis, a Thessalian city in the
Spercheius Valley. Ceyx was known for having granted asylum to Hercules,
who had accidentally killed a kinsman of the Calydonian king Oeneus, his
host, and had departed Calydon in self-imposed exile. It was on their way to
Trachis that Hercules and his wife, Deianeira, had their fateful encounter
with the Centaur Nessus, an encounter that would lead to Hercules’s death
by suicide soon thereafter. As for Ceyx, his own life was filled with tragedy.
His son Hippasus participated in Hercules’s campaign against Oechalia and
was killed in battle. His brother’s daughter Chione was raped by Hermes
and Apollo in succession and, having been impregnated by both gods, bore
twins: Autolycus, a dishonest schemer like his father, Hermes, and
Philammon, expert at singing and playing the lyre like his father, Apollo.
Chione, swollen with pride over her divine offspring, boasted that she was
more beautiful than the goddess Diana, for which sin Diana shot an arrow
through her tongue, causing a wound that extinguished her voice and life
alike. In despair, her father flung himself from the cliffs of Parnassus,
though mid-flight, the gods transformed him into a hawk. As the Roman
poet Ovid recounts, troubled over his brother’s mysterious fate, Ceyx
resolved to travel by sea to consult an oracle at Claros in Ionia for
illumination, but he lost his own life in stormy seas. His wife, Alcyone, had
begged him not to go and prayed endlessly to Hera for his safe return, not
knowing what had happened. Hera sent Morpheus, the god of dreams, to
appear to Alcyone as Ceyx and reveal the truth of her husband’s tragic end.
When Alcyone ran to the sea and found her husband’s floating corpse, the
gods transformed them both into kingfishers, seeing to it that their seven
days of nesting in winter, the so-called Halcyon Days, would be marked by
calm seas.
(See also Alcyone, Apollo, Calydon, Centaurs [the], Deianeira, Diana,
Hera, Hercules, Hesper, Morpheus, Nessus, Oeneus, Parnassus [Mount],
and Thessaly.)

CHRYSEIS Chryseis played a pivotal role in the course of the Trojan War
and the fate of Achilles. She was the daughter of Chryses, a priest of
Apollo. Having been taken captive by the Greeks, she was given to King
Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, as war prize and concubine. When her
father later came to the encampment of the Greeks offering generous
ransom for her return, Aga-memnon refused on the grounds that he
preferred her to his own wife, Clytemnestra. Chryses prayed to Apollo for
assistance, and the god answered his prayers by sending a deadly plague to
decimate the Greeks. The seer Calchas was consulted, and he responded
that the remedy was Chryseis’s return. A grievous quarrel between
Agamemnon and Achilles ensued, for Agamemnon insisted that if he was
compelled to give up Chryseis, he would take Achilles’s prize Briseis as
compensation. Agamemnon did take Briseis, causing Achilles, the Greeks’
best warrior, to withdraw from the fighting, at least for a time.
(See also Achilles, Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Apollo, Briseis, Calchas,
Clytemnestra, Mycenae, and Troy.)

CHRYSOTHEMIS Chrysothemis was one of the children of Aga-memnon,

king of Mycenae, and his wife, Clytemnestra. Chrysothemis’s sister
Iphigeneia was sacrificed by Agamemnon to the goddess Artemis when the
ships of the Greeks were unable to set sail for Troy from Aulis. Her other
siblings, Orestes and Electra, avenged their father’s murder at the hands of
Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. In the tragedian Sophocles’s play
Electra, Chrysothemis is sympathetic to her sister Electra’s keen desire for
revenge but is unwilling to help execute a plot for vengeance on the
grounds that she and her sister are merely women and thus inherently too
weak.
(See also Agamemnon, Aulis, Clytemnestra, Electra [heroine],
Mycenae, Orestes, and Troy.)

CINYRAS Cinyras was a legendary king of Cyprus. In mythology he had

strong ties with Aphrodite, whose temple he was said to have built on the
island of Cyprus and whose worship he reputedly established there. He was
also known as founder of the Cypriot city of Paphos. Accounts of his
origins are conflicting. According to the Roman poet Ovid, he was a son of
Paphos, the daughter of Pygmalion and his statue-wife, Galatea. Other
authors, however, claim that he hailed from Assyria or Cilicia, among other
places, with Eos (“Dawn”) and Tithonus being his ancestors. Unbeknownst
to him, Cinyras became the father of Adonis, and to his horror, the mother
was his own daughter Myrrha (or Smyrna, according to some sources).
Myrrha had many suitors, but she refused them all, since none was as noble
as her father. Though she tried to fight it, her passion for Cinyras grew
stronger daily. The only way to escape this base love, she thought, was to
hang herself. Myrrha’s nurse prevented her from committing suicide,
however, and helped to sneak her into her father’s bed. When Cinyras, at
last, discovered the crime in which he had been complicit, he drew his
sword, and Myrrha fled. For nine months she traveled through Arabia to the
distant land of the Sabaeans, and with her baby due, she fell into despair,
calling upon the gods to help her in some way. She asked to be transformed,
as she was a source of pollution both to the living and to the dead. Her
prayers were answered, and she became a precious myrrh tree. Her
endlessly streaming tears became myrrh’s fragrant resin, and from her bark
emerged the beautiful baby Adonis, with whom Aphrodite would fall in
love.
(See also Adonis, Aphrodite, Cyprus, Eos, Galatea, Myrrha, Paphos,
Pygmalion, and Tithonus.)

CLEOBIS The Greek historian Herodotus records the miraculous tale of

the brothers Cleobis and Biton. The story is preserved in an account of the
Athenian statesman Solon’s visit to the fabulously wealthy Croesus, king of
Lydia. Croesus was surprised when he asked Solon whom he considered the
most fortunate of men and the answer was not “you, Croesus.” Solon
responded that this distinction fell to a certain Tellus, a man of adequate
means who had fathered fine children, witnessed the birth of grandchildren
to all his children, and met a glorious death in the service of his city. Solon
deemed Cleobis and Biton, two brothers from the city of Argos, to be the
second most fortunate. These brothers were not only strong but noble. On
the occasion of a festival in honor of the goddess Hera, their mother,
Cydippe, a priestess of that goddess, needed to be conveyed to the
goddess’s temple in a timely manner. When her oxen could not be found,
her sons yoked themselves to her heavy cart and pulled it a great distance
(45 stadia, approximately 4.5 miles, or 7,000 meters) to the temple. To the
rejoicing of the populace, she arrived in time and prayed before the statue
of Hera that, in compensation for their pious act, her sons receive the
greatest possible reward. When the youths thereafter fell asleep on the
temple’s floor, they did not wake again, having met their end at the moment
of their greatest glory. Consequently, the people of Argos dedicated statues
of them at Delphi as being the best of men. Solon concluded his moralizing
tale with the summary remark to Croesus that no man could be counted
happy or fortunate until one knew how he met his end.
(See also Argos, Delphi, Hera, and Lydia.)

CLYTEMNESTRA Clytemnestra (variously spelled also as Clytaemnestra

or Clytaemestra) was a daughter of the Spartan king Tyndareus and Leda.
Her siblings were the beautiful Helen of Troy (and Sparta) and the Dioscuri,
Castor and Pollux. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, murdered her first
husband, Tantalus, son of Thyestes, subsequently taking her as bride.
Motherhood marked the beginning of Clytemnestra’s tragedy. To
Agamemnon, Clytemnestra bore Iphigeneia (also called Iphianassa), Electra
(also called Laodice), Chrysothemis, and Orestes. When the assembled
Greek forces were unable to set sail for Troy, being stayed by adverse
winds, the Greeks, beset by hunger and disease, consulted the seer Calchas
in search of a remedy, and he revealed that the goddess Artemis was
responsible: the goddess was angered by Agamemnon’s accidental killing
of a deer that had been sacred to her. The terrible remedy for the Greeks’
predicament, Calchas pronounced, was the sacrifice of Iphigeneia to
Artemis. Agamemnon sent for Iphigeneia, doing so by resorting to a ruse:
he made it known to Clytemnestra that Iphigeneia was to wed Achilles at
Aulis. For his treachery as well as for this dreadful deed, Clytemnestra
never forgave Agamemnon, and upon his return from Troy, she stabbed him
to death in the bath. Clytemnestra also murdered Cassandra, Agamemnon’s
concubine, whose presence in the palace offended her, underscoring as it
did the faithlessness of her husband. Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus
were, in turn, slain by Orestes, who had been prompted by the god Apollo
to avenge the death of his father. In Aeschylus’s tragedy the Eumenides, it is
Athena who ultimately absolves Orestes of matricide.
(See also Achilles, Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Apollo, Artemis, Aulis,
Calchas, Cassandra, Chrysothemis, Electra, Eumenides [the], Iphigeneia,
Leda, Mycenae, Orestes, Tantalus, Theyestes, Troy, and Zeus.)

CLYTIE The maiden Clytie had been one of the sun god Helios’s lovers.
When the god turned his attentions to Leucothoe, daughter of the Persian
king Orchamus, she was heartbroken and revealed the affair to Orchamus.
In anger at his daughter’s indiscretion, Orchamus buried Leucothoe alive.
As the Roman poet Ovid writes, Helios attempted to disinter and revive her,
but was too late. The grief-stricken god then sprinkled nectar on her body
and the ground, and a precious shrub of frankincense grew from the place
where her body had been. As for Clytie, who had hoped that Helios would
again direct his attentions toward her, she waited in vain, watching the
course of the sun for nine days and nights under an open sky without eating
or sleeping. She became rooted to the ground, her body transformed into a
flower, a heliotrope, that would continue always to turn her face toward the
sun.
(See also Apollo and Helios.)

CORONIS There were several heroines by the name of Coronis and

various stories about each of them. The best-known Coronis was a daughter
of the Thessalian king Phlegyas, and became the mother of the healing god
Asclepius. The travel writer Pausanias preserves two versions of her story.
The first of these explains why Epidaurus was especially sacred to
Asclepius. King Phlegyas, as it happened, was a warlike king who made
frequent forays into neighboring lands to steal others’ crops and cattle.
When, on one occasion, he traveled to the Peloponnese in order to learn
whether that region’s inhabitants, too, were warlike, he brought Coronis
with him. Unbeknownst to her father, Coronis was pregnant by the god
Apollo, and when they arrived at Epidaurus, she bore a son (Asclepius), and
exposed him on a mountain. Asclepius, however, was nursed by goats that
ranged the mountain and was guarded by a herdsman’s dog. Eventually the
herdsman himself came upon the baby but did not move him, recognizing,
when lightning flashed from the child, that he was in the presence of
divinity. According to the second version of Asclepius’s birth, Coronis,
while pregnant with Apollo’s child, was unfaithful to the god with a young
man named Ischys, with whom she had fallen in love. For infidelity to her
brother, Apollo, the goddess Artemis shot Coronis with her arrows, but
Hermes snatched the unborn child from Coronis’s body as it burned on the
funeral pyre.
(See also Apollo, Artemis, Asclepius, Hermes, and Thessaly.)

CREON The name Creon means “Ruler,” and there were two significant
rulers of this name in Classical mythology. One was a regent of Thebes and
brother of Jocasta, wife of Oedipus. Creon’s wife was Eurydice, and his
children included Haemon, the betrothed of Antigone; Megara, the ill-fated
wife of Hercules; and Menoeceus, who was named after his grandfather
(Creon’s father) and sacrificed himself for Thebes. Creon repeatedly served
as ruler of Thebes. He became that city’s regent after the death of Laius;
again when Oedipus departed from Thebes and his sons, Eteocles and
Polyneices, were still too young to rule; and yet again upon the death of
Eteocles and Polyneices at each other’s hands. In the tragedian Sophocles’s
plays Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus, Creon is depicted as a dark
character. When, after Oedipus’s departure from Thebes, Eteocles and
Polyneices turned against each other, Creon attempted to keep power for
himself by seeking Oedipus, who had wandered to Attica as an exile
accompanied by Antigone; it had been prophesied that retention of power
depended on possession of Oedipus, so both Creon and Polyneices went in
search of him. Creon resorted to subterfuge and force to accomplish his
end, but was prevented from seizing Oedipus by the Athenian king Theseus.
After both Polyneices and Eteocles had died, Creon proclaimed a sentence
of death for anyone attempting to bury his nephew Polyneices. When it was
revealed that his own niece Antigone had attempted this, he refused to
relent, even when faced with a good argument: divine law dicatated that
family members must bury their dead. As a result, he lost both Antigone
and his son, Haemon, both of whom committed suicide.
Another Creon was ruler of Corinth. He is known primarily for having
welcomed Jason and Medea to his city once the pair had wrought their
deadly vengeance on Pelias, king of Iolcos. Creon offered his daughter
Creusa (or Glauce, as some sources call her) to Jason in marriage, a fact
that Medea could not stomach. Medea gave her children a poisoned robe
and headdress to give to Creusa as wedding gifts. When Creusa tried these
on, she burst into flame, and Creon, too, perished, becoming stuck to her
poisoned garments, when he attempted to help her.
(See also Antigone, Athens, Attica, Corinth, Creusa, Eteocles, Eurydice
[heroine], Haemon, Hercules, Iolcos, Megara [heroine], Menoeceus,
Oedipus, Pelias, Polyneices, Thebes, and Theseus.)

CRESPHONTES Cresphontes was a third-generation descendant of

Hercules. When Cresphontes, his brother Temenus, and the sons of their
dead brother Aristodemus, Procles and Eurysthenes, were faced with
dividing control of the Peloponnese between them, the decision was made
by drawing lots. Cresphontes favored Messenia and secured his first choice
by resorting to a ruse: three lots designating the territories of Argos, Sparta,
and Messenia were put in a pitcher of water. Two of the lots, those for
Argos and Sparta, were made of fired clay, while the third, for Messenia,
was unfired and dissolved in the water. Cresphontes asked to draw his lot
last, thus ensuring that the lots for Sparta and Argos, which were not
dissolved, were necessarily drawn before it came time for his turn.
Cresphontes’s rule was short-lived, however, as he and his two eldest sons
were killed in a revolt led by a man called Polyphontes, who subsequently
married Cresphontes’s wife, Merope, and made himself king. Cresphontes’s
youngest son, Aepytus, ultimately avenged his father’s death with help from
his mother and thus gained control of the kingdom.
(See also Aepytus, Argos, Hercules, Merope [heroine], Messenia
[place], and Sparta.)

CREUSA There were several characters by the name of Creusa. One was a
daughter of Praxithea and Erechtheus, a king of Athens. This Creusa was
pursued and impregnated by Apollo. After bearing the god’s son, Ion, she
hid the baby in a cave under the Acropolis. At Apollo’s instruction, the god
Hermes brought the infant Ion to Delphi, where he became a priest. As for
Creusa, she later wed Xuthus, a son of Hellen. Since they remained
childless, Xuthus traveled to Apollo’s oracle at Delphi seeking a remedy.
There Xuthus was told that he could claim as his son the first person he
should meet upon leaving the sanctuary. That person happened to be Ion.
Not knowing Ion’s true identity, a jealous Creusa nearly succeeded in
poisoning him, but recognition between mother and son took place in time.
Another Creusa, who is called Glauce in some sources, was the daughter
of King Creon of Corinth. She became betrothed to Jason, and a jealous
Medea engineered her gruesome death.
A third Creusa was the Trojan wife of Aeneas, who became separated
from Aeneas, their son Ascanius, and her father-in-law, Anchises, when
they were fleeing Troy as a family. When Aeneas realized that she was
gone, he turned to rush back into the burning city, but the ghost of Creusa
appeared to him and urged him to carry on to Italy, where he was destined
to become a king and find a new wife.
(See also Acropolis [the], Aeneas, Anchises, Apollo, Ascanius, Athens,
Corinth, Creon, Delphi, Erechtheus, Hellen, Ion, Jason, Medea, Troy, and
Xuthus.)

CYCNUS There were several heroes by the name of Cycnus in Classical

mythology. One of them was a son of the war god Ares. Cycnus made a
career of robbing pilgrims on their way to Delphi by challenging them to a
chariot race that he would always win. He beheaded the losers and
decorated his father’s temple with their skulls. The hero Hercules would
prove to be the undoing of Cycnus. With the help of his chariot driver
Iolaus and of Athena, Hercules won the race and slew Cycnus. According
to the mythographer Hyginus, Hercules consequently came to blows with
Ares himself, and the two had to be separated by a lightning bolt hurled by
Zeus.
Another Cycnus was a distant cousin of Phaethon’s, according to the
Roman poet Ovid. When Phaethon, while driving Helios’s chariot, was
killed by Zeus, Cycnus, a king of Liguria, wandered through the woods and
along rivers, lamenting until his voice was nothing but a shrill strain and he
himself had become a swan.
A third Cycnus was a son of the god Poseidon and the nymph Calyce.
He ruled as king in Colonae, a city in the vicinity of Troy. In the Roman
poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the invincible Cycnus, an ally of the Trojans,
is savagely struck on the head repeatedly and strangled by Achilles,
frustrated at his numerous unsuccessful attempts to kill his adversary. When
Achilles, thinking Cycnus dead, attempts to strip his armor from him, he
finds the armor empty save for a swan.
(See also Achilles, Ares, Athena, Delphi, Helios, Hercules, Phaethon,
Poseidon, Troy, and Zeus.

CYDIPPE Cydippe was a priestess of the goddess Hera and proud mother
of Cleobis and Biton, who would be remembered as among the most
fortunate of all men. After her sons had accomplished a deed not only
virtuous but requiring enormous strength, Cydippe prayed to Hera that they
should receive the greatest possible reward. Consequently, when Cleobis
and Biton fell asleep in Hera’s temple, they did not wake again.
(See Cleobis and Hera.)

CYRENE According to the historian Diodorus Siculus, Cyrene was the

daughter of Hypseus, a son of the river god Peneus. Apollo caught sight of
her in the wilds of Mount Pelion and took her away to Libya, where he
founded a city named after her. At that place, Cyrene gave birth to the
culture hero Aristaeus, who taught humans the arts of beekeeping and
agriculture.
(See also Apollo, Aristaeus, Cyrene [place], Pelion [Mount], and Peneus
[god and place].)

DAEDALUS Daedalus was a skilled sculptor and inventor—by some

accounts, he was the first of these. His parents are variously recorded as
Eupalamus (or Palamon), son of Metion, with Alcippe or as Metion, son of
Erechtheus, with Iphinoe, in all cases indicating Daedalus’s direct descent
from the Athenian king Erechtheus. According to the mythographer
Apollodorus, Daedalus fled from Athens to Crete as he had been found
guilty of murdering his sister Perdix’s son Talus. While on the island of
Crete, Daedalus constructed a hollow wooden cow into which Pasiphae,
King Minos’s wife, could crawl in order to satisfy her passion for a bull that
Poseidon sent to Crete by way of punishing Minos. Daedalus subsequently
constructed the labyrinthine lair that housed Pasiphae’s child by the bull,
the human-eating Minotaur. Minos later held Daedalus and his son Icarus
captive, and so as to engineer their escape, Daedalus constructed wings
made of feathers and wax. Icarus, however, flew too close to the sun, and he
fell to his death in the sea. Daedalus, for his part, made his way safely to
Sicily. Minos came to Sicily in pursuit of Daedalus, and flushed him out by
means of a stratagem: he offered the Sicilian king Cocalus a prize for
passing a thread through a spiraling shell, a near-impossible task that only
someone with Daedalus’s ingenuity could accomplish. When Cocalus
succeeded, Minos knew that Daedalus was behind it. Minos now demanded
Daedalus’s surrender, but, in defense of Daedalus, Cocalus’s daughters
killed the Cretan king.
(See also Athens, Crete, Erechtheus, Icarus, Minos, Minotaur [the],
Pasiphae, and Sicily.)

DANAE Danae was the daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, and Eurydice
(or Aganippe). When she reached childbearing age, her father, Acrisius,
confined her in an impenetrable structure—according to some accounts in
an underground chamber and according to others, a tower. This Acrisius did
in hopes of avoiding the fulfillment of a prophecy that his grandson would
kill him. However, the god Zeus was able to penetrate the enclosure in the
form of a stream of gold and impregnated Danae, who later gave birth to a
son, Perseus. Wishing to rid himself of the child without bloodshed,
Acrisius ordered his daughter and her baby to be placed in a chest and cast
out to sea. The chest and its precious contents arrived safely on the island of
Seriphus, where it was discovered by a kindly fisherman named Dictys.
This fisherman’s brother, Polydectes, king of the island, wished to marry
Danae, and contrived to rid himself of Perseus, now a youth, by sending
him to fetch the head of the Gorgon Medusa. Perseus accomplished his task,
turned Polydectes to stone by exposing him to Medusa’s severed head, and
designated Danae and Dictys regents of the island. According to the Roman
poet Virgil, Danae eventually left Seriphus and returned to Argos, only later
to immigrate to Italy, where she founded Ardea. The Trojan Aeneas’s great
rival, Turnus, king of the Rutulians, was descended from her and had Ardea
as the seat of his kingdom.

(See also Acrisius, Aeneas, Argos, Dictys, Eurydice [heroine], Gorgons

[the], Medusa, Perseus, Polydectes, Rutulians [the], Seriphus, Troy, Turnus,
and Zeus.)

DANAIDS, THE The Danaids were the fifty daughters of Danaus, a king
of Libya who, later in life, became king of Argos in Greece, to which place
he had fled with his family. The Danaids are collectively best known for
having murdered their husbands on their wedding nights at their father’s
behest. In the afterlife, the Danaids were compelled to collect water with
perforated containers, their labor being an eternal punishment. Two of the
Danaids were particularly notable: Hypermnestra, the only one of the sisters
to refuse to kill her husband, and Amymone, who was pursued and
impregnated by the god Poseidon.
(See also Amymone, Argos, Danaus, Hypermnestra, and Poseidon.)

DANAUS The Egyptian king Belus was the father of twin sons, Danaus
and Aegyptus, by Anchinoe, a daughter of the Nile. To Danaus he entrusted
the rule of Libya, and to Aegyptus, Arabia. Upon Belus’s death, the
brothers quarreled over division of their father’s kingdom, and when
Aegyptus proposed that his fifty sons should marry Danaus’s fifty
daughters, the so-called Danaids, in order to consolidate their power,
Danaus suspected ulterior motives. His daughters in tow, Danaus fled to
Argos in the Peloponnese. By some accounts, Danaus subsequently became
king of Argos, displacing the sitting king, doing so because a wolf’s killing
of the community’s prize bull was interpreted as an omen in his favor.
Whatever the reason, Danaus ultimately agreed to the marriage of his
daughters to his brother’s sons, but he instructed the brides to kill their
husbands on their wedding nights. All but one of them obeyed, this being
Hypermnestra, who spared her husband for his respectful treatment of her.
The Danaids buried their husband’s heads on the acropolis of Argos and
their bodies at Lerna, and, according to the mythographer Apollodorus, they
were purified of blood guilt by the gods Hermes and Athena. Danaus later
took measures to marry off his daughters again, instituting a race in which a
competitor’s performance would dictate choice of bride: the winner would
have first choice, the runner-up second, and so on. In spite of reputedly
having been absolved of guilt in this life, the Danaids were punished in the
afterlife, being compelled eternally to fetch water in containers that drained
as quickly as they filled.
(See also Aegyptus, Argos, Athena, Belus, Danaids [the], Hermes,
Hypermnestra, and Lerna.)

DAPHNE Daphne, whose name means “laurel,” was the daughter of

Peneus, god of the river Peneus in Thessaly. Exceedingly lovely, Daphne
had many suitors, but preferred to spend her days a virgin huntress like the
goddess Artemis. Among her suitors, however, was the god Apollo, who
would not be denied. The Roman poet Ovid vividly tells of their encounter.
Apollo, filled with pride over slaying Python, the dragon that guarded the
oracle at Delphi, mocked the god Cupid, saying that his arrows were merely
a child’s toys. To prove Apollo wrong, Cupid turned his arrows on Apollo
and Daphne: Apollo was struck by an arrow that inflamed him with passion,
and Daphne with one that inspired flight. Catching sight of the maiden,
Apollo set off in hot pursuit, pleading his case by recounting his divine
parentage, his powers, and his real estate. But the faster Apollo pursued, the
faster Daphne fled until, exhausted, she begged her father, Peneus, to save
her from the god. Thus, when Apollo finally reached her, she was
transformed into the tree that bears still her name: she became rooted in
place, her body enclosed in bark. Her hair now leaves and her arms graceful
branches, the god loved her still and made her his sacred tree. From that day
forward, Apollo would wear a wreath of bay laurel, and the laurel would
become a potent symbol of prophecy, purity, poetry, music, healing, and
victory, as such having great importance in the daily lives of the Greeks and
Romans.
A less known version of the story is told by the poet Parthenius and
travel writer Pausanias, according to whom Cupid played no part. Instead,
Daphne’s transformation occurred as a result of Apollo’s jealousy over her
having become close with Leucippus, a son of Oenomaus, king of Pisa.
Leucippus, enamored of Daphne but knowing that she wanted nothing to do
with men, had disguised himself as a maiden so as to gain her confidence.
His ruse was exposed, when Daphne and her other maiden friends went to
swim, all but Leucippus taking off their clothes voluntarily. The maidens
then viciously attacked Leucippus, and Apollo set off in pursuit of Daphne.
(See also Apollo, Artemis, Cupid, Delphi, Leucippus, Oenomaus,
Peneus [god and place], Python, and Thessaly.)

DAPHNIS Daphnis was a legendary Sicilian herdsman who, according to

the historian Diodorus Siculus, was the inventor of bucolic or pastoral
poetry and song. He was a son of Hermes and a nymph who bore him (or,
by some accounts, exposed him) in a dense grove of sweet bay laurel
(daphne) from which he derived his name. The Greek poet Parthenius
writes that a particular nymph fell in love with him, and told him always to
remain faithful to her or he would lose his vision. He resisted temptation for
a long time but eventually fell victim to desire for a princess who had
offered him too much wine. As a consequence, he was blinded. The Roman
author Aelian adds that it was for this princess that Daphnis sang the first
pastoral song. In the Idylls of Theocritus, however, Daphnis dies of love at a
young age, and is widely lamented.
(See also Hermes and Sicily.)

DARDANUS Dardanus was an ancestor of the Trojans, who are sometimes

referred to as Dardanians as an indicator of their heritage. According to the
mythographer Apollodorus, Dardanus was a son of Zeus and Electra, a
daughter of Atlas. His parentage is known differently to Homer, however,
who writes that he was the most beloved son of Zeus by a mortal woman.
Dardanus was variously said to have arrived in the territory by Mount Ida
from Arcadia via Samothrace or from Italy. When he arrived, that territory
was ruled by Teucer, son of the river Scamander and of a nymph Idaea, and
its inhabitants were called Teucrians after their king. Teucer welcomed
Dardanus and offered him both a part of his lands and the hand of his
daughter, Batia (or Bateia). On his newly acquired land he built a city at the
foot of Mount Ida, and upon Teucer’s death, he called the whole country
Dardania. With Battia he became father to Ilus and Erichthonius, later father
of Tros (after whom Troy was named).
(See also Arcadia, Atlas, Electra [nymph], Erichthonius, Ida [Mount],
Ilus, Scamander River [the], Teucer, Tros, Troy, and Zeus.)

DEIANEIRA The princess Deianeira was the daughter of King Oeneus of

Calydon and his wife, Althea. The god Dionysus, however, is also cited as
her father. Her brothers were Tydeus and Meleager, both tragic figures in
their own right. Deianeira, for her part, unwittingly lived up to her name,
which means “husband-killer.” Hercules successfully wrestled the river god
Achelous to win her hand, thus fulfilling a promise that he had made to the
ghost of Deianeira’s brother Meleager, which he had encountered while
fetching Cerberus from the Underworld. Since Hercules later killed one of
his father-in-law’s kinsmen by accident, he and Deianeira departed Calydon
in voluntary exile and, in the course of their journey, came to the Evenus
River. There they found the Centaur Nessus, who offered to carry Deianeira
across the river’s strong currents, but while Hercules was making the
crossing, Nessus attempted to rape Deianeira. Hercules felled the Centaur
with one of his lethal arrows, which had been dipped in the monstrous
Hydra’s toxic venom. Before he breathed his last, Nessus convinced
Deianeira to take a vial containing a sample of his blood, which, he
claimed, could be used as a love potion to ensure that she would never lose
Hercules’s love. When, after a successful military campaign against King
Eurytus of Oechalia, Hercules sent home the king’s daughter Iole to be his
concubine, a jealous Deianeira doused a tunic for Hercules with the
Centaur’s blood. This tunic burned Hercules’s flesh, causing him to end his
life with the help of the hero Philoctetes, and Deianeira, in horror at the
unintended outcome of her actions, killed herself as well.
(See also Althea, Calydon, Centaurs [the], Cerberus, Dionysus, Eurytus,
Hercules, Hydra of Lerna [the], Iole, Meleager, Nessus, Oeneus,
Philoctetes, Tydeus, and Underworld [the].)

DEIDAMIA Deidamia was one of the seven daughters of King Lycomedes

of Scyros. While Achilles was in hiding at Scyros among the princesses,
Dei-damia became pregnant by him. After Achilles left for Troy, she gave
birth to a son, Neoptolemus, who would later follow his father to join the
Greek forces at the end of the Trojan War. After the death of Achilles and
upon his return to Greece, Neoptolemus gave Deidamia to the Trojan seer
Helenus as bride.
(See also Achilles, Helenus, Lycomedes, Neoptolemus, Scyros, and
Troy.)

DEMOPHOON Demophoon was the son of Celeus, king of Eleusis, and

his wife, Metaneira. In the course of her wanderings in search of
Persephone, the goddess Demeter—disguised as a mortal—came to the
palace of Celeus. Demeter was welcomed into the household and employed
as nurse for the king’s infant son, Demophoon. The goddess anointed
Demophoon with ambrosia and, at night, placed him in the embers of a fire
in an effort to make him immortal. When Metaneira observed this, she cried
out in fright, and the angered goddess let the child fall. The goddess then
revealed her full divinity and ceased to act as Demophoon’s nurse. While he
did not become immortal, he grew to have a godlike appearance.
(See also Celeus, Demeter, Eleusis, and Persephone.)
 PLATE V

Daphne: Daughter of Peneus, god of the river Peneus

DEUCALION Deucalion was a son of the second-generation Titan god
Prometheus, and his wife, Pyrrha, was a daughter of Prometheus’s brother
Epimetheus and Pandora. The Roman poet Ovid tells the best-known tale of
their adventures. When Zeus, horrified at the depravity that he had
witnessed among humans, decided to flood the earth to erase all traces of
humanity, Deucalion and Pyrrha alone survived, doing so by chance or, as
mythographer Apollodorus suggests, because Prometheus had helped them.
In any event, the boat that carried them came to rest on the peak of Mount
Parnassus, which protruded from the vast sea that now covered the surface
of the earth. The pious couple, grateful to be safe, sacrificed to the local
nymphs and to Themis, whose oracle was nearby. Zeus was moved by the
sight of them alone, two innocent people known for kindliness and fairness,
and caused the flood waters to recede. The couple then prayed to Themis to
help them in their dire circumstances. The goddess’s oracle responded that
they should throw their mother’s bones over their shoulders. Pyrrha refused,
as this would be a sacrilege, but Deucalion knew that Themis would not ask
a taboo of them. He reasoned correctly that Gaia, the Earth herself, was
their mother, and that her bones were the stones lying on the ground. The
two cast stones over their shoulders, and from the stones sprang the current
race of people, durable like the stones from which they originated. The
stones thrown by Pyrrha became women, and those by Deucalion, men.
(See also Epimetheus, Gaia, Pandora, Parnassus [Mount], Prometheus,
Pyrrha, Themis, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

DICTYS Dictys was a fisherman and the twin brother of Polydectes, a king
of the island of Seriphus. The two were the offspring of Aeolus, god of the
winds, and a water nymph. It was the kind-hearted Dictys who rescued the
princess Danae and her baby son Perseus when, having been cast into the
sea in a chest, they washed ashore on Seriphus. Dictys was said to have
protected mother and child, raising the latter as a fisherman. Polydectes,
meanwhile, had taken an interest in Danae and attempted to force her to
marry him. Once Perseus had slain the Gorgon Medusa, he took vengeance
on Polydectes by using the Gorgon’s severed head to turn the king into
stone. With Polydectes dead, Dictys became regent of Seriphus.
 (See also Aeolus, Danae, Gorgons [the], Medusa, Perseus, Polydectes,
and Seriphus.)

DIDO Dido, also called Elissa, was the legendary founder of the city of
Carthage. Her dramatic story is told by the Roman poet Virgil in his epic
the Aeneid. Dido’s husband, Sychaeus, had been murdered for his riches by
her brother, Pygmalion, the king of Tyre in Phoenicia. For this reason, Dido
fled, taking with her a group of people who, like her, loathed or feared
Pygmalion. When they arrived on the Libyan coast, Dido purchased land on
which to build the city of Carthage, which was actively under construction
when Aeneas arrived on the same shores. Up to this point, Dido had
remained faithful to her beloved, deceased husband, having refused a
marriage proposal from the African king Iarbas. Now, however, Dido
became the victim of the goddess Venus’s stratagems, and Cupid was sent
to inflame her with passion for Aeneas. Dido welcomed Aeneas and his
band of Trojans into the city and became romantically involved with
Aeneas, under the misapprehension that their relationship was a marriage.
When Aeneas, without a word of warning, made preparations to leave, a
distraught Dido—now fully aware of the cost to her reputation and her city,
which had ceased to grow and thrive—confronted him. However, Aeneas,
having received a reminder from the gods that it was his destiny to carry on
to Italy, remained steadfast in his intent to leave. As the Trojan ships set
sail, Dido instructed her sister Anna to build a pyre for the purposes of
burning Aeneas’s armor and the bed upon which she had lain with him.
This act, she said, would release her from the clutches of this desperate
love. What Anna did not guess, was that Dido would climb onto the burning
pyre herself and plunge a sword into her breast. Before the spirit left her,
Dido uttered a curse upon Aeneas and the future Romans, his descendants;
the Carthaginian Hannibal, Dido’s avenger, would later fulfill that curse and
march upon Italy. As the funeral pyre blazed, the goddess Juno, who had
loved Dido, ordered Iris to cut a lock of hair from the queen’s head, thus
releasing her soul to travel to the Underworld.
(See also Aeneas, Carthage, Cupid, Iris, Juno, Pygmalion, Rome,
Sychaeus, Troy, Underworld [the], and Venus.)
DIOMEDES There were two significant heroes by the name of Diomedes.
One was the son of Tydeus, son of the Calydonian king Oeneus, and
Deipyle, a daughter of Adrastus. This Diomedes participated in the
Epigoni’s war of vengeance against Thebes, in his case wishing to avenge
the death of his father, Tydeus, who had joined the Seven Against Thebes.
Diomedes later fought at Troy, being one of the bravest there of the Greeks.
In the course of the Trojan War, he wounded Aphrodite when she tried to
save her son Aeneas. In that war, Diomedes also wounded the god Ares,
exchanged armor with the Lycian Glaucus on the basis of family ties,
accompanied Odysseus on a spying mission, was wounded by Paris,
assisted Odysseus both in fetching Philoctetes from Lemnos and stealing
the sacred statue of Athena called the Palladium, and joined Odysseus and
others in concealing themselves in the belly of the Trojan Horse. Unlike
Odysseus and others, Diomedes’s return voyage from Troy to Greece was
uneventful.
Another Diomedes was king of the Bistones, a warlike people of Thrace.
As his eighth Labor, Hercules was sent by Eurystheus to bring him
Diomedes’s infamous mares: Diomedes fed them human flesh. After killing
Diomedes himself, Hercules fed the king to his horses, who then were cured
of their taste for such unnatural food. According to the mythographer
Hyginus, Eurystheus released the mares when Hercules brought them to
him, and they subsequently perished on the slopes of Mount Olympus,
where they were eaten by wild beasts.
(See also Adrastus, Aeneas, Aphrodite, Ares, Athena, Calydon, Epigoni
[the], Eurystheus, Glaucus, Hercules, Lemnos, Lycia, Odysseus, Oeneus,
Olympus [Mount], Paris, Philoctetes, Seven Against Thebes [the], Thebes,
Thrace, Troy, and Tydeus.)

DIRCE Dirce, wife of Lycus, regent of Thebes, was most famous for the
punishment that she underwent for mistreating her husband’s niece Antiope
while Lycus kept her imprisoned. When Antiope later escaped, she was
fortuitously reunited with her sons, Zethus and Amphion, whom she had
believed dead. The stalwart youths killed Lycus (or drove him from the
kingdom) and fastened Dirce to a bull that dragged her to her death. The
mythographer Apollodorus reports that Dirce’s body was cast into the
spring that thereafter bore her name.
(See also Amphion, Antiope, Lycus, Thebes, and Zethus.)

DORUS Dorus was a son of the nymph Orseis and Hellen, eponymous
ancestor of all the Greeks, according to the mythographer Apollodorus.
Dorus’s brothers were Xuthus and Aeolus. When Hellen divided Greece
among his sons, Xuthus received the Peloponnese; Dorus received the land
opposite the Peloponnese (by Mount Parnassus), calling the settlers Dorians
after himself; and Aeolus received Thessaly, subsequently naming the
inhabitants Aeolians. The Dorians, with the help of the descendants of
Hercules (the Heraclids), ultimately invaded the Peloponnese and took
control of Argos, Sparta, Messenia, Megara, and Corinth.
(See also Aeolus, Argos, Corinth, Hellen, Hercules, Megara [place],
Messenia, Parnassus [Mount], Thessaly, and Xuthus.)

DRYOPE Dryope was a daughter of Eurytus, king of Oechalia, in

Thessaly. Famed for her beauty, Dryope was pursued and impregnated by
the god Apollo and, subsequently, was married to Andraemon. According to
the Roman poet Ovid, Dryope brought her baby Amphissus with her when
picking flowers to make garlands for the nymphs. While at a particular lake
surrounded with myrtle thickets, she picked a handful of crimson lotus
flowers to give to her son. But the lotus bled, for it had only recently been
the Naiad nymph Lotis. In fear over her accidental transgression, Dryope
prayed and made an offering to the nymphs—too late, for she became
rooted to the ground, her body was enclosed in bark, and her once lovely
hair was only leaves. She too was now a lotus. Ovid’s lotus is deeply
problematic to identify botanically, though scholars have speculated that it
was the jujube or Ziziphus lotus, which neither is aquatic nor does it have
red or even prominent flowers.
A different, later variant of Dryope’s story is preserved by the
mythographer Antoninus Liberalis. His Dryope was a daughter of Dryops
(“Man of Oak”), and she was loved by Apollo, who, in order to gain access
to her, changed himself into a tortoise that she found and put into her lap.
The tortoise became a serpent, and in this form, Apollo impregnated her.
Dryope subsequently gave birth to Amphissus, but she was later abducted
by the Hamadryad (tree) nymphs with whom she had once kept company.
At the place of her abduction the nymphs caused a black poplar and a
spring to appear. As for Dryope, they made her a nymph.
(See also Apollo, Eurytus, Hamadryads [the], Lotis, Naiads [the], and
Thessaly.)

ELECTRA Electra was a daughter of King Agamemnon of Mycenae and

his wife, Clytemnestra. Her siblings were Orestes, Iphigeneia, and
Chrysothemis. Electra is best known from the tragedies of Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides. While Electra was still a child, her sister,
Iphigeneia, was sacrificed by Aga-memnon in order to appease the goddess
Artemis, who was preventing the Greeks from sailing to Troy. For this act
Clytemnestra would never forgive her husband and, having taken up with
Aegisthus in Agamemnon’s absence, plotted her revenge: upon
Agamemnon’s return, Clytemnestra killed him while he was in the bath. In
the meantime, Electra (or someone else) had sent away the infant Orestes
for his own safety. Electra, for her part, was either kept prisoner in the
palace or, according to Euripides, had been given to a peasant farmer in
marriage. Grown to manhood, Orestes returned to Mycenae and, effecting a
reunion with his sister, avenged himself on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus,
killing them. In Euripides’s version of the tale, a bloodthirsty Electra played
an active part in the killing of her mother, and she ultimately wed Orestes’s
trusty companion Pylades.
The mortal Electra is to be distinguished from the Electra who was a
daughter of Oceanus and another who was one of the Pleiades.
(See also Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Artemis, Chrysothemis,
Clytemnestra, Electra [nymph], Iphigeneia, Mycenae, Oceanus [god],
Orestes, Pleiades [the], Pylades, and Troy.)

ELECTRYON Electryon was a king of Mycenae and son of the hero

Perseus and the Ethiopian princess Andromeda. He himself was the father
of Alcmena and, consequently, the grandfather of Hercules, Alcmena’s son
by Zeus. Electryon was accidentally (or in the course of a quarrel) slain by
his son-in-law Amphitryon.
(See also Alcmena, Amphitryon, Andromeda, Ethiopia, Hercules,
Perseus, and Zeus.)

ENDYMION The mythographer Apollodorus recounts two versions of

Endymion’s parentage: he was a son of Zeus’s son Aethlius and Calyce, a
daughter of Aeolus, or he was a son of Zeus himself. Endymion became a
king of Elis in the Peloponnese, and by some accounts was that city’s
founder. As Endymion was extraordinarily handsome, the moon goddess
Selene fell in love with him and, over time, bore him fifty children. Selene
approached Zeus, asking him to allow Endymion to choose his fate, and
what Endymion chose was to fall into an eternal slumber, remaining both
ageless and deathless. Among the variants of this story is one told by the
Greek poet Hesiod: as a favorite of Zeus, Endymion was allowed to select
the manner of his own death, but when he made advances on the goddess
Hera, he was consigned to Hades.
(See also Aeolus, Hades [place], Hera, Selene, and Zeus.)

EPAPHUS Epaphus was the son of Zeus and Io, daughter of the river god
Inachus. When Io, in the form of a cow, was forced to wander far and wide,
she came to the banks of the Nile in Egypt, where Zeus, by a touch of his
hand, restored her to human form. There, according to the tragedian
Aeschylus, she bore a son named Epaphus, who would rule the fertile land
of Egypt. The mythographer Apollodorus adds that Hera instructed the
Curetes to make off with him but that when Zeus heard this, he killed the
Curetes. Io, for her part, went looking for Epaphus and found him at the
court of the king of Byblos in Syria, where he was being nursed by the
queen. Epaphus eventually married Memphis, daughter of the river god
Nile, and named the city of Memphis, which he had founded, after her. With
Memphis, Epaphus became father to a daughter, Libya, after whom the
country of Libya was named. Among Epaphus’s descendants was Danaus,
whose fifty daughters killed the fifty sons of his brother Aegyptus.
(See also Aegyptus, Curetes [the], Danaus, Hera, Inachus, Io, Libya, and
Zeus.)

EPEUS Epeus (or Epeios and Epius) was named by the Roman poet Virgil
as creator of the Trojan Horse, and he was among the Greek warriors who
hid in its belly.
(See also Troy.)

EPIGONI, THE The Epigoni (“Descendants”) were the sons of the Seven
Against Thebes, the seven captains and their followers who marched
against the city of Thebes in order to back Oedipus’s son Polyneices’s claim
to the throne. All of the seven captains died in that disastrous effort apart
from Adrastus, the expedition’s leader. Later, the seven captains’ sons, the
Epigoni, banded together to avenge the deaths of their fathers by launching
a second expedition against Thebes. The Epigoni’s leader was Alcmaeon,
whose mother, Eriphyle, had been bribed to convince a reluctant
Amphiaraus to join the Seven. The Epigoni were successful in their effort,
and Polyneices’s son Thersander became regent of Thebes.
(See also Adrastus, Alcmaeon, Amphiaraus, Eriphyle, Oedipus,
Polyneices, Seven Against Thebes [the], Thebes, and Thersander.)

ERECHTHEUS Erechtheus was the grandson of Erichthonius, with whom

he was sometimes confused, and one of the legendary early kings of
Athens. According to the tragedian Euripides, Erechtheus was a son of
Pandion and brother of Butes. Erechtheus married Praxithea, and with her
became father to three sons, whose names were Cecrops, Pandorus, and
Metion, and to a number of daughters, the best known of whom were
Procris, Orithyia, and Creusa. Erechtheus was victorious in a conflict with
Eleusis, securing this victory by sacrificing one of his daughters. In the
course of this conflict, Erechtheus killed Poseidon’s son Eumolpus, leader
of the enemy forces, and as retribution for this, Poseidon struck Erechtheus
dead with his trident. Xuthus, one of Erechtheus’s sons-in-law, chose
Cecrops as Erechtheus’s successor to the rule of Athens.
(See also Athens, Cecrops, Creusa, Erichthonius, Orithyia, Poseidon,
Procris, and Xuthus.)

ERICHTHONIUS Erichthonius, whose name is a combination of the

Greek words for wool (erion) and earth (chthon), was an early king of
Athens born of Athena and Hephaestus. The unusual story of his birth is
told in detail by the mythographer Apollodorus. When, on one occasion,
Athena visited He-phaestus in order to ask him to make her new armor, the
god fell in love with her and hobbled in pursuit. When Athena fell,
Hephaestus attempted to embrace her, but Athena fought him off and wiped
his semen from her thigh onto the ground with her woolen robe. From this
semen grew Erichthonius, who was autochthonous, his tale underscoring
the Athenians’ belief that they themselves were an autochthonous people.
Wishing to make the infant Erichthonius immortal, Athena placed him in a
chest with a serpent and gave the chest to the daughters of Cecrops for
safekeeping, with a strict injunction not to open its lid. Curiosity got the
better of them, however, and when they opened the lid, they were shocked
to discover a serpent wound around a baby. The snake either killed the
daughters of Cecrops, or they went mad at the sight and threw themselves
to their death from the Acropolis. Erichthonius was raised on the Acropolis
by Athena and ultimately became king of Athens. As regent he instituted
the Panathenaia, an Athenian festival in honor of Athena. According to an
alternate tradition, Erichthonius himself was half serpent, having a serpent’s
tail. When the lid of the chest was raised, he took shelter beneath the shield
of Athena.
The Athenian Erichthonius is to be distinguished from another hero of
that name who was a king of Dardania and an ancestor of the Trojans. He
was a son of Dardanus and a daughter of Teucer, both important figures in
the early history of Troy. His brother was Ilus, and upon the latter’s death,
Erichthonius became Dardania’s king. Erichthonius would become the
father of Tros, who gave his name to the Trojans, and would become
extraordinarily wealthy, owning a herd of 3,000 wondrous horses.
(See also Acropolis [the], Athena, Athens, Cecrops, Dardanus,
Hephaestus, Ilus, Teucer, and Troy.)

ERIPHYLE Eriphyle was the wife of the seer Amphiaraus and proved
herself to be the epitome of greed and faithlessness. Since Eriphyle had
successfully settled a dispute between Amphiaraus and his brother
Adrastus, the brothers agreed to abide by all her decisions in the future. It
happened that Polyneices, Oedipus’s son, later asked Adrastus and
Amphiaraus to join the army he was raising to displace his brother Eteocles
as regent of Thebes. Amphiaraus was not keen to comply, since he had
foreseen the death of all who joined the expedition, apart from Adrastus.
Polyneices bribed Eriphyle with the splendid necklace of his great-great-
great-grandmother Harmonia, and she prevailed upon her husband to join
Polyneices. As he had predicted, Amphiaraus was killed in the conflict.
Eriphyle was subsequently approached by Thersander, Polyneices’s son, to
convince her sons Alcmaeon and Amphilochus to join those marching
against Thebes to seek vengeance for the death of their fathers. She again
succumbed to a bribe, which this time was Harmonia’s robe, and convinced
her sons to join this new war effort. When Alcmaeon returned home, he
killed his mother, whose spirits (the Erinyes) consequently pursued him.
(See also Adrastus, Alcmaeon, Amphiaraus, Erinyes [the], Eteocles,
Harmonia, Oedipus, Polyneices, Thebes, and Thersander.)

ERYSICHTHON Erysichthon was a king and a godless man. As the

Roman poet Ovid writes, Erysichthon scorned the gods and refused to make
offerings at their altars. His hubris was so great that he chopped down an
ancient oak tree in a grove sacred to the goddess Ceres. In the process, he
killed a man who attempted to stop him, lopping off the man’s head with his
axe. Erysichthon did not stop hacking at the tree, even when a voice
emanated from it calling for retribution: the voice belonged to the Dryad
nymph who inhabited the tree, her life ebbing from her with every blow.
Even this did not stop him, so Ceres summoned the goddess Famine, who
took possession of him. Nothing now could sate his limitless hunger. He
eventually resorted to selling his daughter to raise money for more food, but
as she had the ability to change her shape at will, she repeatedly escaped
enslavement. With nothing else left to eat, Erysichthon ate himself.
This Erysichthon is to be distinguished from the son of the Athenian
king Cecrops, about whom little is known.
(See also Athens, Cecrops, Ceres, and Dryads [the].)

ETEOCLES Eteocles was the brother of Polyneices, both of them being

sons of Oedipus and his wife, Jocasta. His sisters were Antigone and
Ismene. When a blind and disgraced Oedipus left Thebes, Polyneices and
Eteocles had agreed to share the kingdom, each of them ruling alternately
for a year. Eteocles assumed the kingship first and, after the passage of his
first term, refused to step down. This prompted Polyneices to raise an army,
led by the so-called Seven Against Thebes, to depose Eteocles. The seven
captains were Adrastus, Amphiaraus, Capaneus, Tydeus, Hippomedon,
Parthenopaeus, and Polyneices himself. Apart from Adrastus, all met their
end in the conflict, Eteocles and Polyneices having died at each other’s
hands. Thebes’s new regent, Creon, allowed Eteocles, as ostensible
defender of the city, to be buried, but denied burial to Polyneices. It was
Antigone’s burial of Polyneices that led to her own death.
(See also Adrastus, Amphiaraus, Antigone, Capaneus, Ismene, Jocasta,
Oedipus, Parthenopaeus, Polyneices, and Thebes.)

EUMAEUS The story of Eumaeus is told in Homer’s Odyssey. Eumaeus

was a prince by birth but had been kidnapped and sold as a slave to Laertes,
king of Ithaca, whom he served faithfully as the royal swineherd. Eumaeus
later served Laertes’s son Odysseus as well. Upon Odysseus’s return to
Ithaca from Troy after a twenty-year absence, Eumaeus received him
hospitably, although he did not initially recognize him. In his kindness and
humble generosity, Eumaeus was the polar opposite of the goatherd
Melanthios, who had formed an allegiance with the awful men attempting
to win the hand of Odysseus’s wife, Penelope. In contrast to Eumaeus,
Melanthios insulted and kicked Odysseus, believing him only to be a
worthless beggar.
(See also Ithaca, Laertes, Odysseus, Penelope, and Troy.)

EUROPA Europa was the daughter of Agenor, king of Tyre (or Sidon) in
Phoenicia, and his wife Telephassa. Her brothers were Phoenix, Cilix, and
Cadmus, who would become the founder of Thebes. Zeus developed a
passion for her, and, having transformed himself into a gentle, lovely white
bull, he approached her at the seashore. Taken with his beauty and unafraid,
Europa placed garlands on him and eventually climbed up onto his back.
Then the bull-god sped across the sea to Crete, where Europa bore Minos,
Sarpedon, and Rhadamanthus. Agenor, meanwhile, had sent Europa’s
brothers to find her, telling them not to return without her. All ultimately
gave up and founded settlements where they ended their search. Europa
eventually wed the Cretan prince (or king) Asterius, who brought up her
sons as his own.
(See also Agenor, Cadmus, Crete, Minos, Rhadamanthus, Sarpedon,
Sidon, Thebes, and Zeus.)

EURYALUS There were several heroes by the name of Euryalus. In

Virgil’s epic the Aeneid, Euryalus was the young companion of Nisus, both
of whom had accompanied Aeneas to Italy from Troy. Euryalus was so
young and so precious to his mother that she had made the journey to Italy
with him. Euryalus’s bravery and youthful indiscretion together led to his
tragic death. With Nisus he volunteered to leave the Trojan camp which, at
the time, was besieged by Italians, and to go find Aeneas, who had gone to
recruit auxiliary forces. Once outside the camp, Nisus and Euryalus became
carried away with bloodlust and slaughtered many of the sleeping enemy.
Stripping the armor from one of the slain warriors and putting it on was
Euryalus’s undoing: the plundered helmet, reflecting light from the moon,
was spotted by the enemy, and Euryalus was taken captive. Although Nisus
risked his own life trying to save his young friend, both were slain.
(See also Aeneas, Nisus, and Troy.)

EURYCLEIA Eurycleia, whose name means “wide-spreading fame,” had

been the nurse of Odysseus and had later also become the nurse of
Odysseus’s son, Telemachus. Even when Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, did
not do so, Eurycleia recognized Odysseus, who had been away from his
kingdom in Ithaca for twenty years, doing so on the basis of a scar that he
had received in a boar hunt while a young man. Odysseus urged Eurycleia
to keep his identity secret until he could punish Penelope’s suitors, who had
been consuming all the palace’s resources.
(See also Ithaca, Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus.)

EURYDICE There were several mythological characters by the name of

Eurydice. One Eurydice was the wife of Creon, who became regent of
Thebes after the death of Oedipus. She committed suicide upon the death of
her son Haemon, who had taken his life in grief over the suicide of his
fiancée, Antigone.
Another Eurydice was the daughter of Lacedaemon, namesake of the
territory of Sparta, and mother, by Acrisius, of Danae, whom Zeus
impregnated taking the form of a shower of golden rain.
These two mortal Eurydices are to be distinguished from the nymph of
the same name who was married to Orpheus and was pursued by him into
the Underworld.
(See also Acrisius, Antigone, Creon, Danae, Eurydice [nymph],
Haemon, Nymphs [the], Oedipus, Orpheus, Sparta, Thebes, Underworld
[the], and Zeus.)

EURYSTHEUS Eurystheus was a mythical king of Argos or, according to

variant traditions, of Mycenae and Tiryns. It was in service to Eurystheus
that Hercules performed his famous Twelve (or Ten) Labors, a situation that
the goddess Hera had engineered. When Alcmena, whom Zeus had
impregnated, was on the verge of giving birth to Hercules, Zeus made it
known to Hera that a son of his blood would soon be born and would have
an expansive kingdom. Hera, jealous of Zeus’s dalliance with Alcmena,
protracted Alcmena’s labor, thereby causing Alcmena’s son Hercules to be
born after Eurystheus, who happened to be a descendant of Zeus through
the hero Perseus. Later, driven mad by Hera, Hercules killed his wife
Megara and his children. Hercules then went to consult the oracle at Delphi,
which proclaimed that he should go the court of Eurystheus and, over the
course of twelve years, perform whatever labors the latter imposed. As a
consequence, the oracle continued, Hercules would achieve immortality.
Eurystheus’s death, which occurred after Hercules had completed the
Labors, is variously reported: he was either killed by one of Hercules’s sons
or executed at Alcmena’s wishes.
(See also Alcmena, Argos, Delphi, Hera, Hercules, Megara [heroine],
Mycenae, Perseus, Tiryns, and Zeus.)

EURYTUS Eurytus was a king of Oechalia, a place of uncertain location.

According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Eurytus, an expert archer,
gave instruction to a young Hercules in the art of archery. After completing
his Labors, Hercules, wishing to marry, learned that Eurytus was offering
his daughter Iole to the man who could defeat him and his sons in an
archery contest. Hercules did prevail in this contest, but Eurytus refused to
give him Iole, fearing that Hercules would kill Iole if he married her; as
Eurytus was aware, Hercules had killed his first wife and children in a fit of
madness. Hercules later brought an army to attack Oechalia, killed Eurytus
and his sons, vanquished the city, and took Iole captive. Driven by jealousy
of Iole, Hercules’s new wife, Deianeira, doused Hercules’s cloak with what
she thought was a love charm given to her by the Centaur Nessus. But it
was not a love charm; rather, it was a poison that burned Hercules’s flesh.
In Homer’s Odyssey, it was the bow of Eurytus with which Odysseus
killed the suitors of his wife, Penelope, since, in his absence from Ithaca,
they had been eating him out of house and home and had treated his family
outrageously. Homer also records a different version of Eurytus’s death: he
was killed by Apollo in punishment for having challenged the god to a
contest in archery.
(See also Apollo, Centaurs [the], Deianeira, Hercules, Iole, Ithaca,
Nessus, Odysseus, and Penelope.)

EVANDER The travel writer Pausanias reports that Evander, who became
an important ally to Aeneas and his Trojan comrades when they came to
Italy, was the child of a nymph and the god Hermes. Being the wisest man
and the best fighter among the Arcadians of Greece, he had been sent to
establish a colony in Italy. He founded a city called Pallantium on what
would later be called the Palatine Hill, one of the Seven Hills of Rome. The
god of the Tiber River appeared to the hero Aeneas in a dream, urging him
to seek Evander’s aid, which the aged king readily gave: he sent his son,
Pallas, and a contingent of men to join the Trojan forces, and Aeneas
promised to watch over Pallas as he would his own son. It happened that
when Aeneas went to visit Evander, he and his people were celebrating
Hercules’s victory over the monstrous Cacus.
(See also Aeneas, Arcadia, Cacus, Hercules, Hermes, Pallas, Rome,
Tiber River [the], and Troy.)

EVENUS Evenus was the father of Marpessa. When the hero Idas made off
with her, Evenus drove his chariot in pursuit. But when it came clear to him
that he could not catch Idas, he killed both himself and his horses.
(See also Idas and Marpessa.)
GANYMEDE Ganymede was the handsome young son either of the Trojan
king Laomedon or of the Trojan king Tros, from whom the city of Troy’s
name is derived. Ganymede became the cup-bearer of Zeus, having been
carried to Olympus by Zeus’s eagle, or as the Roman poet Ovid writes, by a
love-struck Zeus himself in the guise of an eagle, his sacred bird.
Ganymede’s father was despondent over the abduction of his son, and Zeus
offered him compensation by way of a special gift. This gift was variously
identified in ancient sources as a pair of beautiful mares or a golden
grapevine. Ganymede himself was said to have been transformed into the
constellation Aquarius after his death.
(See also Laomedon, Olympus [Mount], Tros, Troy, and Zeus.)

GLAUCUS There were several heroes by the name of Glaucus. One of

these was a king of Corinth and was the son of Sisyphus and the second-
generation Titan Atlas’s daughter Merope. This Glaucus’s wife became
pregnant by Poseidon, and the result was the hero Bellerophon, whom
Glaucus raised as his own. According to the mythographer Hyginus,
Glaucus’s own mares devoured him at the funeral games of Pelias, former
king of Iolcos, after being defeated by Hercules’s comrade Iolaus in a
chariot race.
Another Glaucus was a fisherman who became a minor sea deity, having
been transformed by grass that he tasted. A third Glaucus was a young son
of King Minos of Crete. This third Glaucus had fallen into a large vat of
honey while chasing a mouse. According to the mythographer Hyginus, his
distraught parents consulted Apollo, who told them that a prodigy had
recently appeared and that whoever could explain it would be able to find
their son and restore him to life. This prodigy was duly located: it was a
newborn bull that changed color three times a day: first white, then red,
then black. Only one man could offer an explanation, this being the seer
Polyidus, who said that the bull was like a mulberry tree, the fruit of which
changes color while ripening from white to red and, finally, to black. The
seer located Glaucus by correctly interpreting an omen: he saw an owl
(glaux in Greek) sitting on a wine vat circled by bees. When Polyidus
subsequently declared that he could not revive Glaucus, Minos ordered him
to be buried with the boy. A snake appeared in the tomb, and Polyidus
killed it. Then another snake appeared seeking its mate, and, finding the
other dead, it returned with an herb that revived it. Polyidus used the same
herb to revive Glaucus and was amply rewarded for his efforts.
Still another Glaucus fought alongside the Trojans in the Trojan War.
With Zeus’s son Sarpedon, he was a captain of the Lycians. When he came
face-to-face with Diomedes, the two realized that they were bound by
ancestral ties of friendship established by their grandfathers, Bellerophon
and Oeneus. Honoring this bond, they did not fight each other and instead
exchanged armor.
(See also Apollo, Atlas, Bellerophon, Corinth, Crete, Diomedes,
Glaucus [god], Hercules, Iolcos, Lycia, Merope [nymph], Minos, Oeneus,
Pelias, Polyidus, Poseidon, Sarpedon, Sisyphus, Titans [the], Troy, and
Zeus.)

GORDIUS Gordius (or Gordias) was the legendary founder of the

Phrygian state and namesake of its capital, Gordium. Gordius was a poor
farmer who had only two oxen to his name, one that pulled his plow and
another that pulled his wagon. One day as he was plowing, an eagle settled
on the plow’s yoke and remained there for the duration of his work. Gordius
took this to be an omen and told his story to a girl from a local prophetic
tribe. She instructed him to return to the place of the omen’s occurrence and
there to make sacrifice to Zeus. This girl became Gordius’s wife, and
together they became the parents of Midas. Later, when the Phrygians were
engaged in civil war, Gordius was named their king, for an oracle from
Zeus had proclaimed that the first wagon driver to come their way would be
their new regent. Gordius then dedicated his wagon in the god’s temple,
securing it with a segment of cornel bark tied in a manner such that it could
not readily be untied (the so-called Gordian Knot). Another oracle foretold
that whoever should be able to untie this insoluble knot would rule all of
Asia. That person would be Alexander the Great.
(See also Midas, Phrygia, and Zeus.)

HAEMON Haemon was the son of Creon, who became regent of Thebes
after the death of Oedipus. Haemon is best known from the tragedian
Sophocles’s play Antigone as the betrothed of Oedipus’s daughter Antigone.
In that play, Haemon interceded with his father to prevent Antigone’s death
by stoning for burying her brother Polyneices, who had been declared an
enemy of the city. Being unable to convince his father to spare her, Haemon
threw himself on his sword by Antigone’s corpse.
A different tradition makes him a casualty of the Sphinx that had been
terrorizing Thebes before Oedipus solved its famous riddle.
(See also Antigone, Creon, Oedipus, Polyneices, Sphinx of Thebes [the],
and Thebes.)

HECABE Hecabe is another name for Hecuba, the wife of Priam, who was
king of Troy at the time of the Trojan War.
(See also Hecuba, Priam, and Troy.)

HECTOR Hector was the best of the Trojan warriors and leader of the
Trojan forces in the course of the Trojan War. He was a son of Troy’s king
Priam and the queen Hecuba, and his siblings included Paris, the abductor
of Helen; the prophetic twins Helenus and Cassandra; the ill-fated
Polyxena; and Troilus, who was ambushed and killed by Achilles. Hector’s
wife was Andromache, herself a princess from the Asian city Thebes.
Andromache and Hector became the parents of Astyanax, who at the end of
the Trojan War was flung to his death from the ramparts of Troy by
Achilles’s son Neoptolemus or Odysseus. Hector’s own fate was sealed
when he killed Patroclus, the close friend and companion of Achilles: it was
the desire for vengeance that drove Achilles, who had withdrawn from the
fighting, back into the fray and to seek Hector specifically. Even when
Achilles had killed Hector, his rage did not abate. Achilles fastened
Hector’s corpse to his chariot and dragged it around the walls of Troy for
days on end. To this outrage even the gods took exception. Hector’s father,
Priam, eventually went to the camp of Achilles, terrifying as that
undertaking was, and successfully retrieved his son’s body. It is with the
funeral of Hector that Homer’s Iliad ends, the hero’s blazing funeral pyre
presaging the fiery fall of Troy.
(See also Achilles, Andromache, Astyanax, Cassandra, Hecuba,
Helenus, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Patroclus, Polyxena, Priam, Troilus, and
Troy.)
HECUBA Hecuba (or Hecabe) was the wife of King Priam of Troy and the
mother of Hector, Paris, Troilus, Helenus, Polydorus, Cassandra, and
Polyxena. The Greek poet Pindar writes that while pregnant with Paris,
Hecuba dreamed that she had given birth to a fire-wielding Hecatoncheir
(“Hundred-Hander”)—or a firebrand, according to the mythographer
Apollodorus. This dream, coupled with a prophecy uttered by Cassandra,
caused her to expose her infant son Paris, who was destined to bring
destruction by fire to the city of Troy. In Homer’s Iliad, she prayed to
Athena for help to no avail and attempted to prevent Hector from risking his
life in battle with Achilles, again to no avail. In the course of the Trojan
War or in its aftermath, she witnessed the death of her husband and a
number of her children. She herself was taken captive and given as a war
prize to Odysseus. The Roman poet Ovid records that when Hecuba was
weeping over the corpse of her daughter Polyxena, she discovered the
murdered body of her son Polydorus, who she thought (and hoped) had
been safeguarded by King Polymestor of Thrace. Learning that Polymestor
had killed Polydorus for his gold, she attacked him, gouging out his eyes.
When Polymestor then set upon her in pursuit, she was transformed into a
dog and made her escape.
(See also Achilles, Athena, Cassandra, Hecatoncheires [the], Hector,
Helenus, Odysseus, Paris, Polydorus, Polyxena, Priam, Thrace, Troilus, and
Troy.)

HELEN Helen, whom the poetess Sappho describes as “the most beautiful
of all humankind,” was “Helen of Sparta” before becoming “Helen of
Troy.” There were various accounts of her birth. Her mother, Leda, a
daughter of the Aetolian king Thestius, was married to the Spartan king
Tyndareus. Helen was variously said to have been born from an egg that
Leda produced after being impregnated by Zeus in the guise of a swan or
from an egg produced by Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, who, herself
having assumed the shape of a goose, was embraced by Zeus in the form of
a swan. According to this second version, Leda found (or was given)
Nemesis’s egg and kept it safe until it hatched. Helen’s siblings were
Clytemnestra, who would become queen of Mycenae, and the divine twins
Castor and Pollux. Clytemnestra, Castor, and Pollux were sometimes said to
have emerged from the same egg as Helen, or to have emerged from
separate eggs, or even to have been the children of Tyndareus, who lay with
Leda on the same night as Zeus did.
When word of Helen’s beauty spread, she was kidnapped by the heroes
Pirithous and Theseus but was rescued by her brothers, Castor and Pollux.
Later, when it was time for her to marry, Tyndareus, realizing that it would
be impossible to choose between Helen’s numerous suitors, allowed her to
make the choice. She selected Menelaus, younger brother of Agamemnon,
who through marriage became the regent of Sparta. With Menelaus Helen
became mother to Hermione, her only child, and lived happily in Sparta
until the arrival of the Trojan prince Paris, who abducted her or, by some
accounts, with whom she left willingly. Paris had come to Sparta seeking
his prize after the famous judgment in which he was asked to decide who
among the goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena was most beautiful.
Aphrodite had successfully bribed him with an offer of the most beautiful
woman in the world, which was Helen. In the wake of Helen’s departure,
Agamemnon assembled the best of Greece’s warriors. This he was able to
do, since Tyndareus had wisely called upon all of Helen’s suitors to swear
to abide by her choice and to come to the couple’s assistance should the
need arise. The Greeks fought with the Trojans for a ten-year period in
order to retrieve her. After the death of Paris in the war’s tenth year, Helen
was given to Paris’s brother Deiphobus in marriage, but the latter was
brutally murdered by Menelaus, according to the Roman poet Virgil. In
Homer’s Odyssey, Helen ultimately returned to Sparta, where she and
Menelaus hospitably received Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, who was
seeking news of his father. There was a tradition, too, that Helen and
Menelaus both had stayed for a time in Egypt on their return voyage from
Troy.
According to the Greek poet Stesichorus, Helen never went to Troy but
rather was wafted by the gods to Egypt, where Menelaus later found her. In
this variant, followed by the playwright Euripides, a phantom of Helen
accompanied Paris in her place. Among the accounts of the end of her life
are several preserved by the travel writer Pausanias: she was hanged on the
island of Rhodes or, upon her death, she joined Achilles as his bride on
White Island in the Black Sea.
(See also Achilles, Agamemnon, Aphrodite, Athena, Castor,
Clytemnestra, Hera, Hermione, Leda, Menelaus, Mycenae, Nemesis,
Odysseus, Paris, Pirithous, Pollux, Sparta, Telemachus, Theseus, Troy,
Tyndareus, and Zeus.)

HELENUS Helenus was a son of King Priam of Troy and his wife,
Hecuba, and he was said to be the twin brother of the prophetess Cassandra.
Helenus, like Cassandra, was blessed with the gift of prophecy, and Homer
calls him “best by far of the augurs.” In his capacity as seer, he foretold the
disastrous consequences of Paris’s sailing off to fetch Helen from Sparta.
He later aided the Greeks in their effort finally to defeat Troy by revealing
to them the fact that the city would not fall unless the Greeks obtained the
ancient statue of Athena called the Palladium and brought both Achilles’s
son Neoptolemus and the hero Philoctetes, bow of Hercules in hand, to
fight with them at Troy. In his epic the Aeneid, Virgil writes that Helenus
became the successor to Neoptolemus’s kingdom and had married
Andromache, his deceased brother Hector’s wife, who, like he, had been
taken captive by the Greeks.
(See also Achilles, Andromache, Athena, Cassandra, Hecuba, Helen,
Hercules, Neoptolemus, Philoctetes, Priam, Sparta, and Troy.)

HELLE Helle was a daughter of Athamas, king of Orchomenus in Boeotia,

and Nephele. Ino, Athamas’s second wife, devised a plot whereby to do
away with Helle and her brother Phrixus, who, having been born earlier
than her own children, stood to become her husband’s heirs. Ino thus caused
the realm’s stockpile of grain seed to become corrupted, with the result that
when sown, the seed failed to germinate. Athamas then sent messengers to
consult the Delphic Oracle regarding a remedy for this catastrophe. Ino,
however, compelled the messengers to report falsely that the Oracle
recommended the sacrifice of Phrixus and, by some accounts, Helle, too.
Nephele was able to save her children at the last minute, sending a golden
fleeced and winged ram to carry them away to safety. In the course of the
ram’s flight, however, Helle lost her balance and fell into the waters below,
which, thereafter, were called Hellespont, “Helle’s Sea,” and now are called
the Dardanelles.
(See also Athamas, Boeotia, Delphi, Hellespont [the], Ino, Nephele, and
Phrixus.)

HELLEN According to the Greek poet Hesiod as well as the historians

Thucydides and Diodorus Siculus, Hellen was a son of Deucalion and
Pyrrha, the sole survivors of the great flood that Zeus sent to wipe out the
human race, which he considered utterly wicked. Other sources name
Hellen’s father as the god Zeus himself. Hellen was considered to be the
ancestor of all the Greeks, who were called “Hellenes” after Hellen. The
tribes of Greece were said to be descended from his sons and grandsons:
Dorus (after whom the Dorians were named), Ion (after whom the Ionians
were named), Achaeus (after whom the Achaeans were named) and Aeolus
(after whom the Aeolians were named).
(See also Achaeans [the], Aeolus [hero], Deucalion, Dorus, Ion, Pyrrha,
and Zeus.)

HERACLES Heracles is the original Greek name for the hero Hercules.
(See Hercules.)

HERCULES Hercules was the most important and best known of all the
Greek heroes. His original Greek name Heracles means “glory of Hera,”
being a combination of the Greek word for “glory,” kleos, and the name of
the goddess Hera. Ironically, Hera’s persecution of him throughout his life,
and his perseverance in the face of extreme adversity, is how he earned his
fame. Hercules was the son of Alcmena, daughter of Electryon, a former
king of Tiryns. Alcmena was married to Amphitryon, her cousin, but she
became pregnant in Amphitryon’s absence when Zeus came to her
disguised as her husband. Amphitryon returned home shortly thereafter and
also slept with her, impregnating her a second time. When nine months had
passed, Alcmena was ready to give birth, but Zeus boasted that a
descendant of his born on that day would become king with an extensive
kingdom. Hera, jealous and angry that Zeus had once again had an affair,
protracted Alcmena’s labor so that Eurystheus, who happened to be
descended from Zeus through his grandfather Perseus, would be born
before Hercules. After Eurystheus, who would later become king of Tiryns
and Mycenae, was born, Alcmena gave birth to twins in the city of Thebes:
Hercules, the child of Zeus, and Iphicles, the son of Amphityron. As
Hercules and Iphicles lay in their crib, Hera sent serpents to kill them.
Iphicles, being a normal baby, did nothing, but Hercules leaped up and
strangled the snakes. As he matured, Hercules gained a reputation for his
strength as well as for his skill in archery and wrestling. He apparently had
less of an aptitude for music, killing his lyre teacher Linus in an outburst of
anger. Hercules was also known for having a voracious appetite both for
food and for women, reputedly sleeping with all fifty daughters of
Thespius, ruler of a neighboring kingdom, and consequently becoming the
father of a great many children. A strict chronology of Hercules’s many
exploits is difficult to establish not only because he lived a most eventful
life but also because his exploits increased in number and in their details as
they were narrated over the centuries. At one stage, Hercules became
entangled with the Minyans, who had been exacting tribute from Thebes;
gathering a group of young warriors, he attacked the Minyan city of
Orchomenos, burning the palace. As a reward for ridding Thebes of the
Minyan threat, the Theban king Creon gave his daughter Megara to
Hercules in marriage. With Megara, Hercules became the father of three (or
five) sons. In a fit of madness sent upon him by his eternal enemy Hera,
Hercules killed his children, two of his brother’s sons, and Megara as well.
Hercules left Thebes in horror over what he had done, and although having
been expiated of blood guilt, traveled to Delphi in order there to consult the
oracle of Apollo. The oracle’s pronouncement was that he should volunteer
his services to Eurystheus and accomplish whatever tasks he should set for
Hercules, this being a means of achieving immortality. This Eurystheus was
the aforementioned descendant of Zeus’s who, through the interference of
Hera, had been born just before Hercules. Hercules now accomplished his
famous Twelve Labors, which required him to travel to the far reaches of
the world: killing the invincible Nemean Lion; eliminating the multi-headed
Hydra of Lerna; capturing the Cerynitian Hind, distinguished by its golden
antlers; trapping the vicious Erymanthian Boar; cleaning the enormous
stables of Augeas; chasing away the projectile-feathered Stymphalian
Birds; capturing the flesh-eating mares of the Thracian Diomedes; fetching
the belt of the Amazon queen Hippolyta; claiming the cattle of the triple-
bodied Geryon; fetching golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides;
and bringing the hell-hound Cerberus up from the Underworld. Hercules’s
further exploits, some of which took place between individual Labors,
included his joining the expedition of Jason and the Argonauts to fetch the
Golden Fleece; ridding the future site of Rome of the dread monster Cacus;
freeing Prometheus from bondage on the Caucasus Mountains; retrieving
Alcestis, wife of Admetus, from the Underworld; rescuing the daughter of
the Trojan king Laomedon from a sea monster; attempting to steal the
Pythia’s tripod from Delphi and wrestling over it with Apollo; serving as a
slave to the Lydian queen Omphale at the behest of the Pythia; wrestling the
river god Achelous for the hand of Deianeira, who, unknowingly, would
cause his death; and killing the Centaur Nessus when the latter attempted to
abduct Deianeira. When Hercules later made Iole, princess of Oechalia, his
concubine, a jealous Deianeira gave Hercules a robe dipped in the love
potion given her by Nessus. This was not a love potion at all but rather a
poison that caused Hercules’s flesh to burn. In agony, he ascended the
Thessalian Mount Oeta and, having instructed his son Hyllus to build a
funeral pyre for him, climbed onto it. None would dare to light the pyre but
the hero Philoctetes, who bravely put the great hero out of his misery. As a
reward, Philoctetes received Hercules’s famed bow and arrow, and Hercules
himself became divine.
(See also Achelous [god], Admetus, Alcestis, Alcmena, Amazons [the],
Amphitryon, Apollo, Argonauts [the], Augeas, Cacus, Caucasus Mountains
[the], Centaurs [the], Cerberus, Cerynitian Hind [the], Creon, Deianeira,
Delphi, Diomedes, Electryon, Erymanthian Boar [the], Eurystheus, Geryon,
Hera, Hesperides [the], Hippolyta, Hydra of Lerna [the], Iole, Iphicles,
Jason, Laomedon, Linus, Lydia, Megara [heroine], Minyans [the],
Mycenae, Nemean Lion [the], Nessus, Oeta [Mount], Omphale, Philoctetes,
Prometheus, Stymphalian Birds [the], Thebes, Thessaly, Thrace, Tiryns,
Troy, Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

HERMIONE Hermione was the daughter of Helen and Menelaus, king of

Sparta, and according to Homer, she was Helen’s only child. When Helen
departed with Paris for Troy, she left her nine-year-old daughter in the care
of her sister Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon. Hermione became
betrothed to Clytemnestra’s son Orestes, but the marriage did not take
place, by some accounts because he was a matricide and was accordingly
polluted in religious and ritual terms. Hermione was later betrothed to
Achilles’s son Neoptolemus by way of bribing him to join the Greek effort
against Troy. This marriage did take place, but Hermione remained
childless. According to the tragedian Euripides’s play Andromache,
Hermione became envious of Andromache, former wife of the deceased
Trojan hero Hector, who, after the fall of Troy, had become Neoptolemus’s
concubine and had borne him children. Hermione accused Andromache of
placing a spell on her and unsuccessfully plotted her death. In the end,
Orestes appeared, killed Neoptolemus, and took Hermione away with him.
(See also Achilles, Agamemnon, Andromache, Clytemnestra, Hector,
Neoptolemus, Orestes, Paris, Sparta, and Troy.)

HERO Hero was a young priestess of the goddess Aphrodite and lived on
the European side of the Hellespont. She was in love with Leander, a youth
who lived in Abydus on the shore just opposite. Leander would visit in
secret at night, swimming the Hellespont’s treacherous waters to meet her.
Aphrodite discovered the lovers, however, and Leander perished while
swimming to meet his beloved Hero. She, in consequence, threw herself
from her tower, thus ending her own life.
(See also Abydus, Aphrodite, Hellespont [the], and Leander.)

HESIONE Hesione was a daughter of Laomedon, one of the legendary

kings of Troy, and she was rescued from sacrifice to a sea monster by
Hercules. When the hero had completed his ninth Labor, fetching the belt of
the Amazon queen Hippolyta, he came to Troy. At the time, that land was
experiencing a twofold disaster: Apollo had sent a plague, and Poseidon
had sent a sea monster that snatched up members of the populace, all of this
intended as a punishment for Laomedon. As the mythographer Apollodorus
writes, the gods had heard how evil Laomedon was and, disguising
themselves as mortal men, made trial of him by offering to build the walls
of Troy for wages. When their labor was complete, Laomedon failed to
make the requisite payment, and it was for this that he and his land were
punished. Learning from an oracle that deliverance from these problems
depended on his offering his own daughter to the sea monster, Laomedon
tied her to cliffs by the sea. It was there that Hercules saw her and offered to
save her life, but for a price: the splendid mares that Zeus had given
Laomedon as compensation for the loss of his son Ganymede. Hercules
killed the monster and saved Hesione but he, like Apollo and Poseidon
before him, did not receive payment. For this reason, Hercules later
returned to the city leading a contingent of warriors and conquered it.
Hercules took Hesione and gave her as a prize to his friend Telamon.
Hesione, for her part, ransomed her brother Priam, who would later become
king of Troy.
(See also Amazons [the], Apollo, Ganymede, Hercules, Hippolyta,
Laomedon, Poseidon, Priam, Telamon, Teucer, Troy, and Zeus.)

HIPPODAMIA There were several desirable heroines by the name of

Hippodamia, which means “tamer of horses” in Greek. One was the
daughter of Oenomaus, king of Pisa, and his queen Sterope. Either because
Oenomaus loved his own daughter, or because it had been prophesied that
his son-in-law would kill him, Oenomaus took measures to prevent her
marriage: he challenged all of her suitors to a chariot race in full confidence
that he would win, since his horses, a gift from Ares, were known to be
swifter than all others. Those who had unsuccessfully attempted to win
Hippodamia’s hand were killed, their heads suspended outside the palace as
a warning to other aspirants. Pelops, son of Tantalus, was undeterred and
resorted to trickery to defeat Oenomaus; he bribed Oenomaus’s charioteer
Myrtilus with the offer of a night with Hippodamia and half of Oenomaus’s
kingdom in exchange for removing the linchpin from the king’s chariot
wheel (or, according to another tradition, replacing it with one of wax).
When the race was underway, the compromised wheel came loose, and
Oenomaus was thrown to his death. Pelops, for his part, did not honor his
promise to Myrtilus and, instead, threw him from a cliff to his death. Before
his death, Myrtilus cursed Pelops and his many descendants, thus being the
cause of their woes. Among the children whom Hippodamia bore to Pelops
were Atreus and Thyestes, both tragic characters, and Pittheus, who would
become the grandfather of the Athenian hero Theseus.
Another Hippodamia was the bride of the Lapith king Pirithous, who
invited his neighbors, the Centaurs, to his wedding. When the Centaurs
became drunk, they attempted to abscond with Hippodamia and the other
Lapith women. As a result, a battle broke out between them, and the
Centaurs were driven from the land.
(See also Ares, Athens, Atreus, Centaurs [the], Lapiths [the], Myrtilus,
Oenomaus, Pelops, Pirithous, Pittheus, Sterope, Tantalus, Theseus, and
Theyestes.)

HIPPOLYTA Hippolyta was a queen of the Amazons, a tribe of warrior

women thought to have lived on the Thermodon River in what is now
Turkey. In the mythographer Apollodorus’s account of the Labors of
Hercules, the great hero was sent to fetch Hippolyta’s belt as his ninth
Labor. Having once belonged to the god Ares, the precious belt was
embroidered with gold, according to the tragedian Euripides, and had been
given to Hippolyta as a mark of her preeminence in war. Since Eurystheus’s
daughter Admeta desired the belt, Hercules was sent to fetch it for her, and
he departed for the Amazons’ lands with just one ship manned by a group
of his comrades. When Hercules and his men arrived, Hippolyta went to
inquire what it was that the men were seeking, and when told that it was her
belt, promised to give it to Hercules. But the goddess Hera, ever causing
trouble for Hercules, disguised herself as an Amazon and spread a rumor
that the newcomers intended to make off with their queen. In alarm, the
Amazons attacked, and in the fray, Hercules killed Hippolyta. Hercules
stripped her belt and returned with it to Greece.
(See also Admeta, Amazons [the], Ares, Eurystheus, Hera, and
Hercules.)

HIPPOLYTUS Hippolytus is best known from the playwright Euripides’s

tragedy Hippolytus. He was a son of the Athenian king Theseus and the
Amazon queen Hippolyta (or, by other accounts, Antiope). Hippolytus was
a chaste hunter and a devotee of the goddess Artemis, a fact that angered
Aphrodite, who caused Theseus’s wife, Phaedra, to fall in love with
Hippolytus. Though she tried hard to suppress her inappropriate feelings,
Phaedra did eventually reveal them to her nurse, who in turn informed a
horrified Hippolytus. Having been scorned, and her reputation beyond
repair, Phaedra hanged herself after composing a note falsely accusing
Hippolytus of having made advances upon her. Upon reading this note,
Theseus prayed to his father, Poseidon, to fulfill a wish, this being the death
of his son. Consequently, while Hippolytus was driving his chariot along
the seashore, a bull appeared from the waves, terrifying his horses.
Hippolytus was thrown and, being dragged, was fatally injured. Before he
breathed his last, the goddess Artemis appeared and assured Hippolytus that
he would not be forgotten and would be honored by maidens of Troezen in
a newly instituted coming-of-age ceremony.
(See also Amazons [the], Antiope, Aphrodite, Artemis, Athens,
Hippolyta, Phaedra, Poseidon, and Theseus.)

HIPPOMENES Hippomenes was, according to the poet Ovid, a great-

grandson of Poseidon and son of Megareus, a Boeotian king. Other sources,
however, list Megareus as one of Hippomenes’s offspring and call
Hippomenes Poseidon’s grandson. Regardless of his parentage,
Hippomenes became one of the many suitors of the lovely huntress
Atalanta. Wishing to remain a virgin like Artemis, the goddess that she
most admired, Atalanta resisted marriage for as long as possible but at last
agreed to wed whoever could outrun her. Many young men attempted this,
and all paid with their lives. Hippomenes, however, was undeterred by this
perilous challenge and prayed to the goddess Aphrodite for help. The
goddess gave him three golden apples, which, in the course of the race, he
threw one by one. Each of these Atalanta sprinted to retrieve, and fetching
the last of these cost her the race. Hippomenes thus won his bride but in his
elation forgot to thank Aphrodite for her aid. As punishment for this, he was
driven by lust to sleep with his new bride in a temple of the goddess
Cybele, violating it. Cybele, in turn, changed the lovers into lions that
henceforth would draw her carriage.
In some traditions, it was not Hippomenes but the Arcadian youth
Melanion of whom this tale is told.
(See also Aphrodite, Arcadia, Atalanta, Boeotia, Cybele, Melanion, and
Poseidon.)

HYACINTH Hyacinth (also Hyacinthos or Hyacinthus) was most often said

to be the son of the Spartan king Amyclas and Diomede, a daughter of
Lapithus, ancestor of the Thessalian Lapiths. Others who are called his
parents include the Muse Clio and the Spartan king Oebalus, father of
Tyndareus. Hyacinth was a youth of such beauty that he was pursued by the
god Apollo, the west wind Zephyr, and Thamyris, a bard of extraordinary
skill who was said to be the first mortal man ever to desire another male.
The Roman poet Ovid’s version of Hyacinth’s tragic end is the best known:
Apollo and Hyacinth were enjoying a respite from the hunt and began to
throw the discus. Apollo threw his discus first, and as Hyacinth bent to
retrieve it, the discus bounced against his head with force enough to kill
him. The travel writer Pausanias reports that it was a jealous Zephyr who,
with a gust of wind, caused this accident. Ironically, Apollo, the god of
healing, was unable to save him. Stricken with grief, Apollo caused a
flower, the hyacinth, its petals bearing marks that spelled out the cry of
mourning, to grow from the place where Hyacinth had fallen.
Hyacinth would be worshipped as a culture hero in the Hyacinthia, a
festival celebrated in his honor. From sources such as the historian
Herodotus and Pausanias, we learn that the Hyacinthia comprised ritualized
mourning for Hyacinth as well as musical performances and athletic
contents engaged in by boys and young men, a banquet and dance, a
procession of maidens, and the gift of a robe to Apollo. Hyacinth’s tomb
and cult, meanwhile, were located in Amyclae near Sparta.
(See also Apollo, Clio, Lapiths [the], Muses [the], Sparta, Thamyris,
Thessaly, Tyndareus, and Zephyr.)
HYLAS Hylas was the son of Theiodamas, king of a people called the
Dryopes, and the nymph Menodice, a daughter of Orion. According to
Apollonius of Rhodes, Hercules raised Hylas, whose father, Theiodamas,
Hercules had killed in anger over his refusal, while plowing, to relinquish
his ox. Young Hylas would become Hercules’s lover as well as his
companion on the Argo when Hercules joined Jason in the quest for the
Golden Fleece. When the Argonauts (sailors on the Argo) reached the
country of Mysia, Hylas went in search of water. Just then a water nymph,
or Naiad, spotted him, instantly smitten with his beauty. Losing all control,
she pulled him with her beneath the water’s surface to make him her
husband. A distraught Hercules went searching for the youth, and
ultimately was left behind by the Argonauts. According to the poet
Theocritus, it was not one but several nymphs that pulled a pitcher-bearing
Hylas into the water.
(See also Argonauts [the], Hercules, Jason, Naiads [the], and Orion.)

HYPERBOREANS, THE The Hyperboreans, those “beyond the north

wind (Boreas),” were a mythical people believed to live in the extreme
north, at the fringes of the known world: the Caucasus Mountains or just
beyond. The Hyperboreans’ existence was a felicitous, paradisiacal one,
and they enjoyed proximity to the gods, especially Apollo, who spent a
portion of each year in their land. According to the Greek poet Pindar, the
Hyperboreans could be reached neither by ship nor on foot, the hero
Perseus arriving among them borne on winged sandals. The poet writes also
that the Hyperboreans were celebrants of the Muses, dancing and playing
the flute and lyre in the goddesses’ honor; wore wreaths of golden laurel,
the plant most sacred to Apollo; and were not subject to illness or old age.
(See also Apollo, Boreas, Caucasus Mountains [the], Muses [the], and
Perseus.)

HYPERMNESTRA Hypermnestra was one of the fifty daughters of King

Danaus, who were collectively known as the Danaids. What distinguished
Hypermnestra from her infamous sisters is the fact that she alone refused
her father’s order to kill her husband on her wedding night: her forty-nine
sisters, on the other hand, did as their father asked, for their bridegrooms
were the sons of Danaus’s twin brother Aegyptus, who had designs on the
lands that Danaus ruled. Instead of ending his life, Hypermnestra helped her
husband, Lynceus, to flee. For her act of disobedience, Hypermnestra was
imprisoned by her father but, as the mythographer Apollodorus writes, she
was later reunited with her husband. The travel writer Pausanias, on the
other hand, records that Hypermnestra was placed on trial but acquitted by
the people of Argos. She and Lynceus became the parents of a son by the
name of Abas.
The Danaid Hypermnestra is to be distinguished from the daughter of
Thestius of the same name, who was said to be the mother of the seer
Amphiaraus.
(See also Aegyptus, Amphiaraus, Argos, Danaids [the], Danaus, and
Thestius.)

HYPSIPYLE Hypsipyle was the daughter of Thoas, a king of the island of

Lemnos. When the women of Lemnos killed the island’s male population,
Hypsipyle spared her father, Thoas, and hid him or, as the mythographer
Hyginus writes, secretly placed him on a ship that conveyed him to safety.
A year after the men’s extermination, Jason and the Argonauts appeared on
the island. Hypsipyle, who was acting regent, persuaded the other women to
welcome the men and invite them to stay. Though the Argonauts did not
stay on, Hypsipyle did become pregnant by Jason and bore him two sons.
When the other women later discovered that the former king, Thoas, was
still alive, he was put to death, and Hypsipyle was sold into slavery to
Lycurgus, king of Nemea, where she served as nurse to the king’s young
son.
(See also Argonauts [the], Jason, Lemnian Women [the], Lemnos,
Lycurgus, and Thoas.)

IASUS Iasus, a king of Tegea in Arcadia, is one of the individuals named

as father of the fleet-footed huntress Atalanta. In the Roman poet Ovid’s
well-known version of her story, her father was Schoeneus, a Boeotian
king, but for the playwright Euripides, her father was Maenalus.
(See also Arcadia, Atalanta, Boeotia, and Schoeneus.)
ICARUS Icarus was the young son of the craftsman Daedalus. It so
happened that father and son were held captive on the island of Crete by its
king, Minos, and Daedalus wished very much to find a means of escape.
However, Daedalus was faced with a particular challenge, since Minos was
lord of the seas and land, leaving only the sky as a region that offered clear
passage. Daedalus accordingly crafted wings made of feathers held in place
with wax for both himself and his son. Although Daedalus had cautioned
against it, Icarus, carried away by the wonder of this gift of flight, flew too
close to the sun. The wax in his wings melted, and the boy plummeted into
the sea that now, after him, is called Icarian. Icarus’s first and final flight is
described by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses.
(See also Crete, Daedalus, and Minos.)

IDAS Idas was a son of the king of Messenia and participated in both the
hunt for the Calydonian boar and Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece.
According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Idas claimed his bride by
unconventional means. He abducted Marpessa, daughter of Evenus, in a
winged chariot that he had received from Poseidon. Evenus drove his own
chariot in pursuit, but, realizing that he could not catch Idas, killed his
horses when he came to the river Lycormas and then leaped into the river’s
current to his death. Marpessa had also been desired by the god Apollo, and
the god, too, pursued Idas’s chariot. When Idas and Apollo came to blows,
Zeus intervened and asked Marpessa to choose between her suitors. Her
choice was Idas, a mortal like herself, and together they became parents to
Cleopatra, who would later wed Meleager.
(See also Apollo, Calydon, Evenus, Jason, Marpessa, Meleager,
Messenia, Poseidon, and Zeus.)

ILUS Ilus was the namesake of the city of Troy, which was also known as
Ilion (or Ilium and Ilios). Ilus was reputedly the city’s founder and the son
of King Tros, who gave his name to the Trojans, and Callirrhoe (“Beautiful-
Flowing”), daughter of the local Trojan river god Scamander.
(See also Scamander River [the], Tros, and Troy.)

INO Ino was a mortal woman who became divine through the providence
of the gods. As a deity, she was known as Leucothea (the “White Goddess”)
and played an important role in preserving the life of the hero Odysseus in
the course of his ten-year journey home from Troy: she provided him with a
veil that helped him stay afloat while swimming to the island of the
Phaeacians after becoming shipwrecked.
Surviving accounts of Ino’s mortal life and metamorphosis are various
and, in part, conflicting. In broad sweeps, her story is as follows. Ino was a
daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, a king and queen of the city of Thebes.
Her sisters were Agave, Autonoe, and Semele, who was impregnated by
Zeus and became mother to the god Dionysus. Upon Semele’s tragic death
by incineration, Zeus rescued the still unborn baby Dionysus and saw to it
that he was delivered to Ino and her husband, the Boeotian king Athamas,
to bring up. This fact was discovered by an ever-jealous Hera, who vented
her anger on Ino and her husband by causing Athamas, in fit of madness, to
kill his own son Learchus. A fearful Ino snatched up her remaining son
Melicertes, and with the child in her arms, flung herself from a cliff into the
sea below. According to the poet Ovid, it was Aphrodite who pitied Ino and
asked Poseidon to save mother and child by making them immortal. For the
mythographer Hyginus, it was Dionysus who saved her, moved by the
plight of the woman who had raised him.
In the course of her life as a mortal, Ino was central to several other
well-known tales. Along with her sisters, she was responsible for the
gruesome dismemberment of Pentheus, her sister Agave’s son. Pentheus
had become regent of Thebes and, when Dionysus (also called Bacchus)
arrived there in order to introduce the Bacchic rites and their benefits to the
populace, Pentheus resisted. Pentheus’s death at the hands of his own
mother and her sisters while all were in a Bacchic frenzy was his
punishment. Ino was also involved in the saga of the hero Jason’s quest for
the Golden Fleece, although more indirectly. King Athamas had, as it
happened, been married previously (or was married simultaneously) to
Nephele (“Cloud”). In the knowledge that Nephele’s children and not her
own were to inherit the Boeotian throne, Ino contrived a plot whereby the
kingdom’s store of grain seed was spoiled—by some accounts, by burning
—so that, when sown, it would not sprout. When the region’s crops
inevitably failed, Athamas consulted the Oracle of Delphi regarding a
remedy, but Ino persuaded the messengers that had been sent on this errand
to bring back a false response: Nephele’s children, Phrixus and Helle, must
be sacrificed. Although unwillingly, Athamas was prepared to do this, but
Nephele was able to save her children by placing them on the back of a
winged and golden-fleeced ram that would carry them far from the
kingdom. Only Phrixus survived the journey, arriving safely at Colchis on
the shores of the Black Sea. The Colchians welcomed him, and the region’s
king, Aeetes, gave him one of his daughters in marriage. The golden ram,
meanwhile, was sacrificed by way of thanksgiving, and its hallowed fleece
was guarded by a sleepless dragon. It was this fleece that the hero Jason
would be sent to fetch, a task that he accomplished with the help of the
sorceress Medea. As for Ino, the poet Nonnus recounts that it was in
vengeance for her evil plot against Nephele’s children that Athamas set
upon her and her children, killing one of them and causing Ino to leap into
the sea with the other.
(See also Aeetes, Agave, Aphrodite, Athamas, Autonoe, Boeotia,
Cadmus, Colchis, Delphi, Dionysus, Harmonia, Helle, Hera, Jason,
Leucothea, Medea, Nephele, Odysseus, Pentheus, Phaeacians [the],
Phrixus, Poseidon, Semele, Thebes, and Zeus.)

IO Io was the daughter of Inachus, god of the river Inachus in Argos, and
her mother is sometimes given as one of the Oceanid nymphs. Like so
many comely maidens, she caught the attention of Zeus, who pursued her.
She fled the god’s advances, but he stayed her flight and overpowered her,
covering the site of her ravishment with a cloud to conceal his infidelity.
Zeus’s wife, Hera, however, was not long deceived, suspecting that the
god’s trickery lay behind the sudden presence of a cloud in an otherwise
cloudless sky. At Hera’s approach, Zeus transformed Io into a white heifer,
but Hera, suspecting the truth, asked that the heifer be given to her, a favor
that Zeus, under the circumstances, could not deny her. As the Roman poet
Ovid tells it, Hera enlisted the hundred-eyed monster Argus to guard Io at
all times. Argus let her graze by the light of day but hobbled her at night.
Io’s distress at her misfortune was heightened by the fact that neither her
sisters nor her father recognized her until, with her hoof, she traced her
name in the sand. Finally, Zeus could not bear her suffering any longer and
sent Hermes to slay Argus. Still, Hera’s persecution of Io continued, for the
goddess sent a gadfly after her. In an effort to escape this torment, Io fled
from continent to continent and swam the seas. The Ionian Gulf and the
Bosphorus “Cow’s Passage” (also called Bosphorus “Cow’s-Foot”), both of
which she crossed, owe their names to her. She eventually made her way to
Egypt and the banks of the Nile. In sympathy for her sufferings, the Nile
beseeched Zeus to help. Io now resumed her former shape and bore to Zeus
a son called Epaphus, who, like his mother (revered now as the Egyptian
goddess Isis), became the object of worship in Egypt.
(See also Argus, Bosphorus [the], Epaphus, Hera, Hermes, Inachus,
Oceanids [the], and Zeus.)

IOBATES Iobates was a king of Lycia and father of Stheneboea, wife of

Proetus, a king of Argos. It was while the hero Bellerophon was staying at
the court of Proetus that Stheneboea conceived a passion for him. When her
advances were rebuffed by Bellerophon, she accused him of rape. Proetus
accordingly sent Bellerophon to Iobates with a letter instructing the latter to
kill him. Iobates dealt with this request by sending Bellerophon to complete
an impossible task, slaying the dread Chimaera. When Bellerophon later
returned victorious to Iobates’s palace, the king offered Bellerophon his
other daughter, Philonoe, in marriage.
(See also Argos, Bellerophon, Chimaera [the], Lycia, and Proetus.)

IOLE Iole was a daughter of King Eurytus of Oechalia. When Eurytus

made it known that he would offer his hand in marriage to anyone who
could defeat him in a contest of archery, Hercules accepted the challenge
and won. But Eurytus did not make good on his promise, and Hercules later
returned to Oechalia and took Iole by force, making her his concubine.
Iole’s presence made Hercules’s wife, Deianeira, jealous. Deianeira’s
subsequent efforts to retain Hercules’s affections led to his death.
(See also Deianeira, Eurytus, and Hercules.)

ION Ion was the eponymous ancestor of the Ionians. Ion was the stepson of
the Athenian king Xuthus, according to the playwright Euripides’s Ion. His
mother was Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, himself one of the legendary
kings of Athens. Creusa had been impregnated by the god Apollo and
abandoned her newborn son, Ion, at the site of her ravishment, which was a
cave. The infant was discovered and brought to the Temple of Apollo at
Delphi, where he was raised by priests and joined their number. When
Xuthus arrived at Delphi in order to consult the oracle regarding his
childlessness, he was told that the first person that he came upon while
leaving the precinct would be his son. The first person he saw was Ion,
whom he subsequently claimed as kin. While still at Delphi, Creusa
attempted to kill Ion, as she had been led to believe that he was Xuthus’s
son by a concubine, but mutual recognition between mother and son
occurred just in time. Ion would become king and have four sons who, in
turn, would be the progenitors of the four tribes of Athens.
Ion’s half brother was Achaeus, and his paternal uncles were Aeolus and
Dorus, all of whom would become the progenitors of the four Greek tribes
into which the Hellenes were divided: the Ionians, Achaeans, Aeolians, and
Dorians respectively.
(See also Aeolus, Apollo, Athens, Creusa, Delphi, Erechtheus, Ionians
[the], and Xuthus.)

IONIANS, THE The Ionians were one of the four tribes or groups into
which the Greeks divided themselves. The Ionians were said to have been
descendants of the Athenian king Ion and to have emigrated from Athens to
the territory on the central western coast of Asia Minor that would be called
Ionia.
(See Athens, Hellen, Hellenes [the], Ion, and Ionia.)

IPHICLES Iphicles was the twin half brother of Hercules: both he and
Hercules were sons of Alcmena, although Hercules’s father was Zeus and
Iphicles’s father was Alcmena’s mortal husband, Amphitryon. When Hera
sent serpents to kill Hercules in his crib, Iphicles reputedly was terrified,
but Hercules, demonstrating bravery and brawn even as a baby, strangled
the serpents, thus saving both himself and his brother. Iphicles would later
participate in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar and join Hercules in the
latter’s attack on Troy and the city’s king Laomedon. According to the
mythographer Apollodorus, Iphicles later joined Hercules in a campaign
against Sparta and was killed in that conflict.
 (See also Alcmena, Amphitryon, Calydon, Hera, Hercules, Laomedon,
Sparta, Troy, and Zeus.)

IPHIGENEIA Iphigeneia, whose name means “born for violence,” was a

daughter of King Agamemnon of Mycenae and his wife Clytemnestra. Her
siblings were Orestes, Electra, and Chrysothemis. When the Greeks had
assembled at Aulis to sail for Troy in pursuit of the beautiful Helen, they
were unable to do so, since the winds were unfavorable. This condition
persisted, and the men began to grow weary and starve. When the seer
Calchas revealed the cause for the Greeks’ suffering, Agamemnon, the
Greeks’ commander-in-chief, was put in a terrible spot: the cause for the
adverse winds was the goddess Artemis, who was angry over
Agamemnon’s accidental killing of a deer sacred to her, and the only
remedy was the sacrifice to Artemis of Iphigeneia. Agamemnon put the
interests of the Greeks above those of his family and sent for Iphigeneia,
making it falsely known to her and to his wife, Clytemnestra, that
Iphigeneia would wed the young Achilles at Aulis. According to the
tragedian Aeschylus, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter although she
begged for her life; in Euripides’s Iphigeneia in Tauris, however, she was
rescued at the last minute by Artemis, who substituted a deer for Iphigeneia
on the sacrificial altar. The goddess then transported Iphigeneia to the
barbarian land of Tauris on the northern coast of the Black Sea. There
Iphigeneia became Artemis’s priestess, her particular task being to ritually
prepare foreigners for human sacrifice at the hands of the Taurians. Later,
Iphigeneia’s brother Orestes, accompanied by his friend Pylades, appeared
at Tauris, seeking a particularly sacred ancient statue of Artemis at Apollo’s
command. Iphigeneia assisted Orestes in securing the statue and
successfully loading it onto a vessel bound for Greece. The goddess Athena
appeared and instructed Orestes to take the statue to Halae in Attica and to
establish a temple to Artemis there; Iphigeneia, for her part, was to be taken
to Brauron, where she would serve as a priestess of Artemis for the rest of
her days.
(See also Achilles, Agamemnon, Artemis, Athena, Attica, Aulis,
Calchas, Clytemnestra, Electra [heroine], Mycenae, Orestes, Pylades, and
Troy.)
IPHIS Iphis was a young man of humble origins. His increasingly desperate
overtures to the princess Anaxarete were repeatedly rejected by her, as a
consequence of which he hanged himself at her door. When Anaxarete
leaned out her window to watch his funeral procession, the gods who had
heeded his mother’s prayer for vengeance turned her to stone.
(See also Anaxarete.)

ISMENE Ismene was one of the children of Oedipus and Jocasta. Her
siblings were Antigone, Polyneices, and Eteocles. She is best known for her
role in the playwright Sophocles’s tragedy Antigone, in which she refuses to
join Antigone in resistance to the Theban regent Creon’s edict forbidding
burial of their brother Polyneices. Ismene’s argument is that that the sisters
are merely weak women. She is the polar opposite of Antigone, who is
brave and stubborn in the extreme, willing to risk her life for what she
believes to be right in the eyes of the gods.
(See also Antigone, Creon, Eteocles, Jocasta, Oedipus, Polyneices, and
Thebes.)

IULUS In Virgil’s epic the Aeneid, Iulus was the son of the Trojan hero
Aeneas and his first wife, Creusa. Iulus was also called Ascanius and, in a
Trojan context, Ilus. The name Iulus marked him as founder of Rome’s
Julian family, which included Julius Caesar and the Julian line of emperors.
(See also Aeneas, Ascanius, Creusa, Rome, and Troy.)

IXION Ixion was known, among other things, as the first murderer or,
alternatively, the first to murder a blood relative, for this reason becoming
one of those individuals who, after their death, were subject to eternal
punishment in the Underworld for their sins. Ixion was said to be either the
son of Antion or of the violent Phlegyas, both of whom were kings of the
Lapiths, a people who lived in Thessaly and would famously battle the
Centaurs. As for the details of Ixion’s sins, he became betrothed to Dia,
daughter of a certain Eioneus, promising but failing to deliver a generous
bride-price. When Eioneus then seized Ixion’s prized mares as collateral,
the latter agreed to pay his father-in-law in full. Instead of making payment,
however, Ixion laid a trap: a fiery pit in which Eioneus perished. According
to historian Diodorus Siculus, no person dared to purify Ixion of his blood
guilt, but, eventually, Zeus himself did so, going so far as to invite Ixion to
Mount Olympus. While enjoying the hospitality of the gods, Ixion
conceived a lust for Hera, on whom he made unwanted advances. When
Hera made this known to Zeus, the god fashioned a replica of Hera from a
cloud to ascertain the truth of his wife’s claim. Sure enough, Ixion came to
sleep with the counterfeit Hera, a cloud-woman called Nephele, and
impregnated her with Centaurus, ancestor of the Centaurs. For this crime
Zeus punished Ixion by fastening him to a flaming wheel that, bearing
Ixion, would spin eternally in the Underworld.
(See also Centaurs [the], Hera, Lapiths [the], Nephele [goddess],
Olympus [Mount], Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

JASON The hero Jason’s father was Aeson, who, as son of the Thessalian
king Cretheus, should have become the king of Iolcos. Aeson’s half-brother
Pelias, however, seized the throne. In fear for Jason, his newborn son,
Aeson made it known that the infant was dead and, in secret, brought him to
the Centaur Chiron to be raised. When Jason was of age, he set out to claim
the throne of Iolcos. On his way he came to a raging river, where he found
an old woman who wished to cross but lacked the strength. This woman,
unbeknownst to Jason, was the goddess Hera in disguise, and she rewarded
him by becoming his protector. As Jason was carrying her across the river
on his shoulders, he lost a sandal in its currents. As it happened, Pelias had
been warned by a prophecy that he was destined to lose his kingdom to a
stranger who would one day appear wearing just one sandal. Upon laying
eyes on the one-sandaled stranger, Pelias was justifiably concerned. Hoping
to dispose of the youth by a means other than murder, Pelias sent Jason to
fetch the Golden Fleece that was kept in a grove sacred to the god Ares in
the barbarian land of Colchis. Pelias’s expectation was that Jason could not
survive the journey to this distant land even if he managed to lay hands on
the Fleece. Jason assembled a crew of the bravest men that Greece had to
offer and with them, he set sail on the ship Argo, built specially for this
voyage; it was after this vessel that Jason and his men were called the
Argonauts (“sailors on the Argo”). On their way to Colchis, Jason and his
Argonauts encountered the Lemnian Women, the Harpies, and the Clashing
Rocks (Symplegades), surviving all the challenges these posed and other
dangers, too. In Colchis, the region’s king Aeetes, being reluctant to release
the Fleece, challenged Jason to complete a series of tasks sure to get the
best of the young newcomer. However, with the assistance of Aeetes’s
daughter Medea, a sorceress and priestess of Hecate, Jason completed the
tasks: yoking fire breathing oxen, plowing a field and sowing it with
dragon’s teeth, and then killing the armed warriors who sprang from the
sown seed. Jason then seized the Fleece, again with the assistance of
Medea, who lulled to sleep the dragon guarding it. Medea in tow, Jason
returned to Greece, along the way encountering the Phaeacians, Scylla and
Charybdis, and the giant Talus. In Thessaly, Medea engineered the death of
Pelias, and thereafter, she and Jason fled to Corinth, where Jason would
later seek the hand of the regent’s daughter with tragic results: the death of
his children, the death of his new bride-to-be, and the death of Creon, king
of Corinth. Medea predicted in Euripides’s tragedy Medea that Jason would
die a broken man after being struck by the ship Argo’s rotting timber.
(See also Aeetes, Aeson, Ares, Argonauts [the], Centaurs [the],
Charybdis, Chiron, Colchis, Corinth, Creon, Harpies [the], Hecate, Hera,
Iolcos, Lemnian Women [the], Medea, Pelias, Phaeacians [the], Scylla,
Symplegades [the], Talus, and Thessaly.)

JOCASTA Jocasta was the daughter of Menoeceus, a Theban noble, and

the sister of Creon, who would serve repteatedly as regent of Thebes.
Jocasta had been married to the Theban king Laius, with whom she became
mother to Oedipus. Since Laius had received a prophecy stating that his son
by Jocasta was destined to kill him, their baby, Oedipus, was left to die on
the slopes of Mount Cithaeron. Oedipus was soon found, however, and
brought to Corinth, where he was adopted by that city’s king. After Laius
was killed by Oedipus, who was ignorant of his victim’s identity, Oedipus
won the throne of Thebes by virtue of solving the Sphinx’s riddle. Oedipus
thus became the king of Thebes and took Jocasta, his mother, as bride.
Importantly, neither Oedipus nor Jocasta was aware of Oedipus’s true
identity. Jocasta bore Oedipus four children: Eteocles, Polyneices,
Antigone, and Ismene. When Jocasta learned the horrible truth of Laius’s
murder at the hands of her son and of her own incest, she hanged herself.
 (See also Antigone, Cithaeron [Mount], Corinth, Creon, Eteocles,
Ismene, Jocasta, Laius, Oedipus, Polyneices, Sphinx of Thebes [the], and
Thebes.)

LABDACUS Labdacus was the father of Laius and grandfather of

Oedipus. Labdacus himself was the son of Polydorus, the only son of
Harmonia and Cadmus, the founder of Thebes. Since Labdacus was too
young to rule when Polydorus died, Lycus, his great-uncle, ruled Thebes in
his place. When Labdacus did become king, his rule was short-lived, as he
lost his life in a boundary dispute with the Athenians. Lycus now again
became regent until being killed (or being expelled from the city) by Zethus
and Amphion.
(See also Amphion, Athens, Cadmus, Harmonia, Laius, Lycus, Oedipus,
Polydorus, Thebes, and Zethus.)

LAERTES Laertes was a king of Ithaca and, with Anticleia, the father of
Odysseus. In Homer’s Odyssey, Laertes, too old to be serving as regent, was
living on a farm far outside the city when Odysseus returned to Ithaca after
a twenty-year absence, and it was on this farm that he and his son were
reunited. After this reunion, the goddess Athena breathed strength into
Laertes so that he could fight side-by-side with his son in the battle that
ensued between Odysseus and the kinsmen of Penelope’s slain suitors.
(See also Athena, Ithaca, Odysseus, and Penelope.)

LAIUS Laius was the son of Labdacus, grandson of Polydorus, and great-
grandson of Cadmus, all of them kings of Thebes. As Laius was too young
to assume the throne upon the death of his father, Labdacus, he was placed
under the guardianship of Lycus, who ruled Thebes in his place. When
Lycus was killed by Zethus and Amphion for mistreating their mother,
Antiope, Laius was expelled from the city but took refuge at the court of
Pelops, king of Pisa. While teaching Pelops’s son Chrysippus how to drive
a chariot, Laius became enamored of him and made off with him to Thebes.
There Laius became king, and it was ostensibly in retribution for
kidnapping Chrysippus that his real troubles began. When he married
Jocasta and bore a son, Oedipus, he exposed the child since it had been
prophesied that his own son would kill him. Yet Oedipus was saved, reared
in Corinth, and later killed Laius at a crossroads without knowing his
identity. Oedipus consequently became king of Thebes and married his
mother, Jocasta, with whom he had four children: Eteocles, Polyneices,
Antigone, and Ismene.
(See also Amphion, Antigone, Antiope, Cadmus, Corinth, Eteocles,
Ismene, Jocasta, Labdacus, Lycus, Oedipus, Pelops, Polyneices, Thebes,
and Zethus.)

LAOCOON According to the Roman poet Virgil, Laocoon was a priest of

Neptune and the only one among the Trojans to suspect that the Trojan
Horse was not an offering to the goddess Minerva, as the treacherous Greek
Sinon led the Trojans to believe, but rather was a war engine to be used to
breach the walls of Troy, or else contained Greek warriors in its belly. He
hurled his spear at the horse’s belly, but there was no telltale sound. After
voicing his concerns, Laocoon proceeded to prepare a sacrifice for
Poseidon, but two enormous serpents appeared from the sea and wound
themselves around Laocoon’s two sons, killing them and their father as
well. Their terrible task complete, the serpents then took refuge in
Minerva’s temple. The horrified Trojans wrongly interpreted the gruesome
death of Laocoon and his sons as an omen signifying that Laocoon had been
wrong and that the horse was indeed a gift for Minerva. They accordingly
proceeded to pull it inside the Trojan citadel.
(See also Minerva, Neptune, Sinon, and Troy.)

LAOMEDON Laomedon was the son of Ilus, a king of Troy, and the father,
among others, of Priam, king of Troy at the time of the Trojan War;
Tithonus, beloved of the goddess Eos; Hesione; and, by some accounts,
Ganymede, who became Zeus’s cup-bearer. Laomedon is primarily known
for having cheated the gods Apollo and Poseidon out of the wages he owed
them when, either as punishment on Zeus’s part for an attempted revolt or,
as the mythographer Apollodorus writes, because they wished to see
Laomedon’s reputed wickedness firsthand, they worked for him for one
year. By most accounts, both gods were employed to build the walls of
Troy. As punishment for Laomedon’s offense, Apollo sent a pestilence and
Poseidon a man-eating sea monster to plague the region. Laomedon
discovered from an oracle that the remedy for this was to sacrifice his
daughter, Hesione, to the sea monster. When Hercules, who was passing by,
agreed to save Hesione in exchange for Laomedon’s immortal horses—a
gift to Laomedon from Zeus as compensation for the loss of Ganymede—
Laomedon again refused to make good on his promise. Hercules later
returned to attack Troy, kill Laomedon, and take Hesione. At this point
Priam became king of Troy.
(See also Apollo, Eos, Ganymede, Hercules, Hesione, Ilus, Poseidon,
Priam, Tithonus, Troy, and Zeus.)

LAPITHS, THE The Lapiths were a legendary tribe of northern Thessaly.

They are variously described as being descended from Lapithus, a son of
Apollo and a daughter of Peneus, or from Ixion. If descended from Ixion,
they would be half brothers of the Centaurs, with whom they famously
battled at the wedding of the Lapith king Pirithous. At this wedding, the
Centaurs became drunk and attempted to ravage the Lapith women. This
violent act precipitated a conflict that ended in the Centaurs’ being driven
from Thessaly. The Athenians would view the battle between the Lapiths
and Centaurs as emblematic of historical battle between the Greeks and
Persians in the Persian Wars.
(See also Apollo, Athens, Centaurs [the], Ixion, Lapiths [the], Peneus
[god], Pirithous, and Thessaly.)

LATINS, THE The Latins were an Italian people who lived in the region of
Latium. In Virgil’s Aeneid, their king is Latinus, and the Latin people
become united with the immigrant Trojans, led by Aeneas, to become the
Romans’ ancestors.
(See also Aeneas, Latinus, Latium, Rome, and Troy.)

LATINUS Latinus was king of the Latin peoples of Latium in west-central

Italy. According to the Roman poet Virgil, he was the son of the rustic god
Faunus and a nymph, and he was the great-grandson of Saturn. According
to variant traditions, he was known also as a son of Odysseus and the
sorceress Circe, or of Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, and Circe, however. In
Virgil’s Aeneid, his capital is Laurentum, a city taking its name from a
sacred laurel tree that Latinus had dedicated to Apollo when he built the
citadel. It was to this tree that a swarm of bees flew, indicating that the
princess Lavinia should marry a man from overseas. That man would be
Aeneas, but the match was one that Latinus’s queen, Amata, vehemently
opposed. Although Latinus wished for peace with Aeneas and the Trojans
who appeared on his shore, the people of Laurentum would be swept into a
conflict that he could not prevent. When Lavinia did, eventually, marry
Aeneas, Latinus became an ancestor of the future Romans and lent his name
to their language, Latin.
(See also Aeneas, Amata, Apollo, Circe, Faunus, Latium, Lavinia,
Odysseus, Rome, Saturn, and Telemachus.)

LAUSUS Lausus was the son of the Etruscan king Mezentius. In the course
of the war in Italy between the newly arrived Trojans and the Latins,
Mezentius, an ally of the Latins, was gravely wounded by the Trojan hero
Aeneas. Lausus bravely and nobly sacrificed himself to ensure his father’s
safety, protecting him with his shield from further injury. With Mezentius
safely off the battlefield, Lausus returned to the fray and was himself slain
by Aeneas, who, deeply moved by Lausus’s filial devotion, refrained from
stripping his armor as a prize. Lausus’s death prompted a grief-stricken
Mezentius to return to battle where he, too, fell by Aeneas’s sword.
(See also Aeneas, Etruria, Latins [the], Mezentius, and Troy.)

LAVINIA Lavinia was the daughter of Latinus, king of Latium, and his
wife, Amata. Prior to the arrival of Aeneas and his cohort of Trojan
refugees in Italy, she had many suitors, foremost among them Turnus, king
of the Rutulians. It was Turnus whom Lavinia’s mother, Amata, favored,
but Latinus had received a prophecy from the oracle of his father, Faunus,
that would prevent that union: on the basis of a sequence of omens, namely
the sudden appearance of a swarm of bees that settled in Laurentum’s
sacred laurel and Lavinia’s hair bursting into flames, Faunus prophesied
that strangers would come from abroad who, united with Latinus’s family,
would give him descendants of great fame. Lavinia herself, Faunus added,
would gain glory but bring war upon her people. Soon thereafter war did,
indeed, break out between the Trojans and the Latins. When the Trojans
prevailed, Aeneas made peace with the Latins, wed Lavinia, and founded
the city of Lavinium, which was named after his new bride.
(See also Aeneas, Amata, Faunus, Latins [the], Latinus, Latium,
Rutulians [the], Troy, and Turnus.)

LEANDER Leander was a youth who lived in Abydus, a town on the

Asiatic shores of the Hellespont. He was in love with a maiden by the name
of Hero, who lived in Sestos, on the Hellespont’s opposite shore. However,
their love was forbidden, since Hero was a priestess of Aphrodite, her
service to the goddess demanding chastity. For this reason, Leander swam
the strait’s treacherous waters under the cover of night, with only light from
Hero’s tower to guide him. But the lovers were discovered by the goddess,
and Leander consequently drowned while swimming to meet his beloved.
Hero, in turn, threw herself into the Hellespont’s currents in anguish over
Leander’s death.
(See also Abydus, Aphrodite, Hellespont [the], and Hero.)

LEDA Leda was the daughter of Thestius, king of Aetolia, and his wife,
Eurythemis, and her sisters were Althea, mother of the Calydonian hero
Meleager, and Hypermnestra, mother of the seer Amphiaraus. Leda married
the Spartan king Tyndareus, and with him became mother to Clytemnestra,
future queen of Mycenae, and the twins Castor and Pollux. She was
impregnated by Zeus in the guise of a swan, her child by Zeus being the
lovely Helen. By some accounts Castor and Pollux (or only Pollux) were
also Zeus’s children.
(See also Althea, Amphiaraus, Calydon, Castor, Helen, Hypermnestra,
Meleager, Mycenae, Pollux, Sparta, Thestius, Tyndareus, and Zeus.)
LEMNIAN WOMEN, THE The story of the island of Lemnos’s female
inhabitants is vividly told by the Greek poet Apollonius of Rhodes in his
account of the hero Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece. These women, as it
happened, had killed every male inhabitant of the island (but one) in the
year prior to Jason’s arrival. The women committed this mass murder in
anger that their husbands had forsaken them for their Thracian concubines.
This had occurred because the Lemnian women had neglected the rites of
the goddess Aphrodite, and as punishment, the goddess had made them
distasteful to their husbands. When Jason and his Argonauts appeared, the
women’s queen, Hypsipyle, argued persuasively that the women should
welcome these newcomers so as to rebuild their populace and to help them
defend themselves against marauding neighbors. The Argonauts enjoyed
the women’s hospitality but did not stay. The Lemnian women would later
discover that Hypsipyle had spared her father, Thoas, the island’s former
king, and for this both killed Thoas and sold Hypsipyle into slavery.
(See also Aphrodite, Argonauts [the], Hypsipyle, Jason, Thoas, and
Thrace.)

LEUCIPPUS Leucippus was a grandson of Perseus. He was the father of

Arsinoe, who was sometimes named as mother of the healing god
Asclepius, as well as of Phoebe and Hilaira, whose abduction by Castor and
Pollux (the Dioscuri) is referred to as the “rape of the Leucippides” (“rape
of the daughters of Leucippus”).
(See also Arsinoe, Asclepius, Castor, Dioscuri [the], Perseus, and
Pollux.)

LINUS The famed musician Linus may have originated as personification

of the ritual cry of lamentation ailinon, and over time, a complicated
mythology developed around him. He was called the son of Apollo and one
of the Muses, either Urania, Calliope, Terpsichore, or Euterpe, which
parentage would make him divine. However, his father was also identified
as Amphimarus, a son of Poseidon, or Oeagrus, a Thracian king, and his
mother as Psamathe, daughter of Crotopus of Argos, or Aethusa, a daughter
of Poseidon.
A version of his story preserved by the travel writer Pausanias serves to
explain Linus’s connection with lamentation: Linus’s mother, Psamathe,
had exposed him as an infant in order to avoid her father’s anger over her
pregnancy by Apollo. While in the wilds, Linus was killed by Crotopus’s
hunting dogs, for which act Apollo avenged himself upon Argos by causing
an outbreak of plague. As a remedy for the plague, the women of Argos
instituted a ritualized lament for Linus. According other traditions, Linus
was killed by the god Apollo in jealousy over his skill as a musician or,
alternatively, he became the lyre teacher of Hercules, who killed him in a fit
of rage over being reprimanded. The legendary bards Orpheus and
Thamyris were also named as pupils of Linus.
(See also Apollo, Argos, Calliope, Euterpe, Hercules, Muses [the],
Orpheus, Poseidon, Terpsichore, Thamyris, Thrace, and Urania.)

LOTUS EATERS, THE In the course of their ten-year journey home from
Troy, Odysseus and his men came to the mythical land of the Lotus Eaters.
Odysseus sent three of his men as scouts to determine what sort of people
the inhabitants of this land might be, and they were hospitably received by
the Lotus Eaters, who offered them the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus to eat.
While kind of them, this act of hospitality was in actual fact a threat, as the
lotus made those who ate of it wish to stay with the Lotus Eaters, forgetful
of their friends, family, and homecoming. Odysseus himself had to go and
forcibly tear his men away. The Greeks then set sail immediately, lest any
others be tempted by this seductive fruit.
As was the case with all the places that Odysseus visited, efforts were
made even in antiquity to identify the land of the Lotus Eaters. While there
was no consensus, the Greek historian Herodotus and others assert that the
Lotus Eaters lived on the Libyan coast. An effort was also made to identify
the lotus, with the most plausible arguments being made for fruit of the
jujube, Ziziphus lotus.
(See also Odysseus and Troy.)

LYCAON Lycaon was an infamous king of Arcadia. He was a son of

Pelasgus, namesake of the legendary aboriginal people of Greece, the
Pelasgians. His mother was Meliboea, a daughter of Oceanus, or the
mountain nymph Cyllene. By numerous wives, Lycaon was father to fifty
sons and two daughters, Dia and Callisto, who was pursued by Jupiter and
transformed into a bear. Lycaon’s own metamorphosis is dramatically
narrated by the Roman poet Ovid. Through his contempt for the gods and
wickedness, Lycaon became emblematic of humanity’s moral decline.
Jupiter came to know Lycaon’s depravity firsthand. Having heard how
badly humans were behaving, Zeus was determined to see the state of
affairs for himself. The god disguised himself as a mortal and came to the
palace of Lycaon in Arcadia. When he made it known that a god had
arrived, all present offered prayer except Lycaon, who mocked the others
for their piety. In fact, Lycaon planned to kill his divine guest in his sleep in
order to determine whether or not he was actually an immortal and, adding
worse to bad, he killed one of his hostages, serving the still-warm flesh to
Jupiter. At this outrage, the god struck the palace with lightning and turned
Lycaon into the beast he already was: a bloodthirsty wolf. On the basis of
his encounter with Lycaon, Jupiter later decided to eliminate all humans
with a great flood, which Deucalion and Pyrrha would miraculously
survive.
(See also Arcadia, Callisto, Deucalion, Jupiter, Oceanus [god], Pelasgus,
and Pyrrha.)

LYCOMEDES Lycomedes was a king of the Dolopes on the island of

Scyros. At the request of the sea goddess Thetis, who wished to prevent her
young son Achilles from being taken to fight and die at Troy, Lycomedes
hid him among his daughters. One of Lycomedes’s daughters, Deidamia,
would become pregnant by Achilles and give birth to a son, Neoptolemus.
Achilles, for his part, was discovered on Scyros by Odysseus, who tricked
him into revealing himself. When the Athenian king Theseus came to
Scyros, he was less hospitably treated: according to the biographer Plutarch,
Lycomedes became concerned that Theseus might take the kingdom from
him and hurled him from a cliff to his death.
(See also Achilles, Deidamia, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Scyros, Theseus,
and Thetis.)

LYCURGUS Lycurgus, a son of Dryas (or the god Ares) and king of the
Edonians in Thrace, became the epitome of sacrilegious disdain for the
gods. According to Homer, when the god Dionysus and his nursemaids
arrived in Thrace, Lycurgus set upon them, attempting to drive them away;
the god’s nurses scattered when Lycurgus struck them with an ox-goad, and
a terrified Dionysus took refuge with the goddess Thetis in the sea. For this
affront, the gods struck Lycurgus blind. The story is told differently by the
mythographer Apollodorus: Dionysus came to Thrace accompanied by
female followers, the Bacchantes. The latter, together with the Satyrs who
formed part of Dionysus’s entourage, were imprisoned by Lycurgus. The
god released his imprisoned followers and struck Lycurgus with madness.
In his altered mental state, Lycurgus killed his own son, chopping him to
bits, believing him to be a grapevine. Now the land of Thrace suffered from
infertility, and an oracle declared that Lycurgus should be put to death. The
Edonians accordingly shackled their king and took him to Mount Pangaeus,
where he was killed by the horses that resided here.
The evil Lycurgus is to be distinguished from several other, less well
known legendary personages of the same name, which included the king of
Nemea to whom the Lemnian queen Hypsipyle was sold, and the Arcadian
king, whose son Ancaeus joined the expedition of Jason and the Argonauts.
(See also Ancaeus, Arcadia, Ares, Argonauts [the], Bacchantes [the],
Dionysus, Hypsipyle, Jason, Lemnos, Satyrs [the], Thetis, and Thrace.)

LYCUS There were a number of characters by the name of Lycus in

Classical mythology, but the most dramatic story centers on Lycus of
Boeotia. Lycus’s brother Nycteus had been appointed regent of Thebes until
the legitimate king, Labdacus, came of age. When Nycteus’s daughter
Antiope was impregnated by Zeus, she ran away, taking refuge with the
king of Sicyon. At his brother’s request, Lycus, who now had become king,
retrieved and imprisoned her. Meanwhile, Antiope’s newborn sons, Zethus
and Amphion, were exposed in the wilds of Mount Cithaeron in the
expectation that they would perish there. Lycus’s wife, Dirce, proceeded to
treat Antiope terribly, and when Antiope later was able to escape, both
Lycus and Dirce paid for their misdeeds with their lives.
(See also Antiope, Boeotia, Cithaeron [Mount], Dirce, Labdacus,
Thebes, and Zethus.)

LYNCEUS Lynceus was one of the fifty sons of Aegyptus and grandson of
the Egyptian king Belus. Lynceus alone was spared by his wife,
Hypermnestra, when her father, Danaus, instructed his fifty daughters to kill
their husbands, the fifty sons of Aegyptus, on their wedding night. Lynceus
later succeeded Danaus on the throne of Argos and with Hypmermnestra
became father to Abas, who in turn succeeded him.
(See also Abas, Aegyptus, Argos, Belus, and Hypermnestra.)

MAENADS, THE Female celebrants of the god Dionysus were called

Bacchantes but also Maenads after the “mania” that they experienced when
possessed by the god. This “mania” (from the Greek word mania of the
same meaning) went hand in hand with the Maenads’ ecstasy, Greek ek-
stasis, “standing outside oneself.” Women in ancient Greece had few
opportunities to escape their domestic duties, and the worship of Dionysus
provided a welcome release. As is vividly portrayed in the tragedian
Euripides’s play, The Bacchae, the god’s female worshippers would leave
their looms, families, and houses. Having partaken of wine, an embodiment
of the god, these women loosened their hair, donned fawnskins, and holding
thyrsi (fennel staffs topped with ivy), made for the mountains in order there
to dance and commune with nature. A part of their ritual was the tearing
apart (sparagmos) of small animals and eating them raw (omophagia), this
being another way of partaking of the god, since Dionysus was a god of all
liquid life and life-sustaining fluids, in this case blood.
(See also Bacchantes [the] and Dionysus.)

MARPESSA Marpessa was a daughter of Evenus and, through her father,

a descendant of the god Ares. When the lovely Marpessa was being courted
by the god Apollo, Idas, son of Aphareus, carried her off in a winged
chariot that he had received from Poseidon. Evenus leaped into his chariot
and went in pursuit. Realizing that he could not catch Idas, Evenus
slaughtered his horses when he came to the Lycormas River and drowned
himself in the river’s current. After this occurrence, the river became known
as Evenus. As for Marpessa, when she and Idas arrived at Messene, Apollo
attempted to seize the girl. A conflict between her suitors ensued, but Zeus
put an end to it, stating that Marpessa should choose which of them to wed.
Marpessa chose her mortal suitor, Idas, as she feared that as she grew older,
the god might abandon her. With Idas, Mar-pessa bore Cleopatra, who
would become the wife of Meleager.
(See also Apollo, Ares, Idas, Meleager, and Poseidon.)

MEDEA Medea was a daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis and the Oceanid
Eidyia. Her paternal grandfather was the sun god Helios, and her aunt was
the sorceress Circe. Medea herself was a priestess of the goddess Hecate
and skilled in the use of magic herbs, charms, and incantations. While there
are many versions of the dramatic events in her life, the best-known are
recounted in the poet Apollonius of Rhodes’s Voyage of the Argo and the
tragedian Euripides’s play Medea. When the hero Jason arrived at Colchis
in search of the Golden Fleece, the goddesses Hera and Aphrodite contrived
to make Medea fall in love with Jason so that she would help him complete
the seemingly impossible tasks that Aeetes made a requirement for
releasing the Golden Fleece: yoking a pair of fire-breathing bulls, plowing a
field with the bulls, sowing dragon’s teeth, and killing the warriors that
would spring from those teeth when sown, all in the space of a single day.
Medea did help Jason, who promised to marry her as a sign of his gratitude.
Medea supplied him with a salve that would protect him against the bulls’
flames, and instructed him how to deal with the dragon-teeth warriors,
namely by throwing a rock in their midst causing them to turn against each
other. These tasks complete, Medea then lulled to sleep the fearsome dragon
that guarded the Fleece in Ares’s sacred grove and accompanied the Greeks
on their journey back to Greece. When pursued by Medea’s brother
Apsyrtus, Medea contrived a plan whereby to ambush and kill him. Jason
and Medea were wed and purified of pollution from murder on the island of
the Phaeacians. When, at last, they arrived in Thessaly, Pelias refused to
keep his promise to give Jason the throne, and Medea devised his
punishment. She cut up an elderly ram and put the pieces into a cauldron
from which the ram emerged not only intact but also rejuventated: this,
Medea said to Pelias’s daughters, she could do for their elderly father.
Pelias’s daughters consented, but the cauldron into which his body parts
were placed contained no magic potion. With Pelias now dead, Jason and
Medea fled Iolcos and took refuge in the city of Corinth. There Jason
became engaged to the Corinthian king Creon’s daughter Glauce.
Meanwhile, Medea, whom the Corinthians considered to be a dangerous
sorceress, was to be banished. In anger over this slight, Medea caused the
death of Creon, Glauce, and her own children. Glauce was given a poisoned
headdress and cloak as wedding presents, and when she put these on, her
flesh burst into flames and dissolved. As Creon tried to help Glauce, he
became stuck to her gown. As for Medea’s children, these she killed with
her own hands. Medea herself escaped the gruesome scene in the chariot of
Helios and married the Athenian king Aegeus. When in Athens, Medea
attempted to poison Theseus, Aegeus’s son by the princess Aethra, and
when this fact was discovered, she was again banished. Now she returned to
Colchis with her son by Aegeus, Medus, namesake of the Asian Medes. By
some accounts, Medea became the consort of Achilles in the Isles of the
Blessed at the end of her life.
(See also Achilles, Aeetes, Aegeus, Aethra, Aphrodite, Apsyrtus, Ares,
Argonauts [the], Circe, Colchis, Corinth, Creon, Hecate, Helios, Hera,
Iolcos, Jason, Oceanids [the], Pelias, Phaeacians [the], Theseus, and
Thessaly.)

MEGARA Megara was the daughter of Creon, ruler of Thebes after the
death of Oedipus and his sons. Creon offered her as a wife to Hercules by
way of rewarding the hero for releasing Thebes from paying tribute to the
Boeotians. There were varying accounts of Megara’s demise. Megara bore
Hercules three (or five) sons. In a fit of madness induced by the goddess
Hera, who persecuted Hercules throughout his life, Hercules killed both
Megara and his children using his club and bow after completing his
Twelve Labors, according to the tragedian Euripides. By contrast, the
mythographer Apollodorus writes that Hercules, in a fit of madness, threw
his own children and two of his brother Iphicles’s into a fire, as a
consequence for which he condemned himself to exile. Hercules traveled to
Delphi’s oracle to ask where he should go live. The response was that he
should go to Tiryns and there serve the king Eurystheus for twelve years
and perform labors that Eurystheus would impose on him.
Megara was also the name of a city in Greece at the Isthmus of Corinth.
(See also Creon, Delphi, Eurystheus, Hera, Hercules, Iphicles, Megara
[place], Oedipus, Thebes, and Tiryns.)
MELANION Some authors name Melanion, and not Hippomenes, as the
young man who won the hand of the huntress Atalanta by defeating her in a
footrace. This he could do only because he had received some golden
apples from Aphrodite, which he strategically used to lure Atalanta off
course.
(See also Aphrodite, Atalanta, and Hippomenes.)

MELEAGER Meleager was a son of Oeneus, king of Calydon, an Aetolian

city, and his niece Althea. According to the mythographer Hyginus, upon
Meleager’s birth, the Fates foretold his destiny: Clotho said that he would
be noble, Lachesis said that he would be brave, but Atropos, spotting a log
burning on the hearth, said, “He will live only as long as this log keeps
burning.” Hearing this, his mother hastened to the fire, snatched out the log,
and kept it hidden to preserve her son’s life. While Meleager did join Jason
and the Argonauts on the quest for the Golden Fleece, he is best known for
his role in the hunt for the dread Calydonian Boar. It happened that his
father, Oeneus, while a pious man, had somehow overlooked the goddess
Artemis when making sacrifice to the gods in thanks for the first fruits of
harvest. In anger at him, the goddess sent a boar—the so-called Calydonian
Boar—to ravage the land and its orchards. All the strongest and bravest
men gathered for the hunt, but it was Meleager who killed the boar.
According to Homer in the Iliad, a battle broke out between the Aetolians
and the neighboring Curetes, all of whom had been party to the hunt. The
cause for the conflict was the boar’s head and hide, which constituted the
prizes of the hunt. In the course of this conflict, one of Althea’s brothers
died, and in anger at her son, Althea called for his death. Then, aggrieved at
his mother’s curse, Meleager withdrew from the fighting, and the Curetes
gained ground. Meleager’s wife, Cleopatra, the city’s elders, his own father,
his mother, his sisters, and his friends begged him to return to the battlefield
and offered gifts to entice him, but to no avail. It was only when the Curetes
had set fire to the city that his wife was able to prevail on him to help. Later
authors, including the Roman poet Ovid and the mythographer Hyginus,
provide additional details. It had been the fleet-footed maiden Atalanta who
inflicted the boar’s first wound, allowing Meleager to complete the task of
killing it. In recognition of this fact, Meleager presented Atalanta with the
boar’s head as a trophy, an action that drew the resentment of his mother’s
brothers. A fierce battle ensued, in the course of which Meleager killed his
mother’s brothers. Meleager was said either to have died in the course of
the fighting or to have met his untimely end when Althea, in despair over
the loss of her brothers, threw the long-hidden, fatal log on the hearth.
(See also Althea, Argonauts [the], Artemis, Atalanta, Calydon, Fates
[the], Jason, and Oeneus.)

MENELAUS Menelaus was a major figure in the saga of the Trojan War.
He was the younger brother of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, the most
powerful Greek ruler at the time. As sons of Atreus, Menelaus and
Agamemnon were called “Atreidae” (“Sons of Atreus”), and they were
great-grandsons of the ill-fated Tantalus. Menelaus was one of the many
suitors of the beautiful Helen and prevailed when her father, Tyndareus,
allowed her to make her own selection from among them. By virtue of
marriage to Helen, Menelaus became Tyndareus’s successor to the throne of
Sparta. Menelaus’s fortunes turned for the worse when the Trojan prince
Paris arrived in Sparta. While Menelaus was briefly away in Crete, Paris
made off with Helen to Troy. When this occurred, Agamemnon gathered the
best of Greece’s warriors to lead them in a military effort to retrieve Helen.
In Homer’s Iliad, Menelaus is said to have met Paris in single combat in
order to bring the ten-year war to a close, and he would have slain Paris had
not the goddess Aphrodite intervened. According to Homer’s Odyssey,
Menelaus lost a number of his ships on the way home at the conclusion of
the war but, after a time in Egypt, did eventually return to Sparta with
Helen.
(See also Agamemnon, Aphrodite, Atreus, Helen, Mycenae, Paris,
Sparta, Tantalus, Troy, and Tyndareus.)

MENOECEUS There are two significant heroes by the name of

Menoeceus in Classical mythology. The first of these was the father of
Creon, regent of Thebes after the death of Oedipus and his sons. This
Menoeceus, according to the mythographer Hyginus, was descended from
the warriors who sprang from the dragon’s teeth that Cadmus sowed at
Thebes, the so-called Sparti (or Spartoi). By his wife Eurydice, Creon had a
son also named Menoeceus. When, in the course of the conflict between
Oedipus’s sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, and their respective supporters,
Thebes was in dire straits, the seer Teiresias proclaimed that the city could
be saved only if this younger Menoeceus were sacrificed to Ares; the god, it
was said, was still angered over Cadmus’s killing of the dragon from whose
teeth the Sparti, Thebes’s original inhabitants, had sprung. It was
Menoeceus specifically who had to die as he was descended from the Sparti
on both his mother’s and his father’s side. Creon attempted to prevent the
sacrifice of his son, but Menoeceus sacrificed himself by leaping to his
death from the city’s walls.
(See also Ares, Cadmus, Creon, Eteocles, Eurydice [heroine], Oedipus,
Polyneices, Teiresias, and Thebes.)

MEROPE There are several characters named Merope who appear in

Classical mythology. One Merope (also known as Aero) was a daughter of
Oenopion, king of the island of Chios. When the hunter Orion came to the
island, he either pursued the hand of Merope in marriage or, in a variant of
the story, violated her out of wedlock. In anger at Orion, Oenopion,
according to the mythographer Apollodorus, got him drunk, put out his eyes
as he slept, and threw him out onto the beach.
Another Merope was the wife of the Messenian king Cresphontes, a
descendant of Hercules. After a short reign, Cresphontes was killed in a
revolt by Polyphontes, who then married Merope. Cresphontes’s son
Aepytus, whom Merope had sent away to keep him safe during the revolt,
sought to avenge his father’s death and was nearly killed by his mother,
who did not recognize him when he returned to the kingdom. Mother and
son ultimately collaborated in the killing of Polyphontes, and Aepytus
became king.
A third Merope, also called Perioboea, was the wife of the Corinthian
king Polybus and foster mother of Oedipus.
All three heroines are to be distinguished from the Pleiad nymph
Merope who was a daughter of the second-generation Titan god Atlas, wife
of Sisyphus, and mother of Glaucus, father of the hero Bellerophon.
(See also Aepytus, Atlas, Bellerophon, Chios, Corinth, Glaucus, Merope
[nymph], Oedipus, Orion, Pleiades [the], Polybus, Sisyphus, and Titans
[the].)

MEZENTIUS According to Virgil in the Aeneid, Mezentius was an

Etruscan king of extraordinary cruelty, his atrocities having included
chaining living men face-to-face with corpses, ensuring a gruesome death
for those being tortured in this way. His subjects rose up in rebellion against
him, set fire to the palace, and killed his guards. Mezentius escaped with his
life and took refuge with Turnus and the Rutulians, a Latin people. When
Turnus and other Latin tribes later engaged in armed conflict with Aeneas
and his band of Trojans, the godless Mezentius and his son Lausus faced
Aeneas in battle. A wounded Me-zentius was conveyed to safety by Lausus,
who later fell victim to Aeneas’s sword. With his son dead, a grief-stricken
Mezentius embraced the idea of engaging again with Aeneas and fought
bravely until he also met his end at Aeneas’s hands.
(See also Aeneas, Etruria, Lausus, Latins [the], Rutulians [the], Troy,
and Turnus.)

MIDAS Midas was a historical king of Phrygia around whom a host of

legends arose. He was a son of Gordius, whom some sources call the
founder of the city of Gordium. Other sources cite Midas as Gordium’s
founder and claim that Midas named the city after his father. The Roman
poet Ovid writes that when old Silenus became separated from Dionysus
and his entourage of Satyrs and Maenads, Midas entertained him hospitably
for ten days and then restored him to the god. In gratitude, Dionysus
granted Midas whatever he desired, and what he wished was that everything
he touched would turn to gold. The foolishness of this request soon became
apparent, as food and drink, too, became solid gold. When Midas asked the
god for forgiveness, this was readily granted, and he was instructed to wash
his hands in the river Pactolus, whose streams thereafter turned to gold all
the soil that they contacted. Later, when the god Pan, playing his reed pipe,
challenged Apollo, with his lyre, to a music contest, Midas proclaimed Pan
to be the winner. Exclaiming that Midas could not possibly have human
ears, an angry Apollo punished Midas by giving him donkey’s ears. Only
Midas’s barber knew his secret, for Midas now kept his head covered. In the
passage of time, however, the barber could no longer contain his secret and,
digging a hole in the ground, told it to the hollowed earth. In this way
having unburdened himself of keeping the secret, the barber then closed up
the hole. In spite of this precaution, Midas’s secret emerged when reeds
growing from this spot whispered it as they rustled in the wind.
(See also Apollo, Dionysus, Gordius, Maenads [the], Pactolus River
[the], Pan, Phrygia, Satyrs [the], and Silenus.)

MINOS Minos was a legendary king of Crete whose sea power became
wide-ranging. He ruled from a palace at Cnossus, and it was after him that
the Bronze Age civilization (circa 3000–1150 BCE) of the island was called
Minoan. Minos was a son of Zeus and Europa, the Phoenician princess
whom Zeus abducted to Crete, and his siblings were variously known as
Rhadamanthus, Aeacus, and Sarpedon. Minos succeeded Europa’s mortal
husband, Asterius, to the throne of Crete, and, when his right to rule was
questioned, he asserted that it had been divinely sanctioned. According to
the mythographer Apollodorus, Minos proved his proximity to the divine by
stating that the god Poseidon would grant him any request he might make.
What he asked for was a bull to be sent to him from the sea; this bull, he
said, would subsequently be sacrificed to the god. The bull did indeed
appear, but Minos, finding it too handsome to part with, sacrificed another
in its stead. For this Poseidon punished Minos by causing the king’s wife,
Pasiphae, to develop a passion for the bull. So relentless was her desire that
she enlisted the aid of the craftsman Daedalus, then resident on the island,
to craft a device—a hollow wooden cow—that she could use to approach
the bull and satisfy her desire. Pasiphae became pregnant by the bull and
bore the monstrous Minotaur (“Bull of Minos”), half human and half bull.
Minos, wishing to avoid the pollution that bloodshed would bring, did not
kill the monster but instead instructed Daedalus to construct a maze to
house the creature. Minos fed the Minotaur humans, specifically the seven
youths and seven maidens that he had required the Athenians to send every
nine years in compensation for their killing of his son, Androgeus. The third
group of Athenian victims included Theseus, the king of Athens’s son, who
had undertaken to slay the Minotaur. This Theseus did with the help of
Minos’s daughter Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him but whom
Theseus soon abandoned. Presumably suspecting that Daedalus had been in
some way complicit in Theseus’s victory, Minos imprisoned Daedalus, but
the latter escaped on wings made of feathers and wax, though he lost his
young son Icarus on their airborne route. Minos pursued Daedalus to Sicily,
where he was killed in battle or, by some accounts, was murdered by the
daughters of the Sicilian king.
After his death, Minos, like his brother Rhadamanthus, was said to have
become a judge of the dead in the Underworld.
(See also Aeacus, Androgeus, Ariadne, Athena, Athens, Cnossus, Crete,
Daedalus, Europa, Icarus, Minotaur [the], Pasiphae, Poseidon,
Rhadamanthus, Sarpedon, Theseus, Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

MINYANS, THE The Minyans were a people or tribe said to have been
descended from Minyas, a relatively shadowy figure who was variously
described as a son of Zeus, Poseidon, or Ares and as a grandson of Aeolus.
The Minyans were based in northern Boeotia, the center of their power
being the city of Orchomenos, and were known for their great wealth. As a
reward for defeating the hostile Minyans, who had been exacting tribute
from Thebes, that city’s regent Creon offered Hercules his daughter Megara
in marriage.
The band of men who accompanied the hero Jason on his quest for the
Golden Fleece, the so-called Argonauts, were called Minyans, though it
would appear that only Jason himself was, strictly speaking, a descendant of
Minyas.
(See also Aeolus [hero], Ares, Argonauts [the], Boeotia, Creon,
Hercules, Jason, Megara [heroine], Poseidon, Thebes, and Zeus.)

MYRMIDONS, THE The Myrmidons, “Ant People,” were said to have

been ants who, at the request of Aeacus, king of Aegina, were transformed
into people. Aeacus made this request of his father, Zeus, when the island’s
populace had been decimated by a plague. The Myrmidons emigrated to
Thessaly, and in the Trojan War, the Myrmidon warriors were led by
Achilles.
(See also Achilles, Aegina [island], Thessaly, Troy, and Zeus.)

MYRRHA Myrrha, who is called Smyrna in some sources, was the

daughter of the Cinyras, king of Cyprus. She refused to marry any of the
many young men who pursued her, falling prey, instead, to a forbidden
love, love of her own father. By some accounts, this occurred as a result of
some affront to Aphrodite on her part or on the part of her mother. Myrrha
attempted suicide, but was saved by her nurse, who contrived a plan
whereby Myrrha could spend the night with her father under cover of night
and unbeknownst to him. The queen, as it happened, was away celebrating
a festival of Hera, and Myrrha came to Cinyras on several nights. When
Cinyras discovered the horrible truth of what had transpired, he lunged at a
pregnant Myrrha with his sword. She fled and, when ready to give birth,
asked the gods to help her in some way, as she was fit to be among neither
the living nor the dead. She then became the precious tree that still bears her
name, and her flowing tears are myrrh’s fragrant resin. When, after nine
months, the tree’s bark parted, it was the baby Adonis who emerged.
(See also Adonis, Aphrodite, Cinyras, Hera, and Cyprus.)

MYRTILUS Myrtilus was a son of Hermes and was charioteer to

Oenomaus, a king of Pisa, who challenged all of his daughter Hippodamia’s
suitors to a chariot race that he would inevitably win. Losers in the
challenge were beheaded. Undeterred, Pelops, son of Tantalus, found a way
to beat Oenomaus: he bribed Myrtilus with the promise of a night with the
bride and half the kingdom. Myrtilus accepted, and removed the linchpin
from the wheel of Oenomaus’s chariot. Thus, when the race was in full
swing, the wheel came loose, and Oenomaus, having been thrown, was
mortally injured. After his victory, Pelops both failed to honor his promise
and cast Myrtilus into the sea to his death. Before dying, however, Myrtilus
was able to utter a curse on Pelops and all of his descendants with his last
breath.
(See also Hermes, Hippodamia, Oenomaus, Pelops, and Tantalus.)

NARCISSUS Narcissus was a handsome youth born to a Naiad nymph

named Liriope and the god of the river Cephissus, who had overpowered
her. According to the Roman poet Ovid, Liriope consulted the seer Teiresias
regarding the span of her child’s life, and he replied that Narcissus would
live until he came to know himself. This self-knowledge came at the age of
sixteen, when he was adored by maidens and youths alike but ignored
everyone’s advances, including those of the nymph Echo, who pined away
in lovesickness to become nothing but a disembodied, echoing voice. As
punishment for his arrogant slight of all who desired him, the goddess
Nemesis caused him to fall in love with himself, which occurred when he
caught sight of his reflection in a pool. Not knowing it was his own face
that he saw reflected, he tried vainly to touch and kiss the apparition, but to
no avail. Like Echo, he too pined away, leaving no trace of his former self
but the flower that thereafter bore his name.
(See also Cephissus [god and place], Echo, Naiads [the], Nemesis, and
Teiresias.)

NAUSICAA Nausicaa was the daughter of the Phaeacian king Alcinous

and his queen, Arete. When Odysseus was swept up on the shores of
Scheria, Nausicaa happened to be there as well, since the goddess Athena,
who did what she could to help Odysseus, had inspired her to go to the
seashore at just that moment. Nausicaa, who clearly viewed Odysseus as a
potential suitor, directed Odysseus to her father’s palace, where he was
hospitably received. Alcinous did offer Nausicaa’s hand in marriage to
Odysseus, who deftly sidestepped the issue without causing offense by
revealing that he was already married.
(See also Alcinous, Arete, Athena, Nausicaa, Odysseus, Phaeacians
[the], and Scheria.)

NELEUS Neleus was a son of Tyro and Poseidon. Neleus and his brother
Pelias, who had been abandoned by their mother as infants, were later
reunited with her and killed their evil stepmother. Later, as a result of a
disagreement between him and his brother, Neleus left Thessaly and made
for the Peloponnese, where he became the king of Pylos, a city that,
according to the mythographer Apollodorus, he founded. Neleus wed
Chloris, daughter of Amphion, and together they had one daughter and
twelve sons, among them Nestor, who would become Pylos’s most famous
legendary king. In the course of time, Neleus became involved with
Hercules, when the latter came to him in hopes of being purified of the
murder of Iphitus, brother of Iole, whose hand in marriage Hercules had
unsuccessfully sought. Hercules killed Neleus and eleven of his sons,
leaving Nestor to inherit the throne of Pylos.
(See also Amphion, Hercules, Iole, Nestor, Pelias, Poseidon, Pylos,
Thessaly, Troy, and Tyro.)

NEOPTOLEMUS Neoptolemus (“Young Fighter”) was the son of the

Greek hero Achilles and Deidamia, a daughter of Lycomedes, king of the
island of Scyros. Neoptolemus was conceived while Achilles was in hiding
on the island of Scyros among the king’s daughters, as his mother, Thetis,
wanted to prevent his being sent to fight at Troy. The war at Troy was in its
tenth year and, with Achilles dead, the Greeks’ chances of taking the city
were decreasing. The Trojan prophet Helenus revealed that Troy would
only fall if the Greeks went to fetch Neoptolemus and Philoctetes, who had
been abandoned on the island of Lemnos. According to the tragedian
Sophocles, it was Neoptolemus and Odysseus who were sent to persuade
Philoctetes to join the Greeks. Neoptolemus fought bravely at Troy but was
also ruthless and cruel. He was one of the Greeks who hid inside the belly
of the Trojan Horse and, once inside the city of Troy, set fire to the city.
According to the Roman poet Virgil, he also killed King Priam when the
latter had taken refuge at an altar of Zeus, which was an act of sacrilege,
and it was either he or Odysseus who sacrificed Priam’s daughter Polyxena
to the ghost of Achilles. It was also he, or Odysseus, who was said to have
thrown the Trojan prince Hector’s young son, Astyanax, from the walls of
Troy to his death. Hector’s wife, Andromache, meanwhile, was awarded to
Neoptolemus as a concubine. By some accounts Neoptolemus gave
Andromache to the Trojan seer Helenus after he married Hermione,
daughter of the Spartan king Menelaus and Helen. In an account of the end
of his life, the tragedian Euripides writes that it was the Mycenaean king
Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, who had Neoptolemus killed while the latter
was at Delphi, doing so since he had also been promised Hermione’s hand
in marriage.
(See also Achilles, Agamemnon, Andromache, Astyanax, Deidamia,
Delphi, Hector, Helen, Helenus, Hermione, Lemnos, Lycomedes, Menelaus,
Mycenae, Odysseus, Orestes, Philoctetes, Polyxena, Priam, Scyros, Sparta,
Troy, and Zeus.)
NEPHELE Nephele was the first wife of Athamas, a king of Boeotia, and
mother to two children, Phrixus and Helle. Athamas’s second wife, Ino,
resented Nephele’s children, as it was they, and not her own children, who
would be Athamas’s heirs. Ino accordingly contrived a plot whereby to
convince Athamas to kill Nephele’s children. Nephele was, however, able to
rescue her children by sending a winged, golden-fleeced ram to carry them
to safety. Phrixus was ultimately carried to Colchis on the Black Sea, but
Helle fell to her death.
The heroine Nephele is conflated by some ancient authors with the cloud
goddess Nephele whom Zeus created to trick the sinner Ixion.
(See also Athamas, Boeotia, Colchis, Helle, Ixion, Nephele [goddess],
Phrixus, and Zeus.)

NESTOR Nestor was one of the twelve sons of Neleus, a king of Pylos,
and Chloris, daughter of Amphion. Nestor succeeded his father on the
throne of Pylos and ruled for three generations. In his youth, he was a
skilled warrior, having encountered foes as diverse as Hercules and the
Centaurs. As an old man, he led a contingent of ninety ships to Troy, where
he was a source of sound advice for the Greeks. Nestor survived the Trojan
War and hospitably received Odysseus’s son Telemachus when he traveled
to Pylos while gathering information about his father.
(See also Amphion, Centaurs [the], Hercules, Neleus, Odysseus, Pylos,
Telemachus, and Troy.)

NIOBE Niobe was a daughter of Tantalus, king of Lydia, and the wife of
the Theban king Amphion, co-regent with his brother Zethus. Having been
blessed not only with a distinguished ancestry, social status, and beauty, she
had a wealth of children: according to Homer there were twelve, and
according to Ovid fourteen, half of them being sons and half daughters.
This richness of blessings caused her to proclaim publicly that she was
worthier of worship than Leto, mother of the divine twins Artemis and
Apollo, as that goddess merely had two children. At this insult, an
aggrieved Leto (the Roman Latona) called upon her children for help.
Coming equipped with their bow and arrow, they slew all of Niobe’s
children. Amphion, in grief, took his own life, and Niobe, in the extremity
of her grief, turned to stone, becoming the “eternally weeping rock” on
Mount Sipylus in Lydia.
(See also Amphion, Apollo, Artemis, Leto, Lydia, Tantalus, Thebes, and
Zethus.)

NISUS One mythological Nisus was the son of Pandion, a legendary king
of Athens who, while in exile from Athens at Megara, begat Nisus. Pandion
eventually became regent of Megara, and Nisus succeeded him. Whether it
was because King Minos of Crete had his sights set on Athens, which was
ruled by Nisus’s brother Aegeus, or for some other reason, Minos’s forces
attacked Megara. Scylla, Nisus’s daughter, watched the conflict and,
catching sight of Minos, the enemy commander, fell instantly in love. She
planned to win Minos’s heart by presenting him with her father’s lock of
purple hair, which, if severed from his head, would end the invincibility of
his kingdom. Under cover of night, Scylla cut Nisus’s purple lock and
offered it to Minos, who was horrified at her deed and wanted nothing to do
with her. When Scylla plunged into the sea in pursuit of Minos’s ship, she
was prevented from climbing aboard by Nisus, who had become an osprey
(or sea eagle) and dove at her menacingly. Scylla’s fate is variously
described as drowning or as transformation into a sea bird or fish.
Another Nisus appears in Virgil’s Aeneid as the devoted friend of the
handsome young warrior Euryalus. According to Virgil, this Nisus was a
son of Hyrtacus and the nymph Ida. He had accompanied Aeneas in the
flight from Troy, and during the war between the forces of Aeneas and the
Rutulians, he and Euryalus volunteered to venture forth from the besieged
Trojan camp at night in search of Aeneas. As they made their way, they
slaughtered a number of the enemy, and Euryalus made a fatal, youthful
mistake: he stripped the armor of an enemy captain, and the helmet’s gleam
gave him away. Euryalus was taken captive, and although Nisus sacrificed
his life to save him, both were slain.
(See also Aegeus, Aeneas, Athens, Crete, Euryalus, Megara [place],
Minos, Pandion, Rutulians [the], Scylla [heroine], and Troy.)

NUMA Numa Pompilius, known more commonly simply as Numa, was the
second of the seven legendary kings of Rome and the successor of
Romulus. Details of his life and his accomplishments were recorded by the
historian Livy and the biographer Plutarch. According to tradition, Numa
was born in the city of Cures in the territory of the Sabines in Italy. His
birthday, it was said, coincided with the date of the foundation of Rome:
April 21 in the year 753 BCE. Numa married Tatia, daughter of Titus Tatius,
king of the Sabines, and he enjoyed a reputation for being deeply versed,
even at a young age, in both divine and human law. The senators of Rome
thus invited him to become regent, an honor he accepted only after, at his
request, an omen from Jupiter himself had been secured. Numa was
remembered not only for the era of peace that he brought to Rome but also,
critically, for his establishment of Roman sacred law and state cult.
Recognizing that his institution of religious practices, priesthoods, festivals,
and other observances might meet with resistance from those disinclined or
unable to see their value, he invented a story indicating that he had been
instructed in his efforts by the gods themselves: he made it known that he
had met after nightfall with the goddess Egeria, who herself had guided him
in the establishment of rites and priesthoods most appropriate to each of the
gods. After a reign of forty-three years, Numa was buried on the Janiculum,
one of Rome’s seven hills.
(See also Egeria, Rome, Romulus, and Sabines [the].)

ODYSSEUS Odysseus (or Ulysses) was the son of the Ithacan king
Laertes and his wife, Anticleia. He succeeded Laertes on the throne of
Ithaca when the latter stepped aside in his old age. Odysseus’s wife was
Penelope, a daughter of Icarius, and with her he became the father of
Telemachus. Odysseus, who had been one of the suitors of Helen, was
bound by oath to join the massive Greek contingent that set sail for Troy in
pursuit of Helen, and he brought twelve shiploads of men. Odysseus played
a significant role in the ten-year Trojan War. Among other things, he
attempted to broker peace between the Greeks and Trojans; joined an
embassy that tried to convince Achilles to return to the fighting after he, in
response to grievous insult, had withdrawn; went to spy on the Trojans and
their allies; and, in addition to going on a killing spree, took captive a
Trojan spy. After Achilles, who had eventually resumed fighting, was killed
by the Trojan prince Paris, Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax retrieved his
body. When the two subsequently competed for Achilles’s armor, Odysseus
prevailed. Famous for his cleverness, Odysseus was credited with devising
the stratagem of the Trojan Horse as a means to gain access to Troy and
with capturing the Trojan seer Helenus, who revealed that Troy would not
fall if the Greeks did not go get the hero Philoctetes from the island of
Lemnos, bring Achilles’s son Neoptolemus to Troy, and gain possession of
the sacred wooden statue of Athena (the Palladium) housed in a Trojan
temple. Diomedes joined Odysseus in the theft of the Palladium, and it was
due to the goddess’s anger over this that so many Greeks died on their way
home from Greece. After setting sail from Troy, where Odysseus (or
Neoptolemus) sacrificed the Trojan princess Polyxena to the ghost of
Achilles, Odysseus spent another ten years trying to get home. His journey,
as recounted in Homer’s Odyssey, took him to distant lands, where he faced
a host of challenges, all of which he overcame due to his adaptability,
ingenuity, and ability to persevere. In the course of his travels he negotiated
perils arising from encounters with the Cicones, whose town his men
sacked; the overly hospitable Lotus Eaters; the Cyclops Polyphemus; the
island of Aeolus, Lord of the Winds; the cannibalistic Laestrygons; the
sorceress Circe; the land of the dead; the deadly but euphonious Sirens; the
dread monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis; the cattle of Helios; and
the seductive earth goddess Calypso. By the time he came to the island of
Calypso, Odysseus was alone, all of his companions having perished. With
the help of Calypso and the goddess Ino, Odysseus made it safely to the
island of the kindly Phaeacians, who brought him home to Ithaca. There he
faced still more challenges, as in his long absence, a group of ill-behaved
young men had settled in his palace, each of them wanting to win the hand
of Penelope, and his servants, with the notable exception of the swineherd
Eumaeus and the nurse Eurycleia, had switched their allegiance to the
suitors. With the help of Eumaeus and his son, Telemachus, with whom he
was reunited, Odysseus slew the suitors, the worst of whom, Antinous, died
first. Only then did Odysseus reveal himself to Penelope and his father, the
latter joining him in battle against the townsfolk angered at the slaying of
their sons. When, with the help of Athena, order was reestablished,
Odysseus again ruled Ithaca. It had been prophesied in the Odyssey that
Odysseus would end his days at sea after first wandering on land and
making sacrifice to Poseidon, but another tradition told of his death at the
hands of Telegonus, his son by the sorceress Circe.
While a positive, heroic character in the Homeric tradition, Odysseus
came to be presented in a less flattering light by later authors, for whom his
cleverness became a vehicle for treachery, and it was in such contexts, as in
Sophocles’s play Philoctetes, that he was called a son not of Laertes but of
Sisyphus.
(See also Achilles, Aeolus, Antinous, Ajax [the Great], Athena, Calypso,
Charybdis, Circe, Cyclopes [the], Diomedes, Eumaeus, Eurycleia, Helen,
Helenus, Helios, Ino, Ithaca, Laertes, Laestrygons [the], Lotus Eaters [the],
Neoptolemus, Penelope, Phaeacians [the], Philoctetes, Polyphemus,
Polyxena, Poseidon, Scylla, Sirens [the], Sisyphus, Telamon, Telemachus,
and Troy.)
OEDIPUS Oedipus, whose name can be interpreted as meaning “swollen
foot” or “foot-based knowledge,” was the son of the Theban king Laius and
his wife, the queen Jocasta. Since Laius had received a prophecy stating
that his son was destined to kill him, baby Oedipus was exposed on the
slopes of Mount Cithaeron with his ankles pinned together, this effort to
cripple him being thought a deterrent to his rescue by a passing stranger.
But the shepherd who had been instructed to expose the infant gave him to
a member of the king of Corinth’s staff who, in turn, delivered him to the
Corinthian king Polybus and his wife, Merope. When, as a youth, Oedipus
heard that he was not actually Polybus’s son, he went to inquire about the
truth of this rumor from the oracle at Delphi; the oracle’s answer was not
direct, its pronouncement being that Oedipus was destined to kill his father
and marry his mother. So Oedipus left Delphi determined never to return to
Corinth, in hopes of avoiding fulfillment of the prophecy. On the way he
came upon a chariot driven by an elderly man. A dispute over right of way
ensued at a crossroads, and Oedipus slew the stranger. This stranger,
unbeknownst to Oedipus, was Laius, and Oedipus had accordingly killed
his father. Oedipus, whose story is best known from the tragedian
Sophocles’s tragedies Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, then came
to Thebes, where he was named king and given Jocasta as wife, as a
consequence of ridding the land and its people of persecution by the
Sphinx; this Oedipus did by solving the Sphinx’s riddle, thus proving
himself also to be the wisest human, as many had attempted to solve the
riddle before him and paid with their lives. With Jocasta, Oedipus became
father to two daughters, Antigone and Ismene, and two sons, Eteocles and
Polyneices. All was well in Thebes until a plague descended on the city, and
in order to counteract it, Oedipus sent his wife’s brother, Creon, to Delphi in
order to inquire after a remedy. The oracle declared that the murderer of
Laius must be found and driven from the city. This, of course, was Oedipus
himself, but not knowing his true identity, an important clue to which would
have been the condition of his feet, his realization of the truth was not
immediate. Jocasta guessed the truth first and hanged herself. A shattered
Oedipus put out his own eyes but did not commit suicide, considering
himself a source of pollution equally to the dead and to the living. He was
subsequently exiled from Thebes and, wandering the countryside
accompanied by his daughter Antigone, came to Colonus in the territory of
Athens, where he unwittingly entered an area sacred to the Eumenides. The
residents of Colonus wanted the polluted Oedipus to leave, and his
challenges were compounded by the appearance of his brother-in-law,
Creon, and his son Polyneices: Creon had come to take Oedipus back to
Theban lands by force, as that city’s safety depended on Oedipus’s
presence, and Polyneices, too, wished to have possession of Oedipus so that
he might prevail in his assault on Thebes. As it happened, Thebes was
under threat since Oedipus’s sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, had agreed to
rule in alternate years, but Eteocles refused to give up the throne, prompting
Polyneices to muster an army against him. Fortunately, Oedipus was offered
asylum by the Athenian king Theseus and subsequently vanished from the
earth, with only Theseus knowing where he was buried. Thereafter Oedipus
would safeguard Athens. Thebes, in turn, was repeatedly attacked, first by
Polyneices and the Seven Against Thebes and later by the Epigoni, the
surviving sons of the Seven. Eteocles and Polyneices, fulfilling Oedipus’s
curse upon them, killed each other in the first of these Theban conflicts.
(See also Antigone, Athens, Cithaeron [Mount], Colonus, Corinth,
Creon, Delphi, Epigoni [the], Eteocles, Eumenides [the], Ismene, Jocasta,
Laius, Merope [heroine], Polybus, Polyneices, Seven Against Thebes [the],
Sphinx of Thebes [the], Thebes, and Theseus.)

OENEUS Oeneus was a legendary king of Calydon in Aetolia. The most

notable of his children with his first wife, Althea, were Deianeira and
Meleager, and with his second wife, Periboea, it was Tydeus. The
mythographers Apollodorus and Hyginus preserve a wide range of details
about his life. Among other things, Oeneus reputedly recognized the god
Dionysus’s interest in his wife Althea and allowed the god to spend time
with her; the result was Deianeira, who then was technically his
stepdaughter. Dionysus, for his part, gave the gift of a grapevine to Oeneus,
the first mortal to have received this valuable gift. As for Deianeira, she
caught the eye of Hercules, to whom Oeneus gave her as a bride in a union
that Hercules would live to regret. While a pious man, Oeneus had
somehow overlooked the goddess Artemis when making sacrifice to the
gods in thanks for the first fruits of harvest. In anger at him, the goddess
sent a boar—the so-called Calydonian Boar—to ravage the land of Calydon
and its orchards. In the course of this battle, Meleager killed Althea’s
brothers, in anger over which Althea caused Meleager’s untimely death,
followed by her own. Oeneus then married Periboea, who was either given
to him as a prize or had been sent to him by her father with a decree that she
should be put to death because her reputation had been tarnished. In any
event, Periboea bore Oeneus two sons, one of them Tydeus, who would
become father to the hero Diomedes.
(See also Althea, Artemis, Calydon, Deianeira, Diomedes, Dionysus,
Hercules, Meleager, and Tydeus.)

OENOMAUS Oenomaus was king of Pisa and a son of the god Ares, who
gave him a pair of horses that were as swift as the wind. Oenomaus
challenged all of the suitors of his daughter, Hippodamia, to a chariot race
in the knowledge that he would win. Until the appearance of Pelops,
Oenomaus had defeated, killed, and beheaded all of them. Pelops, however,
defeated Oenomaus, doing so because he had bribed the king’s charioteer,
Myrtilus, to compromise Oenomaus’s chariot. Having been fatally wounded
when he was thrown from his chariot, Oenomaus was succeeded by Pelops,
who took Hippodamia as his bride.
(See also Ares, Hippodamia, Myrtilus, and Pelops.)

OMPHALE Omphale was a mythical queen of Lydia. According to the

historian Diodorus Siculus, Hercules murdered Iphitus, brother of Iole,
whose hand in marriage he had unsuccessfully sought. Consequently,
Hercules became afflicted with an ailment that he could not shake. He
consulted the oracle of Apollo, which instructed him to allow himself to be
sold into slavery and to give the payment generated by his sale into slavery
to the sons of Iphitus. It was Omphale to whom Hercules was sold, and he
served her faithfully, ridding the land of the Cercopes, who were robbers
and evildoers, killing some of them and taking others of them captive. He
also killed Syleus, who had forced passersby to hoe his vineyard, with his
own hoe, and, having sacked the city of the marauding Itoni, he enslaved its
inhabitants. A delighted Omphale freed Hercules from obligation to her and
with him bore a son by the name of Lamus.
(See also Apollo, Hercules, Iole, and Lydia.)

ORESTES Orestes was the son of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and his
wife, Clytemnestra. His siblings were Iphigeneia, Electra, and
Chrysothemis, and his dramatic story, its details varying in each telling, lies
at the core of plays written by all three great Athenian playwrights:
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. When Agamemnon left for Troy and
Clytemnestra had taken Aegisthus as a lover, the baby Orestes was sent
away to the court of King Strophius of Phocis, at least ostensibly for his
own safety. When, after a ten-year absence fighting the Trojan War,
Agamemnon returned to Mycenae and was murdered by Clytemnestra,
Orestes, having consulted the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, was instructed by
the god to make his way to Mycenae and avenge the death of his father.
Accompanied by his Phocian friend Pylades, Orestes returned to Mycenae
and, by some accounts with the support of his sister, killed Clytemnestra
and Aegisthus. As a consequence of these murders, Orestes was relentlessly
pursued by the Erinyes (“Spirits of Vengeance”) until he stood trial for
murder in Athens at the hallowed court of the Areopagus. There, according
to Aeschylus, the goddess Athena exculpated him and pacified the Erinyes,
making them goodly spirits now called the Eumenides. A variant tradition,
which is the subject of Euripides’s Iphigeneia in Tauris, portrays an Orestes
who, as a result of relentless pursuit by the Erinyes, traveled to the
barbarian land of Tauris at Apollo’s command. There he was to obtain an
especially sacred wooden statue of Artemis that had fallen from the heavens
and bring it to the territory of Athens. Again accompanied by Pylades,
Orestes accomplished this task with the help of his sister Iphigeneia, who
had become a priestess of Artemis in Tauris after being saved from human
sacrifice by the goddess whom she now served. Orestes would eventually
become the king of Mycenae and also of Sparta.
(See also Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Apollo, Athens, Chrysothemis,
Clytemnestra, Delphi, Electra [heroine], Erinyes [the], Eumenides [the],
Iphigeneia, Mycenae, Pylades, Sparta, Taurians [the], and Troy.)

ORION Orion was a noted hunter of enormous size who, upon his death,
was raised to the heavens to become the constellation that bears his name.
(See Orion [prodigies].)

ORITHYIA Orithyia (or Oreithyia) was known to the poet Homer as a

Nereid nymph but was more commonly known as a daughter of the
Athenian king Erechtheus and his wife, Praxithea. Orithyia had caught the
eye of Boreas, god of the north wind, as she danced along the banks of the
Ilissus River, and he abducted her. Orithyia bore the god several children,
among them the winged brothers Zetes and Calais, who would join the hero
Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece.
(See also Athens, Boreas, Calais, Erechtheus, Ilissus River [the], Jason,
Nereids [the], and Zetes.)

ORPHEUS The renowned singer and musician Orpheus was a son of the
Muse Calliope and the Thracian king Oeagrus or, alternatively, Apollo, who
was said to have taught him how to play the lyre. Orpheus participated in
the hero Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece but is best known for the
events that led to the loss of his wife and his own death. Orpheus was
married to a Naiad nymph named Eurydice, who was at one point pursued
by the rustic deity Aristaeus and, in the course of her flight, was bitten by a
serpent. The serpent’s bite proved fatal, and a despondent Orpheus followed
her into the Underworld, where, according to the Roman poet Ovid, he
moved Hades, Proserpina, and all the sinners residing there to tears with his
music. The regents of the Underworld permitted Orpheus a reprieve: he
could lead Eurydice back up to the world of the living, but he must not look
back until he emerged from the land of the dead. Overcome by worry,
Orpheus did look back, and Eurydice was again taken from him. Now
Orpheus was inconsolable and wandered the earth lamenting, moving
animals, stones, and even trees with his plaintive songs. For three years he
lamented, remaining true to Eurydice’s memory and, by spurning their
advances, angered some Thracian Maenads who tore him limb from limb.
While the rest of him lay where he was killed, his still-singing head and
sounding lyre were carried along the streams of the Hebrus River to the sea
and eventually to the island of Lesbos, home of inspired poets. Now
Orpheus’s spirit passed to the world below, where he was reunited with
Eurydice.
(See also Apollo, Aristaeus, Calliope, Eurydice [nymph], Hades [god],
Jason, Maenads [the], Muses [the], Naiads [the], Proserpina, Thrace, and
Underworld [the].)

PALINURUS Palinurus was one of the Trojan refugees who accompanied

Aeneas in his flight from Troy to Italy. Palinurus, however, met a tragic end
on Italian shores. Overpowered by the god Somnus (“Sleep”), Palinurus,
Aeneas’s helmsman, fell overboard and, after washing up on the shore, was
set upon by locals and killed. Aeneas encountered his ghost in the
Underworld on the banks of the river Styx, which he could not cross
because he had not received proper burial. The Sibyl, who had accompanied
Aeneas, dispelled Palinurus’s worries by telling him that he would receive
burial in due course and that a land formation on the western coast of Italy
would be named Cape Palinurus after him.
(See also Aeneas, Sibyl of Cumae [the], Somnus, Styx [the River], Troy,
and Underworld [the].)

PALLAS There were several characters in Classical mythology who were

called Pallas, among them one of the Titans, one of the Giants, and the
goddess Athena herself. The best-known human hero by that name appears
in Virgil’s epic the Aeneid. This Pallas was a son of the Arcadian king
Evander, who had founded the town of Pallantium on what would later be
known as Rome’s Palatine hill. Evander was an important ally for Aeneas
when he arrived in Italy from Troy and was faced with resistance by the
native Italians. Evander entrusted his cherished son Pallas to Aeneas, and it
was the Rutulian prince Turnus’s killing of Pallas that caused Aeneas not to
spare Turnus at the epic’s end but rather to slay him brutally, calling his
death a sacrifice to Pallas.
(See also Aeneas, Arcadia, Evander, Giants [the], Pallas [goddess],
Rome, Rutulians [the], Titans [the], Troy, and Turnus.)

PANDARUS Pandarus was a son of the Arcadian king Lycaon, a man with
savage tendencies who was transformed into a wolf. Pandarus was an ally
of the Trojans in the Trojan War and, through the intervention of the
goddess Athena, broke a truce established between the Greeks and Trojans
by shooting an arrow at the Spartan king Menelaus, wounding him.
Hostilities resumed, and Pandarus was eventually slain by the Greek hero
Diomedes.
(See also Arcadia, Athena, Diomedes, Lycaon, Menelaus, and Troy.)

PANDORA Pandora, whose name means “giver of all things,” was,

according to the Greek poet Hesiod, the first woman. She was fashioned of
earth and water by the god Hephaestus on Zeus’s instruction, and she was
created as retribution for Prometheus’s assistance to humankind;
Prometheus’s assistance consisted of stealing fire from the gods, as well as
tricking Zeus into accepting the lesser portion of a sacrificial animal on
occasions when humans made sacrifice to the gods. The gods bestowed
gifts on Pandora: Athena taught her how to weave and clothed her in
lustrous garments, Aphrodite gave her grace and beauty, the Graces and
Persuasion (Peitho) brought her necklaces of gold, and the Hours (Horae)
crowned her head with floral wreaths, but Hermes made her shameless and
deceitful and gave her the power of speech. Pandora was not offered to
Prometheus, who, true to his name (“Foresight”), would have seen trouble
coming, but to his brother Epimetheus, “Hindsight.” No sooner did
Epimetheus take possession of her than she opened a chest that she had
been given and had been instructed not to open. Out flew many things that
would be blessings for humankind but also sorrow, disease, and all manners
of suffering that humans had not previously known. One thing only
remained stuck under the chest’s lid, that being Hope.
(See also Aphrodite, Athena, Epimetheus, Graces [the], Hephaestus,
Hermes, Prometheus, and Zeus.)

PARIS Paris, who was known also as Paris Alexander or simply Alexander
(or Alexandros, “Helper of Men”), was a son of Priam, king of Troy, and
his wife, Hecuba. His many siblings included Hector, the staunch defender
of Troy; the prophetic twins Cassandra and Helenus; and Polyxena, who
would become the victim of human sacrifice. As the result of a disturbing
dream indicating that their child would cause the destruction of Troy,
Hecuba and Priam ordered the infant Paris to be exposed by one of the
royal herdsmen on the slopes of nearby Mount Ida. When the herdsman
returned to the site days later, he found Paris still alive, for he had been
nursed by a bear, and took him in. Paris was later integrated into the royal
family when he came to Troy and prevailed in every contest of funeral
games (athletic contests held on the occasion of someone’s death) that
Priam had instituted; he was, in fact, on the verge of being killed by another
contestant, his own brother Deiphobus, when Cassandra recognized him. It
later happened that, when Paris was tending his flocks on Mount Ida, he
was visited by the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite and was asked to
award the famous Golden Apple to the fairest of them, having been selected
for this task on the basis of his own beauty. This apple had been the goddess
Eris’s (“Strife’s”) gift to Peleus and Thetis at their wedding. None of the
goddesses left Paris’s decision to chance, each of them offering him a bribe:
Hera offered him extensive rulership; Athena offered him victory in war;
and Aphrodite, knowing him best, offered him the most beautiful woman in
the world. For Paris, the choice was clear. He selected Aphrodite, and his
prize would be Helen, wife of the Spartan king Menelaus. So, Paris set sail
for Sparta, where he was hospitably entertained, and then, when Menelaus
was summoned abroad, made off to Troy with Helen, who by some
accounts went willingly, and by others not. As all the eligible nobles in
Greece had vied for Helen’s hand, her father had wisely asked all of them to
swear an oath to abide by his (or, alternately, her) decision and to defend the
selected groom should the need arise. Consequently, when Menelaus was in
need, the Greeks assembled en masse, and a contingent of 1,000 ships, led
by Menelaus’s brother, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, set off for Troy in
order to retrieve Helen and punish the Trojans. The Greeks and Trojans
battled for ten years, and, according to Homer in the Iliad, it was in the
tenth year that Paris at last faced Menelaus in single combat for the purpose
of settling the conflict. However, when Paris was on the verge of being
defeated and killed, he was saved by Aphrodite, and the battle raged on. At
last Paris’s brother Hector, who had been Troy’s best hope for defense, was
slain by Achilles. Paris later killed Achilles, shooting him with one of his
arrows, and Paris himself was killed by the Greek hero Philoctetes, who
wounded him with one of the poisoned arrows of Hercules.
(See also Achilles, Agamemnon, Aphrodite, Athena, Cassandra, Eris,
Hector, Hecuba, Helen, Helenus, Hera, Ida [Mount], Menelaus, Mycenae,
Peleus, Philoctetes, Polyxena, Priam, Sparta, Thetis, and Troy.)

PARTHENOPAEUS The hero Parthenopaeus was variously known as one

of the Seven Against Thebes—an army led by seven commanders,
including Oedipus’s son Polyneices, against the city of Thebes—and
brother of Argos’s king Adrastus, or as a son of the fleet-footed huntress
Atalanta and Meleager, who with Aphrodite’s help was able to win
Atalanta’s hand.
(See also Adrastus, Aphrodite, Argos, Atalanta, Eteocles, Meleager,
Oedipus, Polyneices, Seven Against Thebes [the], and Thebes.)

PATROCLUS Patroclus was the son of Menoetius and was born in the
region of Locris in central Greece. When Patroclus was very young, he
killed a boy with whom he had been playing dice and, as a consequence, he
and his father went into exile. They came to the palace of King Peleus of
Phthia, father of Achilles, whose faithful companion and friend Patroclus
became. When Achilles withdrew from the fighting in the tenth year of the
Trojan War, Patroclus, too, withdrew for a time but did re-enter the conflict
as a surrogate for Achilles, whose armor he put on when he headed out to
battle. Although Achilles warned him only to fight so long as to drive the
Trojans back from the Greeks’ camp, Patroclus stayed in the fray, fighting
valiantly and killing, among many others, Zeus’s son Sarpedon. Patroclus
was eventually wounded by the god Apollo and a warrior named Euphorbus
before being killed by Hector. It was the death of Patroclus that drove
Achilles out of isolation and back into the war, his sole purpose being to
exact vengeance for the death of his friend. This he did by killing Hector
and then defiling his body until even the gods could stand it no longer.
(See also Achilles, Apollo, Hector, Peleus, Sarpedon, Troy, and Zeus.)

PELASGUS Pelasgus was the namesake of the Pelasgians, who were

considered to be the original pre-Greek inhabitants of Greece. He was
known variously as a king of Argos, Arcadia, and Thessaly, and his parents
were said to be Zeus and Niobe, among others. According to the Greek poet
Hesiod, Pelasgus was autochthonous, born of the soil. In Arcadia, Pelasgus
was known as a culture hero, having taught the populace how to construct
huts and make clothes from animal hides. With the Oceanid Meliboea (or,
by some accounts, with the nymph Cyllene) he became the father of
Lycaon, who, according to the Roman poet Ovid, was transformed into a
wolf for his murderous tendencies.
(See also Arcadia, Argos, Lycaon, Niobe, Oceanids [the], Thessaly, and
Zeus.)

PELEUS Peleus, who became king of Phthia in Thessaly, is perhaps best

known as the father of Achilles, but he was certainly a warrior of note in his
own right. He was a son of Aeacus, king of Aegina, and brother of
Telamon. Since Peleus and Aeacus had killed their half brother, they were
sent away from Aegina, and Peleus came to Phthia. There he wed Antigone,
daughter of King Eurytion, but Antigone later killed herself, wrongly
suspecting Peleus of not having been true to her. As for Eurytion, Peleus
slew him by accident in the course of the hunt for the Calydonian Boar, in
which he participated. Peleus also took part in Jason’s quest for the Golden
Fleece. On the grounds that he was the best man alive (or because neither
Zeus nor Poseidon, who both desired her, wanted to risk fathering a son
more powerful than themselves), the goddess Thetis was given to him in
marriage. There was a tradition that Peleus had to work hard to gain
physical possession of his bride, successfully wrestling with her as she
changed shape from that of a woman to a beast and fire. All the gods
attended the wedding, apart from Eris (“Strife”), who had not been invited,
an exclusion that led to the beauty “contest” judged by the Trojan prince
Paris and to the Trojan War.
By Peleus, Thetis became the mother of Achilles, whom she wanted to
make immortal. This she did by holding the infant over burning embers,
which Peleus witnessed in horror, causing her to abandon the effort and
depart for the ocean; by another account, Thetis availed herself of a
different method, namely dipping Achilles into the waters of the river Styx.
In any event, Peleus outlived his son, since Achilles did not become
immortal and was killed by the Trojan prince Paris at the end of the Trojan
War.
(See also Achilles, Aeacus, Aegina, Calydon, Eris, Jason, Paris,
Poseidon, Styx [the River], Thessaly, Thetis, Troy, and Zeus.)
PELIAS Pelias was a king of Iolcos in Thessaly and a son of Poseidon and
Tyro, whom the god had raped disguised as the river Enipeus. Tyro exposed
both Pelias and his twin brother Neleus, but the boys were found and raised
by herdsmen. As the mythographer Apollodorus reports, Pelias received his
name from the mark (pelion) left on his forehead by one of the herdsmen’s
horses, who kicked him. When reunited with their mother, Pelias killed his
stepmother Sidero, who had abused Tyro but had taken refuge in a precinct
of Hera, which should have rendered her immune to any violence. This last
act set Pelias on a course of enduring evildoing. He drove his half brother
Aeson, who stood first in line to inherit the throne, from Iolcos and made
himself king of that city. Later, when Aeson’s son Jason came to claim the
throne, Pelias sent him on a mission that he was sure would prove fatal, this
mission being to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the barbarian land of
Colchis. When, against all odds, Jason returned to Ioclos, he brought with
him the Colchian princess Medea, who used her skills as a sorceress to end
Pelias’s life; this Medea did by convincing Pelias’s daughters that she could
make their father young again. Medea demonstrated how this could be done
by rejuvenating an old ram that she first cut up and then tossed into a
cauldron filled with a magic potion. Pelias’s daughters agreed to subject
their father to the same treatment, but Medea, exacting vengeance on behalf
of Jason, threw Pelias’s limbs into a cauldron filled only with water.
(See also Aeson, Colchis, Hera, Iolcos, Jason, Medea, Neleus, Poseidon,
Sidero, Thessaly, and Tyro.)

PELOPS Pelops was the son of the goddess Dione and Tantalus, a man
who greatly abused his privileged access to the gods. Tantalus’s greatest sin
consisted of chopping Pelops up and using his body parts as ingredients in a
stew to be served to the gods. Almost all the gods realized what Tantalus
had done in time. Only Demeter, who was distracted by grief over losing
her daughter, Persephone, ate from the portion put before her, biting into
Pelops’s shoulder blade. When Zeus subsequently reassembled and revived
Pelops, a piece of ivory in place of the shoulder blade was used to make
him whole. When grown to maturity, Pelops set his sights on marrying the
lovely Hippodamia, daughter of King Oenomaus of Pisa. Many had
attempted to win her hand, and many had failed, their failure costing them
their lives, for Oenomaus challenged them all to a chariot race that he was
guaranteed to win and beheaded the losers. By bribing Myrtilus,
Oenomaus’s charioteer, to remove the linchpin from the wheel of his
adversary’s chariot, Pelops not only won the chariot race but also became
the king of Pisa, since Oenomaus, thrown from his compromised chariot,
had perished. But Pelops did not honor his promises to Myrtilus, whom he
hurled from a cliff to his death; before expiring, Myrtilus was able to utter a
curse against Pelops and his descendants. Among these descendants were
the adulterous Theyestes and Atreus, who would become father to
Agamemnon, later murdered by his wife, and to Menelaus, husband of the
lovely Helen, all of them tragic figures. In spite of the curse, Pelops himself
became a powerful ruler, extending his influence so far that the entire
Peloponnese (“Island of Pelops”) took its name from him. According to
tradition, his chariot race with Oenomaus was the founding event of the
Olympic Games, which took place at the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia in
what was formerly the territory of Pisa.
(See also Agamemnon, Atreus, Demeter, Dione, Helen, Hippodamia,
Menelaus, Myrtilus, Oenomaus, Olympia, Tantalus, Theyestes, and Zeus.)

PENELOPE Penelope, daughter of the Spartan king Icarius, was the wife
of Odysseus, mother by Odysseus of Telemachus, and a model of wifely
fidelity. When Odysseus did not return home after the Trojan War and all of
Ithaca’s most eligible young men courted her, she put them off by stating
that she would make her choice when she finished weaving a shroud for her
father-in-law Laertes. Every night Penelope would undo the day’s work, but
eventually the suitors discovered her ruse and pressed her to finish.
Fortunately, it was not long after this that Odysseus returned. Being as
clever and circumspect as her husband, Penelope was unsure whether, after
so many years, Odysseus really was who he claimed to be, and made trial of
him: in Odysseus’s presence, she told the nurse Eurycleia to move what had
been her marriage bed for the newly arrived Odysseus to sleep in. Only
Odysseus would know that this could not be done, for he had carved the bed
from the stump of an olive tree around which he had built his palace.
(See also Eurycleia, Ithaca, Laertes, Odysseus, Sparta, Telemachus, and
Troy.)
PENTHESILEIA Penthesileia was an Amazon and, as the Greek poet
Quintus of Smyrna reports, a daughter of the war god Ares. After the death
of Hector, she came to Troy as an ally of the Trojans, doing so by way of
expiating a grievous sin: she had accidentally killed her own sister
Hippolyta while hunting. She fought bravely, killing many Greeks, but she
and her horse were felled by the great ash spear of Achilles. As she lay
dying, Achilles, overcome by her loveliness, fell in love with her.
(See also Achilles, Amazons [the], Ares, Hector, Hippolyta, and Troy.)

PENTHEUS Pentheus was the son of the Theban king Cadmus’s daughter
Agave and Echion, one of the warriors (the so-called Sparti) who sprang
from the dragon’s teeth that Cadmus sowed. In Cadmus’s advanced age,
Pentheus became regent of Thebes, and it was then that Dionysus,
Pentheus’s cousin, came to Greece, arriving first in Thebes of all Greek
cities, in order to introduce his worship to that land. Pentheus was skeptical
of this supposed new god and attempted to imprison him together with
those citizens of Thebes who joined his celebrants; the latter included
Cadmus, the seer Teiresias, his own mother Agave, and his aunts, Ino and
Autonoe. As was to be expected, the god was too powerful for Pentheus and
would have his vengeance. While Pentheus was on the one hand disturbed
by the god’s effeminacy, he was also curious about it and was curious, too,
about what the god’s female celebrants (called Maenads or Bacchantes)
were doing: it was later reported that they had taken to the wilderness,
danced in ecstasy, and nursed the young of animals they had found. The
Bacchantes’ revels turned sinister when they caught sight of Pentheus
spying on them. With Agave in the lead, the women tore Pentheus limb
from limb, mistaking him for an animal and making him a victim of their
sparagmos and omophagia (tearing apart and eating raw), known ancient
ritual practices of the Bacchantes.
(See also Agave, Autonoe, Bacchantes [the], Cadmus, Dionysus, Ino
[heroine], Teiresias, and Thebes.)

PERDIX Perdix was the great-grandson of the Athenian king Erechtheus

and nephew of the craftsman Daedalus. As the Roman poet Ovid and others
report, Perdix invented the saw and the compass, and an envious Daedalus
hurled him from the Acropolis. But Minerva, patroness of all craftsmen,
rescued him and transformed him into a partridge, the bird called perdix
(“partridge” in Greek) after him.
(See also Acropolis [the], Athens, Daedalus, Erechtheus, and Minerva.)

PERSEUS The Greek hero Perseus was a son of the god Zeus and the
princess Danae, daughter of Acrisius, king of the Greek city of Argos.
Having learned from an oracle that he would be killed by his grandson,
Acrisius sought to prevent access to his daughter by imprisoning her.
According to the mythographer Apollodorus, this prison was an
impenetrable buried chamber of bronze; for the poet Ovid, it was a brazen
tower; and for the mythographer Hyginus, it was a bunker of stone. In any
event, this prison was no deterrent for Zeus, who breached the prison in the
shape of a stream of gold and lay with Danae, impregnating her. Alarmed
but unwilling to assume the guilt of bloodshed, Acrisius set his daughter
and her baby adrift in a chest to perish at sea. To no avail. When the chest
and its passengers arrived safely on the island of Seriphus, mother and child
were discovered and taken in by Dictys, a local fisherman. While in
Dictys’s care, Danae caught the eye of the fisherman’s brother, the island’s
king Polydectes, who sought her hand in marriage.
Whether it was because Perseus, now grown, objected to the marriage or
whether king Polydectes simply wished to have Danae for himself, he
tricked Perseus into bringing him a wedding gift that, for any normal
mortal, would be impossible to obtain: the head of the Gorgon Medusa.
With the help of the gods Athena and Hermes, Perseus made his way to the
Graiae (“The Old Ones” or “The Gray Sisters”), who, being the Gorgons’
siblings, would be able to tell him how to find Medusa. They did not offer
this information willingly, however, doing so only when Perseus contrived
to seize the single eye and tooth that they shared between them. Perseus,
they said, would have to find the nymphs of the north, who possessed
equipment required to complete his task. From these nymphs Perseus
received a leather satchel, winged sandals, and a magical cap that rendered
those who wore it invisible. From Hermes he received a sickle, and from
Athena a well-polished shield, essential as it could be used as a mirror with
which to locate the Gorgons—scaly, horned, and snake-haired—who, if
gazed upon directly, turned those looking at them to stone. After locating
the Gorgons’ lair, Perseus, unseen, severed Medusa’s head while she was
sleeping and placed it in his pouch. His winged sandals, then, conveyed him
swiftly out of range of Medusa’s sisters who, upon awaking, gave chase.
From Medusa’s neck, or from the blood that had been spilled, sprang the
winged horse Pegasus and the relatively shadowy figure Chrysaor.
Poisonous snakes swarmed in the lands over which he flew with the still-
dripping severed head.
In the course of his journey back to Seriphus, Perseus stopped to visit
Atlas, who had previously denied him hospitality and whom, in vengeance,
he turned into the stony mountains that still bear his name by holding aloft
Medusa’s head. He also stopped in Egypt, where, being related to Danaus,
he had ancestral ties and was later honored in cult. He also saw, and
immediately desired, the princess Andromeda, who had been chained to a
crag on the coast of Ethiopia. This was the doing of her father, King
Cepheus: she was to be prey for a sea monster sent by Poseidon to range
those waters, her sacrifice an atonement to the Nereid nymphs, whom his
wife, Cassiopeia, had insulted, calling herself more beautiful than they.
Having slain the monster as well as Andromeda’s uncle and former suitor,
Phineus, Perseus claimed her as bride and brought her to Seriphus. There
Perseus again pulled out the Gorgon’s head so as to turn Polydectes to stone
for his ill treatment of Dictys and his mother. Having no further use for his
winged sandals and magic cap, Perseus gave them to Hermes to return to
the nymphs. The head of Medusa, however, he gave to Athena, who affixed
it as an emblem on her breastplate or shield.
Perseus made Dictys regent of the island of Seriphus and, with his
mother, Danae, set out in search of his grandfather, Acrisius, who, having
learned of his grandson’s survival and fearing that the oracle would be
fulfilled, had left his kingdom in Argos. What the oracle had predicted did,
nonetheless, come to pass, for Perseus unwittingly killed Acrisius with a
discus while competing in athletic contests in the city of Larissa. Not
wishing to return to Argos, Perseus made his cousin Megapenthes king and,
in turn, assumed the latter’s throne over Tiryns. By some accounts, Perseus
established the city of Mycenae at the spot where he discovered water or
where the cap of his sword’s scabbard fell.
Perseus and Andromeda founded the Perseid Dynasty, becoming parents
to seven children, among them Perses, from whom the kings of Persia
claimed descent; Alcaeus, who fathered Amphitryon; Sthenelus, father of
Eurystheus, who sent the hero Hercules on his labors; and Electryon, who
sired Alcmena, the mother of Hercules.
The ancient travel writer Pausanias reports that in addition to being
venerated as a hero in Egypt, Perseus received particular honors near Argos
and Mycenae as well as in Athens and at Seriphus after his death. Upon
their deaths, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Andromeda, and Perseus all became
constellations.
(See also Acrisius, Alcaeus, Alcmena, Andromeda, Argos, Athena,
Atlas, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Chrysaor, Danae, Dictys, Electryon, Ethiopia,
Eurystheus, Gorgons [the], Graiae [the], Hercules, Hermes, Larissa,
Medusa, Mycenae, Pegasus, Perses, Phineus, Polydectes, Seriphus, Tiryns,
and Zeus.)

PHAEACIANS, THE The Phaeacians were a people beloved of the gods

and lived on the island of Scheria. Having previously inhabited a land
called Hyperia, these famed seafarers were brought to Scheria by
Nausithous so that they might escape the neighboring Cyclopes, who
harassed them. On Scheria, Nausithous established a well-ordered city, and
he was succeeded as king by Alcinous, whose queen was Arete. Alcinous’s
daughter, the princess Nausicaa, guided Odysseus to her father’s palace,
where he was hospitably received. Although the Phaeacians were aware of
a prophecy foretelling the destruction of their city if they generously
continued to offer conveyance on their ships to all who needed it, they took
Odysseus home to Ithaca. Upon their ship’s return, it was turned to stone by
Poseidon.
(See also Alcinous, Arete, Cyclopes [the], Ithaca, Nausicaa, Odysseus,
Poseidon, and Scheria.)

PHAEDRA Phaedra was a daughter of Minos, king of Crete, and his wife,
Pasiphae. Like her mother, Phaedra, too, fell victim to an inappropriate
love. In Phaedra’s case, she developed a passion for her husband Theseus’s
son, Hippolytus, a chaste devotee of the virgin goddess Artemis. Phaedra
tried hard to suppress her feelings, but her old nurse perceived her suffering
and compelled her to speak of what it was that ailed her. Promising to help,
the nurse revealed Phaedra’s passion to a horrified Hippolytus. Her
reputation now beyond repair, Phaedra killed herself, but not before writing
a note to her husband indicating that her death was a result of Hippolytus’s
having made unwanted advances upon her. This false accusation prompted
Theseus to curse his son, causing his death.
(See also Artemis, Crete, Hippolytus, Minos, Pasiphae, and Theseus.)

PHAETHON The story of Phaethon (“The Gleaming One”) and his tragic
fate is vividly told by the Roman poet Ovid. Phaethon was a son of Helios,
whom Ovid equates with Apollo, and the nymph Clymene. Wishing to
know for certain that the Sun God was his father, Phaethon asked him for a
favor that would yield the proof he needed. The otherwise all-seeing god
acquiesced, inviting the youngster to ask any favor he liked. What Phaethon
desired was to drive his father’s chariot, and this he did with disastrous
results. Driving it too high into the heavens, he was startled by the
constellations, and, losing control of his horses, he scorched the clouds and
all the Earth. As the universe was in turmoil, in danger of destruction,
Jupiter himself intervened, striking down Phaethon with a lightning bolt.
The boy fell to his death into the Eridanus River. His sisters, the Heliades,
wept ceaselessly for him and turned into poplars yielding amber tears, while
his lamenting kinsman Cycnus became a swan, forever singing a plaintive
song.
(See also Apollo, Clymene, Cycnus, Eridanus River [the], Heliades
[the], Helios, and Jupiter.)

PHILEMON Philemon was the husband of Baucis. The couple were

Phrygian peasants who, in spite of their abject poverty, were the only ones
in their village to offer the gods Jupiter and Mercury hospitality while they
were traveling disguised as humans. For their generosity, Baucis and
Philemon were rewarded by being appointed priests of the two gods. Their
humble hut became a temple, and their village, which the gods utterly
wiped out, became a lake. At the time of their deaths, occurring
simultaneously at their request, the two became an oak tree and a linden.
(See also Baucis, Jupiter, Mercury, and Phrygia.)
PHILOCTETES Philoctetes was one of the many Greeks who sailed for
Troy, but unlike most, he did not reach the shores of Troy at the inception of
hostilities. When the Greeks stopped to make sacrifice on the island of
Tenedos, Philoctetes was bitten by a snake. The wound was painful and
festered, causing him to curse and cry out. Odysseus convinced the Greeks
to abandon Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos on the grounds that his cries
would bring them bad luck. Philoctetes then lived alone on Lemnos for ten
years, armed with only the bow and arrow that Hercules had given him in
thanks for lighting the pyre on which he wished to end his life; Hercules
had been in agony, having been poisoned by his wife, Deianeira, with what
she mistakenly thought was a love potion. The Greeks came to regret their
abandonment of Philoctetes when it was revealed that Troy would not fall
unless Philoctetes with Hercules’s bow and arrow was present.
Consequently, Odysseus and Achilles’s son Neoptolemus went to retrieve
Philoctetes, a thing they very nearly did not achieve, as Philoctetes was,
justifiably, still angry. Nonetheless, Philoctetes was brought to Troy, and,
his wound having been healed, he killed the Trojan prince Paris, whose
abduction of Helen was the immediate cause of the war.
(See also Achilles, Helen, Hercules, Lemnos, Neoptolemus, Odysseus,
Paris, and Troy.)

PHILOMELA Philomela (“Nightingale”) was an Athenian princess who

was imprisoned and repeatedly raped by her sister Procne’s husband, King
Tereus of Thrace. When Philomela threatened to reveal this ill treatment of
her, Tereus cut out her tongue. But Philomela was able to tell her story
nonetheless, for she wove it into a tapestry that was delivered to Procne,
who had been led to believe that she was dead. The sisters plotted a terrible
vengeance on Tereus, and as Philomela fled Tereus in his wrathful pursuit
of her, she became a nightingale.
(See also Athens, Procne, Tereus, and Thrace.)

PHINEUS Phineus was a blind seer whose parentage was disputed. Among
those called his father were the god Poseidon, Agenor of Tyre, and
Agenor’s son Phoenix. Phineus married Cleopatra, a daughter of the wind
god Boreas and Orithyia, and later took as wife Idaea, a daughter of
Dardanus. Accounts of his blinding were various. Among those claimed as
being responsible for this was Boreas (with help from the Argonauts), who,
according to the mythographer Apollodorus, wished to punish Phineus for
blinding his grandsons, which Phineus had done believing that they had
made advances on Idaea. Alternatively, it was said that Zeus blinded him
because he had revealed the future to humans, thus making too much
knowledge available to them. In Apollonius of Rhodes’s Voyage of the
Argo, Phineus was being tortured by the Harpies, who snatched away what
food he tried to eat and fouled the rest. He was saved, however, by Boreas’s
sons Zetes and Calais, who had joined Jason’s crew of Argonauts, and in
thanks for this, he reavealed how the Argo could safely sail between the
Symplegades (“Clashing Rocks”).
(See also Agenor, Argonauts [the], Boreas, Calais, Dardanus, Harpies
[the], Orithyia, Poseidon, Symplegades [the], and Zetes.)

PHRIXUS Phrixus was a son of Athamas, king of Orchomenus in Boeotia,

and Nephele. When his father, Athamas, later took Ino as wife, she devised
a plot whereby to do away with Phrixus and his sister Helle, who, being
born earlier than her own children, stood to become her husband’s heirs. Ino
thus caused the realm’s stockpile of grain seed to become spoiled, with the
result that when sown, the seed failed to germinate. Athamas then sent
messengers to consult the Delphic Oracle regarding a remedy for this
catastrophe. Ino, however, compelled the messengers to report falsely that
the Oracle recommended the sacrifice of Phrixus and, by some accounts,
Helle too. Nephele, however, was able to save her children, sending a
golden fleeced and winged ram to carry them away to safety. In the course
of the ram’s flight, Helle lost her balance and fell into the waters below,
which thereafter were called Hellespont, “Helle’s Sea,” and now are called
the Dardanelles. Phrixus, for his part, was conveyed safely to the town of
Aea in Colchis on the eastern shores of the Black Sea. The Colchian king
Aeetes welcomed Phrixus, who sacrificed the ram in thanksgiving either to
Ares, as the mythographer Hyginus writes, or to Zeus, according to
Apollodorus. The ram’s fleece was given to King Aeetes, who hung it in on
the limbs of an oak in a grove sacred to Ares, where it was guarded by a
dragon. It was this fleece that the hero Jason, accompanied by the
Argonauts, was sent to retrieve. Meanwhile, Aeetes offered Phrixus his
daughter Chalciope in marriage, but Aeetes came to fear Phrixus and his
sons, having heard a prophecy that he would lose his kingdom to a
foreigner. Aeetes thus contrived their murder, but Phrixus’s sons, at least,
were able to escape and were later rescued by Jason, who came upon them
as castaways.
(See also Aeetes, Ares, Argonauts [the], Athamas, Boeotia, Colchis,
Delphi, Helle, Hellespont [the], Ino, Jason, Nephele [heroine], and Zeus.)

PIERUS Pierus was a Macedonian king who is perhaps best known as

having been father to nine daughters, the Pierides. These young women had
lovely singing voices and presumed themselves to be equal to or better
vocalists than the Muses. The Roman poet Ovid recounts the contest
between them. The Muses prevailed, as deities always did, and the
daughters of Pierus, being sore losers, were transformed into chattering
magpies for their continued insolence. Pierus was considered to be the
namesake of Pieria, the birthplace of the Muses and of the bard Orpheus.
(See also Macedon, Muses [the], Orpheus, Pieria, and Pierides [the].)

PIRITHOUS Pirithous (or Perithous and Peirithous) was a king of the

Lapiths in Thessaly. He was called a son of Zeus by some but was also
known as a son of Ixion, the sinner who would become fastened to a
flaming wheel in the Underworld. Pirithous was reputedly involved in a
wide range of adventures, among them attempted abductions, in which he
was joined by the Athenian hero Theseus: the two first attempted to make
off with Helen of Sparta, prior to her marriage to Menelaus, and, later, with
Persephone, Hades’s queen. Pirithous is best known for his battle with the
Centaurs, who had been his neighbors. Pirithous invited them to his
wedding, but the Centaurs became drunk in the course of the festivities and
tried to make off with Hippodamia, Pirithous’s bride, and the other Lapith
women. A fierce battle ensued, and the Centaurs were driven from
Thessaly.
(See also Athens, Centaurs [the], Hades [god], Helen, Hippodamia,
Ixion, Lapiths [the], Persephone, Theseus, Thessaly, Underworld [the], and
Zeus.)
PITTHEUS Pittheus was a son of Tantalus’s son Pelops and Hippodamia,
daughter of Oenomaus of Pisa. Pittheus became a king of Troezen in the
northeastern Peloponnese and played a significant role in the life of the hero
Theseus. When King Aegeus of Athens came to Troezen and related what
Apollo’s oracle at Delphi had told him in response to his query about being
childless, Aegeus understood its meaning, although it eluded Aegeus: the
Athenian king was not to loosen his wineskin (goatskin container for wine)
until he returned home. Pittheus accordingly arranged for his daughter
Aethra to lie with Aegeus, and she became pregnant with Theseus, who
would, when grown, make his way to Athens and claim that city’s throne.
(See also Aegeus, Aethra, Apollo, Athens, Delphi, Hippodamia,
Oenomaus, Pelops, Tantalus, and Theseus.)

POEAS Poeas was the father of Philoctetes, the friend who helped
Hercules in his final hour by agreeing to light the funeral pyre that he
mounted in order to end his life. Poeas joined the expedition of Jason and
the Argonauts, and in the course of the return journey from Colchis, Poeas
fatally wounded the Sicilian giant Talus.
(See also Argonauts [the], Hercules, Jason, Philoctetes, Sicily, and
Talus.)

POLYBUS Perhaps the best-known Polybus was the Corinthian king who,
with his wife, Merope (or Periboea), took in the infant Oedipus and raised
him as his own child. When Oedipus learned from the Oracle at Delphi that
he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother, he left Corinth but
unknowingly killed his biological father, Laius, on the road. Oedipus
became Laius’s successor on the throne of Thebes and married his mother,
who bore him several children.
The Corinthian Polybus became confused with a Sicyonian king of the
same name who was father of Adrastus, one of the Seven Against Thebes.
(See also Adrastus, Corinth, Delphi, Laius, Merope [heroine], Oedipus,
Seven Against Thebes [the], and Thebes.)

POLYDECTES Polydectes and his brother, Dictys, were grandsons of the

wind god Aeolus and a Naiad (a water nymph). Polydectes became king of
the island of Seriphus, and Dictys a fisherman. Polydectes became
enamored of the hero Perseus’s mother, Danae, when she and her baby
Perseus arrived, adrift in a chest, on the island. Hoping to make Danae his
bride, Polydectes contrived a plot whereby to rid himself of Perseus, who,
by some accounts, stood in his way. Polydectes thus announced that he was
planning to wed Hippodamia and requested fine horses specifically as a
wedding gift. Perseus, who had been raised as a fisherman by Dictys, could
never hope to purchase such a gift and, instead, offered (or was forced to
offer) the head of the Gorgon Medusa instead, this being a “gift” that was
seemingly impossible to obtain. When, contrary to expectation, Perseus
returned to Seriphus with the Gorgon’s head in hand, he turned Polydectes
and his assembled courtiers to stone, petrification being the result of
looking directly at Medusa. A kinder Polydectes is portrayed by the
mythographer Hyginus, according to whom Polydectes took Danae as wife
and raised Perseus in a temple of Minerva. When Acrisius arrived in pursuit
of Danae and Perseus, his daughter and grandson, Polydectes interceded so
as to reconcile grandfather and grandson. Although Perseus swore that he
would never kill Acrisius, he did later kill him accidentally while throwing
a discus.
(See also Acrisius, Aeolus, Danae, Dictys, Gorgons [the], Medusa,
Minerva, Naiads, Perseus, and Seriphus.)

POLYDORUS There were several heroes by the name of Polydorus

(“Giver of Many Gifts”). One was a son of King Priam of Troy and his
wife, Hecuba. As the Roman poet Virgil writes, in order to keep him safe
from the Greeks during the Trojan War, his parents sent him to Polymestor,
king of the Bistones in Thrace, but Polymestor, driven by greed, murdered
the boy for the gold that had been sent along with him. When, after the fall
of Troy, Hecuba had been taken captive by the Greeks and came to Thrace,
she there discovered the corpse of her son and exacted vengeance upon
Polymestor. On his way to Italy, the Trojan hero Aeneas, too, came to
Thrace and discovered Polydorus’s place of burial accidentally. When
Aeneas picked some branches of myrtle and dogwood, the plants bled, and
the voice of Polydorus was heard: Polydorus’s ghost told Aeneas of his
brutal murder. Aeneas subsequently made sacrifice to the deceased in order
to ensure proper burial and quickly departed from Thrace.
Another Polydorus was the son of Cadmus and Harmonia and became
father of Labdacus. By some accounts, he held the throne of Thebes for a
short time but died while still a young man.
(See also Aeneas, Cadmus, Harmonia, Hecuba, Labdacus, Priam,
Thebes, Thrace, and Troy.)

POLYIDOS Polyidos (or Polyeidos), “The One Who Knows Much,” was a
Corinthian seer with very considerable powers to work miracles. According
to the Greek poet Pindar, Polyidos assisted the hero Bellerophon, who had
been tasked with slaying the Chimaera. The seer had instructed Bellerophon
to go to sleep on an altar of Athena, where he dreamed that the goddess
appeared to him, a golden bridle in hand. Bellerophon recounted the dream
to Polyidos, who advised him to make sacrifice to Poseidon, as the dream-
Athena had instructed to do; to make sacrifice to Athena; and to use the
bridle, which had manifested itself in “real” form, in order to tame Pegasus.
Polyidos also famously helped King Minos of Crete find his young son
Glaucus and, after finding him, restore him to life: the child was found
drowned in a vat of honey and was miraculously revived by Polyidos, who
had observed a serpent reviving its dead companion.
(See also Athena, Bellerophon, Chimaera [the], Corinth, Crete, Glaucus,
Minos, Pegasus, and Poseidon.)

POLYNEICES Polyneices, whose name means “much strife,” was the

cause of much hostility in the city of Thebes. He was a son of Oedipus, king
of Thebes, and the queen Jocasta. Together with his brother, Eteocles, he
was cursed by his father; according to the playwright Sophocles, this was
because the brothers had done nothing to prevent Oedipus from being
exiled. Once they were of age, the brothers agreed to share the throne by
ruling in alternate years, but Eteocles, who ruled first, refused to step down.
As a result, Polyneices raised an army, which was led by his father-in-law,
Adrastus, to march against Thebes. This contingent was known as the
Seven Against Thebes, and in the ensuing battle, all the seven captains apart
from Adrastus were killed. Polyneices and Eteocles killed each other, in this
way fulfilling their father’s curse upon them. Jocasta’s brother Creon, who
then became regent, forbade the burial of Polyneices on the grounds that he
was an enemy of the city, a position with which Polyneices’s sister
Antigone disagreed at the cost of her life. The death of Polyneices’s allies
was later avenged by the so-called Epigoni, the sons of the fallen Seven.
(See also Adrastus, Antigone, Creon, Epigoni [the], Eteocles, Jocasta,
Oedipus, Seven Against Thebes [the], and Thebes.)

POLYPHONTES Polyphontes was a descendant of Hercules and usurper

of the throne of Cresphontes, King of Messenia. Polyphontes, “Killer of
Many Men,” slew not only Cresphontes but also the king’s two eldest sons.
The youngest, Aepytus, was saved by the queen Merope and, when grown
to manhood, avenged his father’s death, subsequently becoming king in his
place.
(See also Aepytus, Cresphontes, Hercules, Merope [heroine], and
Messenia.)

POLYXENA Polyxena was a daughter of King Priam of Troy and his wife,
the queen Hecuba. Her best-known siblings were Paris (Alexander), Hector,
Deiphobus, Helenus, Cassandra, Polydorus, and Troilus. Polyxena herself
was known primarily for how she died. The most common account of her
death is that the ghost of Achilles—appearing either above his tomb or in a
dream—demanded her sacrifice upon his tomb, or he would prevent the
Greeks from returning home from Troy. By some accounts, it was
Achilles’s son Neoptolemus who carried out the sacrifice.
(See also Achilles, Cassandra, Deiphobus, Hector, Hecuba, Helenus,
Neoptolemus, Polydorus, Priam, Troilus, and Troy.)

PROCNE Procne was a daughter of the legendary Athenian king Pandion.

The best known of her siblings were Erechtheus and Philomela. Pandion
gave Procne as bride to King Tereus of Thrace, and she bore him a son
named Itys. When Procne later discovered that Tereus had imprisoned and
repeatedly raped Philomela, the sisters plotted a gruesome vengeance: they
served Tereus his own son. When fleeing Tereus’s rage, Procne became a
swallow and her sister a nightingale.
(See also Athens, Erechtheus, Philomela, and Tereus.)
PROCRIS Procris was a daughter of the legendary Athenian king
Erechtheus and was married to Cephalus, son of King Deion of Phocis. The
Roman Ovid poet tells the best-known version of their tragic love story.
While a newlywed Cephalus was out hunting, he was abducted by the
goddess of the dawn, Aurora (Eos to the Greeks). Procris was anguished
over his disappearance, but Cephalus was anguished, too, at being separated
from his bride, a fact that angered the goddess. So Aurora released
Cephalus and said to him in parting that he would come to wish that he had
never been with Procris. The goddess’s words planted a seed of doubt, and
Cephalus wondered if Procris might have been unfaithful to him in his
absence. Accordingly, he decided to test her by disguising himself and
propositioning her, using money as a bribe. She refused him repeatedly
until, at last, he offered an enormous fortune for a single night. When she
relented, an angry Cephalus revealed himself, and she, in shame, departed
for the woods to become a companion to Diana, goddess of the hunt.
Cephalus apologized and won her back, and the two had happy years
together. Later, however, when Cephalus was again out hunting, he took a
break from the heat of the day. While resting in the shade, he called out to
the cooling breeze, asking it to comfort him and restore his vigor. But
someone overheard him addressing these tender words to Aura, which was
a woman’s name but also the word for “breeze.” His alleged faithlessness
was reported to Procris who, on the next day, followed her husband into the
woods. When he heard a rustling, he shot what he thought was prey. What
he found was no animal but his beloved Procris, fatally wounded.
The mythographer Apollodorus preserves a different version of the
story, according to which Procris was successfully seduced by another man
in Cephalus’s absence. She subsequently fled to Crete, where King Minos
desired her and offered her a hunting dog and javelin. In exchange for these
gifts, she cured Minos of an illness that been causing his mistresses to
perish, and she slept with him. Later fleeing the anger of Minos’s wife,
Pasiphae, Procris returned to Athens, where she was reconciled with her
husband who, while the two of them were out hunting, killed her
accidentally. Hyginus records a different version still that blends aspects of
both others: Procris fled to Crete, where she became a devotee of Diana.
She became reconciled to her husband in the guise of a young man with
whom Cephalus agreed to spend the night in order to lay claim to the
“youth’s” fine hunting dog and javelin. When the two met at night, Procris’s
true identity was revealed, and although she was later killed in that fateful
hunting accident, Procris bore to Cephalus one Arcesius, who sired Laertes,
the hero Odysseus’s father.
(See also Athens, Aurora, Cephalus, Crete, Diana, Erechtheus, Laertes,
Minos, Odysseus, and Pasiphae.)

PROCRUSTES According to the mythographer Hyginus, the miscreant

Procrustes, whose name means “stretcher,” was a son of Neptune.
Whenever travelers came to him seeking lodging, Procrustes offered them a
bed but would make them fit the bed exactly: he lopped off the limbs of
those too tall and stretched the limbs of those too short. While making his
way to Athens, a young Theseus came upon Procrustes and killed him by
subjecting him to the very form of torture to which he had subjected others.
Procrustes was variously known also as Polypemon and Damastes.
(See also Athens, Neptune, and Theseus.)

PROTESILAUS Protesilaus, whose name means “first among the people,”

was a son of Iphicles (or Actor) and Diomedea (or Astyoche). Having been
one of Helen of Sparta’s numerous suitors, he was obliged to go to Troy and
went as commander of forty ships from Thessaly. According to the
mythographer Hyginus, although an oracle had warned that the first man to
touch the Trojan shore would be the first to lose his life, Protesilaus, whose
real name was Iolaus, bravely leaped ashore. He was instantly killed by
Hector. His new bride, Laodamia, daughter of Acastus, was grief-stricken at
his loss and begged the gods that she be allowed to speak with him for just
three hours. The gods granted this request, but when Protesilaus died a
second time, Laodamia could not bear the sorrow, so she commissioned a
bronze likeness of him and kept it in her chambers under the pretense that
she was making sacrifice to it. Yet a servant saw her embracing the statue
and, mistaking it for a live man, informed her father that she had a lover.
Her father soon discovered the truth and, in order to put an end to her
misery, cast the statue onto a pyre. Her sorrow compounded, Laodamia then
threw herself on the pyre, too.
(See also Hector, Helen, Sparta, Thessaly, and Troy.)
PSYCHE The story of Psyche, whose name means “soul,” is told by the
Roman author Apuleius in his novel The Golden Ass. Psyche was one of
three princesses, all of them lovely, but Psyche was the loveliest of all. Her
beauty became widely known, and people began to worship her as though
she were an incarnation of the goddess Venus herself, leaving the goddess’s
altars empty of sacrifices. At this Venus was angered, and instructed her son
Cupid to make Psyche fall in love with the lowliest of men. Meanwhile,
Psyche’s father had become frantic, as his daughter had no suitors; all
admired her as though she were a statue and untouchable. The king
consulted Apollo’s oracle and was instructed to leave Psyche on a cliff,
where she would become the bride of a monster. From that cliff, Psyche
was wafted onto a beautiful meadow and found her way into a lovely palace
where all her needs were attended to by handmaids whose voices she heard
but whom she never saw. She had a husband, too: Cupid, who appeared to
her only under cover of darkness. Although Cupid, whom she had never
actually seen, advised her against it, Psyche allowed her sisters to visit her.
Out of envy over her luxurious surroundings, they prompted her to find out
what her husband looked like, leading her to believe that he might indeed
be a monster. A worried Psyche then lit a lamp and illuminated her sleeping
husband. She was enraptured by the sight, but oil from her lamp dripped on
Cupid, and he woke, instantly taking flight. A now-pregnant Psyche
wandered the earth in search of him, enduring every kind of hardship, and
then became enslaved to Venus, who set her a series of what she thought
would be impossible tasks. All these tasks, which included sorting vast
quantities of grain, gathering wool from sheep with golden fleeces, and
obtaining a sample of water from the river Styx, Psyche accomplished, the
first with the assistance of ants, the second with assistance of a talking reed,
and the third with the help of Jupiter’s eagle. The last task consisted of
obtaining a beauty cream from Proserpina, queen of the Underworld. In this
case, too, Psyche had help: it came from the tower from which she intended
to throw herself. Having faced the Underworld’s countless dangers and
having obtained a box of this cream, Psyche was overcome with curiosity
and opened the container. Inside was no unguent but the sleep of death,
from which Cupid saved her. Reunited with the young god, Psyche became
immortal and bore him a child called Voluptas (Pleasure).
(See also Cupid, Jupiter, Proserpina, Styx [the River], Underworld [the],
Venus, and Zeus.)

PYGMALION There are two notable Pygmalions in Greco-Roman

mythology. One was a king of Cyprus who, as the Roman poet Ovid
recounts, chose a life of celibacy in shock at the shameful lives led by
women on the island. Possessing a sculptor’s skill, he created an ivory
statue of a girl so beautiful that he fell in love with her and showered her
with gifts. On the occasion of the goddess Aphrodite’s festival, he made an
offering and a prayer to the goddess: he asked that he one day have a wife
just like his ivory girl. His wish was granted: the statue became animate, a
woman of flesh and blood. Post-classical authors called this woman
Galatea. To Pygmalion she bore a girl named Paphos, whose son Cinyras
later founded the city of (Old) Paphos, the site of Aphrodite’s most
hallowed sanctuary and the place where Aphrodite first stepped on land
consequent to her watery birth.
The other Pygmalion was a king of Tyre in Phoenicia and, according to
Virgil in his Aeneid, brother of Dido, who became one of the many
casualties of the hero Aeneas’s quest to reach the shores of Italy and
establish the Roman race. Covetous of Dido’s husband’s wealth, Pygmalion
murdered him and hid this fact from Dido. Yet the bloodied ghost of her
husband, Sychaeus, appeared to her at night revealing her brother’s
murderous act and urging her to flee the country. This Dido did, taking with
her a group of refugees who hated or feared the tyrant-king. As leader of
these people, Dido traveled overseas to the land of Byrsa, in northern
Africa, which she purchased with riches whose hiding place her husband’s
ghost had also disclosed.
(See also Aeneas, Aphrodite, Cinyras, Cyprus, Dido, Paphos, and
Sychaeus.)

PYLADES Pylades was the son of Strophius, king of Phocis in central

Greece. He became a close friend and companion to the Mycenaean king
Aga-memnon’s son Orestes, who by some accounts was his cousin and had
been sent to the court of Strophius after his mother, Clytemnestra, and her
lover, Aegisthus, had murdered his father, Agamemnon. Pylades
accompanied Orestes when he returned to Mycenae to exact vengeance for
his father’s murder and was with him, too, when he traveled to the
barbarian land of the Taurians in order to fetch a wooden statue of Artemis
that, if brought to the territory of Athens, would ensure Orestes’s release
from pursuit by the Erinyes. Pylades was given Orestes’s sister Electra as a
bride and with her became father to two sons.
(See also Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Artemis, Athens, Clytemnestra,
Electra [heroine], Erinyes [the], Mycenae, Orestes, and Taurians [the].)

PYRAMUS Pyramus and Thisbe were young, star-crossed lovers who lived
in the city of Babylon. According to the Roman poet Ovid, who vividly tells
their tragic tale, the two met daily in secret, whispering to each other
through a crack in the wall that separated their houses, for their parents
objected to their special friendship, unwilling that they should meet or
marry. At last they could stand separation no longer and planned to escape
their parents by leaving their homes and the city under the cover of night.
They agreed to meet at an easily recognizable landmark, the tomb of Ninus,
father to the Babylonian queen Samiramis. The tomb’s location was marked
by a mulberry tree heavy with white fruit. At the fall of darkness, Thisbe
first made her escape, arriving alone at the place of meeting. As it
happened, a lioness approached, her mouth bloodied from a recent kill. A
terrified Thisbe fled, dropping her veil in flight, but the lioness did not
pursue her, having come to this spot only for a drink. After mouthing
Thisbe’s veil, the lioness departed, and now Pyramus appeared. He did not
see Thisbe, but instead caught sight of her bloodied veil. Believing his
beloved to have been killed, he threw himself upon his sword. His blood
stained the fruits of the mulberry red and also soaked its roots. Now Thisbe
came out of hiding to discover the tree’s color oddly changed and then
quickly discovered the cause. In desperation she, too, threw herself upon
the sword. The lovers’ death was thereafter memorialized by the mulberry,
its red fruit a constant reminder of their tragic end. In death, at least, their
ashes were allowed to mingle, being kept in a single urn.
(See also Babylon, Semiramis, and Thisbe.)

PYRRHA Pyrrha was the daughter of the second-generation Titan god

Epimetheus and Pandora, the first woman, who brought as a dowry the
fateful Pandora’s Box, filled with good and evil. Pyrrha married her uncle
Prometheus’s son, Deucalion, and with him survived the great flood
brought on by Zeus, who was angered at all the human depravity he had
witnessed and wished to eradicate humanity. When the couple’s boat
washed up on the summit of Mount Parnassus, which protruded from the
waters covering the earth, Zeus pitied them and ordered the waters to
recede. Pyrrha and Deucalion then repopulated the earth; receiving
guidance from the goddess Themis, they cast stones over their shoulders,
and these became the current, hardened human race. With Deucalion,
Pyrrha would later become mother to six children, the best known of whom
was Hellen, ancestor of the Hellenes, as the Greeks called themselves.
(See also Deucalion, Epimetheus, Hellen, Pandora, Parnassus [Mount],
Prometheus, Themis, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

PYRRHUS Pyrrhus was another name for Neoptolemus, son of Achilles.

(See also Achilles and Neoptolemus.)

REMUS Remus was a son of the Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia and Mars, and
was the twin brother of Romulus, who became founder of Rome. After the
twins had survived attempted drowning in the Tiber River and had grown to
manhood, they desired to found their own city. As the brothers were the
same age, there was no easy way to decide who would name and rule the
city. In the course of a dispute between them, Remus, by way of mocking
Romulus, leaped over the city’s rising walls, causing his brother to slay him
in anger.
(See also Mars, Rhea Silvia, Rome, Romulus, Tiber River [the], and
Vesta.)

RHADAMANTHUS Rhadamanthus (or Rhadamanthys) was a son of Zeus

and the princess Europa. According to Homer, he was the brother of Minos,
and according to Hesiod, he was brother of both Minos and Aeacus. Various
traditions suggest that all three brothers became judges in the Underworld
after their deaths. As for Rhadamanthus, the historian Diodorus Siculus
records that on the island of Crete, which was the place of his birth, he
became known for making the most just decisions and instituting
appropriate punishments for malefactors. When he later resided in Asia
Minor, islanders and mainlanders alike voluntarily subjected themselves to
his rule because of his reputation for being a paragon of justice.
(See also Aeacus, Crete, Europa, Minos, Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

RHEA SILVIA Rhea Silvia was the daughter of Numitor, a king of Alba
Longa, the city that the Trojan hero Aeneas’s son Ascanius had founded in
Italy. Although Numitor was the elder son of King Procas and thus the
latter’s rightful heir, he was driven from the throne by his younger brother
Amulius, according to the Roman historian Livy. Not stopping there,
Amulius killed Numitor’s sons and, so as to ensure that he would have no
grandsons, made his daughter Rhea Silvia a Vestal Virgin; the Vestals,
priestesses of Vesta, were required to remain celibate while serving the
goddess, and indiscretions were punishable by death. In spite of all these
measures, Rhea Silvia was impregnated by the god Mars. Amulius had
Rhea Silvia imprisoned as a consequence, and he ordered her children, the
twins Romulus and Remus, to be placed in a basket and set adrift in the
Tiber River. Amulius, of course, expected that the twins would die, but they
did not, famously being rescued by a she-wolf. As for Rhea Silvia,
“mother” of the Romans, she was later released by her sons when they
came of age.
(See also Aeneas, Alba Longa, Ascanius, Mars, Remus, Rome,
Romulus, Tiber, and Vesta.)

RHOECUS Rhoecus of Cnidus was said to have observed a particular oak

ready to fall and ordered his slaves to prop it up. In gratitude for this, the
Hamadryad nymph who inhabited the tree granted Rhoecus a wish. What he
wished for was to lie with her, and she consented, stating that he must
remain true to her and that she would send a bee as a messenger at the
appropriate moment. When she did send the bee, Rhoecus happened to be
engaged in a board game and was simply annoyed at the bee’s presence,
seemingly having forgotten what it could signify. In anger the nymph
blinded him. According to Pindar, who offers a variant of the story,
Rhoecus had been unfaithful and was stung.
(See also Hamadryads [the].)
 PLATE VI

Romulus and Remus: Twin brothers and founders of the city

of Rome
ROMULUS Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, were children of Rhea
Silvia, a priestess of Vesta, and the god Mars. Their birth was wholly
unexpected, as Rhea Silvia’s uncle, Amulius, had appointed her a Vestal
precisely because the Vestals were to remain celibate, any breach of their
vows of chastity being punishable by death. Upon the twins’ birth, Rhea
Silvia was imprisoned while Romulus and Remus were placed in a basket
and set adrift in the Tiber River. When the waters receded, the basket and its
precious contents were discovered by a she-wolf, who suckled the twins. A
herdsman named Faustulus came upon them and brought them home, and
he and his wife, Larentia, who were childless, raised the twins as their own.
As the boys matured, they took to hunting and also to marauding, stealing
from robbers and distributing the twice-stolen goods to their community of
herdsmen. Remus was taken captive and delivered to Numitor, his
grandfather, for punishment, but Numitor suspected his true identity. At the
same time the herdsman Faustulus revealed to Romulus what he suspected
the truth of his birth to be. Thus, Romulus and Remus each brought
supporters with them to oust the usurper-king Amulius, and after Romulus
killed Amulius, Numitor, the rightful king, was reinstated as ruler of Alba
Longa. Romulus and Remus, for their part, now desired to build their own
city, but as they were twins, it was not clear who should name and rule it.
They accordingly decided to leave this question up to the gods, Remus
positioning himself on the Aventine Hill and Romulus on the Palatine in
order to await signs from above. Remus received a sign first, as six vultures
appeared to him, but twelve then appeared to Romulus. The followers of
each brother claimed their own champion victorious, and a quarrel ensued.
In anger, Remus leaped over the city’s rising walls by way of insult, and for
this action Romulus killed him, thus becoming king and naming the city
after himself: Rome. Romulus established laws as well as religious
practices and priesthoods, and he increased the population by making his
new city a sanctuary for all those desiring a new life. Still there was a
problem, as the population consisted solely of men. Romulus sent envoys to
neighboring cities to negotiate alliances and intermarriage, but the Romans
were everywhere denied. Accordingly, Romulus devised a plan: the
Romans would host a celebration in honor of Neptune and invite the
neighboring peoples, including the Sabines. Pleased to attend, the
neighboring peoples came, their women and children in tow. When their
guests were engrossed in the spectacle, the Romans set upon the maidens
and made off with them. This caused the outbreak of hostilities in which
Romulus was at first victorious and dedicated Rome’s first temple to Jupiter
in consequence. Hostilities continued, however, and the Sabines, last among
the neighboring peoples to do so, finally also attacked Rome. The Sabines
went so far as to breach Rome’s fortifications, since the Romans were
betrayed by Tarpeia, daughter of a Roman commander, and hostilities raged
on until the Sabine women entreated their new husbands and fathers to call
a truce and make peace. This they did, making a single people out of two.
After the death of the Sabine king Titus Tatius, Romulus ruled the
combined peoples until his miraculous death and deification: while
Romulus was reviewing the troops on the Campus Martius, a sudden storm
enveloped him in clouds, and he disappeared from earth. Romulus, it was
declared, had been carried to the heavens, and he was henceforth
worshipped as the god Quirinus.
(See also Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Quirinus, Rhea Silvia, Rome, Sabines
[the], Tarpeia, Tiber, and Vesta.)

RUTULIANS, THE The Rutulians were an Italian people residing in

southern Latium. Their capital was Ardea, and their king, Turnus, had
hoped to win the hand of Lavinia, daughter of Laurentum’s king Latinus.
When Aeneas arrived in Italy, Latinus promised Lavinia to Aeneas, and the
Rutulians joined the other Latins in war against Aeneas and his allies.
(See also Aeneas, Latinus, Latium, Lavinia, and Turnus.)

SABINES, THE The Sabines were an Italian people who lived northeast of
Rome, the city founded by Romulus. At Rome’s founding, their king was
Titus Tatius, who later ruled jointly with Romulus after the Sabines and
Romans resolved to become a single people. This union occurred
subsequent to a bitter war resulting from the Romans’ theft of the Sabines’
women, a conflict that the Sabine women resolved by appealing to their
new husbands and their fathers to make peace. Titus Tatius and Romulus
ruled together for a period of five years until the former was murdered by a
cohort from Laurentum, leaving sole rule to Romulus. After Romulus’s
passing, the Sabine Numa Pompilius became Rome’s second king.
(See also Numa, Rome, and Romulus.)

SALMONEUS Salmoneus’s father was Aeolus, a son of Hellen and

“founder” of the Aeolians. According to the mythographer Hyginus,
Salmoneus first lived in Thessaly, but afterward came to Elis, where he
founded a city called Salmone. Salmoneus, in an excess of pride, wanted to
be the equal of Zeus and went so far as to claim that he actually was this
god, taking for himself sacrifices intended for Zeus and dragging behind his
chariot kettles that produced a noise like thunder. He imitated Zeus’s
lightning bolts by hurling lit torches into the air. Consequently, Zeus struck
him dead with one of his thunderbolts and wiped out the city of Salmone,
inhabitants and all. The historian Diodorus Siculus adds to this tale the story
of Salmoneus’s daughter, Tyro. Salmoneus, who dishonored and
disrespected all the gods, failed to believe that Tyro had been impregnated
by Poseidon and treated her badly, this being another reason that he was
struck down by Zeus. A variant of Tyro’s saga makes Salmoneus’s wife,
Sidero, Tyro’s tormentor and Tyro’s sons her avenger.
(See also Poseidon, Sidero, Tyro, and Zeus.)

SARPEDON There were two Sarpedons of note, one being the grandfather
of the other. The elder Sarpedon was a son of Zeus either by Europa,
daughter of Cadmus, or Laodamia, daughter of Bellerophon. Having been
raised on the island of Crete, the elder Sarpedon fled from there to Asia
Minor, where he fought the legendary Solymi, whose former lands he then
ruled, doing so jointly with Lycus of Athens (from whom the Lycians took
their name) at a later point. Sarpedon and his grandson Sarpedon became
confused even in antiquity. In Homer’s Iliad the younger Sarpedon was a
son of Zeus and, with his cousin Glaucus, leader of the Lycians, who had
come to fight on the side of the Trojans. In the course of the fighting,
Sarpedon came face-to-face with Achilles’s close friend Patroclus, and his
father, Zeus, was grieved at the prospect of now losing his son. Zeus
deliberated whether or not to save him and consulted Hera, who pointed out
that all the gods had mortal children whom they would want to save, and
that favoritism would bring with it strife. She suggested that he honor his
son by having his body removed from the battlefield by Hypnos and
Thanatos (“Sleep” and “Death”) and brought to his home in Lycia for
proper burial.
(See also Achilles, Bellerophon, Cadmus, Crete, Europa, Glaucus
[hero], Hera, Hypnus, Lycia, Patroclus, Solymi [the], Thanatos, and Zeus.)

SCHOENEUS Schoeneus was a Boeotian king, and a son of Athamas,

who was also father of the ill-fated children Phrixus and Helle. Schoeneus
is best known as the father of the swift-footed huntress Atalanta, whom no
person could outrun, at least without resorting to trickery.
(See also Atalanta, Athamas, Boeotia, Helle, and Phrixus.)

SCIRON Sciron, by some accounts a son of Poseidon or grandson of

Pelops, was a legendary outlaw who resided on the Scironian Cliffs on the
Saronic Gulf at the eastern coast of the territory of Megara. Alongside these
cliffs lay the road to Athens, and Sciron would ask passersby to wash his
feet. While they were bent over, busy with the task, he would hurl them off
the cliffs to their deaths in the sea, where, according to the mythographer
Apollodorus, they were devoured by an enormous turtle. The hero Theseus
rid the cliffs of this hazard by subjecting Sciron to the very treatment to
which he had subjected others, his bones later fusing to the crags, according
to the Roman poet Ovid.
(See also Athens, Megara [place], Pelops, Poseidon, and Theseus.)

SCYLLA Scylla was princess of the Greek city Megara and daughter of
Nisus, that city’s king. While Minos, king of Crete, was waging war upon
Megara, Scylla fell in love with him at first sight. The way to win Minos’s
heart, she reasoned, was to ensure his victory over Nisus, a thing that,
according to an oracle, could be achieved only if Nisus’s single lock of
purple hair were severed from his head. The Roman poet Ovid describes
Scylla’s treachery in detail: she cut the lock at night while her father was
sleeping and offered it to Minos who, alarmed at this act of brazen betrayal,
would have nothing to do with her. Minos set sail for Crete at first occasion,
and Scylla leaped into the sea, swimming in pursuit. However, when she
reached the Cretan vessel, her father, transformed into an osprey, dove at
her, causing her to lose her grip. Now she, too, became a sea bird or, as
mythographer Hyginus reports, a fish. The travel writer Pau-sanias’s
version of Scylla’s end is different: he writes that Minos tied her by the feet
to the ship’s stern, thus causing her to drown.
This Scylla is to be distinguished from the nymph-turned-monster of the
same name.
(See also Crete, Megara [place], Minos, Nisus, and Scylla [monster].)

SEMELE The lovely Semele distinguished herself by the manner of her

death. She was a daughter of Cadmus, king and founder of Thebes, and his
wife, Harmonia. As was the case with a number of lovely maidens, she
caught the ever-roving eye of Zeus, by whom she became pregnant. Hera
became aware of this affair and, disguising herself as Semele’s old nurse,
tricked Semele into doubting that her lover was divine. The goddess urged
that she should ensure that he was not merely some mortal man claiming to
be Zeus. The next time that Zeus visited her, a concerned Semele asked him
for a favor, and he replied that he would grant her anything she desired.
Being the guarantor of the sanctity of oaths, he could not deny her request:
she asked that he appear to her in his full divine glory. So, he appeared to
her as the god of storms and bearer of lightning. The pregnant Semele
caught fire and perished, but Zeus was able to save her unborn fetus, the
infant Dionysus, and sewed it into his thigh, from which the god was born
when the period of gestation was complete. According to the playwright
Euripides’s tragedy The Bacchae, Semele’s sisters Agave, Autonoe, and
Ino, envious that their sister had become mother to a god, spread a rumor
that Dionysus was no god and Semele’s lover a mortal. For this the sisters
were punished, being driven to murder Agave’s son Pentheus. The Roman
poet Ovid adds that Ino had actually served for a time as Dionysus’s nurse,
but that he was then given to the nymphs of Mount Nysa to raise.
(See also Agave, Autonoe, Cadmus, Dionysus, Harmonia, Hera, Ino,
Nysa, Pentheus, Thebes, and Zeus.)

SEMIRAMIS The Assyrian queen Semiramis was a historical figure,

accounts of whose life and achievements became steeped in legend.
Reputedly a great beauty, Semiramis was said to have been born of the Near
Eastern fertility goddess Derketo/Atargatis, nurtured by doves, and raised
by shepherds. According to the historian Diodorus Siculus, while married to
an Assyrian officer, Semiramis caught the eye of King Ninus, who wished
to marry her. Under threat from Ninus, the officer committed suicide, and
Semiramis then became queen. Later, after Ninus’s death, she became sole
regent and was credited with having built Babylon, as the Roman poet Ovid
mentions in the tale of the star-crossed lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, as well
as leading several successful military campaigns.
(See also Babylon and Pyramus.)

SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, THE The Seven Against Thebes were the
seven captains assembled by King Adrastus of Argos to help Oedipus’s son
(and Adrastus’s son-in-law) Polyneices in his bid to take the throne of
Thebes from his brother Eteocles; the brothers had agreed to share the
crown of Thebes by ruling alternately for a year, and Eteocles, who had
assumed the kingship first, refused to step down. Although not all sources
agree on the identity of the Seven, they are often listed as Adrastus;
Polyneices; Tydeus, the brutal father of Diomedes; the prideful, godless
Capaneus; Hippomedon; Parthenopaeus; and the seer Amphiaraus, who
knew beforehand that the campaign would go badly. All the Seven apart
from Adrastus were slain, and they were later avenged by their sons, the so-
called Epigoni.
(See also Adrastus, Amphiaraus, Argos, Capaneus, Diomedes, Epigoni
[the], Eteocles, Oedipus, Parthenopaeus, Thebes, and Tydeus.)

SIBYL OF CUMAE, THE Sibyls were prophetesses who, from birth,

received divine inspiration and served the deities who inspired them
throughout their very long lives. The Roman historian Varro notes known
Sibyls from around the Greco-Roman world: Persia, Libya, Delphi,
Cimmeria, Erythrea, Samos, Cumae, the Hellespont, Phrygia, and Tibur.
The most famous of these was the Sibyl of Cumae, who resided in a
mountain cavern at Cumae on Italy’s Campanian coast. According to the
Roman poet Virgil, there were one hundred entrances to the vast cavern,
and from all of these the Sibyl’s voice could be heard. The hero Aeneas was
sent to consult the Sibyl, and, while possessed by the god Apollo, she told
him of the wars he faced in Latium and that he must both pluck a certain
golden bough as an offering for Proserpina and bury his fallen comrade
Palinurus in order to gain access to the Underworld. Subsequently, she
accompanied the hero all the way to the Elysian Fields, where he met his
father, Anchises.
(See also Aeneas, Anchises, Apollo, Cumae, Delphi, Elysian Fields
[the], Hellespont [the], Latium, Palinurus, Phrygia, Proserpina, and
Underworld [the].)

SICHAEUS Sichaeus (or Sychaeus) was the murdered husband of Dido,

queen of Carthage.
(See Carthage, Dido, and Sychaeus.)

SIDERO Sidero was the stepmother of Tyro, daughter of the sacrilegious

Salmoneus, a king of Salmonia in Elis. For her ill treatment of Tyro, her
grandson Pelias (or Pelias and his brother Neleus) killed her.
(See also Neleus, Pelias, Salmoneus, and Tyro.)

SINIS Sinis was a son of Poseidon, according to the Greek poet

Bacchylides, and was a truly evil man who lived on the Isthmus of Corinth.
Known as Pityokamptes (“Pine-Bender”), Sinis tied the arms and legs of
passersby to pine trees that he had bent to the ground, and when he released
the trees, his hapless victims were torn apart. On his way from Troezen to
Athens, the young hero Theseus rid Greece of this plague by subjecting him
to the same torture. A variant tradition preserved by the mythographers
Hyginus and Apollodorus describes Sinis’s preferred mode of torture
differently: Sinis compelled passersby to bend, or to help bend, trees, which
he released as the task was being completed, thereby launching his
unsuspecting victims into the air.
(See also Athens, Corinth, Poseidon, and Theseus.)

SINON Sinon was a Greek whose treachery is vividly described in Virgil’s

Aeneid. A participant in the Trojan War, he pretended to have been
designated by the Greeks for human sacrifice but to have escaped. The
priest Laocoon had warned the Trojans to beware of the Trojan Horse, but
Sinon told a lying tale that, together with Laocoon’s death, convinced them
that the horse was harmless. According to Sinon, the Greeks had departed
for home and had left the horse as an offering to the goddess Minerva,
whose anger at the Greeks for Ulysses and Diomedes’s theft of her ancient
statue, the so-called Palladium, had caused the Greeks to fare so poorly in
the war.
(See also Athena, Diomedes, Laocoon, Minerva, Troy, and Ulysses.)

SISYPHUS Sisyphus became one of the canonical sinners in the

Underworld, his fate being to push a boulder up a hill only to have it always
roll down again as he reached the top. Sisyphus was a son of Hellen’s son
Aeolus and grandfather of Bellerophon, and by some accounts, he was the
founder of Corinth. Sisyphus became known as being cunning, and in the
estimation of the gods, overly so. For example, when faced with repeated
theft of his cattle by Hermes’s son Autolycus, who had the ability to change
the appearance of the cattle that he stole (from black to white, from horned
to hornless, and so on), Sisyphus marked the bottom of his remaining
cattle’s hooves, thus making the animals identifiable. Among the reasons
given by ancient sources for his eternal punishment in the Underworld were
his taking captive Thanatos (“Death”) himself, with the result that no
person died until the god Ares intervened, releasing Thanatos and causing
Sisyphus’s death. The mythographer Apollodorus, by contrast, offers
Sisyphus’s betrayal of Zeus, who had secretly absconded with the river god
Asopus’s daughter Aegina, as a reason for his punishment in the
Underworld.
(See also Aegina, Aeolus [hero], Bellerophon, Corinth, Hellen, Hermes,
Thanatos, and Underworld [the].)

SOLYMI, THE The Solymi were a warlike tribe that, as Homer and later
authors recount, lived in eastern Lycia and were defeated by the hero
Bellerophon, who, riding the winged horse Pegasus, attacked them on the
orders of the Lycian king Iobates.
(See also Bellerophon, Iobates, Lycia, and Pegasus.)
SYCHAEUS Sychaeus (or Sichaeus) was the deceased husband of the
Carthaginian queen Dido. According to Virgil’s Aeneid, Sychaeus had been
the wealthiest landowner in Phoenicia, and Dido’s brother, Pygmalion, who
was the king of Tyre, coveted his wealth. Driven by greed, Pygmalion
murdered Sychaeus and hid his evil deed from Dido. Sometime later, the
bloodied ghost of Sychaeus appeared to Dido in her sleep and revealed
what he had suffered. Sychaeus’s ghost also disclosed to Dido the location
of a cache of hidden gold and silver and urged her to flee the country. This
she did, gathering those who hated or feared the tyrant Pygmalion. With
these refugees she set sail and arrived, ultimately, in Libya, where she
founded a new city, Carthage. As a consequence of her disastrous love
affair with the Trojan Aeneas, Dido committed suicide, but in the
Underworld, she was reunited with her beloved Sychaeus.
(See also Aeneas, Dido, Carthage, Pygmalion, and Underworld [the].)

TANTALUS Tantalus was a legendary Lydian king who, with Sisyphus and
Ixion, became one of the canonical sinners in Hades. Tantalus’s eternal
torture in the Underworld consisted of standing in a pool whose waters
receded when he bent to drink, and branches hanging heavy with fruit
above his head were blown out of his reach by breezes when he tried to pick
their bounty. In addition to this, a boulder was suspended just overhead,
always on the verge of falling, thus posing a constant threat. Though he was
reputedly a son of Zeus who enjoyed the favor of the gods, it was a grave
offense to them that occasioned his punishment, and this offense was
variously described. The Greek poet Pindar recounts two reasons for his
punishment. Tantalus had dined with the gods, who shared with him nectar
and ambrosia, divine food that would make him immortal, but Tantalus
subsequently shared this food with his mortal companions. Alternatively, in
return for the meals that they had shared with him, Tantalus invited the gods
to dine but, as a test of their wisdom, served them his son Pelops, of whom
he had made a stew. Fortunately, all but one of the gods perceived that
something was amiss; only Demeter, steeped in grief over her loss of
Persephone, ate some of the stew, causing Zeus, who then reassembled and
revived Pelops, to replace his nibbled-on shoulder blade with ivory. Pelops
would become a tragic figure in his own right, as would Niobe, Tantalus’s
daughter.
(See also Demeter, Hades [place], Ixion, Lydia, Niobe, Pelops,
Persephone, Sisyphus, Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

TARPEIA Tarpeia was the daughter of the Roman general Spurius

Tarpeius, who had been charged with securing the Capitoline Hill against
the attacking Sabines. Tarpeia betrayed the Romans by offering the Sabines
entry into the Romans’ fortifications in exchange for what they wore on
their left arms. Presumably it was their heavy gold bracelets that Tarpeia
was after, but the Sabines rewarded her instead with their shields, using
these to crush her on the grounds that death was what a traitor deserved.
Tarpeia gave her name to the Tarpeian Rock on Rome’s Capitoline Hill
from which later traitors were cast to their deaths.
(See also Capitoline Hill [the], Sabines [the], and Rome.)

TAURIANS, THE The Taurians were a people who inhabited the region
now known as the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea. Among their kings
were Perses, brother of the Colchian king Aeetes, and Thoas, who was king
when Iphigeneia, having been saved from death at the hands of her father,
Agamemnon, was brought to Tauris by the goddess Artemis. It was the
custom of the Taurians to sacrifice strangers to Artemis, and Iphigeneia
served as Artemis’s priestess, her job being to prepare these human victims
for sacrifice, until she was rescued by her brother Orestes.
(See also Aeetes, Agamemnon, Artemis, Colchis, Iphigeneia, Orestes,
and Thoas.)

TEIRESIAS Teiresias (or Tiresias) was a Theban seer. He was descended

from the Sparti, the “Sown Men” who sprang from the soil when Cadmus,
founder of Thebes, sowed dragon’s teeth. Like many of those who had
received divine inspiration, he was blind, and the mythographer
Apollodorus reports several causes of his blindness. Either he revealed the
secrets of the gods to humans, saw the goddess Athena naked, or asserted
that women receive greater pleasure from lovemaking than men, a
statement that aroused Hera’s anger. As it happened, Teiresias was uniquely
qualified to judge in the last-mentioned matter as he had lived both as a
man and as a woman: having one day stepped upon a female snake coupling
with a male snake, he turned into a woman, and when he repeated this at a
later point, now stepping on the male, he again became a man.
Teiresias served the Thebans faithfully for three generations. When
Dionysus came to Thebes in order to introduce his worship to Greece,
Teiresias wisely urged the young regent Pentheus to embrace the god as he
and the aged Cadmus had done. Later, he revealed to Oedipus that the latter,
and not some unknown brigand, was the murderer of Thebes’s king Laius
and thus, unknowingly, had committed incest with his mother. Teiresias
knew, too, that Creon, who became regent of Thebes, was wrong to refuse
burial to Oedipus’s son Polyneices and that disaster would result. Even
dead, Teiresias retained his prophetic powers, for his spirit appeared before
Odysseus and prophesied all the trials that the hero would face in the future.
(See also Athena, Cadmus, Creon, Dionysus, Hera, Laius, Odysseus,
Oedipus, Pentheus, Polyneices, and Thebes.)

TELAMON Telamon was a son of Aeacus, king of Aegina, and brother of

Peleus, who is best known as the father of Achilles. Telamon and Peleus
joined together to kill their stepbrother Phocus and, as a consequence, were
sent into exile by their father. While Peleus went to Thessaly, Telamon went
to the island of Salamis, where he married the king’s daughter, Glauce, and,
after the king’s death, became the island’s regent. After Glauce’s death,
Telamon married Periboea (or Eeriboea), who bore Ajax (the Great or
“Telamonian Ajax”), later to be one of the best warriors among the Greeks.
Both Telamon and Peleus joined the hunt for the Calydonian Boar and
Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, but Telamon is perhaps best
remembered for his assistance to Hercules when the latter attacked Troy in
order to exact vengeance for an earlier wrong: as a reward for saving his
daughter Hesione from a sea monster, the Trojan king Laomedon had
promised to give Hercules the wondrous horses that he had received from
Zeus but reneged on that promise. Telamon was the first to breach the walls
of Troy, and for this, Hercules, never wanting to be outdone, came close to
killing him. Telamon saved himself by claiming to be building an altar in
honor of Hercules, and the latter awarded him Hesione, who would become
the mother of Teucer by Telamon.
(See also Achilles, Aeacus, Aegina [place], Ajax [the Great], Calydon,
Hercules, Hesione, Jason, Laomedon, Peleus, Salamis, Teucer, Thessaly,
and Troy.)

TELEMACHUS Telemachus, “Far-Fighter,” was the son of Odysseus, king

of Ithaca, and his wife, Penelope. When Odysseus left for Troy to fight in
the Trojan War, Telemachus was just an infant, but when, after a twenty-
year absence, his father returned, he had grown to become a suitable ally for
him as he won back his home and kingdom from Penelope’s lawless suitors.
Homer’s Odyssey recounts Telemachus’s maturation process: asserting
himself for the first time, he called an assembly of the Ithacans, a thing that
had not occurred on the island for a very long time, and he traveled to
mainland Greece in order to gather news of his father from old King Nestor
of Pylos and Menelaus in Sparta. There was a tradition that Telemachus
ultimately married the sorceress Circe, who made him and his mother,
Penelope, immortal.
(See also Circe, Ithaca, Menelaus, Nestor, Odysseus, Penelope, Pylos,
Sparta, and Troy.)

TELEPHUS Telephus was the son of Hercules and the princess Auge, a
priestess of Athena and daughter of the Tegean king Aleus. As Auge had
become pregnant out of wedlock, she abandoned her child, Telephus, in
Athena’s precinct, where he was later discovered by her father, Aleus.
Aleus then ordered Telephus to be exposed on Mount Parthenius, where he
was rescued by a doe who had a newborn fawn and nursed him until he was
found by some shepherds. Auge, for her part, was sent away to be sold or
drowned, but she escaped this fate, becoming the wife (or adopted
daughter) of Teuthras, a king of Teuthrania in Mysia. According to an
alternate tradition, Auge and Telephus were set adrift at sea in a chest by
Auge’s father and, contrary to expectation, survived, arriving in Mysia,
where Telephus later became regent. When the Greeks arrived there on their
way to Troy, Telephus was wounded by Achilles, and the wound would not
heal. He learned from Apollo’s oracle that only the source of his wound
could cure him, so he went in search of Achilles, who was willing to help
but claimed not to be a healer. According to the mythographer Hyginus, it
was Ulysses who explained that Achilles’s spear, not Achilles, was the
required healer, and scraped some rust from its tip onto the wound, which
instantly healed. In gratitude for this, Telephus showed the Greeks the way
to Troy.
(See also Achilles, Apollo, Athena, Hercules, Troy, and Ulysses.)

TEREUS Tereus, reportedly a son of the war god Ares, was a Thracian
king who was guilty of a terrible crime and, as a consequence, suffered
terrible retribution. When the city of Athens was under attack, Tereus
brought his forces to aid the Athenian king Pandion. For this kindness
Pandion rewarded Tereus by offering him his daughter Procne as bride.
When a period of five years had passed, Procne, who missed her sister
Philomela, begged Tereus either to let her visit Athens or to let her sister
come to visit her. Tereus acquiesced and set sail for Athens to fetch
Philomela. However, the moment that he laid eyes on Philomela, he was
gripped by passion. When, at last, Tereus and Philomela arrived in Thrace,
he took her to a hut in the woods and raped her. When Philomela threatened
to expose his crime, he grabbed his sword and cut out her tongue; Procne,
meanwhile, was told that her sister had perished at sea. Although Philomela
could not speak, she found another means of documenting her suffering: she
turned to her loom, which she used to weave her story into a tapestry that
she gave to the old woman who attended her. In this way, Tereus’s crime
was made known to Procne, who rescued her sister, and the two plotted
their vengeance on Tereus. The sisters murdered Tereus’s young son, Itys,
and made a stew of him. They served this gruesome stew to Tereus, who ate
with gusto until he asked for his son, and Philomela appeared with Itys’s
head. The full horror of what had transpired having been revealed, Tereus
set upon the sisters with his sword. As they fled, Philomela became a
nightingale and Procne a swallow. Tereus, for his part, became a hoopoe, a
species of bird distinguished by its showy crown feathers.
(See also Ares, Athens, Philomela, Procne, and Thrace.)

TEUCER There were two heroes of note by the name of Teucer. The first
of these was said to be a son of the river Scamander and Idaea, nymph of
Mount Ida in the Troad (region surrounding the future site of Troy), but
another tradition called him an immigrant from Crete. This Teucer was the
first king of the Troad, and the Trojans were called Teucrians in
acknowledgment of this fact. Teucer was succeeded by Dardanus, who had
married Teucer’s daughter. Both Teucer and Dardanus were ancestors of
Troy’s kings.
The other Teucer was a son of the hero Telamon and Hesione, daughter
of the Trojan king Laomedon. His half brother was Ajax the Great, side by
side with whom he fought in the Trojan War.
(See also Ajax the Great, Crete, Dardanus, Hesione, Ida [Mount],
Laomedon, Telamon, and Troy.)

TEUCRIANS, THE The Trojans were sometimes called Teucrians after

Teucer, an ancestor of the Trojan kings.
(See Teucer and Troy.)

THAMYRIS Thamyris is known as early as Homer’s Iliad as a bard from

Thrace who was exceedingly skilled in singing and playing the cithara. Yet
Thamyris fell prey to hubris, foolishly boasting that he could outperform
the Muses. For this presumption the Muses struck him blind and caused him
to forget his art. Thamyris is also known as the first man to desire another
male, the object of his affections being the Spartan youth Hyacinth.
(See also Hyacinth, Muses [the], Sparta, and Thrace.)
THERSANDER Thersander was a son of Oedipus’s son Polyneices and
Argea, daughter of the King Adrastus of Argos. Adrastus had led a
contingent, the so-called Seven Against Thebes, that attacked Thebes in
order to secure the throne for Polyneices. After the defeat of the Seven and
the death of all seven captains but Adrastus, Thersander organized a second
campaign against Thebes, the leaders of which were the sons, the so-called
Epigoni, of the original Seven. Like his father before him, Thersander
resorted to bribery in order to build his contingent: he offered the seer
Amphiaraus’s wife, Eryphile, the glorious, coveted robe (or necklace) of
Harmonia in exchange for her convincing her son Alcmaeon to lead the
campaign. When, as a consequence of this military effort, Thebes fell,
Thersander became its regent. Thersander also reputedly participated in the
Trojan War and was either killed by the Mysian king Telephus in the course
of a raid or survived the raid and became one of the Greeks to hide in the
belly of the Trojan Horse.
(See also Adrastus, Alcmaeon, Amphiaraus, Argos, Epigoni [the],
Eryphile, Eteocles, Harmonia, Seven Against Thebes [the], Telephus,
Thebes, and Troy.)

THESEUS Theseus was a legendary king of Athens and the most

important Athenian hero. His eventful life was recounted in detail by his
ancient biographer Plutarch and by the mythographer Apollodorus. Theseus
was reputedly the son of the Athenian king Aegeus and of Poseidon. His
unusual parentage, which was similar to that of Hercules, resulted from
Aegeus’s consultation of the oracle at Delphi regarding his childlessness
and subsequent visit to Troezen, where his friend Pittheus was king. Aegeus
was baffled by the oracle’s pronouncement that he should wait to open his
wineskin (goatskin container for wine) until he got home, but Pittheus
immediately grasped its meaning, ensured that Aegeus was drunk, and
arranged for his daughter Aethra to sleep with him. The god Poseidon, as it
happened, visited Aethra on the same night. When Aegeus departed for
Athens the next day, he told Aethra that if she should be pregnant with a
son by him, she should instruct the boy to retrieve a sword and sandals that
he had hidden under a boulder and make his way to Athens. Aethra was
indeed pregnant with a boy, and when he was strong enough to do so, he
retrieved the items that Aegeus had hidden. According to Plutarch, it was
either the stashing of these items (thesis in Greek) after which Aethra
named the boy Theseus or Aegeus’s later establishing him formally as his
son and heir (themenos, “having established”). Admiring Hercules and
wishing to emulate that distinguished hero, who had rid humankind of
myriad banes, young Theseus set off for Athens not by sea, which would
have been the shorter and easier route, but by land, across the Isthmus of
Corinth. There he encountered an array of evildoers, all of whom he
eliminated by subjecting them to the same treatment to which they had
subjected others. Among them were Periphetes, who would strike travelers
on the head with his bronze club, killing them; Sinis, who would tie his
victims to a bent pine that, upon its release, would straighten and hurl them
to their deaths; Sciron, who would push those so kind as to wash his feet
from the cliffs by which he sat; and Procrustes, who offered travelers a bed
but ensured that they fit its dimensions perfectly, either by stretching them
or by lopping off protruding limbs. When Theseus arrived in Athens, he
was welcomed by Aegeus but was immediately disliked by Medea, whom
Aegeus had married because she promised him an heir. She attempted to
kill Theseus, offering him a cup of poisoned wine, but Aegeus, whom
Medea had made suspicious of the youth, recognized Theseus’s sword and,
just as Theseus raised his cup to drink, dashed it to the ground. Theseus was
declared Aegeus’s heir, which pronouncement occasioned resistance on the
part of the sons of Aegeus’s brother, who rose up against him. Theseus
vanquished his cousins’ men, who had attempted to ambush him, and set
out to win the favor of the Athenian people, first by capturing the Bull of
Marathon that was ranging the countryside and wreaking havoc; the Bull of
Marathon was the same bull with which Pasiphae, wife of King Minos of
Crete, had become enamored and by which she had become mother of the
Minotaur. At this time, the Athenians were under obligation to send seven
young men and seven young women to Crete for the Minotaur to consume
every nine years in atonement for the murder of Minos’s son Androgeus.
Now Theseus volunteered to be in their number, intending to slay the
Minotaur. This he accomplished with the help of Minos’s daughter Ariadne,
who fell in love with him at first sight and gave him a ball of string to
unravel as he made his way through the labyrinth that housed the Minotaur,
thus ensuring that he could find his way out again. For her help, Theseus
promised to make Ariadne his wife and take her back with him to Athens.
But Theseus abandoned Ariadne on the island of Dia (Naxos), from where
she was fortunately rescued by the god Dionysus—the abandonment being
a point of controversy for Classical authors. Meanwhile, Aegeus had been
awaiting Theseus’s return anxiously, having instructed his son to raise a
white sail to signal victory and a dark sail to signal his death. A distracted
Theseus forgot to raise the white sail, causing Aegeus to leap from the
Acropolis to his death. Theseus now became king and united all of the
previously scattered settlements, in this way establishing Athens proper.
While king of Athens, Theseus joined with Hercules in the latter’s
embroilment with the Amazons, which led to the Amazons’ attack on the
Acropolis itself. Theseus defeated the Amazons, and with the Amazon
queen Hippolyta (or Antiope), became the father of Hippolytus, for whom
Theseus’s wife Phaedra, a daughter of Minos, developed a passion that led
to her suicide and Theseus’s calling a fatal curse upon Hippolytus. Things
went from bad to worse when Theseus later attempted to abduct Helen of
Sparta when she was just twelve years old and then decided to help his
friend the Lapith king Pirithous abduct the Underworld’s queen,
Persephone, as his bride. Both Theseus and Pirithous were taken prisoner in
the Underworld, but Theseus secured his release through the intervention of
Hercules. Upon his return, Theseus found Athens in turmoil, his former
allies having abandoned him. He therefore left Athens for the island of
Scyros, where the king Lycomedes, having become worried about the
presence of such a powerful person on his island, killed him. After his
death, Theseus was elevated to the status of a demigod by the Athenians,
whom he later assisted when they were threatened by the Persians in the
course of the Persian Wars (499–449 BCE).
(See also Acropolis, Aegeus, Aethra, Amazons [the], Androgeus,
Antiope, Ariadne, Athens, Corinth, Crete, Delphi, Dionysus, Helen,
Hercules, Hippolyta, Hippolytus, Lapiths [the], Lycomedes, Medea, Minos,
Minotaur [the], Naxos, Pasiphae, Persephone, Phaedra, Pirithous, Pittheus,
Poseidon, Procrustes, Sciron, Scyros, and Sinis.)

THESTIUS Thestius was a mythical Aetolian king, whose father was

variously recorded as the god Ares or Agenor, a descendant of Dorus.
According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Thestius had a number of
children by one Eurythemis, daughter of Cleoboea. His daughters, who are
all prominent figures in mythology, were Althea, mother of Meleager; Leda,
mother of Helen of Sparta (and Troy), Clytemnestra, and the Dioscuri; and
Hypermnestra, mother of the seer Amphiaraus. His sons participated in the
hunt for the Calydonian Boar, and when Meleager awarded the boar’s hide
as a prize to the deserving huntress Atalanta, the brothers took it from her,
thinking it a disgrace that this prize should be given to a woman. For this
affront Meleager slew them, and it was in anger over the death of her
brothers that Meleager’s mother, Althea, cast a particular log that was the
measure of his life into the fire.
(See also Agenor, Althea, Amphiaraus, Ares, Atalanta, Calydon,
Clytemnestra, Dioscuri [the], Dorus, Helen, Hypermnestra, Leda, and
Meleager.)

THEYESTES Theyestes was a son of Pelops and his wife, Hippodamia.

Since Pelops had won his wife’s hand by treachery and, consequently, a
curse had been called down upon him and his descendants, Theyestes’s life
was marked by tragedy. Theyestes and his brother, Atreus, had killed their
stepbrother, Chrysippus, at their mother’s request and were exiled from
their home in Pisa as a result. Atreus wed Aerope, a princess from Crete,
and with her became father to Agamemnon and Menelaus. Theyestes later
seduced Aerope (or she fell in love with him), and she helped him obtain a
golden fleece that Atreus had kept hidden instead of presenting it to the
goddess Artemis as he should have. When the throne of Mycenae became
vacant and that city’s inhabitants were instructed by an oracle to select one
of the sons of Pelops as their king, Theyestes, who was, unbeknownst to his
brother, in possession of the fleece, said that possession of the fleece should
be the deciding criterion. Thus, Theyestes became king of Mycenae, but
Atreus would have his vengeance. Claiming that there had been foul play,
he suggested that the kingship should be given to that man who could
reverse the course of the sun, a thing that he caused to occur with the help
of Zeus. Now Atreus became Mycenae’s king. He then invited Theyestes to
a feast and fed him a meal made of his own children; the heads and hands
of the victims were displayed to Theyestes as proof. Theyestes then went
into exile and, perhaps unknowingly, fathered Aegisthus by his own
daughter Pelopia. While Pelopia was pregnant, she was wed to Atreus, and
the latter believed Aegisthus to be his own son. When a famine beset the
land, the oracle at Delphi indicated that Atreus should find and bring back
Theyestes. This he did and instructed Aegisthus to kill him, but Theyestes
recognized Aegisthus’s sword as his own, and Aegisthus’s true paternity
became known. Aegisthus then killed Atreus instead. Theyestes again
briefly became king of Mycenae, but was driven from the throne by the
Spartan king Tyndareus, who was acting on behalf of Atreus’s sons
Agamemnon and Menelaus.
(See also Aegisthus, Aerope, Agamemnon, Atreus, Crete, Delphi,
Hippodamia, Menelaus, Mycenae, Pelops, Sparta, Tantalus, Tyndareus, and
Zeus.)

THISBE Young Thisbe was the fairest girl in Babylon and was loved by
her neighbor Pyramus. The dramatic tale of their forbidden, tragic love is an
aetion, or explanation, for the reddening of the mulberry’s fruit.
(See also Babylon and Pyramus.)

THOAS There were several characters by the name of Thoas in Classical

mythology. One Thoas was a king of the barbarian people known as the
Taurians. He was regent when Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigeneia was
brought to Tauris by the goddess Artemis. In Tauris Iphigeneia would
become a priestess of Artemis, her particular task being to prepare strangers
for sacrifice, for it was the custom of the Taurians to sacrifice visitors to
their land.
Another Thoas was a king of the island of Lemnos, and was the only
man to be spared when the island’s women (the so-called Lemnian Women)
killed all their male kin. Thoas was hidden by his daughter Hypsipyle and
either escaped or, by some accounts, was later discovered and killed by the
women.
A third Thoas was a king of Aetolia and a participant in the Trojan War,
in which he fought bravely and which he survived.
(See also Agamemnon, Artemis, Hypsipyle, Iphigeneia, Lemnian
Women [the], Lemnos, Taurians [the], and Troy.)
THYIADES, THE Thyiades (or Thyades), “Stormers,” was another name
for Maenads or Bacchantes, the female worshipers of Dionysus. This name
is a reference to the women’s wild dancing while possessed by the god.
(See also Bacchantes [the], Dionysus, and Maenads [the].)

TITHONUS Tithonus was a son of the Trojan king Laomedon and the
brother of Priam, who would be Troy’s king at the time of the Trojan War.
The extremely handsome Tithonus was abducted by Eos, goddess of the
dawn, and she was so taken with him that she asked Zeus to make him
immortal, forgetting, however, also to ask that he remain ageless.
Consequently, Tithonus wasted away with age, and Eos imprisoned him. At
last there was nothing left of him but his chirruping voice. By some
accounts, he had become a cicada (or grasshopper).
(See also Eos, Laomedon, Priam, Troy, and Zeus.)

TRIPTOLEMUS Triptolemus was a culture hero (bringer of civilization

and culture) said to have been the first to sow seed for cultivation. He had a
close connection with the goddess Demeter and her sanctuary at Eleusis.
His parentage was variously recounted: he was known as a son of Celeus, a
king of Eleusis, and his wife, Metaneira, and even as a child of Oceanus and
Gaia. As the Roman poet Ovid writes, Ceres (the Roman Demeter) gave her
chariot, which was drawn by two winged dragons, to Triptolemus and
instructed him to sow the earth with grain, passing over both tilled and
untilled lands.
(See also Celeus, Ceres, Demeter, Eleusis, Gaia, Oceanus [god], and
Persephone.)

TROILUS Troilus was generally considered to be one of the many children

of King Priam of Troy and his wife, Hecuba, although the mythographer
Apollodorus writes that he was actually Hecuba’s son by Apollo. Troilus is
known in antiquity primarily for the manner of his death, the details of
which vary from author to author apart from the fact that he died at the
hands of the hero Achilles. For example, Troilus was said to have been
captured by Achilles in a sanctuary of the god Apollo and killed on the
god’s very altar or to have been killed on the seashore while exercising his
horses.
(See also Achilles, Apollo, Hecuba, Priam, and Troy.)

TROS Tros was the namesake of the Trojans and a son of Erichthonius, a
king of Dardania, which was named after its founder, Dardanus. With
Callirrhoe, daughter of the river god Scamander, he became the father of
Ilus, who would establish the city of Troy. He was, by some accounts, also
called the father of Ganymede, the handsome youth whom Zeus abducted to
become his cup-bearer on Mount Olympus.
(See also Dardanus, Erichthonius, Ganymede, Ilus, Olympus [Mount],
Scamander River [the], Trojans [the], Troy, and Zeus.)

TURNUS Turnus was the young and handsome king of the Rutulians, an
Italian people living in southern Latium. Turnus had desired to marry
Lavinia, daughter of the Laurentine king Latinus, and Latinus’s wife,
Amata, strongly favored this match. However, the union of Turnus and
Lavinia was not to be, according to a prophecy that caused Lavinia’s father
to offer her instead to the Trojan Aeneas. Turnus, pressed by the goddess
Juno, then led the other Latins in war against Aeneas. In the course of the
fighting, Turnus killed Pallas, the son of Aeneas’s ally Evander, and was
brutally slain by Aeneas, who was seeking vengeance for Pallas’s death.
(See also Aeneas, Amata, Evander, Juno, Latinus, Latium, Lavinia,
Pallas, Rutulians [the], and Turnus.)

TYDEUS Tydeus was a son of Oeneus, king of Calydon, and became the
father of Diomedes, one of the best and bravest of the Greeks fighting at
Troy. Tydeus himself had been exiled from Calydon and came to Argos,
whose king Adrastus promised to help him gain the throne of Calydon after
first helping Polyneices with his bid for the throne of Thebes. Tydeus joined
Adrastus and the famous campaign of the Seven Against Thebes, in the
course of which he was fatally wounded. The mythographer Apollodorus
reports that Tydeus had been a candidate for immortality but that when he
demanded the head of Melanippus, who had wounded him, and sucked out
his brains, a horrified Athena withheld this boon.
(See also Adrastus, Argos, Athena, Calydon, Diomedes, Polyneices,
Seven Against Thebes [the], Thebes, and Troy.)

TYNDAREUS Tyndareus was one of the legendary kings of Sparta. His

parents are variously recorded as the Spartan king Oebalus and a Naiad
nymph by the name of Bateia, or as Perieres, grandson of Hellen, and the
hero Perseus’s daughter Gorgophone. According to the mythographer
Apollodorus, after being driven from Sparta by his brother (or half brother),
Tyndareus came to the court of Thestius, king of Aetolia, where he was
given the princess Leda in marriage. With the help of Hercules, Tyndareus
returned to Sparta and claimed the throne. As queen of Sparta, Leda bore
children both to Tyndareus and to Zeus: Zeus was the father of the beautiful
Helen (and, according to some sources, also Pollux and perhaps Castor),
while Tyndareus was called the father of Clytemnestra, and perhaps Castor
and Pollux (or just Castor). When it came time for Helen to wed, Tyndareus
was presented with a real challenge, as all the eligible nobles of Greece
came seeking her hand. The clever Odysseus advised him to ask all of the
suitors to swear to defend the man selected if, in the future, he were to be
subjected to some wrong with respect to his marriage. This way, there
would be no strife between the suitors. It was either Tyndareus or Helen
who chose Menelaus, the younger brother of Agamemnon, and Menelaus
would succeed Tyndareus on the throne. As for the suitors’ oath, that would
prove to be essential when the Trojan prince Paris took Helen away with
him to Troy, as all Helen’s former suitors were bound to help Menelaus
retrieve her. As for the rest of his best-known children (or stepchildren),
Clytemnestra, a future husband-slayer, became the queen of Mycenae, and
the twins Castor and Pollux became gods.
(See also Agamemnon, Castor, Helen, Hellen, Leda, Menelaus,
Mycenae, Naiads [the], Odysseus, Paris, Perseus, Pollux, Sparta, Troy, and
Zeus.)

TYRO Tyro was the beautiful daughter of Salmoneus, who, in an excess of

pride, had impersonated Zeus, for which crime he paid with his life.
According to Homer, Tyro became the wife of Cretheus, a son of Aeolus
and king of Iolcos, but she fell in love with the god of the river Enipeus.
The god Poseidon desired her, and disguising himself as Enipeus, embraced
her, becoming by her the father of Pelias, who would become king of
Iolcos, and Neleus, a future king of Pylos. The mythographer Apollodorus
adds that she exposed her children, and they were raised by the keeper of a
horse that had kicked Pelias. When later reunited with their mother, they
avenged Tyro’s stepmother Sidero’s ill treatment of her, killing Sidero even
though she had sought refuge in a precinct of the goddess Hera. By
Cretheus, Tyro became the mother of Pheres, who would become father to
Admetus, and of Aeson, a future king of Iolcos and father of the hero Jason.
(See also Admetus, Aeolus, Hera, Iolcos, Jason, Neleus, Pelias,
Poseidon, Pylos, Salmoneus, Sidero, and Zeus.)

ULYSSES Ulysses (or Ulixes) is the Latin name for Odysseus, the Greek
hero known for his great cunning as well as for his bravery and strength. He
was credited with devising the Trojan Horse so that the Greeks, after a ten-
year period, could at long last take the city of Troy, and he overcame
numerous obstacles on his ten-year journey home to Ithaca from Troy.
(See also Odysseus and Troy.)

XUTHUS Xuthus was a son of Hellen, the legendary ancestor of all the
Greeks, and the brother of Dorus and Aeolus. When Hellen entrusted each
of his sons with regency over a portion of Greece, Xuthus was awarded the
Peloponnese, but was driven away by his brothers for having designs on
more territory. He arrived in Athens, where King Erechtheus gave him his
daughter Creusa as a bride. With Creusa he became father to Ion, who
would become the eponymous hero of the Ionians, and to Achaeus, who
would found Achaea. According to the tragedian Euripides, Xuthus
succeeded Erechtheus as king of Athens, but according to Pausanias,
Xuthus selected Erechtheus’s son Cecrops to assume that role.
(See also Achaeans [the], Achaeus, Aeolus, Athens, Cecrops, Creusa,
Dorus, Erechtheus, Hellen, Ion, and Ionians [the].)

ZETES Zetes and his twin brother, Calais, were sons of Boreas, the north
wind, and the Athenian king Erechtheus’s daughter Oreithyia, whom Boreas
had raped. As children of Boreas, they were known as “Boreads.” The
youths had wings, a physical feature inherited from their father, but,
according to the Roman poet Ovid, they did not grow the wings until
reaching puberty. The two accompanied Jason and the Argonauts on their
quest for the Golden Fleece, and it was in the course of this adventure that
they rescued the Thracian sinner Phineus from torture by the Harpies, who
snatched away all his food. According to the poet Apollonius of Rhodes,
the twins were loath to help Phineus when he asked them for help, as they
feared retribution from the gods who had ordained Phineus’s punishment.
Heartened by the clairvoyant Phineus’s claim that they had nothing to fear,
they flew in pursuit of the Harpies, whom they very nearly caught, deterred
only by the goddess Iris (or Hermes), who intervened and swore that the
Harpies would no longer bother Phineus. The mythographer Apollodorus
preserves a variant of the myth: while pursued by Zetes and Calais, one of
the Harpies fell into a river in the Peloponnese to her death and another died
of exhaustion. As for Zetes and Calais, the two perished at the hands of
Hercules, who was angered to hear that it was they who had persuaded the
Argonauts to leave him behind in Mysia, where he was searching for his
young companion and lover, Hylas, who had been abducted by nymphs.
(See also Argonauts [the], Athens, Boreas, Erechtheus, Hercules,
Hermes, Hylas, Iris, Jason, Oreithyia, and Phineus.)

ZETHUS Zethus and his twin, Amphion, were sons of Zeus and Antiope.
The two were exposed after their birth but were found and raised by
herdsmen. Later reunited with their mother, Antiope, who had been
imprisoned and tortured by Lycus, king of Thebes, and his wife, Dirce, they
took vengeance upon the royal couple. Zethus and Amphion became joint
regents of the city of Thebes, whose walls they built, Zethus by lifting the
heavy stones and Amphion by charming them with his lyre. That city,
which had previously been called Cadmeia after its founder, Cadmus, was
now called Thebes after Zethus’s wife, Thebe.
(See also Amphion, Antiope, Cadmus, Dirce, Lycus, Thebes, and Zeus.)
AEGAEON Aegaeon was another name for Briareus, one of the
Hecatoncheires, hundred-handed and fifty-headed monsters born to the
earth goddess Gaia. In Homer’s epic the Iliad, it is explained that Aegaeon
is the name that humans called him by but that the gods called him
Briareus. In the passage of time, some monsters became conflated or
confused with others. This was the case with Aegeaon/Briareus, whom the
Roman poet Ovid describes as a sea deity, while Virgil, in his Aeneid,
makes him a fire-breathing monster and one of the Giants who made an
assault on Zeus and his siblings, the so-called Olympian gods. Aegaeon was
even identified as one of the one-eyed Cyclopes.
(See also Briareus, Cyclopes [the], Gaia, Giants [the], Hecatoncheires
[the], Olympus [Mount], and Zeus.)

ANTAEUS Antaeus was a Libyan giant and the son of Poseidon and Gaia
(“Earth”). According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Antaeus would
challenge travelers to his country to a wrestling match, in which he
inevitably prevailed. The poet Pindar adds that he used the skulls of his
victims to roof his father Poseidon’s temple. Antaeus met his match when
Hercules came to Libya on his way to retrieve the Hesperides’ golden
apples: in the knowledge that Antaeus derived his strength from contact
with the earth (his mother), Hercules lifted him in the air and squeezed the
life out of him.
(See also Gaia, Hercules, Hesperides [the], and Poseidon.)

ARGES Arges, “The Flashing One,” was a Cyclops, one of the one-eyed
giants born to the elemental gods Uranus (“Heaven”) and Gaia (“Earth”).
His brothers were Brontes and Steropes, according to the Greek poet
Hesiod in his account of the origin of the gods.
(See also Cyclopes [the], Gaia, and Uranus.)

ARGUS The giant herdsman Argus (or Argos), the “Panoptes” (“All-
Seeing One”), as he was called, was said to have as few as four eyes and as
many as a thousand, according to the poet Hesiod and the tragedian
Aeschylus, respectively. The mythographer Apollodorus adds that his eyes
covered his entire body, and we learn from Ovid, for whom Argus had one
hundred eyes, that only two of these rested shut at any given time. Just as
there were divergent accounts of his appearance, there was no consensus
about his parentage. Apollodorus lists four different potential human
fathers, while for Aeschylus he was born directly from the earth and thus
autochthonous. Argus is best known for his guardianship of the lovely
maiden Io, whom Zeus pursued. To hide his amatory antics from his jealous
wife, Hera, Zeus changed poor Io into a heifer. When Hera, suspecting
trickery, asked Zeus for the heifer as a gift, he could thus hardly refuse.
Upon receiving Io, Hera tasked Argus with guarding her, though she was
ultimately rescued by Hermes, who slew the monster. The killing of Argus
is what earned Hermes the name “Argeiphontes,” “Argos-Slayer.” As a
tribute to her devoted servant, Hera placed Argus’s eyes on the tail feathers
of the peacock, her sacred bird.
Other less-known exploits on Argus’s part are recorded by Apollodorus,
who reports that the exceedingly strong Argus killed the following: a bull
that was ravaging Arcadia; a Satyr who was stealing the Arcadians’ cattle;
the monster Echidna, who was harassing passersby; and those guilty of
murdering Apis, a king of the Peloponnese.
(See also Arcadia, Echidna, Hera, Hermes, Io, Satyrs [the], and Zeus.)

BRIAREUS Briareus (“The Mighty One”), also known as Obriareus or

Aegaeon, was one of the three Hecatoncheires, hundred-handed and fifty-
headed monsters born of the Earth goddess Gaia and Uranus. His siblings
included the three one-eyed Cyclopes and the twelve Titan gods, according
to the poet Hesiod. Of the Hecatoncheires, Briareus alone acquired
somewhat of a personal mythology. For Homer, he is a son of Poseidon and
was called upon by Thetis to prevent Poseidon, Hera, and Athena from
revolting against Zeus and placing him in chains. Pausanias, on the other
hand, repeats a tale explaining how the god Poseidon came to have special
claim to the Isthmus of Corinth: when Poseidon and the sun god Helios
were quarreling about control of the Isthmus, Briareus negotiated an
agreement between them whereby Poseidon would maintain his interest in
the isthmus while Helios would hold sway over the Corinthian acropolis, or
Acrocorinth. Helios, in turn, would later transfer the Acrocorinth to
Aphrodite.
(See also Aegaeon, Aphrodite, Corinth, Cyclopes [the], Gaia,
Hecatoncheires [the], Olympus [Mount], Poseidon, Titans [the], Uranus,
and Zeus.)

BRONTES Brontes, whose name means “the thunderer,” was one of the
brood of one-eyed Cyclopes born to the gods Uranus and Gaia. His
brothers, according to the Greek poet Hesiod, were Arges and Steropes.
(See also Cyclopes [the], Gaia, and Ouranos.)

CACUS Cacus (“The Evil One,” also spelled Kakos) was a bloodthirsty,
fire-breathing, half-human giant and a son of the god Vulcan. In his epic the
Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil tells the only real story about him, a story
repeated, but in slightly different detail, by other poets in the time of the
emperor Augustus (indicating that Virgil might have been the story’s
original source). While Hercules was driving Geryon’s cattle through Italy,
Cacus contrived a ruse whereby to steal them. While Hercules had stopped
to pasture his cattle, Cacus, under the cover of night, grabbed eight cattle by
the tail and dragged them to his cavern lair beneath the Aventine Hill at the
future site of Rome; the cattle having been moved in this way, Hercules
would be unable to track them. But, when Hercules later passed by the
cave, one of the remaining cattle bellowed, and one of purloined cattle
lowed in response, alerting Hercules to its whereabouts. In a rage, Hercules
tore off the jagged peak that served as the cavern’s roof and pelted the giant
with arrows, branches, and rocks. Weakened, the monster could be
strangled. His death was cause for celebration among the surrounding
populace who, now rid of a scourge, revered Hercules as a hero and
established the Great Altar of Hercules in his honor.
(See also Geryon, Hercules, and Vulcan.)

CECROPS Cecrops was known as the first king of Athens and its territory,
Attica, which in his time was called Cecropia. He was reputedly
autochthonous—literally being born from the earth—and hybrid in form,
his lower body being that of a snake.
(See Cecrops [hero].)
CELAENO According to the Roman poet Virgil, Celaeno was one of the
ghastly bird-woman Harpies who tortured the offending king Phineus as
well as Aeneas’s band of Trojan refugees by snatching away their food
before it could be eaten. When the Trojans, swords in hand, attacked the
Harpies, Celaeno terrified them by prophesying that they would eventually
reach their goal, the shores of Italy, but that they would there suffer from
grievous famine. Interestingly, Virgil describes Celaeno as a Fury, and thus
as one of the Spirits of Vengeance with whom the Harpies may have been
conflated. The Harpy Celaeno is to be distinguished from the Oceanid of
the same name.
(See also Aeneas, Furies [the], Harpies [the], Oceanids [the], Phineus,
and Trojans [the].)

CENTAURS, THE The Centaurs, literally “bull-slayers,” are generally

viewed as a tribe of hybrid creatures who had the torso of a human and
body of a horse, but there was also a tradition—as, for example, recorded
by the historian Diodorus Siculus—that they were a savage people who
were the first to ride horses and who mated with mares to produce the first
generation of “hippo-centaurs” (“horsey bull-slayers”). The Centaurs are
described in some sources, including Diodorus, as being the direct offspring
of the sinner Ixion and Nephele, a cloud goddess shaped by Zeus to
resemble his wife, Hera, whom Ixion was pursuing. They are also called the
children of Centaurus, a monstrous child of Ixion and Nephele, or of the
god Apollo and Stilbe, a daughter of the river god Peneus and the Naiad
Creusa. According to the poet Pindar, Centaurus sired the hybrid Centaurs
by mating with mares. Still another tradition, preserved by the poet Nonnus,
describes Zeus, having taken on the form of a horse, as being the father of
the Centaurs with Ixion’s wife, Dia.
The Centaurs are collectively best known for their battle with the
Lapiths, a neighboring people whose prince, Pirithous, invited them to his
wedding. Whether it was because they became inebriated and accordingly
unruly, or because they resented the fact that Pirithous, another of Ixion’s
offspring, was going to inherit the latter’s throne, the Centaurs tried to make
off with the Lapith women at the wedding. A fierce battle ensued, in which
the Lapiths prevailed. This famous battle was depicted both on the
sculptures of the Parthenon and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, where it
symbolized the precedence of the Greeks over barbarians and culture over
savagery. Several of the Centaurs had their own, distinct mythologies.
These included the wise and educated Chiron, who raised the young
Achilles, and Nessus, who assaulted Hercules’s wife Deianeira.
(See also Achilles, Apollo, Chiron, Deianeira, Hercules, Ixion, Lapiths
[the], Naiads [the], Nephele, Nessus, Parthenon [the], Pirithous, Olympia,
and Zeus.)

CERBERUS Cerberus, whom Homer calls “the hound of Hades,” was one
of the brood of monsters, which include the Hydra of Lerna and the
Chimaera, spawned by Typhon and the half maiden, half serpent Echidna.
He was variously described as having as many as fifty or one hundred heads
and as few as three. The mythographer Apollodorus writes that Cerberus,
the three-headed dog, had the tail of a dragon and snakes’ heads growing
from his back. For the poet Hesiod, Cerberus was an eater of raw flesh and
had a bark like clashing bronze. Cerberus’s duty was to allow the deceased
to enter the House of Hades but to block the living from entering and the
dead from leaving. On the instruction of the Sibyl of Cumae, the living hero
Aeneas secured passage into Hades by throwing Cerberus a drugged honey
cake. The best-known myth involving Cerberus is the tale of Hercules’s
twelfth and final Labor (or by some accounts, the tenth): Hercules was
ordered to bring Cerberus up from the Underworld, a task that he
accomplished by overpowering the beast without the use of weapons. As
the poet Ovid writes, upon reaching the realm of the living, the distressed
hound raged, foam from its mouth falling upon the earth to produce the
poisonous plant aconite, which the sorceress Medea used in attempting to
kill the hero Theseus.
(See also Aeneas, Chimaera, Echidna, Hades [god and place], Hydra of
Lerna [the], Medea, Sibyl of Cumae [the], Theseus, Typhon, and
Underworld [the].)

CERYNITIAN HIND, THE The Cerynitian Hind, a golden-antlered deer

sacred to the goddess Artemis, took its name from the Greek river
Cerynites, which rose in Arcadia and flowed through Achaea into the sea.
Capturing this deer and bringing it alive to Mycenae constituted the third
Labor of Hercules. According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Hercules,
wishing neither to kill nor wound it, pursued it for a whole year. At last, the
weary deer sought shelter on Mount Artemisius, and while making its way
to the river Ladon, it was shot and wounded by Hercules, who carried it off
on his shoulders. Along the way, Hercules encountered an angry Artemis,
accompanied by her brother Apollo. The gods would have taken the deer
from him but ultimately allowed him to continue with it to Mycenae when
he explained that he had only been following orders from King Eurystheus
who, accordingly, was to blame.
(See also Apollo, Arcadia, Artemis, Eurystheus, Hercules, and
Mycenae.)

CHARYBDIS The whirlpool Charybdis, conceived of as a female monster,

was located opposite Scylla in a narrow strait. According to Homer, a fig
tree growing on the rocks above her signaled her exact location, thus
allowing Odysseus safely to avoid her. Three times daily Charybdis would
suck down waters so forcefully that even Poseidon could not rescue a ship
caught in the maelstrom’s powerful vortex. To avoid her, Odysseus resigned
himself to the certain loss of men to Scylla, whose lair he would have to
pass by closely. Jason, on his return journey from the land of Colchis, and
Aeneas, on his way to Italy, were also able safely to avoid Charybdis. It was
speculated even in antiquity that Charybdis actually existed and was located
in the treacherous Straits of Messina.
(See also Aeneas, Colchis, Jason, Odysseus, Poseidon, and Scylla.)

CHIMAERA, THE The Chimaera was a hybrid female monster that,

according to the poet Hesiod, was born of the half-maiden monster Echidna
to Typhaon, a lawless monster confused or conflated by later writers with
the hundred-bodied Typhon (also called Typhoeus). The Chimaera’s
siblings, all likewise monsters, included Orthus, the hound of Geryon; the
hellhound Cerberus; and the many-headed Hydra of Lerna. For Hesiod, the
Chimaera was fearsome, huge, swift-footed, and strong. She had three
heads—one of a lion, another of a goat, and another of a dragon—being a
lion in the front, a fire-breathing goat at her middle, and a serpent to the
rear. The hero Bellerophon was sent by the Lycian king Iobates to kill this
monster, which was ravaging the countryside. This Perseus did with the
help of the winged horse Pegasus, whom he had tamed with the help of the
gods, and from whose back he, flying aloft, slew the monster with his
arrows.
(See also Bellerophon, Echidna, Geryon, Hydra of Lerna [the], Iobates,
Lycia, Pegasus, and Typhon.)
 PLATE VII

Cerberus: “The hound of Hades” that guards the gates of the

Underworld
CHIRON Chiron was a Centaur, having the torso of a man and the body of
a horse, but differed from the others of his kind in that he was wise, gentle,
and cultured. He was skilled in the art of healing and, according to
mythographer Hyginus, was the first to use herbs in the medical art of
surgery. In addition to being an accomplished healer, Chiron was well
versed in prophecy, music, and gymnastics, for he had received instruction
in these arts by the divine twins Apollo and Artemis. Chiron is sometimes
described as having the same parentage as all the Centaurs, thus being a
child of the sinner Ixion and Nephele, the cloud goddess. Perhaps reflecting
his elevated status, he was also known as a son of the god Cronus and the
second-generation Titan Philyra, a daughter of Oceanus. According to the
mythographers Apollodorus and Hyginus, as well as the poets Callimachus
and Apollonius, when Cronus’s dalliance with Philyra was discovered by
his wife, Rhea, he transformed himself into a stallion, hence his child’s half-
equine form. Yet another tradition asserts that Zeus was Chiron’s father. In
any event, Chiron was renowned for his many skills and, accordingly, was
given a number of heroes to rear and educate. The most notable of these
were Achilles, Jason, Asclepius, Actaeon, and the twins Castor and Pollux.
For a long time, Chiron lived in a cave on Mount Pelion in coastal
Thessaly, but he, together with the other Centaurs, was driven by their
neighbors the Lapiths from Thessaly to Cape Malea in the Peloponnese. It
was there that Hercules inadvertently caused Chiron’s death, wounding him
accidentally with one of his poisoned arrows. Chiron’s suffering was so
extreme that, although immortal, he wished to die. Of his end there are
various accounts. The poet Ovid, for example, writes that Zeus, in pity,
raised him—now the constellation Sagittarius—to the heavens. But it was
also rumored that Chiron opted to swap destinies with Prometheus, who
was suffering eternal torture in the Underworld.
(See also Achilles, Actaeon, Apollo, Artemis, Asclepius, Castor,
Centaurs [the], Cronus, Hercules, Ixion, Jason, Lapiths [the], Nephele,
Oceanus [god], Pelion [Mount], Prometheus, Rhea, Thessaly, Titans [the],
Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

CHRYSAOR Chrysaor, whose name means “golden sword,” was a

warrior, and likely a monster, born of the god Poseidon and the Gorgon
Medusa. He sprang fully grown from Medusa’s neck when her head was
severed by Perseus. Chrysaor, in turn, fathered the triple-headed (or by
some accounts, triple-bodied) monster-king Geryon by Callirrhoe, a
daughter of the god Oceanus.
(See also Geryon, Gorgons [the], Medusa, Pegasus, Perseus, Poseidon,
and Oceanus [god].)

COTTUS Cottus, whose name means “wrathful one,” was one of the three
Hecatoncheires, hundred-handed and fifty-headed monsters born of the
earth goddess Gaia and Uranus. His siblings included the three one-eyed
Cyclopes and the twelve Titan gods.
(See also Cyclopes [the], Gaia, Hecatoncheires [the], Olympus [Mount],
Titans [the], Uranus, and Zeus.)

CYCLOPES, THE The Cyclopes, “Round-Eyed Ones,” were godlike

giants in appearance except that each had a single round eye on its
forehead. In the earliest existing account of their birth, the poet Hesiod
writes that three Cyclopes—named Arges, “The Flashing One,” Brontes,
“The Thunderer,” and Steropes, “Lightning Bolt”—were born of the
elemental gods Gaia and Uranus after the Titans. Their father, Uranus,
found the Cyclopes and their brothers, the Hecatoncheires, so hideous that
he thrust them back inside Gaia (“Earth”) upon their birth. For this insult
and injury Gaia would have her revenge, and she recruited her youngest
Titan son, Cronus, to help her. This Cronus did by castrating his father and
assuming kingship over the gods, until the eventual birth and rise of Zeus.
Cronus released the Cyclopes from their prison in the Earth in order to help
him in his coup, only to imprison them again. Zeus, too, asked for their
assistance in his struggle for the throne against Cronus but released them.
When freed, the Cyclopes were tasked with producing lightning bolts for
Zeus, and their forge, according to the Roman poet Virgil, was located
under Mount Etna in Sicily. The mythographer Apollodorus reports that the
Cyclopes were eventually killed by Apollo in vengeance for Zeus’s ending
the life of his son Asclepius.
Most memorable of all Cyclopes was the monstrous shepherd
Polyphemus, who imprisoned Odysseus and his men in his cave and would
have eaten all of them had the clever Odysseus not devised a ruse to
outsmart him. Polyphemus, and the other uncouth, uncivilized Cyclopes
who lived near him on the island visited by Odysseus, had no clear relation
to the thunderbolt-forging Cyclopes of which Hesiod and others tell: they
were, instead, lawless, uncultured cave-dwellers who lived off the land
without practicing agriculture, relying as they did on the gods to supply
them with an abundance of grain and grapes while, at the same time,
disdaining them.
(See also Apollo, Asclepius, Cronus, Gaia, Hecatoncheires [the],
Odysseus, Polyphemus, Sicily, Titans [the], Uranus, and Zeus.)

ECHIDNA According to the poet Hesiod, the cave-dwelling Echidna was

half lovely maiden and half serpent. Her parents are variously given as the
sea god Phorcys and his sister Ceto; Chrysaor and Callirrhoe; and Tartarus
and Gaia. With the monstrous Typhon (also called Typhaon or Typhoeus),
she herself was mother to an array of other monsters. These included
Orthus, the two-headed guard dog belonging to the triple-bodied Geryon;
Cerberus, the triple-headed dog that guarded Hades; the many-headed
Hydra of Lerna, which Hercules later slew; and the many-headed dragon
Ladon. To her own son Orthus, Echidna reputedly bore the Nemean Lion,
which Hercules famously killed, and the Sphinx of Thebes, which Oedipus
outwitted, causing its death. The cave-dwelling monster Scylla, to whom
Odysseus lost some of his companions; the vulture that eternally feasted on
Prometheus’s liver; and the composite-beast Chimaera, slain by
Bellerophon, were also known as her offspring.
(See also Bellerophon, Cerberus, Chimaera, Chrysaor, Gaia, Geryon,
Hades [place], Hercules, Hydra of Lerna [the], Ladon, Nemean Lion [the],
Odysseus, Oedipus, Phorcys, Prometheus, Scylla, Sphinx of Thebes [the],
Tartarus, and Typhon.)

ENCELADUS Enceladus was one of the Giants (Gigantes) who waged

war on Zeus and his siblings. Enceladus was killed in this battle by the
goddess Athena, who was said either to have thrown the entire island of
Sicily or just Mount Etna onto him. His fiery breath is still emitted from
Etna’s mouth.
(See Athena, Giants [the], Sicily, and Zeus.)

EPHIALTES Ephialtes and his twin brother, Otus, were exceedingly

handsome and tall (well over 50 feet, 15 meters) but also filled with hubris.
Together they committed several outrages against the gods, going so far as
to attack them, and for this they were duly punished.
(See also Otus.)

ERYMANTHIAN BOAR, THE The Erymanthian Boar was an enormous

creature that ranged the wooded slopes of Mount Erymanthus in Arcadia
and ravaged the lands belonging to those who lived in the town of Psophis.
It was Hercules’s fourth Labor to capture this bull alive, which he did by
chasing the animal into deep snow. When Hercules appeared in Mycenae
with the boar over his shoulders, a terrified king Eurystheus hid in a large
storage jar.
(See also Arcadia, Erymanthus [Mount], Eurystheus, Hercules, and
Mycenae.)

EURYALE Euralye, the “Wide-Strider,” was one of Medusa’s two

immortal sisters and a Gorgon. The tragedian Aeschylus describes the three
sisters as having snakes as hair and being detested by humankind.
(See also Gorgons [the] and Medusa.)

FAUNS, THE Fauns were Roman woodland spirits, or demigods, who

came to be viewed as having hybrid human-animal characteristics and to be
equated or confused with Satyrs. Like Satyrs—and like the prophetic rural
god Faunus, of whom they constitute a plurality—they were thought to
inhabit the forests and mountains, to be associated with goats and sheep,
and to be lovers of the Nymphs. As for their appearance, they were
predominantly anthropomorphic but having goats’ tails, ears, and horns.
(See also Faunus, Nymphs [the], and Satyrs [the].)

FAUNUS Faunus was an Italian nature deity who was associated with
forests and wild places and was responsible, too, for the fertility of flocks
and fields. He became conflated or identified with the Greek god Pan,
borrowing the latter’s goatlike physical features as well. In addition to being
a nature and fertility deity, Faunus possessed prophetic powers.
(See Faunus [god].)

GERYON Geryon was the triple-headed (or triple-bodied) regent of the

mythical island Erythia (“the Red Island”), located in the far west, by some
accounts lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Geryon was the child of
Medusa’s son Chrysaor and the Oceanid Callirrhoe, and he was famous for
his fine herd of crimson-colored cattle. To lay claim to and drive away these
cattle was the hero Hercules’s tenth Labor.
On his way to the Red Island, Hercules erected the two pillars that bear
his name: one on the European and one on the African continent. Since the
sun was beating down on him relentlessly while erecting the pillars, an
exasperated Hercules shot an arrow at the sun god Helios. Admiring
Hercules’s spirit, the god supplied him with a magic chalice in which to
transport the cattle, once captured. Hercules slew both the herdsman and the
double-headed dog that had been charged with guarding the herd. As for
Geryon, Hercules killed him with one of his arrows.
(See also Chrysaor, Erythia, Helios, Hercules, Medusa, and Oceanids
[the].)

GIANTS, THE There were quite a number of notable giants in Classical

mythology, among their number being Talus, the bronze giant; Otus and
Ephialtes, who stormed the heavens; the Cyclops Polyphemus; and the
hunter Orion. Nontheless, these are distinct from “the Giants” (in Greek,
Gigantes), brothers, according to the Greek poet Hesiod, born from the
blood that fell upon the earth when Cronus, avenging the grievous wrong
done to his mother Gaia (“Earth”), castrated his father Uranus. Other beings
that were born from the blood of Uranus were the Erinyes (spirits of
vengeance), while Aphrodite was born from the foam produced when
Uranus’s severed testicles fell into the sea. Hesiod describes the Giants as
large in size, and having gleaming armor and long spears. The
mythographer Apollodorus would later say that they were unsurpassed in
size and so strong that they were invulnerable. They were terrifying to look
at, having long hair and beards as well as serpents’ scales covering the
lower part of their bodies.
Exploits attributed to the Giants (Gigantes) were several. The most
famous of these was the Gigantomachy, the famous battle between the gods
and Giants, in which the Giants unsuccessfully battled Zeus and his
siblings. Classical authors eventually confused and conflated this battle
with the earlier battle between the Olympian gods (Zeus and his siblings)
and the Titans (an older generation of gods) for control of the world. As for
the Gigantomachy, this power struggle was occasioned by the Giant
Alcyoneus’s theft of the cattle of the sun god Helios and Gaia’s attempt to
make Alcyoneus immortal, both of which things were a direct threat to the
gods. Having learned that they required a mortal to help them vanquish the
Giants, Zeus and his siblings enlisted the aid of Hercules, who killed
Alcyoneus as well as others of the Giants. Apart from Alcyoneus, the best
known of the Giant brothers were Enceladus and Porphyrion. According to
the mythographer Apollodorus, Porphyrion made an assault on both
Hercules and the goddess Hera, for whom he had developed unbridled
passion. When he attempted to rape the goddess, Zeus struck him with a
thunderbolt and Hercules slew him with an arrow. The goddess Athena
dealt with Enceladus by throwing the island of Sicily on him.
(See also Aphrodite, Athena, Cronus, Cyclopes [the], Enceladus,
Erinyes [the], Gaia, Hera, Hercules, Orion, Otus, Polyphemus, Talus, Titans
[the], Uranus, and Zeus.)

GORGONS The Gorgons were three monstrous sisters whose lair was in
the territory of Libya. Their names were Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, and
they were said to be the offspring of the sea deity Phorcys and his sister
Ceto. According to an alternate tradition, they sprang from the earth
goddess Gaia, who produced them to be her allies in the battle between the
gods and Giants. Of the Gorgon sisters only Medusa was mortal, and for
that reason Perseus was sent to fetch her head. According to mythographer
Apollodorus, the Gorgons had serpents as hair, large tusks like a boar’s,
hands of bronze, and golden wings. Indeed, they were so hideous in
appearance that they turned to stone all who looked upon them directly.
 (See also Medusa, Perseus, and Phorcys.)

GRAIAE, THE The Graiae (or Graeae), whose name means “the old ones”
or “the gray-haired ones,” were, like the Gorgons, children of the sea god
Phorcys and his sister Ceto. As Phorcys’s offspring they were known
collectively as the Phorcydes, and Apollodorus reports that they were old
from birth. Their names are given as Enyo (translated as “Horror”),
Pemphredo (or Pephredo, “Alarm”), and Deino (“Dread” or, according to
Hyginus, Persis, “Ruin”). Between them they had a single eye and tooth,
which they shared. Perseus stole this eye and tooth as a means of forcing
the sisters to reveal the location of their siblings, the Gorgons. The Graiae
resided in Libya, in the far west of the world as it was known to the Greeks.
(See also Enyo, Gorgons [the], Perseus, and Phorcys.)

GRIFFINS, THE Griffins were Libya, hybrid creatures having the head of
a bird of prey and the body of a winged lion. These monsters “originated”
in the ancient Near East, from where they were imported and absorbed into
Greek thought and material culture. Classical authors ranging from poets to
historians and geographers mention the griffins as tasked with guarding vast
resources of gold to be found in the northern mountains near the lands of
the Hyperboreans and the Scythians (a historical nomadic people based in
the Black Sea and Caucasus region). This gold, it was said, was coveted by
the Arimaspi, a tribe of one-eyed horsemen, who repeatedly attempted to
steal it.
(See also Arimaspi [the], Caucasus Mountains [the], and Hyperboreans
[the].)

GYGES Gyges (or Gyes), whose name means “son of the earth,” was one
of the three Hecatoncheires, hundred-handed and fifty-headed monsters
born of the earth goddess Gaia and Uranus. His siblings included the three
one-eyed Cyclopes and the twelve Titan gods.
(See also Briareus, Cyclopes [the], Gaia, Hecatoncheires [the], Olympus
[Mount], Titans [the], Uranus, and Zeus.)

HARPIES, THE The Harpies, whose name means “snatchers” or

“grabbers,” were two or (according to some sources) three monstrous
female daimones, or spirits—technically deities—that personified the
demonic, unpredictable, grasping forces of storm winds. For the poet
Hesiod, they were two in number and the daughters of the Oceanid Electra
and Thaumas, a son of the primordial elemental gods Pontus (“Sea”) and
Gaia (“Earth”). Hesiod gives their names as Aello (“Storm Wind”) and
Ocypete (“Swift Foot”). Homer speaks of a Harpy named Podarge, which
also means “swift-footed,” who was the mother of Achilles’s miraculous
horses. Later authors provide other names as well, including Celaeno (“The
Dark One”) and Nicothe (“Swift Victor”).
The Harpies were originally ill-defined physically but, over time, came
to be viewed as winged monsters with human heads. Thus in Homer’s
Odyssey, the Harpies are merely forces that cause the disappearance of
Odysseus, while for Virgil, there is “no monster more awful or savage,” for
they are creatures that have “the faces of maidens and avian bodies, bellies
that ooze the most fetid gore, clawed hands, and faces pallid from
starvation.” The Harpies are best known for their persecution of the
Thracian king Phineus, whom they had been sent to punish for abusing the
oracular powers given him by the god Apollo: the Harpies would snatch
away Phineus’s food with their beaks or talons, and on the occasions that
they left him any food, what food they did not take was rendered inedible
by their foul stench. The heroes Jason and Aeneas, together with their
respective cohorts, both encountered the Harpies. In the case of Jason’s
crew, the swift sons of the north wind Boreas, Zetes and Calais, were
persuaded by Phineus to help him, and they pursued the Harpies when they
appeared. Had the goddess Iris not intervened, the brothers would have
overtaken and killed the monsters. From this point on, the Harpies ceased to
plague Phineus. As for the Trojan hero Aeneas, he and his men were
themselves plagued by the Harpies, who twice succeeded in stealing food
from them while on their long journey to Italy. When Aeneas and his men
turned their swords upon them, one, Celaeno, angrily uttered terrifying
prophetic words: the Trojans would, at long last, reach Italian shores but
they would there be beset by famine so great that they would resort to
chewing their very tables.
(See also Achilles, Aeneas, Boreas, Calais, Celaeno, Iris, Jason,
Oceanids [the], Odysseus, Phineus, Thrace, Trojans [the], and Zetes.)
HECATONCHEIRES, THE The three Hecatoncheires (“Hundred-
Handers”), Cottus, Briareos, and Gyges (or Gyes), were monstrous siblings
of the Cyclopes and Titans, all of them being the offspring of the earth
goddess Gaia and Uranus. According to the poet Hesiod, the
Hecatoncheires each had one hundred arms and fifty heads, and they were
hideous, strong, and filled with hubris. Uranus detested them from the first
moment and thrust them back deep inside their mother, Gaia, after their
birth, causing her great pain—pain she would not bear. Gaia made a sickle
and asked her Titan children to avenge her for the violence she had
suffered. Only the youngest, Cronus, came forward. Armed with the sickle,
he waited until his father came to lie with Gaia at night and, ambushing
Uranus, castrated him. Yet the Hecatoncheires were still not released from
their prison in Tartarus, as the depths of Earth were known. This did not
occur until Zeus, needing help battling Cronus and the other Titan gods,
released the Hecatoncheires, only later, after the battle, to return them there
again. The mythographer Apollodorus adds that when they were returned to
Tartarus, the Hecatoncheires were made guards of the vanquished Titans,
whom Zeus imprisoned there.
(See also Cronus, Cyclops, Gaia, Tartarus, Titans [the], and Uranus.)

HYDRA (OF LERNA), THE The Hydra was an enormous serpent with
nine heads—or as many as fifty or one hundred—one of which was
immortal. Its parents were the giant Typhon and Echidna, half maiden and
half serpent, the so-called “mother of all monsters.” The Hydra’s haunts
were the marshes of Lerna, near the city of Argos. The second of Hercules’s
Labors was the slaying of the Hydra. But each time that Hercules would cut
off one of its heads, two would grow in its place. Not only this, but a giant
crab that kept the Hydra company appeared and joined the fray. Hercules’s
clever nephew and companion Iolaus proposed a remedy: the moment
Hercules severed a head, Iolaus would cauterize the stump with a firebrand.
This the two did until only the Hydra’s immortal head remained. Hercules
then cut off this head, and after burying it beneath a boulder, dipped his
arrows in the Hydra’s lethal venom. Both the Hydra and the crab, which
Hercules had also slain, were placed in the heavens by the goddess Hera as
constellations.
 (See also Argos, Echidna, Hercules, Lerna, and Typhon.)

LADON The hundred-headed serpent, or dragon, Ladon was variously

known as the offspring of the sea god Phorcys and his sister Ceto, or as the
child of the monstrous Typhon (or Typhoeus) and Echidna. Alternatively, he
was said to have sprung from the earth. Having no need for sleep, and thus
able to be ever watchful, he became guardian of the Hesperides’ golden
apples. After being slain by Hercules, whose eleventh Labor consisted of
fetching the golden apples, Ladon became the constellation Serpentarius.
(See also Echidna, Hercules, Hesperides [the], Phorcys, and Typhon.)

LAESTRYGONS, THE The Laestrygons (or Laestrygonians) were a

mythical people, or more properly, group of cannibalistic giants, whom
Odysseus and his men encountered on their perilous, ten-year return voyage
from Troy after the Trojan War. When Odysseus caught sight of the
Laestrygons’ town of Telepylos, which had been founded by a son of
Poseidon, they believed that they had come upon a place whose inhabitants
were likely to welcome them. The first of the Laestrygons whom the Greeks
came upon was the Laestrygonian king Antiphates’s daughter, who had
gone out from the city to fetch water. She showed the men the way to her
father’s palace, where they found a terrifying woman, the queen, who was
as large as a mountain. The queen summoned her husband, who snatched up
two of the Greeks and prepared to eat them. The other Greeks ran to their
ships. Only the ship of Odysseus and his own crew escaped the island,
however, for the Laestrygons came running in the tens of thousands, hurling
boulders that smashed the other ships and killed many of their crew. What
men were not crushed were speared like fish.
 (See also Odysseus, Poseidon, and Troy.)

MARSYAS Marsyas was a Phrygian Satyr (or Silen) whose misfortune it

was to come upon a flute that the goddess Athena had cast aside: the
goddess was displeased at the appearance of her face—cheeks puffed out—
which she saw reflected in a pool while playing this instrument. Marsyas
was so pleased at his newfound skill that he challenged the god Apollo to a
musical contest. Inevitably, the god, who was playing his cithara, was
designated the winner, though it is variously reported how he achieved his
victory: either by stipulating that both parties were required to play their
instruments upside down, which Marsyas was unable to do, or by singing to
accompany his cithara, thus enhancing his song. In any event, the outcome
of the contest was a gruesome one. Apollo hung Marsyas from a lofty tree
and flayed him alive for daring to challenge a deity. Marsyas’s stripped skin
was said either to have been made into a wineskin or to have been left
suspended. So terrible was the sight of his skinned, still-living body, writes
the poet Ovid, that all the countryfolk and rustic gods wept, their tears
forming the river that thereafter bore the Satyr’s name.
(See also Apollo, Athena, Phrygia, Satyrs [the], and Silens [the].)

MEDUSA Medusa was one of the three Gorgon sisters, creatures so

hideous that they turned all who looked at them to stone. Medusa alone of
the three was mortal, and once had been a beautiful maiden whom the god
Poseidon pursued. She was transformed into a snake-haired monster by
Athena, either out of envy of the girl’s beauty or out of anger at the fact that
Poseidon had lain with her in Athena’s shrine, defiling it.
When Perseus beheaded Medusa, Pegasus and Chrysaor, Medusa’s
children by Poseidon, sprang fully grown from her severed neck. According
to the tragedian Euripides in his play Ion, Athena gave two drops of
Medusa’s blood to the Athenian king Erichthonius: one drop could cure
disease, and the other was lethal. In another version of the tale, Athena gave
a portion of the blood to the healing god Asclepius to be used as a cure for
illness and as a means to restore life.
According to Roman tradition, Medusa and the god Vulcan were the
parents of the fire-breathing giant Cacus.
(See also Asclepius, Athena, Cacus, Chrysaor, Erichthonius, Gorgons
[the], Pegasus, Poseidon, and Vulcan.)

MINOTAUR, THE The Minotaur, or Minotauros (“Bull of Minos”) in

Greek, was a hybrid monster, with the head of a bull and the body of a man,
that lived on the island of Crete. The Minotaur was the offspring of the
Cretan queen Pasiphae and a handsome white bull for which she developed
a consuming passion. The bull had been sent to Crete by the god Poseidon
in answer to a prayer by the island’s king Minos, who, boasting that the god
would do whatever he asked, promised to sacrifice the bull to the god upon
its appearance. Yet Minos did not keep his promise, and in vengeance for
this slight, Poseidon caused Minos’s wife, Pasiphae, to fall in love with it.
Unable to quell her passion, a desperate Pasiphae asked the craftsman
Daedalus, then residing on the island, to help her consummate her desire.
To this end, Daedalus constructed a hollowed wooden cow to enclose
Pasiphae for the amorous encounter. The result was the monstrous
Minotaur, which Minos could not bring himself to kill and, instead, kept
enclosed in a mazelike prison, the Labyrinth, constructed by Daedalus.
When Minos’s son Androgeus was later killed in Athens, a plague was
sent upon that city. Apollo’s oracle at Delphi advised the Athenians to send
seven youths and seven maidens to Crete every nine years, where they
would be fed to the Minotaur by way of atonement for Androgeus’s death.
It was the Athenian king Aegeus’s son Theseus who put an end to this
terrifying tribute. Volunteering as one of the seven youths, Theseus traveled
to Crete and, with the assistance of Minos’s daughter Ariadne, was able to
escape the Labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur; falling in love with
Theseus at first glance, Ariadne had offered him a ball of yarn that he was
to unravel as he entered the Minotaur’s treacherous lair. Though Theseus
promised to take Ariadne back to Athens with him, he abandoned her on the
island of Naxos, from where she was rescued by the god Dionysus, who
made her his bride. Theseus, meanwhile, did not escape punishment for his
actions. Upon his arrival home, he forgot to raise a white sail of victory,
which caused his father, Aegeus, anxiously awaiting his son’s safe return, to
hurl himself into the sea in grief.
(See also Aegeus, Ariadne, Athens, Crete, Daedalus, Dionysus, Minos,
Naxos, Pasiphae, Poseidon, and Theseus.)

NEMEAN LION, THE Killing the invulnerable Nemean Lion was the first
and one of the best known of the Labors of Hercules. This lion, which
resided at Nemea in the eastern Peloponnese, was variously said to be the
offspring of the serpent-maiden Echidna and either Typhon or her own son
Orthus, the two-headed dog that guarded the giant Geryon’s herds.
According to the Greek poet Hesiod, the goddess Hera raised the lion and
set him loose upon the hills of Nemea, where he proceeded to prey on the
inhabitants. Hercules attempted to shoot the lion with his bow and arrow
but quickly learned that the lion’s pelt could not be penetrated. Overcoming
the lion ultimately required both trickery and a show of strength: Hercules
ambushed the lion by stealthily entering the cave in which it had gone to
hide and wrestled with it to its death. Upon accomplishing this task,
Hercules skinned the lion and thereafter always wore its pelt. It is the pelt
and his famous club that make Hercules easily recognizable in Classical art.
(See also Echidna, Geryon, Hercules, Nemea, and Typhon.)

NESSUS The Centaur Nessus is best known for his assault on Hercules’s
wife, Deianeira, and for indirectly causing Hercules’s death. When Hercules
and his wife came to the Evenus River, Nessus offered to carry Deianeira
across the forceful currents. With Deianeira in his grasp, Nessus attempted
to rape her, but Hercules stopped him with a lethal arrow shot. As Nessus
lay dying, he succeeded in convincing Deianeira to keep a sample of his
blood to use as a love charm that, he claimed, would ensure her husband’s
everlasting love. Tragically, Deianeira did keep and use the Centaur’s
blood, which was no love charm, for it was tainted by toxic poison from
Hercules’s arrow—poisonous venom from the dread Hydra of Lerna that
Hercules had earlier slain.
(See also Centaurs [the], Deianeira, Hercules, and Hydra of Lerna [the].)

ORION Orion was a noted hunter of enormous size who, upon his death,
was raised to the heavens to become the constellation that bears his name.
There were various accounts of his birth and also widely varied accounts of
the adventures that marked his life. He was known as a son of Poseidon and
Euryale, a daughter of King Minos of Crete, but also, indirectly, a son of the
childless Hyrieus of Thrace, who had asked the gods Zeus, Poseidon, and
Hermes for a son; as the Roman poet Ovid writes, the gods obliged Hyrieus
by urinating in a bull’s hide that was buried and, after a nine-month period
of gestation, yielded Orion. According to the mythographer Apollodorus,
who outlines Orion’s life, the god Poseidon gave him the gift either of being
able to walk on the oceans’ water or of being able to stride through it. His
first marriage was to Side, whom the goddess Hera sent to the Underworld
since she believed herself to be the goddess’s rival in beauty. Orion later
pursued Merope, daughter of Oenopion, the king of Chios. When Oenopion
sought to delay the union, an impatient and intoxicated Orion raped
Merope. For this the king blinded him as he slept, but Orion made his way
to the sun god Helios, who restored his sight. Among his loves was the
goddess Eos, who took him to the island of Delos. There were various
accounts of how he met his end, among them a fatal game of quoits (ring
toss) with the goddess Artemis, attempted rape of a Hyperborean maiden by
the name of Opis, and the bite of a scorpion. According to this last version,
both the scorpion and Orion became constellations.
(See also Artemis, Crete, Eos, Helios, Hera, Hermes, Hyperboreans
[the], Merope, Minos, Poseidon, Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

OTUS Otus and his twin brother, Ephialtes, were, according to Homer, not
only the most handsome men ever to grace the earth (after Orion) but also
the tallest, and thus giants. When just nine years of age they measured nine
forearm-lengths in breadth (about 22.5 feet, or 7 meters) and nine arm spans
in height (approximately 54 feet, or 16 meters). The twins were called
Aloads, “sons of Aloeus,” Aloeus being a son of Poseidon and Canace,
daughter of Aeolus, Lord of the Winds. Aloeus, however, was not their real
father, for their mother, Iphimedeia, had been impregnated by the god
Poseidon, with whom she was in love. The mythographer Apollodorus adds
that Iphimedeia had become so infatuated with Poseidon that she frequented
the seashore where she filled her lap with water; consequently, Poseidon
came to meet her.
These marvelous twins, regrettably, were too prideful and committed a
series of outrageous acts. They took Ares, the fierce god of war, captive and
kept him in a bronze cauldron bound in chains for thirteen months. The god
had become so faint and broken, as Homer affirms, that had the twins’ new
stepmother, Eeriboeia, not interfered by alerting Hermes, who released him,
Ares would have perished. The Aloads even aspired to attack the gods in
their safe dwelling place in the heavens, which they intended to reach by
piling the mountains Olympus, Ossa, and Pelion one upon the other. As a
final outrage against the gods, each of the twins made advances on a
goddess: Otus on Artemis and Ephialtes on Hera. Their punishment for this
offense was swift and final: the goddess Artemis disguised herself as a deer
and leaped between them. In their eagerness to kill this deer, they
accidentally killed each other on the island of Naxos.
 Curiously, the travel writer Pausanias notes a tradition according to
which the two giants were the first to worship the Muses on Mount Helicon.
(See also Aeolus, Aloeus, Ares, Artemis, Canace, Helicon [Mount],
Hera, Hermes, Muses [the], Naxos, Olympus [Mount], Orion, Ossa
[Mount], Pelion [Mount], and Poseidon.)

PEGASUS The winged horse Pegasus was a child of the Gorgon Medusa
by Poseidon. Pegasus and his brother, the giant Chrysaor, were not born by
normal means but rather sprang fully grown from Medusa’s severed neck
when Perseus cut off her head. The poet Hesiod says of Pegasus that his
name is derived from the springs, pegai, of Oceanus near which he was
born and that he eventually went to live among the gods, with Zeus, for
whom he carried thunder and lightning.
Pegasus is best known for his adventures with the hero Bellerophon.
According to the poet Pindar, Bellerophon tamed the horse with a golden
bridle given him by the goddess Athena, who instructed him also to
sacrifice a white bull to Pegasus’s father, Poseidon, in order to ensure his
success in breaking the horse. Mounted on Pegasus’s back, the young hero
attacked the Amazons, killed the fire-breathing Chimaera, and defeated the
Solymi, a belligerent tribe dwelling in Lycia. In another of Pindar’s works,
Bellerophon is presented as an example of hubris; Pegasus threw
Bellerophon when he attempted to reach the dwelling places of the gods so
that he might keep company with Zeus. Less dramatic but nonetheless
notable details about Pegasus involve his creation of several springs where
he struck the earth with a hoof. These were the Hippocrene Spring, a spring
on Mount Helicon that was sacred to the Muses, and also the spring of
Pirene, which marked the spot where Bellerophon first bridled him and
which was of immeasurable importance to the city of Corinth. Not
coincidentally, Pegasus, as a symbol of the city, was depicted on coins
minted by the city of Corinth and her colonies, for Bellerophon was the son
of Corinth’s king, Glaucus.
(See also Amazons [the], Athena, Chimaera, Chrysaor, Corinth, Gorgons
[the], Helicon [Mount], Hippocrene, Medusa, Muses [the], Oceanus [place],
Perseus, Pirene, Poseidon, Solymi [the], and Zeus.)
POLYPHEMUS According to Homer’s Odyssey, from which he is best
known, Polyphemus was the most powerful of the Cyclopes and the son of
the god Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa, daughter of the sea deity Phorcys.
Like the other Cyclopes, he was a giant—as Odysseus describes him, “a
mountain of a man”—and had a single, round eye in the middle of his
forehead. Also like the other Cyclopes, he was a lawless, cave-dwelling
loner. When Odysseus and his men came to the island of the Cyclopes, he
was curious to find out what sort of people lived there, so, accompanied by
twelve men, he made his way inland from the shore to come upon the cave
of Polyphemus, which was fitted out with a fenced yard and pens for the
keeping of goats and sheep. While the Cyclops was out pasturing his flocks,
Odysseus and his men helped themselves to cheese in the Cyclops’s cave.
His men now wanted to leave, but Odysseus wished to stay, hoping for the
gifts that, in the Greek world, one would typically expect to receive from a
person whose house one was visiting; such gift giving was the norm,
regardless of whether visits were made by chance or whether either party
was previously known to the other. But the Cyclops, having no regard for
custom or culture, kept the Greeks imprisoned in his cave and, grabbing
two of Odysseus’s men, dashed them together and ate them. After
Polyphemus had made himself another such meal, Odysseus contrived a
plan whereby to escape the cave. Odysseus offered the Cyclops strong,
undiluted wine, which he greedily drank in abundance; a civilized man in
the Greek world would have cut his wine with water. Only now did
Odysseus offer his name, but it was a false one: “Nobody.” With the
Cyclops soon in a drunken slumber, Odysseus and his comrades put out his
single eye with a massive, sharpened branch of olive, its tip aglow from
being held in the Cyclops’s fire. Polyphemus cried to his neighbors for help,
but they turned away laughing when he shouted that “Nobody” was hurting
him. Odysseus and his men were able to escape the sealed cave by fastening
themselves to the underbellies of the Cyclops’s largest, wooliest rams. It
was the blinding of Polyphemus that earned Odysseus the hatred of
Poseidon, who proceeded to torment him and further delay his return to
Ithaca.
Polyphemus arguably showed a marginally “softer” side in his amorous
pursuit of the Nereid nymph Galatea. In order to win her favor, he took
pains to improve his appearance and sang of his love for her to the
accompaniment of a flute. Galatea, however, loathed the monster as much
as she loved handsome Acis, son of the woodland deity Faunus and a sea
nymph. In a rage at finding the lovers together, Polyphemus threw a
massive rock at Acis, crushing him. In answer to Galatea’s prayer that Acis
somehow be saved, the earth split open to reveal him reincarnated as a river
god.
(See also Acis, Cyclopes [the], Faunus, Galatea, Nereids [the],
Odysseus, Phorcys, and Poseidon.)

PORPHYRION Porphyrion was one of the Giants (Gigantes), fierce,

serpent’s tail–legged giants who waged war on Zeus and his siblings and
were born from the blood generated by the castration of Uranus. Porphyrion
appears to have been among the strongest of his brothers, and the Greek
poet Pindar calls him their leader or king. He acquired a passion for Hera
and attempted to rape her, apparently through Zeus’s devising, whereupon
Zeus struck him with a lightning bolt and Hercules then killed him with one
of his arrows.
(See also Giants [the], Hera, Hercules, Uranus, and Zeus.)

PYTHON Python was as an enormous dragon or serpent that resided by a

spring at Delphi. The Roman poet Ovid writes that the monster was born
from a sludge-covered Gaia (“Earth”) after the Great Flood that nearly
eliminated all humankind. According to so-called Homeric Hymn to the god
Apollo, Python was female and had been given the dreadful monster
Typhon to rear. She was reputedly a bane to humans, to whom she brought
death in great numbers until Apollo killed her with his weapons, a bow and
arrows. The monster’s corpse lay rotting in the sun, and in a story repeated
by the geographer Strabo and others, it was the putrefaction (pythesthai
means “to rot” in Greek) of its body that was the source of the monster’s
name as well as of Pytho, the name of the area where it died; Pythian, an
epithet for Apollo; and Pythia, the name of the priestesses of Apollo’s
oracle at Delphi.
The travel writer Pausanias and others preserve the legend that Python
had been posted at Delphi by Gaia or by Themis to guard the oracle at
Delphi and that by slaying Python, Apollo gained ownership of this most
famous of sites of prophecy. The god was said to have instituted the Pan-
Hellenic Pythian Games, which were held every four years, to
commemorate his slaying of this monster.
(See also Apollo, Delphi, Gaia, Hera, and Themis.)

SATYRS, THE Satyrs were male hybrid creatures who were part horse and
part human. They stood and walked upright, unlike the quadruped, half-
horse Centaurs to whom they were akin, and in their original, traditional
form, they had horses’ tails, long hair and beards, horses’ ears, bulbous
foreheads, and snub noses. Artistic representations also showed them
sometimes with the legs and hooves of a horse as well as with enlarged,
erect penises. It was only in the Hellenistic Period (after 323 BCE, the death
of Alexander the Great) that Satyrs, in an assimilation to the rustic god Pan,
took on a goatlike appearance, having shorter tails and sprouting horns.
Satyrs, who in earliest times were indistinguishable from Silens, were
woodland spirits or daemons that lived in the wild, being found in
mountains, forests, and caves alongside Nymphs with whom they cavorted
and whom these lusty creatures amorously pursued. Lustfulness,
enthusiasm for wine, and a propensity for mischief were characteristic of
them. Silens, on the other hand, came to be viewed as elderly Satyrs.
Alongside Nymphs, both Satyrs and Silens formed the typical entourage of
the shape-shifting god Dionysus. The best-known Satyr in Classical
mythology was also the most tragic of them. This was Marsyas, who had
found the flute cast aside by the goddess Athena, and, when he discovered
that he had a talent for playing the instrument, he made the terrible mistake
of challenging Apollo to a music contest. As a consequence of his
pridefulness, he was flayed alive. Another Satyr, his name unknown,
pursued the Danaid Amymone, but was driven off by Poseidon, who then
took up in the pursuit of the maiden himself.
(See also Amymone, Apollo, Athena, Centaurs [the], Dionysus,
Marsyas, Nymphs [the], Poseidon, and Silens [the].)

SCYLLA Scylla was a sea nymph turned monster. She was variously
described as a daughter of an otherwise shadowy Crataeis or Lamia, of the
sea goddess Echidna, or of Hecate, goddess of witchcraft, and the sea god
Phorcys (or Typhon or Triton). According to the Roman poet Ovid, Scylla
had many suitors but shunned all of these, taking refuge among the nymphs
of the sea. But the sea god Glaucus caught sight of her and pursued her, to
no avail. She fled in fear of him, so Glaucus went to the abode of the
sorceress Circe in order to obtain a cure for his lovesickness and to find a
way to punish Scylla. Circe duly obliged him by tainting Scylla’s favorite
pool, the place she went to bathe, with poisons. As she waded, waist-deep,
into the tainted water, the submerged parts of her body altered gruesomely,
her loins now fixed with the snarling heads of dogs. Ultimately, Scylla was
further transformed into a bristling crag. Alternate versions of the story
claim that she was transformed into a monster by Amphitrite or Poseidon.
In Homer’s Odyssey, the earliest literary mention of Scylla, she is a monster
who yelps like a young dog and has twelve feet as well as six necks with
three rows of gnashing teeth. She lived her days in a cave from which perch
she reached out to snatch fish and hapless sailors, among them six of
Odysseus’s crew. Jason and his heroic crew the Argonauts escaped her with
the help of the sea goddess Thetis, and the Trojan hero Aeneas, too, was
able to avoid her on his way to Italy.
Even in antiquity there were attempts to locate the mountainous rock or
promontory that was Scylla’s lair and that lay opposite the great rock
beneath which the whirlpool Charybdis could be found; according to the
historian Thucydides, for example, the rocks of Scylla and Charybdis were
situated to either side of the Straits of Messina, the waterway between
Rhegium and Messana, which was narrow, rough, and offered treacherous
passage to ships.
The monster Scylla is to be differentiated from the treacherous
Megarean princess who betrayed her homeland out of love for King Minos
of Crete.
 PLATE VIII

The Sirens: Hybrid female monsters who lure sailors to their

deaths
 (See also Aeneas, Argonauts [the], Charybdis, Crete, Echidna, Glaucus
[god], Hecate, Jason, Megara [place], Minos, Odysseus, Phorcys, Poseidon,
Scylla [heroine], Triton, and Typhon.)

SILENS, THE Silens were originally indistinct from Satyrs, woodland

spirits who were half human and half horse. Over time, however, Silens
came to be seen as elderly Satyrs, the most prominent of their group being
Silenus.
(See also Satyrs [the] and Silenus.)

SILENUS Silenus was an elderly Satyr and the most notable of the Silens,
woodland daemons who were half horse but who, over time, became more
goatlike. Silenus was represented in literature and art as jovial, rotund, and
balding. Like other Silens and Satyrs, he was fond of wine, music, and
dance. There were various accounts of his birth: the poet Nonnus describes
him as autochthonous, born literally from Gaia (“Earth”), but according to
rhetorician Aelian, he was the immortal son of a Nymph. Silenus was a
fixture in the entourage of the god Dionysus, with whom he had a
particularly close relationship: there was a tradition that it was Silenus to
whom the infant Dionysus was given by Zeus to rear after the tragic death
of his mother, Semele, and the historian Diodorus Siculus notes that Silenus
was Dionysus’s attendant, advisor, and instructor. The Phrygian king Midas
was said to have had an encounter with Silenus, either when taking him
captive in a miraculous garden, where he was then asked to prophesy the
future, or when coming to his rescue after he had become separated from
Dionysus in a drunken state. For his rescue of Silenus, Dionysus rewarded
Midas by granting him a wish, and what Midas wished was that everything
he touched would turn to gold.
(See also Dionysus, Gaia, Midas, Nymphs [the], Phrygia, Semele, Silens
[the], and Zeus.)

SIRENS, THE The Sirens were hybrid female monsters with human heads
and the bodies of birds. Sometimes they were also represented as having
human arms with which to hold their musical instruments. The particular
hazard that they posed was to lure sailors to their deaths with their
enchanting songs. For Homer, the Sirens were two in number, and he does
not describe their appearance, while later authors (and artists) indicate that
there were three of them and that they were bird women. The Sirens are
best known from Odysseus’s encounter with them. The goddess Circe
warned Odysseus that the Sirens’ irresistible songs caused all those who
heard them to forget their homecomings and, as a consequence, their
island’s beach was covered with their victims’ glistening bones. Odysseus
was instructed to place softened wax in his men’s ears while passing the
Sirens and to have himself lashed to the boat’s mast, so that he could enjoy
the Sirens’ song about the Trojan War without succumbing to their fatal
enticements. It was a good thing that Odysseus listened to Circe, for he was
so overcome by the Sirens’ voices that he begged his men to release him, a
request that they, fortunately, did not hear or heed. According to the epic
poet Apollonius of Rhodes, the hero Jason and his companions, too,
encountered the Sirens. On their way back from Colchis with the Golden
Fleece, Jason and his men passed the island Anthemoessa, where the Sirens
resided. The bard Orpheus sang to the accompaniment of his lyre so loudly
that he drowned out the Sirens’ song, and all of Jason’s men were saved
except one, who leaped overboard.
Apollonius and others call the Sirens daughters of the river god
Achelous and of the Muse Terpsichore (or Melpomene). The Sirens were
said to have been companions of the goddess Demeter’s daughter,
Persephone, before she was abducted by Hades. The Roman poet Ovid adds
that the Sirens had golden feathers and were transformed into bird-maidens
so that they could move as quickly as possible in their search for
Persephone.
(See also Achelous [god], Circe, Colchis, Demeter, Hades [god], Jason,
Melpomene, Muses [the], Odysseus, Orpheus, Persephone, and
Terpsichore.)

SPHINX OF THEBES, THE Sphinxes were hybrid monsters introduced

to the Greek world from Egypt and the Near East. Represented as winged
lions with human heads, they featured in Greek art as early as the Bronze
Age (circa 3000–1150 BCE) but entered the literary tradition as we know it
much later. In Greek texts, sphinxes are female, though in art there are also
males. Classical authors offer varying accounts of these monsters’ origins.
The poet Hesiod refers to the Sphinx (in the singular) as the offspring of the
serpent- maiden Echidna (or the Chimaera) with the monstrous dog Orthus.
Assuming that there were more than one Sphinx, the infamous Sphinx of
Thebes was the only one really to distinguish herself, and when ancient
authors mention “the Sphinx,” it is the monster that plagued the city of
Thebes that they speak of. Thus, the mythographer Apollodorus writes that
the Sphinx, born of Echidna and the monstrous Typhon, had a woman’s
face; the breast, feet, and tail of a lion; and a bird’s wings. He goes on to
relate the story well known from the playwright Sophocles’s masterpiece,
Oedipus the King, adding some background detail. The Sphinx had been
sent by the goddess Hera as a plague upon the populace of the city of
Thebes, whom she terrorized by posing a riddle that none could solve,
failure to answer correctly resulting in death. The city’s regent, Creon,
offered his sister, the queen Jocasta, as bride to whoever might successfully
solve this riddle and rid the city of the Sphinx. This Oedipus did, reasoning
correctly that the creature that walked on four feet in the morning, on two at
noon, and on three in the evening was a human (as crawling baby, biped
adult, and staff-assisted elder). Oedipus’s unanticipated response caused the
Sphinx to throw herself from a cliff to her death. Oedipus then became king
of Thebes and unwittingly married his mother, who was Jocasta.

(See also Chimaera [the], Creon, Echidna, Hera, Jocasta, Oedipus,

Orthus, Thebes, and Typhon.)
STEROPES Steropes, whose name means “lightning bolt” or “lightener,”
was a Cyclops, a one-eyed giant born of the elemental gods Gaia and
Uranus. His siblings were Brontes (“The Thunderer”) and Arges (“The
Flashing One”). The Cyclopes’ names reflect the nature of their service to
Zeus, for whose use they forged lightning bolts.
(See also Cyclopes [the], Gaia, Uranus, and Zeus.)

STHENO The Gorgon Stheno, the “Strong One,” was one of Medusa’s two
immortal sisters.
(See also Euryale, Gorgons [the], and Medusa.)

STYMPHALIAN BIRDS, THE According to the mythographer

Apollodorus, the infamous Stymphalian Birds roosted in a dense growth of
trees by Lake Stymphalus near the town of Stymphalus in Arcadia. The
travel writer Pausanias adds that they were man-eating, and Hyginus writes
that the birds discharged their feathers as missiles. Whatever their particular
threat, Hercules was ordered to kill or drive away these birds as the sixth of
his famous Labors. This he did with the help of the goddess Athena, who
supplied him with a bronze rattle that he used to startle the birds from their
hiding places so that he could shoot them with his arrows once they took
flight.
(See also Arcadia, Athena, Hercules, and Stymphalus.)

TALUS The bronze giant Talus (or Talos) has been described as a living
statue or something of a robot, but he was a sentient, living being. The poet
Apollonius of Rhodes says of him that he was descended from the ancient
Race of Bronze and had been given by Zeus to Europa so that he might
keep watch over the island of Crete, which he circuited three times daily;
according to tradition, there had been five successive ages or races of
humans, the Race of Gold, the Race of Silver, the Race of Bronze, the Race
of Heroes, and the present, deeply flawed Race of Iron. Talus’s body and his
limbs were of bronze and thus invulnerable, except for a place at his ankle,
where blood coursed through a single vein. Talus is best known for his
encounter with Jason and the Argonauts, who were accompanied by the
sorceress Medea. When, in the course of their return voyage from fetching
the Golden Fleece, the Argonauts attempted to seek shelter in a harbor on
the island of Crete, Talus pelted them with rocks. Medea, however, put a
hex on him, and while hoisting more rocks, he grazed his ankle and thus
was fatally wounded.
The mythographer Apollodorus offers a slightly different account of his
origins and his physiognomy: after creating Talus, the god Hephaestus
made a gift of him to the Cretan king Minos. Hephaestus’s creation had a
single vein extending from his neck to his ankles that was sealed at its end
with a nail of bronze. He perished when Medea either drove him mad or
when she, as a trick, convinced him that she could make him immortal and
pulled out the nail that sealed his vein.
(See also Argonauts [the], Crete, Europa, Hephaestus, Jason, Medea,
Minos, and Zeus.)

THESPIAN LION, THE The Thespian Lion once ranged the slopes of
Mount Cithaeron. The lion was a bane, as it preyed on the flocks both of
Amphitryon, Hercules’s stepfather, and of Thespius, king of Thespiae.
According to the mythographer Apollodorus, when Hercules was just
eighteen years old, he undertook to kill the troublesome lion. He stayed
with Thespius for fifty days and nights until he was finally able to slay the
lion. Thespius, well aware of Hercules’s more-than-mortal strength and
desiring Hercules’s offspring, sent a different one of his daughters to the
hero every night, and somehow Hercules was fooled, thinking that he had
all the while been sleeping with the same maiden.
(See also Amphitryon, Cithaeron [Mount], and Hercules.)
TITYUS The giant Tityus was a son of Zeus and Elara, daughter of the
Boeotian hero Orchomenus. According to the mythographer Apollodorus,
Zeus, wishing to keep his indiscretion secret from his wife, Hera, hid Elara
under the earth after impregnating her. After a period of gestation, Tityus
emerged from the earth, and for this reason was called earth-born. In time,
however, Tityus would commit a sin that would cause him to return
underground, this time, however, taking up residence in Tartarus, the part of
the Underworld reserved for sinners. His sin was to have attempted raping
Leto, mother of the divine twins Apollo and Artemis, who consequently
killed him with their arrows. It was in the Underworld that Odysseus, and
later Aeneas, saw him, his enormous body sprawled over nine acres, his
liver being eternally eaten by vultures.
(See also Aeneas, Apollo, Artemis, Boeotia, Leto, Odysseus, Tartarus,
Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

TYPHOEUS Typhoeus was another name for Typhon, an enormous hybrid

monster produced by Gaia and sired by Tartarus.
(See Gaia, Tartarus [god and place], and Typhon.)

TYPHON The monstrous Typhon (also called Typhoeus) was early on

confused and conflated with Typhaon. According to the Greek poet Hesiod,
Gaia (“Earth”) produced Typon/Typhoeus with Tartarus, a personification
of the deep, dank parts of Hades deep within Earth. Typhon was a terrible
monster with prodigious strength. He had a hundred serpents’ heads that
had dark, flickering tongues and produced the sounds of every kind of
animal: a lion, bull, dog, snake, and more. His eyes flashed fire. With the
she-monster Echidna, Typhon/Typhaon became father to a host of other
monsters: Orthus, the hound of triple-bodied Geryon; Cerberus, the hound
of Hades; the many-headed Hydra of Lerna; and the fire-breathing
Chimaera. Zeus correctly perceived Typhon as a threat to his realm and
shook the heavens and seas alike with his thunder. God and monster
engaged in a terrible battle that caused the earth, sky, and sea to seethe with
powerful winds, earthquakes, and fire. Even Hades trembled beneath the
earth’s crust. Eventually, Zeus felled his rival, striking him with a blazing
thunderbolt, and cast him into the depths of Tartarus. The mythographer
Apollodorus provides a more detailed physical description of the giant: he
was so enormous in size that his head reached beyond the mountains to the
stars. A hundred serpents’ heads projected from his arms, and this winged
giant had hissing, coiling vipers in place of legs. According to Apollodorus,
Pindar, Ovid, and others, when Zeus overcame Typhon, he cast him beneath
Mount Etna on the island of Sicily, which fact accounts for that mountain’s
volcanic activity.
(See also Cerberus, Chimaera [the], Echidna, Gaia, Geryon, Hades [god
and place], Hydra of Lerna [the], Sicily, Tartarus [god and place], and
Zeus.)
ABYDUS Abydus was a city located on the narrowest part of the
Dardanelles, or Hellespont, as it was called in antiquity. This city, founded
in the seventh century BCE, was situated on the Asian side of the strait, and
as the Greek historian Herodotus noted, it was there that the Persian king
Xerxes constructed a bridge spanning the Hellespont so as to facilitate
passage for his massive army to Greece. Abydus was notable in Classical
mythology as the home of Leander, a young man whose beloved Hero, a
priestess of the goddess Aphrodite, lived in Sestus, on the Hellespont’s
opposite shore. Leander would swim to meet her at nightfall until their
liaison took a tragic turn, his drowning occasioning Hero’s suicide.
(See also Aphrodite, Hellespont [the], Hero, and Leander.)

ACHELOUS RIVER, THE The Achelous River, Modern Greek Akheloos

Potamos, is one of the longest rivers (approximately 137 miles, or 220
kilometers) in Greece. Rising in the Pindus Range, it flows into the Ionian
Sea and, in antiquity, formed a natural border between the regions of
Aetolia and Acarnania in central Greece. This river was of such importance
that its deified personification, the river god Achelous, could be invoked as
the deity of all rivers, and both the river and its god featured in a number of
myths. For example, Achelous was reputedly the father of Castalia,
namesake of the Castalian Spring, which was sacred to the Muses;
Alcmaeon, son of one of the Seven Against Thebes, purified himself in this
river’s waters after killing his mother, Eriphyle, for her repeated treachery;
and Hercules wrestled with Achelous in order to win the hand of his last
wife, Deianeira. In the course of the wrestling match with Hercules,
Achelous was said to have assumed the form of a serpent and then of a bull.
The geographer Strabo explains these myths by relating them to physical
features of the river itself: its serpentine course and the bull-like roar
generated by its rushing waters.
(See also Alcmaeon, Castalian Spring [the], Deianeira, Hercules, Muses
[the], and Seven Against Thebes [the].)

ACHERON, THE RIVER Acheron was believed to be one of the main

rivers in the Underworld, the geography of which shifted over time. In fact,
the name of the river was sometimes used to refer to the Underworld in its
entirety. According to Homer, who is the earliest source of information
about the location and nature of this river, Acheron lay beyond the river
Oceanus, which encircled the world of the living, and by the Grove of
Persephone. It was there, at the point where the rivers Phlegethon and
Cocytus, a branch of the river Styx, flowed into Acheron, that Odysseus
dug a pit from which he conjured the souls of the dead. In Virgil’s Aeneid,
by contrast, Acheron is identified with the Styx and is the river over which
Charon ferried the souls of the dead.
(See also Aeneas, Charon, Cocytus [the River], Oceanus [god and
place], Odysseus, Persephone, Phlegethon [the River], Styx [the River], and
Underworld [the].)

ACROPOLIS, THE The Acropolis is a massive, flat-topped, limestone

outcropping in the Attic plain that served as Athens’ old citadel and later its
religious center. It rises to a height of approximately 492 feet (150 meters)
and has a greatest length and width of about 885 feet (270 meters) and 512
feet (156 meters), respectively. The term “acropolis,” which means “high
city” or “highest part of the city,” can refer to the upper town of any city in
Greece. For purposes of defense, there was a tendency to build settlements
on hilltops, often fortified, and when populations expanded, to build in the
areas surrounding the original town center. In the case of Athens, whose
acropolis is the best known, the upper city was fortified in the Bronze Age
(thirteenth century BCE) and, in that period, contained a palatial building.
After the destruction of the palace and the close of the Bronze Age, the
Acropolis, having become the symbolic center of the city, saw several
phases of temple and monument construction, the most ambitious being
undertaken by the tyrant Peisistratus in the sixth century BCE and the
statesman and general Pericles in the fifth century BCE. Ruins of the
monuments now visible on the Acropolis stem from the building program
of Pericles, whose aim was to make Athens a showcase and “school” for all
of Greece.
As the goddess Athena was the patron goddess of Athens, she figured
heavily in the symbolism of the Acropolis monuments. The Parthenon,
constructed in the years 447–432 BCE in Athena’s honor and dedicated to
her as maiden goddess (Parthenos), contained a monumental (38 feet, or
11.5 meters, tall) cult statue of gold and ivory that depicted Athena as
warrior-goddess wearing a helmet, which was decorated with a sphinx,
griffins, and Pegasus, and wearing a breastplate, the latter bearing the head
of Medusa. With her left hand, the Parthenos statue supported a shield
bearing scenes from the legendary battle of the Athenians, led by Theseus,
against the Amazons and from the battle of the gods and Giants, and in her
right hand held a small winged Nike (personification of victory). On her
sandals appeared scenes from the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, and on
the statue’s base, the myth of Pandora. At her feet lay curled a serpent, a
depiction of the early Athenian king Erechtheus. Myths featured on the
statue reappeared on the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon itself, in
particular the battles of the Lapiths and Centaurs, the Athenians and
Amazons, and the gods and Giants, which, together with scenes from the
Trojan War, have been interpreted as symbolizing the victory of the Greeks
over the Persians in the Persian Wars (492–449 BCE) and, as a consequence,
the god-sanctioned victory of civilized Greece over “the barbarian” writ
large. The temple’s pediments, for their part, featured the spectacular birth
of Athena from the head of Zeus and her triumph over Poseidon in the
contest for patronage of Athens.
Another Athena, made of bronze and allegedly visible to sailors as far
away as Sounion (Sunium), stood outside the Parthenon by the formal
entrance to the upper Acropolis precinct and represented Athena, again
armed, as Promachos, defender of the city and leader of the battle ranks.
The Acropolis also housed the temple known as the Erechtheum, which is
distinguished by its caryatid porch and was sacred to Athena Polias
(guardian of the city) and to the legendary Athenian kings Erechtheus and
Cecrops, as well as to Poseidon, the mark of whose trident striking the
Acropolis’s rock could be seen in the temple. In close proximity to the
Erechtheum stood the olive tree that Athena produced in her contest with
Poseidon. The Acropolis also housed the small temple of Athena in the
guise of goddess of victory, Nike, and a shrine of Artemis. At the base of
the Acropolis lay the theater of Dionysus who, in addition to being the god
of wine, was the patron god of the theater.
(See also Amazons [the], Artemis, Athena, Athens, Attica, Cecrops,
Centaurs [the], Dionysus, Erechtheus, Giants [the], Gorgons [the], Griffins
[the], Lapiths [the], Medusa, Nike, Pandora, Parthenon [the], Pegasus,
Poseidon, Sphinx, Theseus, Troy, and Zeus.)

AEAEA Aeaea is the mythical island inhabited by the enchantress goddess

Circe, who detained Odysseus for a full year in the course of his ten-year
journey home from Troy. According to Homer’s Odyssey, she resided there
with a group of nymphs and an entourage of tamed wolves and lions. The
hero Jason, accompanied by the barbarian princess Medea, also visited this
island in search of Circe, who was Medea’s aunt and from whom they
sought purification from the pollution of murder. In antiquity, the island was
variously believed to be in the Far East, at the edge of the known world, or
in the West, according to the Roman poet Virgil, located somewhere off the
Italian coast between Cumae, where the Sibyl resided, and Latium, where
the Trojan hero Aeneas and his band of Trojan refugees would eventually
settle.
(See also Aeneas, Circe, Cumae, Jason, Latium, Medea, Odysseus, Sibyl
of Cumae [the], and Troy.)

AEGEAN SEA, THE The Aegean Sea lies between the coast of Greece
and Turkey, extending from the Hellespont to Crete, as defined by the
Greek historian Herodotus. Among the legendary etymologies for the sea’s
name is derivation from the name of the Athenian king, Aegeus, who
plunged to his death in this body of water because he thought his son,
Theseus, had perished while attempting to kill the Minotaur.
(See also Aegeus, Athens, Minotaur [the], and Theseus.)

AEGINA The island of Aegina lies in the Saronic Gulf approximately 13

miles (20 kilometers) southwest of Athens. This island, which was settled
as early as the fourth millennium BCE, is notable among other things for the
imposing remains of its temple of the fertility goddess Aphaea, the
sculptural decoration of which depicted scenes from the first and second
Trojan wars, both of which had connections with the island’s mythology.
According to legend, the island took its name from the nymph Aegina,
whom Zeus abducted to the island of Oenone, which he subsequently
renamed after her. By Zeus, Aegina became the mother of Aeacus, a later
king of the island who would repopulate his plague-decimated island with
ant-people. Aeacus, for his part, was the father of Peleus, later Achilles’s
father, and Telamon, who would become the father of the Ajax the Great.
Achilles and Ajax fought in the second and best known Trojan War, while
Telamon helped Hercules in his battle, an earlier Trojan war, against Troy’s
king Laomedon.
(See also Achilles, Aeacus, Ajax [the Great], Hercules, Laomedon,
Peleus, Telamon, Troy, and Zeus.)

ALBA LONGA The town of Alba Longa was located in the region of
Latium on Mount Albanus, modern Monte Cavo, southeast of Rome.
According to legend, Alba Longa was founded by Ascanius, the son of
Aeneas, who had brought a group of Trojan refugees to Italy after the fall of
Troy to the Greeks in the Trojan War. Alba Longa would remain the capital
of Latium until the founding of Rome by Romulus and was allegedly
destroyed in the middle of the seventh century BCE by the Roman king
Tullus Hostilius.
(See also Aeneas, Ascanius, Latium, Rome, Romulus, and Troy.)

ALPHEUS RIVER, THE Alpheus, Modern Greek Alfios, is the largest

river in the Peloponnese and one of the largest in Greece. Rising in southern
Arcadia and flowing by Olympia into the Ionian Sea, its course is some 70
miles (110 kilometers) in length. The Alpheus is featured in the Labors of
Hercules, who diverted its course in order to clean the stables of Augeas,
and as in the case of all rivers, the Alpheus was conceived of not only as a
place but also as a deity, the river god Alpheus, who was a personification
of this river. The god Alpheus was one of the many children of Oceanus and
developed a passion for the nymph Arethusa, whom he pursued to Sicily,
where she became a spring and their waters mingled.
(See also Alpheus [god], Arcadia, Arethusa, Augeas, Hercules, Oceanus
[god], and Sicily.)

ARCADIA Arcadia was a rugged, mountainous region in the central

Peloponnese more suited to hunting and animal husbandry than to
agriculture. Its boundaries were largely defined by mountains (clockwise
from the northeast, by Mount Erymanthus, Mount Cyllene, Mount Aroania,
Mount Cyllene, Mount Oligyrtus, Mount Parthenius, the foothills of the
Parnon and Taygetos ranges, Mount Nomia, and Mount Elaeum), and it was
slightly smaller in area than the modern regional unit of the same name.
Arcadia’s most important river, the Alpheus, is also the principal river in the
Peloponnese. Other Arcadian bodies of water well known from mythology
are Lake Stymphalus, home of the dangerous Stymphalian Birds, and even
the Underworld’s river Styx, which made a short aboveground appearance
in the region. The Arcadians claimed that they were descendants of the
most ancient inhabitants of Greece, the Pelasgians, who were named after
Pelasgus, the culture hero responsible for teaching the Arcadians how to
build huts and make clothing from animal hides. The namesake of Arcadia
was said to be Arcas, a son of Zeus and the bear-woman Callisto. In
keeping with the region’s rustic character, Arcadia was considered the home
of the god Pan, the birthplace of Hermes, and a favorite hunting ground of
the goddess Artemis.
(See also Alpheus River [the], Arcas, Artemis, Callisto, Erymanthus
[Mount], Hermes, Pan, Pelasgus, Stymphalus, Styx, and Zeus.)

ARETHUSA Arethusa, Fonte Aretusa in Italian, is a spring on the Sicilian

island of Ortygia, which is the historic center of Syracuse. The spring is
said to have taken its name from the Peloponnesian nymph Arethusa who
fled the amorous pursuit of the river god Alpheus to arrive on Ortygia,
where she became a spring. The nymph Arethusa, who personified this
spring, appeared as the emblem of Syracuse on coinage issued by that city
in antiquity.
(See also Alpheus [god and place], Ortygia, and Sicily.)

ARGOS Argos, which is sited about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the coast,
was the principal city in the Argolis region of the eastern Peloponnese and
is the site of a modern town of the same name. According to the Greek
geographer Strabo (64 BCE–19 CE), the greater part of Argos was situated in
a plain, and it had a citadel called Larisa, a moderately fortified hill upon
which there was a temple of Jupiter. Argos was reputedly the oldest city in
Greece, and its mythology was complicated and confused even in antiquity.
By some accounts, Argos was originally inhabited by the ancestors of
Pelasgus, namesake of the pre-Greek, aboriginal inhabitants of Greece
called Pelasgians and a descendant of the local Argive river god Inachus.
As the mythographer Apollodorus writes, Argus, who gave his name to
Argos, was a brother of Pelasgus. There are physical remains of a Bronze
Age settlement and fortifications at Argos that point to the city’s importance
in that period, especially the late fourteenth to thirteenth centuries BCE, but
its height of power and influence came later, beginning in the middle of the
eighth century BCE through the sixth century BCE, in the so-called Archaic
Period, when its territory extended along the eastern coast of the Parnon
peninsula to the island of Cythera. While Argos lost territory and power to
its neighbor Sparta, it did control the sites of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Lerna,
all of which, including Argos, play a significant role in mythology. Among
Argos’s most notable legendary figures are Io, Inachus’s daughter, who was
transformed into a cow; the selfless and heroic Cleobis and Biton; Danae,
whose prison the god Zeus accessed in the form of a golden shower and
with her became father of the Gorgon-slayer Perseus; Adrastus, leader of
the Seven Against Thebes; and Eurystheus, the king for whom Hercules
performed his Labors. Among the gods, it was Hera to whom Argos was
most sacred.
(See also Adrastus, Cleobis, Danae, Eurystheus, Gorgons [the], Hera,
Hercules, Inachus, Io, Lerna, Mycenae, Pelasgus, Perseus, Seven Against
Thebes [the], Sparta, Tiryns, and Zeus.)

ATHENS Athens, which according to legend was named after its patron
goddess Athena, was and still is the principal city of the region of Attica.
The city lies on a plain that is surrounded by the Aegaleos, Parnes,
Pentelicon, and Hymettus mountains. Piraeus, the city’s port, lies on the
northeastern edge of the Saronic Gulf, and was connected by a system of
long walls (a walled access “corridor” approximately 4 miles (6 kilometers)
to the walls of Athens proper, on either side of which ran the Ilissus and
Eridanus rivers. Athens is dominated by the Acropolis, the ancient city’s
citadel and religious center, which houses Athena’s most important temple,
the Parthenon. Already in antiquity, the Acropolis became a museum of
sorts to Athenian mythological history, containing structures that alluded to
the many roles assumed by the city’s patron goddess as well as to the city’s
legendary founders and early kings, among them the earth-born Cecrops,
the snake-man Erechtheus, and the hero Theseus, notable for reputedly
slaying the Minotaur of Crete, uniting the various settlements in Attica, and
repulsing an attack on his city by the Amazons.
(See also Acropolis, Amazons [the], Athena, Attica, Cecrops, Crete,
Erechtheus, Ilissus River [the], Minotaur [the], and Theseus.)

ATTICA Attica, modern Attiki, is the territory of Athens. In antiquity,

Attica could be defined as the triangular peninsula at the eastern edge of
central Greece, being separated from Boeotia to its north by Mount Parnes
and Mount Cithaeron and from Megara to the west by Mount Cerata.
Modern Attica is somewhat larger, including Megara, the Saronic Islands,
the island of Cythera, and a portion of the Peloponnese.
Prior to the ascendancy of Athens, Attica contained a number of
separate communities that, according to tradition, were twelve in number at
the time of the legendary king Cecrops. These eventually united to form a
single Athenian state, which development was attributed to the Athenian
hero Theseus. The sanctuary of Eleusis (modern Elefsina), sacred to the
goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, and the sanctuary of
Artemis at Brauron (modern Vraona) were located in Attica, the former
northwest of Athens’s center and the latter to its southeast. Another
mythologically significant site in Attica is Colonus, which was situated just
outside the walls of Athens and was the site of the death and heroization of
Oedipus as well as of the sacred grove of the Eumenides.
(See also Artemis, Athens, Cecrops, Cithaeron [Mount], Colonus,
Demeter, Eleusis, Eumenides [the], Megara [place], Oedipus, Persephone,
and Theseus.)

AULIS Aulis was a town on the eastern coast of Boeotia just south of the
Euripus channel, which separates the island of Euboea from the Greek
mainland. The travel writer Pausanias visited Aulis and intimates that it was
named after the daughter of Ogygus, a legendary Boeotian king. He saw
there both a temple of Artemis containing two marble statues of the
goddess, one holding torches and the other shooting an arrow, and the very
plane tree that, at the time of the Trojan War, had become the locus of an
important omen: a snake appeared before the Greeks gathered there and,
winding its way up the tree’s trunk, proceeded to devour a sparrow’s eight
nestlings and the mother sparrow herself. As Homer writes, the Greek seer
Calchas interpreted this as a sign that the Greeks would be victorious at
Troy, but that the war would last a full nine years, with Troy falling in the
tenth. Indeed, Aulis is best known as the gathering point of the Greek forces
bound for Troy, and as the site where the Mycenean king Agamemnon’s
daughter Iphigeneia was sacrificed at the bidding of Artemis.
(See also Agamemnon, Artemis, Boeotia, Calchas, Euboea, Iphigeneia,
and Troy.)

BABYLON The ancient city of Babylon was located on the Euphrates

River in what is now southern Iraq. Situated in the Fertile Crescent,
Babylon was settled from at least the third millennium BCE and, rising to
prominence during the reign of Hammurabi (1792–1750 BCE), famed for his
code of laws, the city served during his reign as the political, religious, and
cultural center of the ancient Near East. Babylon’s Hanging Gardens, called
one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, but not yet found by
archaeologists, were reputedly created over 1,000 years later by the king
Nebuchadnezzar II (reigned 604–562 BCE), under whom the city again
flourished and, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, became the
most splendid city in the known world. Nebuchadnezzar’s extensive
building campaign also produced (in rebuilt form) the Marduk temple
Esagil and the ziggurat Etemanaki that served as the axis connecting heaven
and earth and that came to be known as the Tower of Babyl. In the Roman
poet Ovid’s tale of the star-crossed Babylonian lovers Pyramus and Thisbe,
which is the best-known Classical myth involving the city, the legendary
Assyrian queen Semiramis is credited with building Babylon and its
remarkable walls.
(See also Pyramus, Semiramis, and Thisbe.)

BOEOTIA Boeotia is a region of central Greece, the modern regional unit

(Viotia) of this name being slightly larger than the district was in antiquity.
Ancient Boeotia lay northwest of Athens and was divided from the territory
of Athens and Megara by Mount Cithaeron and Mount Parnes. It was
separated from Phocis on its western border by Mount Helicon, and was
further delimited geologically by the Gulf of Corinth to the southwest and
the Gulf of Euboea to the northeast. Boeotia was settled as early as the
Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age), and enjoyed prominence first in the
Bronze Age (the second millennium BCE), being the site of two notable
Mycenaean palace centers, one at Orchomenos and the other at Thebes. Of
these two cities, it was Thebes that became the most powerful in the region,
and for this reason, the city has an extraordinarily rich mythological
tradition: for example, it was the city populated by warriors sprung from
dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus and home, too, of Oedipus. As regards the
region more broadly, Boeotia was the birthplace of Narcissus, who loved no
one but himself, and it was the site of Mount Helicon, which was sacred to
the Muses.
(See also Cadmus, Cithaeron [Mount], Helicon [Mount], Megara
[place], Muses [the], Narcissus, Oedipus, Thebes, and Zeus.)

BOSPHORUS, THE The Bosphorus (or Bosporus) is the narrow strait

connecting the Black Sea, called the Euxine Sea in antiquity, with the Sea
of Marmara, the ancient Propontis. The Bosphorus and Hellespont separate
the European and Asian continents and allow passage for ships between the
Mediterranean and Black Sea. According to the Greek tragedian Aeschylus,
the Bosphorus took its name from the heroine Io who, having been
transformed into a cow as a result of the goddess Hera’s jealousy of her,
was driven by a gadfly from Greece to Egypt, the Bosphorus being her
point of crossing.
(See also Hellespont [the], Hera, Io, and Zeus.)

CALYDON The city of Calydon was located on the banks of the Evenus
River in the ancient region of Aetolia in west-central Greece. According to
legend, the city was named after its founder, Calydon, a son of Aetolus,
after whom the region of Aetolia is named, and grandson of Endymion, a
king of Elis who became the lover of the moon goddess Selene. A later
regent of Calydon, Oeneus, failed to make sacrifice to the goddess Artemis,
who sent a boar to ravage the land. This resulted in the famous Calydonian
Boar hunt, as a consequence of which the hero Meleager met an early death,
his mother having thrown the log that constituted the measure of his life
into the fire.
(See also Aetolia, Aetolus, Artemis, Endymion, Meleager, Oeneus, and
Selene.)

CAPITOLINE HILL, THE The Capitoline Hill is one of the Seven Hills of
Rome, and although it is the smallest of these, it was the most important,
evolving from the original settlement’s citadel to the later city’s religio-
political center. Its northeast summit was known as the Arx, and was the
location of the citadel proper, while the southwest summit, which
overlooked the Roman Forum, was called the Capitol (Capitolium).
According to the Roman historian Livy, the Temple of Jupiter Feretrius was
the first temple to have been built on the Capitoline, and it was Romulus
himself, Rome’s founder, who was responsible, commissioning the temple
in order to commemorate a military victory that he attributed to the
assistance of Jupiter. The most important temple on the Capitoline was that
on the Capitolium dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno, and
Minerva, the so-called Capitoline Triad of deities. It was at this temple that
victorious generals celebrating a triumph as well as magistrates assuming
office made sacrifice. The temple and the entire hill came to be called
“Capitolium,” a name that, according to the Roman historian Livy, was
derived from the discovery on the site of an oversize human skull by those
constructing the temple; this discovery was interpreted as a sign of the
future greatness of Rome, the citadel being destined to become the “head”
(caput in Latin) of a world empire. In addition to other shrines and
monuments, the Capitoline Hill was the location of the Tarpeian Rock, the
precipice that was named after the treacherous Tarpeia and from which
traitors were thrown to their deaths. At the foot of the Capitoline in the
Forum stood the majestic temple of Saturn, to whom the entire hill had once
belonged.
(See also Juno, Jupiter, Minerva, Rome, Romulus, Saturn, and Tarpeia.)

CARTHAGE According to tradition, the city of Carthage was founded in

the late ninth century BCE by Phoenician colonists on what is now the
Tunisian coast of North Africa. Because of its strategic position, Carthage
became a rival to Rome and, inevitably, these two powers clashed in the
Punic Wars (264–146 BCE). In the course of the conflict, the Carthaginian
general Hannibal marched over the Alps into Italy, much to the horror of
Rome. Carthage was annihilated by the Romans in 146 BCE, only to rise
again a century later but now firmly under the Roman thumb as capital of
the Roman province of Africa.
The Roman rivalry with Carthage was powerfully reflected in the tale of
the Phoenician queen Dido, legendary founder of Carthage, who lost her
dignity and her life as a consequence of her fateful love affair with the
Trojan Aeneas, who was destined to travel to Italy where he would become
the ancestor of the Romans. Hannibal, according to the Roman poet Virgil,
would be Dido’s avenger.
(See also Aeneas, Dido, Rome, and Troy.)

CASTALIAN SPRING, THE The Castalian Spring on the slopes of Mount

Parnassus near Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi reputedly took its name from
the spirit that inhabited it, namely the nymph Castalia, a daughter of the
river god Achelous. Castalia had leaped into the spring’s waters in order to
escape pursuit by the god Apollo. The spring was sacred to the Muses and,
for those who imbibed its waters, was thought to be source of musical and
poetic inspiration. The travel writer Pausanias describes the spring as both
sweet to drink and pleasant to bathe in. Those wishing to consult the oracle
at Delphi purified themselves with the spring’s water.
(See also Achelous [god], Apollo, Delphi, Muses [the], and Parnassus
[Mount].)

CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS, THE The Caucasus Mountains, a range 684

miles (1,100 kilometers) in length and up to 37 miles (60 kilometers) wide,
extend from the Black (Euxine) Sea to the Caspian Sea, forming what was
considered a natural barrier between Europe and Asia. As these mountains
constituted what the Greeks viewed as the northern edge of the civilized
world, the Caucasus region was believed to be the home of a variety of
mythological creatures and legendary “barbarian” tribes or peoples such as
the Griffins, hybrid creatures that were part bird and part lion; the warlike
Amazons; the mysterious Arimaspi; and the Hyperboreans, who enjoyed a
felicitous existence. It was in the Caucasus Mountains, too, that the Titan
Prometheus was said to have been shackled and his continually
regenerating liver eaten by a vulture as punishment for helping humankind.
(See also Amazons [the], Arimaspi [the], Euxine Sea [the], Griffins
[the], Hyperboreans [the], Prometheus, and Titans [the].)

CEPHISSUS RIVER, THE There were several rivers by the name of

Cephissus in Greece, among them one in Boeotia, two in the territory of
Athens, and one in the territory of Argos. The deity personifying the
Boeotian Cephissus was said to be the father of the lovely youth Narcissus,
who pined away out of love for himself. The deity of the Argive Cephissus,
for his part, was reputedly one of the judges in the contest between Hera
and Poseidon for patronage of Argos, a contest in which Hera prevailed.
(See also Argos, Athens, Boeotia, Hera, Narcissus, and Poseidon.)

CHIOS The Greek island of Chios lies in the Aegean Sea in relatively close
proximity to the coast of Asia Minor (4 miles, or 7 kilometers). There was a
tradition that Chios was colonized by Greeks from the island of Euboea in
the ninth century BCE. The island had a reputation for being a rich, fertile
land and a good source of pine: the Greek historian Thucydides remarks on
its prosperity, the island’s inhabitants being the wealthiest people in Greece.
It was Oenopion, a legendary king of this island, who was said to have put
out the eyes of the enormous Orion for violating, or wooing, his daughter
Merope.
(See also Aegean Sea [the], Merope, and Orion.)

CITHAERON, MOUNT Mount Cithaeron (or Kithairon) is a mountain, or,

more properly, a mountain range north of the Isthmus of Corinth and
separating the territory of Athens (Attica) and Megara from Boeotia.
Cithaeron was sacred to a host of deities, among them Zeus, Dionysus,
Hera, and Pan, and was the location of numerous myths associated with
these deities and others. It was in a cave on Cithaeron that Dionysus was
said to have been reared, and the infant Oedipus was left to die on this
mountain’s slopes. Oedipus survived, but Actaeon, one of his ancestors, met
his gruesome end while hunting on this mountain, as did Pentheus,
Dionysus’s cousin.
As for the mountain’s name, the travel writer Pausanias notes that it was
named after a legendary Boeotian king who, being quick of wit, helped
Zeus when confronted, as he often was, with the jealousy of his wife, Hera.
Cithaeron advised the philandering Zeus to place a wooden effigy of his
new love interest in a wagon, seeing to it that Hera would discover it.
Pulling the veil from its head, Hera was relieved to discover a statue, and
not a woman, in her husband’s possession.
(See also Actaeon, Dionysus, Hera, Megara [place], Oedipus, Pan,
Pentheus, and Zeus.)

CLASHING ROCKS, THE “Clashing Rocks” is a translation of the Greek

“Symplegades,” name of the great rock formations that were believed to lie
to either side of the northern end of the Bosphorus and that would quickly
move together and clash, crushing ships between them.
(See also Bosphorus [the] and Symplegades [the].)

CNOSSUS Cnossus (or Knossos), site of the famed palace of King Minos,
is located in a fertile valley just southeast of the modern city of Heraklion
on the island of Crete. The site itself was occupied as early as 7000 BCE (the
Neolithic Period), and the expansive, multilevel palace, which was
subsequently repeatedly modified until its destruction around 1300 BCE, saw
its initial phase of construction in the early second millennium BCE. The
first systematic excavations of the palace were conducted in the early
twentieth century by Sir Arthur Evans and published in his multivolume
work The Palace of Minos at Knossos. The efforts of Evans and his
successors established Cnossus as the political, religious, and artistic center
of the so-called Minoan civilization of Crete. In mythology, the palace at
Cnossus was not only King Minos’s seat of power but also the location of
the labyrinth that Minos compelled the Greek craftsman Daedalus to
construct as a prison for the Minotaur, Minos’s wife Pasiphae’s monstrous
child by a bull for which she had developed an unquenchable passion.
(See also Crete, Daedalus, Minos, Minotaur [the], and Pasiphae.)
COCYTUS Cocytus was one of the rivers of the Underworld, its name
traditionally derived from the ancient Greek kokyein “to wail,” making it
the River of Wailing. According to Homer, the Cocytus was branch of the
river Styx and, together with the river Phlegethon, fed the river Acheron.
The Roman poet Virgil adds details that heighten the horror of the hero
Aeneas’s descent into the Underworld: in the Underworld’s antechamber,
Aeneas and the Sibyl who guides him come to a path leading to the river
Acheron and a point where the Acheron’s tributaries converge in a vast,
seething whirlpool that belches forth the thick sludge carried by the dark
waters of Cocytus.
(See also Acheron River [the], Aeneas, Phlegethon [the River], Sibyl,
and Underworld [the].)

COLCHIS Colchis was a fertile, natural-resource-rich region that lay at the

eastern end of the Black (or Euxine) Sea and was hemmed in by the Greater
and Lesser Caucasus ranges. Settlements existed in the region as early as
the third millennium BCE, and the Greeks sent colonists there in the sixth
century BCE. For the Greeks, Colchis was a mysterious, barbarian land, and
in mythology it was known as the destination of young Phrixus, who
escaped becoming the victim of human sacrifice on the back of a golden-
fleeced ram. At that time, Colchis was the kingdom of King Aeetes, a son
of the god Helios and father of the sorceress Medea. It was to Aeetes’s
kingdom that the Thessalian hero Jason traveled in order to retrieve the
Golden Fleece that, after the ram was sacrificed, hung in a sanctuary of the
god Ares.
(See also Aeetes, Ares, Euxine Sea [the], Hera, Jason, Medea, Phrixus,
and Thessaly.)

COLONUS Colonus, taking its name from the Greek for a small hill
(kolonos), was a region that formed part of the territory of the city of
Athens and lay just north of the city in close proximity to the famous
Academy, the location of Plato’s school of philosophy. Colonus was the
birthplace of the tragedian Sophocles, and it was there that the blind
Oedipus, accompanied by his daughter Antigone, stumbled upon a grove
sacred to the Eumenides and ultimately met his mysterious end, becoming
thereafter honored in cult by the Athenians as their protector and
benefactor.
(See also Antigone, Athens, Eumenides [the], and Oedipus.)

CORINTH The ancient city of Corinth was located at the western end of
the isthmus separating the Peloponnese from Boeotia and is about 2 miles
(3 kilometers) removed from modern Corinth. This city, which possessed an
imposing citadel on the heights of Acrocorinth, was strategically positioned
and important, being located at a point where roads from the north led into
the Peloponnese and ships passed from east to west, and vice versa, through
the isthmus.
The mythological history of Corinth is a complicated one, varying in its
details from author to author. According to the mythographer Apollodorus,
Sisyphus, son of Aeolus, founded Corinth, which was formerly called
Ephyra (or Ephyraea). The travel writer Pausanias adds that Corinth
received its first name, Ephyra, from a daughter of Oceanus who had lived
in that place, but that at a later point, the city was renamed Corinthus after a
descendant of the sun god Helios.
As regards the more extended mythology of Corinth, Sisyphus was said
to have married Merope, daughter of Atlas, with her having a son named
Glaucus, who would become father to the hero Bellerophon, slayer of the
monstrous Chimaera. In order to accomplish this feat, Bellerophon needed
to tame the winged horse Pegasus, who with his hoof created the Corinthian
spring of Pirene. Corinth also had a strong connection to the myth of
Oedipus, as it was the Corinthian king Polybus and his wife, Merope, who
adopted the infant Oedipus when his birth parents left him to die. Herself a
descendant of Helios, the sorceress Medea likewise had ties to Corinth and
brought the hero Jason there, only to have him seek an alliance with the
Corinthian king Creon through marriage to his daughter Creusa (or Glauce,
as she was also known).
(See also Aeolus, Atlas, Bellerophon, Chimaera [the], Creon, Creusa,
Glauce, Glaucus [hero], Helios, Jason, Medea, Merope [nymph and
heroine], Oceanus [god], Oedipus, Pegasus, Pirene, Polybus, and Sisyphus.)

CRETE Crete, which has a total area of some 3,219 square miles (8,336
square kilometers) is the largest of the Greek islands and lies approximately
99 miles (160 kilometers) south of the Greek mainland. The island’s terrain
is varied and mountainous, and its strategic location in the Mediterranean
on trade routes from Egypt, Cyprus, and Asia Minor was a major factor in
the island’s rise to a position of cultural and political prominence in the
Bronze Age (roughly 3000–1150 BCE). The Bronze Age civilization on
Crete, which was called Minoan after the legendary Cretan king Minos,
flourished, with a number of palace centers being built on the island around
2000 BCE at Phaistos, Malia, Zakro, and Cnossus, which is the best known
of these. It was Cnossus that was reputedly the center of Minos’s power,
and there that the famed craftsman Daedalus constructed the labyrinth that
housed the dreaded Minotaur. The island’s mountains Ida and Dicte,
meanwhile, both were credited with being the birthplace of the god Zeus.
(See also Cnossus, Daedalus, Ida [Mount], Minos, Minotaur, and Zeus.)

CUMAE Cumae was a city located on Italy’s Campanian coast. Founded in

the middle of the eighth century BCE, it was the first Greek colony to have
been established on the Italian mainland. In mythology, Cumae featured
principally as the site of a mountain cave that housed the prophetic Sibyl,
who led the Trojan hero Aeneas to the Underworld. The Sibyl’s cave was
located in close proximity to the deep, sulfurous Lake Avernus, which
served as a gateway to the depths of Hades.
(See also Aeneas, Hades [place], Sibyl of Cumae [the], Troy, and
Underworld [the].)

CYNTHUS, MOUNT Cynthus is a mountain on the island of Delos. A

temple sacred to the goddess Hera was located at the mountain’s foot, and a
sanctuary of Zeus and Athena on its peak. Since, according to legend,
Cynthus was the birthplace of Apollo and his sister Artemis, they both
could be referred to as “Cynthian” (“of Mount Cynthus”).
(See also Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Cynthia, Delos, Hera, and Zeus.)

CYPRUS The island of Cyprus, now the Republic of Cyprus, is the third-
largest island in the Mediterranean, having a surface area of 3,572 square
miles (9,251 square kilometers), and is located at the eastern edge of the
Mediterranean, south of Turkey, west of Syria and Lebanon, northwest of
Israel and Palestine, and north of Egypt. As a consequence of its strategic
position, bridging East and West, Cyprus saw an influx of settlers from
Anatolia, Greece, and Phoenicia, among others, and was absorbed into the
empires of Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Macedonia (under Alexander the Great),
and Rome. In mythology, Cyprus is notable for its connection with
Aphrodite, whose most important sanctuary was located on Cyprus at
Paphos, reputedly the place where she first stepped on land after her watery
birth. Aphrodite’s beloved Adonis was the son of Myrrha, princess of
Cyprus, by her own father, the Cypriote king Cinyras. Pygmalion, another
king of Cyprus, fell in love with his statue, who became animate through
the powers of Aphrodite. It is because of her connection with Cyprus that
Aphrodite was called “Cyprian.”
(See also Adonis, Aphrodite, Cinyras, Myrrha, Paphos [place],
Pygmalion, and Rome.)

CYRENE The town of Cyrene was founded by Greek colonists from Thera
in 61 BCE on the eastern coast of Libya near the Cyre spring, which was
deemed sacred to Apollo. A tradition arose according to which the city was
named after Cyrene, granddaughter of the river god Peneus, who was
abducted by Apollo and who at that place gave birth to the god’s son
Aristaeus, bringer of the agricultural arts to humans.
The region surrounding Cyrene, which was rich in grain, olive oil, and
silphium, a plant used as a spice, perfume, and medicine, was called
“Cyrenaica” and became part of both the Roman and Byzantine empires.
(See also Apollo, Aristaeus, Cyrene [heroine], and Peneus [god].)

CYTHERA Cythera (or Kythira) is a Greek island that lies off the
southeastern tip of the Peloponnese, between mainland Greece and Crete.
Having good harbors and strategically located for trade, this island was
coveted by Argos, Sparta, Athens, and Rome, becoming in succession part
of the territory of all of these. In myth, Cythera is principally known for its
association with the goddess Aphrodite, since Cythera, which was the
location of an important sanctuary to the goddess, claimed to be the place
where she first stepped ashore after her birth from the sea, a distinction
claimed also by the island of Cyprus.
(See also Aphrodite, Argos, Athens, Cyprus, Rome, and Sparta.)

DELOS The now uninhabited small island of Delos, having a surface area
of just 1.3 square miles (3.4 square kilometers), lies in the Aegean Sea at
the center of the circle of islands called the Cyclades. In antiquity, the island
was one of the most sacred places in the Greek world, as it was considered
to be the birthplace of the god Apollo and, by most accounts, also of his
twin sister, Artemis. There was a tradition according to which Delos was
earlier known as Asteria and/or Ortygia (“Quail”) after the second-
generation Titan goddess Asteria, who was pursued by Zeus and, in order to
escape him, plunged into the sea in the form of a quail, thereafter becoming
this island. It was reputedly the case that Delos was ungrounded and floated
in the sea until Asteria’s sister, Leto, arrived there to give birth to the divine
twins Apollo and Artemis. While Hera, Zeus, and Athena all had
identifiable cult sites on the island, religious activities here centered on
Leto, Artemis, and, in particular, Apollo.
In terms of its political history, the island is best known for having
become the center and treasury of the defensive confederacy of Greek city
states organized in the wake of the Persian Wars, the so-called Delian
League (formed 478 BCE). The Athenians, under the statesman and general
Pericles, would move the Delian treasury to Athens and transform the
confederacy into their empire, which actions occasioned the Peloponnesian
War (431–404 BCE) and the political demise of Athens.
(See also Apollo, Artemis, Asteria, Athena, Athens, Hera, Leto, Ortygia,
Titans [the], and Zeus.)

DELPHI As the most important sanctuary and oracle of the god Apollo,
Delphi was one of the most sacred places in ancient Greece. Dramatically
situated, Delphi is located on the lower part of the steep southwestern slope
of Mount Parnassus in the region of ancient Phocis, central Greece. The
sanctuary looks out over the Pleistos Gorge at the Kirphis Mountains lying
opposite it. The Gulf of Corinth, which is only 6 miles (10 kilometers)
distant, is also visible from the site. Habitation on the site has been traced to
the Bronze Age (fifteenth century BCE), and the active presence of a cult of
Apollo there is attested by dedications dating to the eighth century BCE. The
roughly rectangular sacred area of the sanctuary itself, the temenos, is
enclosed by a wall inside of which were located an array of monuments and
small, temple-like treasuries erected by the various city-states of Greece; a
theater; the so-called Rock of the Sibyl, perched upon which the first
priestess of Apollo was said to have chanted her prophecies; and the Temple
of Apollo, to which the Sacred Way wound up the slope. The oracle itself
was located inside the Temple of Apollo, where the Pythia, Apollo’s
priestess, was seated on a tripod over a fissure from which gas vapors rose,
causing the ecstatic “inspiration” or trance that marked her possession by
the god. Pilgrims traveled to Delphi from Greece and beyond to put
questions to Apollo via the Pythia, his mouthpiece. The Pythia’s responses
were uttered in verse and were interpreted by priests. The oracle’s responses
were famously misunderstood, as in the case of Oedipus.

The site of Delphi was steeped in lore: the oracle reputedly lay at the
center of the world, its location having been chosen by Zeus, who released
an eagle from each end of the earth, and the place where their flight paths
converged was Delphi. As the world’s center, it was consequently the
world’s omphalos, Greek for “navel,” and a sculpted, oversized omphalos
resided in the god’s temple. According to legend, the oracle belonged first
to the goddess Gaia and was guarded by a serpent, the Python (or Pytho),
which Apollo slew. The Python gave its name to the site, which was called
Pytho before Delphi, and Apollo’s priestess was consequently called the
Pythia. According to the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo, the name of
Delphi is to be derived from the word for dolphin in Greek, delphis, since
the god assumed the shape of a dolphin to board the ship of a certain crew
of men from Crete whom he would make his priests. As for Apollo’s
temple, there were said to have been six iterations of it, the first being made
of laurel branches from the Vale of Tempe; the second of feathers and wax;
the third of bronze, being the handiwork of Hephaestus; the fourth of stone,
designed by Trophonius and Agamedes; the fifth a stone replacement
erected upon the destruction of the fourth in 548 BCE; and the sixth
(completed 320 BCE), again of stone, replacing the damaged fifth. This last
temple endured until it was destroyed in 390 CE on the orders of the Roman
emperor Theodosius I, who wished thereby to eradicate this potent Pagan
threat to Christianity.
(See also Apollo, Crete, Gaia, Oedipus, Parnassus [Mount], Pytho,
Tempe [Vale of], and Zeus.)

DODONA Dodona was the site of the most famous oracle of Zeus. The
sanctuary of Dodona, which contained this oldest of the Greek oracles, was
located in the ancient region of Epirus, part of which now belongs to
Greece and part to Albania. At Dodona, oracular responses issuing from
Zeus were reputedly delivered by the fluttering of the leaves of the god’s
sacred oak tree and by the flight or cooing of doves settling in the tree’s
branches. The Greek historian Herodotus recounts two alternative accounts
of the oracle’s founding and the role of the doves. He heard at Dodona that
two black doves had flown from Thebes in Egypt, one settling at Dodona in
an oak where it assumed a human voice, and one settling in Libya, future
site of the oracle of Zeus Ammon. By contrast, Herodotus continues,
Theban priests maintained that the Phoenicians absconded with two Theban
priestesses, one being taken to Libya and the other to Greece, each later
founding a place of divination at their new home; it was because the women
spoke a language unintelligible to the people among whom they settled that
they were called “doves.”
(See also Ammon and Zeus.)

ELEUSIS Eleusis (Modern Greek Elefsina), which formed part of the

territory of Athens (Attica), was about 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) west of
the city of Athens and situated on the road from Athens to the Isthmus to
Corinth on a low hill close to the sea. Eleusis was famous primarily as the
site of a sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone, in whose honor the famed
Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated, attracting initiates from throughout
the Greek world. Tradition underscored the deep links of Eleusis with
Demeter. The Eleusinian king Celeus, who had taken Demeter in when she
was roaming the earth in search of Persephone, reputedly was responsible
both for building the sanctuary of the goddess in his kingdom and for
instituting the Mysteries. The travel writer Pausanias records a tradition to
the effect that Eleusis was named after the hero Eleusis, a son of the god
Hermes and of Daeira, a daughter of Oceanus. By some accounts, according
to the mythographer Apollodorus, Eleusis was the father of Triptolemus, a
culture hero (bringer of civilization and culture) closely associated with
Demeter, but a variant tradition casts Triptolemus, who sowed grain over all
the earth from a winged chariot given him by Demeter, as a son of the
Eleusinian king Celeus.
(See also Athens, Attica, Celeus, Corinth, Demeter, Hermes, Oceanus
[god], Persephone, and Triptolemus.)

ELYSIAN FIELDS, THE (See Elysium.)

ELYSIUM The conception of Elysium (or Elysian Fields) changed over

time, beginning as a paradisiacal land inhabited by heroes as an alternative
to entering the House of Hades (in other words, to dying) and evolving into
a region of the Underworld reserved for those who had led noble, virtuous
lives. Elysium is first described by Homer in his Odyssey, where it is
prophesied that the hero Menelaus will not die but, in the course of time,
will be conveyed by the gods to the Elysian Fields that lie at the ends of the
earth, at the western edge of the river Oceanus. This Elysium is a land free
from snow and winter’s cold, cooled by breezes from Oceanus’s streams
and by the west wind, Boreas. In this land, where life is easy for mortals,
Rhadamanthus presides. Homer’s view of Elysium coincided and became
conflated with beliefs in a region called the Isles of the Blessed, which were
likewise believed to lie at the edges of the earth. According to the Greek
poet Pindar, the Isles (or Island) of the Blessed are flooded with the light of
the sun, and those who resided there lived free of toil. This land is cooled
with breezes and graced with drifts of golden flowers and groves of trees.
The inhabitants, who wear wreaths and garlands, include the heroes Peleus,
Cadmus, and Achilles. These earlier traditions of Elysium were fused and
transformed by Virgil, who, in his epic the Aeneid, offers the most
developed picture of the Underworld. There Elysium is a region of the
Underworld, and it is gated, lying apart from the dank and terrifying region
of Tartarus, which is reserved for sinners. Virgil’s Elysium is a region
bathed in roseate light, with its own sun and stars. Its residents engage in
sport or sing, dance, and feast, moving freely throughout the region’s shady
groves and sun-drenched, grassy, well-watered meadows. It is in Elysium
that Aeneas, ancestor of the Romans, meets his father, Anchises, who had
died on the journey from Troy to Italy.
(See also Achilles, Aeneas, Anchises, Boreas, Cadmus, Hades [god and
place], Menelaus, Oceanus, Odysseus, Peleus, Rhadamanthus, Rome, Troy,
and Underworld [the].)

EREBUS Erebus became synonymous with the Underworld, but originally

connoted darkness in the earth’s depths, as in the Greek poet Hesiod’s
account of the origins of the world, where Erebus is represented in quasi-
personified form as the father, with Nyx (Night), of Hemera (Day) and
Aether (Upper Air).
(See also Underworld [the].)

ERIDANUS RIVER, THE The Eridanus River features significantly in the

myth of Phaethon, the son of Apollo (Helios) who drove his father’s sun-
chariot so erratically that he threatened the very existence of the earth and
the heaven’s constellations. Phaethon plunged to his death in the Eridanus
River, and it was on this river’s banks that his sisters, the Heliades, were
transformed into poplar trees that, in eternal grief, shed tears of amber. The
hero Hercules also came to the Eridanus and asked the god of that river for
guidance when seeking the Garden of the Hesperides.
For all its legendary renown, the Eridanus and its location were
controversial even in antiquity, some authors doubting its very existence,
among them the geographer Strabo and the historian Herodotus. Key in the
attempted identification of the river was its reputedly being a source of
amber; for that reason the river Po was identified as a likely candidate, but
even the Granicus, Ebro, Rhine, Nile, and the fabled world-river Oceanus
were posited as the Eridanus of myth.
(See also Apollo, Heliades [the], Helios, Hercules, Hesperides [the],
Oceanus [place], and Phaethon.)
 PLATE IX

The Elysian Fields: A prophesied paradise of the afterlife

ERYMANTHUS, MOUNT Erymanthus is a mountain range located in
what was southwestern Arcadia in antiquity but belongs now to the regions
of Achaea and Elis. It was in the thick forests of Erymanthus that the
goddess Artemis would hunt and there, too, that the giant Erymanthian Boar
ranged and brought destruction to those who lived in the region. Capturing
the boar alive was the fourth Labor of Hercules, a task that he accomplished
by driving the animal into deep snow.
(See also Arcadia, Artemis, Erymanthian Boar [the], and Hercules.)

ERYTHIA The mythical island Erythia (or Erythea), “Red Island,” was
known as the kingdom of the triple-bodied Geryon. The island was thought
to lie in the far west, where the sun sets in the streams of the river Oceanus,
thereby “reddening” the island, and to have been named after one of the
daughters of Hesperus, the evening star, or of Geryon himself. Hercules
famously went to this island in order to seize the cattle of Geryon as his
tenth Labor, traversing Oceanus in an enormous cup given him by the sun
god Helios. According to the Greek geographer Strabo, Erythia could be
identified with Gades (modern Cadiz) and nearby islands in southwestern
Spain.
(See also Geryon, Helios, Hercules, Hesperus, and Oceanus [place].)

ETHIOPIA In antiquity, Ethiopia (or Aethiopia), the “gleaming” or “burnt”

region, was a land south of Egypt extending roughly from the Nile’s first
cataract and including the territory of ancient Meroe north from modern
Khartoum in Sudan. A different, shifting vision of Ethiopia emerges from
mythology. In the Odyssey, Homer speaks of two groups of Ethiopians,
both living at the ends of the world: one group residing where the sun sets
and the other where it rises. Ethiopia figures most notably in the tale of the
hero Perseus and the Ethiopian princess Andromeda, whom her father had
shackled to a jagged cliff at the sea’s edge as prey for a dread sea monster.
(See also Andromeda and Perseus.)

ETRURIA Etruria was a region of Italy inhabited by the Etruscans, a pre-

Roman people whose origins were disputed even in antiquity, being called
both indigenous Italians and immigrants from Lydia in the Near East.
According to the Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato, the Etruscans
once controlled nearly all of Italy, and they were undisputedly a major
power and a significant cultural influence on Rome, their presence having
been verified archaeologically in an area extending from the northern
Italian Alps (the Po Valley) to Salerno, though the center of their power was
northwestern Italy between the Arno and Tiber rivers. The Romans were
indebted to the Etruscans for certain religio-political practices and
architectural forms, and were governed by a series of kings of Etruscan
origin until the elimination of kingship and the foundation of the Republic
in 510 BCE. Rome and Etruria were also political or imperial rivals, periodic
hostilities ending with Etruria’s absorption into the Roman state at the close
of the Social Wars of 91–87 BCE.
In terms of mythology, a culture of conflict between the Romans and
Etruscans is preserved even in Rome’s foundation myth, beginning with the
alliance between the Etruscan king Mezentius and the Rutulian prince
Turnus against Aeneas, ancestor of the Romans, and his band of refugees
from Troy, with whom king Latinus of Latium had joined forces.
(See also Aeneas, Latinus, Latium, Mezentius, Rome, Rutulians [the],
Troy, and Turnus.)

EUXINE SEA, THE Euxine Sea was the name by which the Black Sea
was known in antiquity. The name “Euxine,” which means “hospitable” or
“friendly to strangers” in Greek, has been interpreted as a euphemism, as
this body of water was subject to severe storms and was encircled by
barbarian tribes. The historian Strabo tellingly explains that this sea was
once actually called “Axenos,” “inhospitable,” and notes the threat posed
especially by the Scythians, who sacrificed strangers, ate their flesh, and
made drinking cups of their skulls. He adds that in a later period, when the
Ionian Greeks had created settlements along its shores, the sea was called
Euxine. According to legend, it was the hero Jason and his crew of
Argonauts who first accessed the Euxine Sea by ship, having been the first
to pass through the Symplegades (“Clashing Rocks”).
(See also Argonauts [the], Jason, and Symplegades [the].)
FIELDS OF MOURNING, THE The Fields of Mourning (Campi
Lugentes in Latin), a region of the Underworld, appear to have been a
creation of the Roman poet Virgil. After the hero Aeneas and his guide, the
Sibyl, passed the threshold of Hades guarded by the triple-headed Cerberus,
they came to this expansive region of the Underworld, which housed those
who died from broken hearts. It was in the Fields of Mourning that Aeneas
came upon his former lover, the Carthaginian queen Dido, whom he had
cruelly spurned. As Virgil writes, this region’s inhabitants included the
tragic heroines Phaedra, Procris, and Pasiphae, among many others.
(See also Aeneas, Carthage, Cerberus, Dido, Hades [god and place],
Pasiphae, Phaedra, Procris, Sibyl of Cumae [the], and Underworld [the].)

HADES Hades, the “Unseen,” was the Greek name for the Underworld and
for the god who reigned there, though it might be more accurate to state that
Hades was the name for the Land of the Dead, wherever it was thought to
be located, and the king thereof. In Homer’s epic the Odyssey, one of the
earliest extant literary works from antiquity, the Underworld geography is
unclear: Odysseus is told that he must travel to the “House of Hades” in
order to consult the seer Teiresias. Access to the House of Hades appears to
lie just beyond the streams of the river Oceanus, which encircles the earth.
Spirits of the dead rise from a pit in the earth, having come from the depths
of Erebus, to speak with Odysseus. The House of Hades appears at one
moment to lie at the edges of the earth and at another to lie beneath it,
where Odysseus sees Minos, Judge of the Dead; the Giant Orion, ranging
the fields of asphodel; Tityus, his liver being torn out by vultures; Tantalus,
trying vainly to reach water below him and fruit growing overhead;
Sisyphus, pushing his stone uphill; and the shade of Hercules. In the works
of later authors, however, Hades is underground, and the Underworld’s
geography becomes more developed.
(See also Erebus, Minos, Oceanus [place], Odysseus, Orion, Tantalus,
Teiresias, Tityus, and Underworld the].)

HEBRUS RIVER, THE The Hebrus, now called Maritsa (or modern
Greek Evros), was a principal river of Thrace, originating in the Rhodope
Mountains and discharging into the Aegean Sea. The Hebrus, taking its
name from the Greek word “wide” (eurus), was notable in mythology as the
river that carried the singing head of Orpheus along its currents after he was
dismembered by Thracian celebrants of the god Dionysus.
(See also Aegean Sea [the], Dionysus, Orpheus, and Thrace.)

HELICON, MOUNT Helicon is a mountain range in southwestern Boeotia,

central Greece. It was a principal site of worship for the Muses; this was
where, as the Greek poet Hesiod writes, the Muses were accustomed to
dance and where, as he was herding his flocks, they presented him with a
laurel staff, a source of poetic inspiration. There were two springs sacred to
the Muses on Helicon: the Hippocrene, created by the winged horse
Pegasus, and Aganippe, both of which, as the travel writer Pausanias states,
were situated near the Grove of the Muses.
(See also Boeotia, Hippocrene Spring [the], Muses [the], Pegasus, and
Zeus.)

HELLESPONT, THE The Hellespont is the narrow strip of water, or strait,

now known as the Dardanelles. Of strategic importance throughout history,
the Hellespont, which divides the European and Asian continents, connects
the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara and allows passage, via the
Bosphorus, to the Black Sea. The strait took its name from little Helle, who
was drowned in its depths. Helle’s stepmother, Ino, had conspired to have
her and her brother Phrixus killed, but the children’s own mother, Nephele,
tried to save them by seeing to it that they were carried out of harm’s way
by a winged, golden-fleeced ram. As the ram made its way through the
heavens to Colchis on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, Helle lost her
balance and fell into the strait’s waters below them. In terms of mythology,
the strait also figured significantly in the tragic tale of the star-crossed
lovers Hero and Leander, both of whom lost their lives in the Hellespont’s
currents.
(See also Colchis, Helle, Hero, Ino, Leander, Nephele, and Phrixus.)

HIPPOCRENE SPRING, THE The Hippocrene spring on Boeotia’s

Mount Helicon, a mountain held sacred to the Muses, was thought to have
inspired the poetic endeavors of those who drank from it. According to
tradition, the Hippocrene, which means “horse’s spring,” was created by the
winged horse Pegasus when he struck the ground with his hoof.
(See also Boeotia, Helicon [Mount], Muses [the], and Pegasus.)

IDA, MOUNT There were two mountains by the name of Ida that featured
significantly in Classical mythology. One is Mount Ida (Modern Greek Idi)
on the island of Crete, and the other, modern Kazdag˘ı, in what is now
northwestern Turkey. The Cretan Ida is the tallest peak, 8,057 feet (2,456
meters) high, of the mountain range crossing the island from west to east,
and was known as the birthplace of Zeus. The Greek historian Diodorus
Siculus notes that the truth of this tale could be substantiated by physical
remains, one such piece of evidence being the existence of a substantial
cave on the slopes of Ida that had continued to be sacred to Zeus: it was in a
cave that the goddess Rhea was said to have given birth to Zeus and to have
left him to be raised by nymphs and the Curetes. As for the Asian Ida, this
mountain, too, had links with Zeus but had manifold other associations as
well. Its summit reaching a height of 5,820 feet (1,770 meters), Asian Ida
was the site of the ancient city Dardania that dominated the region before
the founding of Troy by one of the descendants of Dardanus, Dardania’s
founder. Mount Ida was deeply entrenched in the story of Troy. It was from
this mountains that Zeus snatched the prince Ganymede to become his cup-
bearer, and it was there, too, that the Trojan prince Paris sat in judgment of
the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, awarding the last of these the
title of “fairest,” and setting in motion the events that would lead to the
Trojan War. It was also on Ida’s slopes that Aphrodite seduced Anchises,
becoming by him mother of Aeneas, ancestor of Rome’s founders Romulus
and Remus. Mount Ida appears to have given its name to a mountain
nymph, Idaea, who resided there and, again according to Diodorus Siculus,
was impregnated by the local river god Scamander, later giving birth to
Teucer, the first to rule as king over the land of Troy.
(See also Aeneas, Anchises, Aphrodite, Athena, Curetes [the],
Dardanus, Ganymede, Hera, Paris, Rhea, Romulus, Scamander River [the],
Teucer, Troy, and Zeus.)

ILION Ilion (or Ilium and Ilios) was another name for Troy, whose founder
was said to be Ilus.
(See also Ilus and Troy.)

ILISSUS RIVER, THE The Ilissus, Modern Greek Ilisos, is a small river
that rises from springs on Mount Hymettus in Attica, the territory of
Athens. The river, which was channeled underground in the first half of the
twentieth century, flows southeast and south of Athens’s ancient, central,
fortified area and, prior to the diversion of its course, used to be a tributary
of the Cephissus (modern Kifisos) River. As one of the two major rivers of
Athens, Ilissus featured in tales of the city’s legendary past. Notably, the
banks of the Ilissus were the site of the abduction of Orithiya, daughter of
the Athenian king Erechtheus, to Thrace by Boreas, god of the north wind.
According to the historian Herodotus, the Athenians were instructed by an
oracle to call upon their son-in-law, Boreas, to help them in the Persian
Wars, and, since Boreas obliged them by sending a storm to decimate the
barbarian fleet, the Athenians established a sanctuary in the god’s honor by
the Ilissus River.
(See also Athens, Boreas, Erechtheus, Orithyia, and Thrace.)

IOLCOS Iolcos (or Iolcus), modern Volos, was a Thessalian town near the
Anaurus (Anavros) River, whose waters flow from Mount Pelion into the
Gulf of Pagasae. Iolcos featured significantly in the legends surrounding the
hero Jason, who, with his crew of Argonauts, sailed to the barbarian land of
Colchis in order to retrieve the Golden Fleece, a task that he completed with
the assistance of the princess Medea. Iolcos was rightfully the kingdom of
Jason’s father, but he had been deposed by his half brother Pelias. Correctly
viewing Jason as a threat, Pelias sent Jason to Colchis. It was from the Gulf
of Pagasae that the Argonauts launched their ship the Argo, and it was the
Anaurus River that Jason had earlier helped the goddess Hera cross, thus
earning her continued protection.
(See also Argonauts [the], Colchis, Hera, Jason, Medea, Pelias, and
Thessaly.)

IONIA The central part of the western coast of Asia Minor became known
as Ionia, as cities in this region were founded by Greeks of the Ionian tribe
who, according to tradition, were descended from the Athenian king Ion.
Ionia extended roughly southward from Smyrna, modern Ismir, to Miletus,
which lay close to the mouth of the Meander River (Turkish Buyuk
Menderes) and near the modern village of Balat in Turkey.
(See also Athens, Ion, and Ionians [the].)

ITHACA The island of Ithaca, modern Ithaki, is one of the seven Ionian
Islands off the western coast of Greece. This small island, with a total area
of just 37 square miles (96 square kilometers), has been and still is
identified as the island kingdom of Odysseus. In the Odyssey, Homer
describes it as sunny, surrounded by close-lying islands, having rugged
terrain, and being well suited to rearing young men. It was from Ithaca that
Odysseus set out for Troy leading a contingent that manned twelve ships.
Of these men he alone returned after ten years of fighting at Troy and a
further ten years of adventure-ridden sea travel as he made his way home.
(See also Odysseus and Troy.)

LARISSA Larissa was one of the most important cities of Thessaly, a

district of northeastern Greece. Larissa was located on the southern bank of
the Peneus River and, in mythology, was the site of the accidental death of
the Argive king Acrisius at the hands of his grandson Perseus, the Gorgon-
slayer.
(See also Acrisius, Argos, Gorgons [the], Peneus River [the], Perseus,
and Thessaly.)

LATIUM The region of Italy called Latium was the territory inhabited by
the Italic tribes known as the Latins (Latini in Latin), who gave their name
to the Latin language. While the Latium inhabited by the historical early
Latins was bounded by the Apennine Mountains to the east and by the Anio
and Tiber rivers to the north, mythological Latium appears to have had
more indeterminate boundaries. According to the Roman poet Virgil,
Latium had been ruled by the god Saturn, who brought a Golden Age to
Italy, and subsequently by the rustic deities Picus and Faunus, followed by
King Latinus, whose daughter the Trojan Aeneas would wed and, by this
union, become founder of the future race of Romans.
 The origin of the name “Latium” is uncertain, being variously derived
from the verb “to hide,” latere in Latin, in reference to Saturn’s hiding in
this region, as well as from the Latin latus, “wide,” a possible reference to
the breadth of the plain at the foot of the Alban hills.
(See also Aeneas, Faunus, Latins [the], Latinus, Picus, Rome, Saturn,
Troy, and Turnus.)

LEMNOS Lemnos is an island lying in the northern Aegean Sea. The

island had a special connection with Hephaestus, god of the forge, as it was
there that he landed, and was well cared for, when Zeus cast him from
Olympus for aiding his mother, Hera. In myth, Lemnos was also important
as the home of the Lemnian Women, all but one of whom, the princess
Hypsipyle, had killed their male kin, and as the island on which the Greeks
abandoned the snake-bitten hero Philoctetes on their way to fight the Trojan
War.
(See also Hephaestus, Hera, Hypsipyle, Lemnian Women [the],
Olympus [Mount], Philoctetes, Troy, and Zeus.)

LERNA Lerna, which was an important settlement in the Bronze Age

(roughly 3000–1200 BCE), lay south of Argos in the Peloponnese.
According to Greek tradition, Lerna was the location of a spring produced
by the god Poseidon when the territory of Argos was suffering from drought
and the lovely Amymone, whom the god pursued, had come in search of
water. This spring would become the home of the Hydra of Lerna, a many-
headed serpent that Hercules slew as the second of his twelve labors.
(See also Amymone, Argos, Hercules, Hydra of Lerna [the], and
Poseidon.)

LYCIA Lycia was a region of southwestern Asia Minor on what is now the
southwestern coast of Turkey. According to the Greek historian Herodotus,
who in this case is relating myth-history, Lycia was settled by immigrants
from Crete led by Sarpedon, a brother of the Cretan king Minos. Both
Sarpedon and Minos, Herodotus writes, were sons of Europa by Zeus, who
had abducted her from Phoenicia by taking on the shape of a handsome
white bull. Herodotus adds that Lycus, son of the Athenian king Pandion,
came to join Sarpedon in that land upon being banished from Athens by his
brother, Aegeus, and that the inhabitants of the region were subsequently
called Lycians after him, their territory then being called Lycia. The Lycians
were among those who fought on the side of Troy in the Trojan War, and,
although Zeus considered interfering to prevent it, Sarpedon lost his life in
that war. Apart from Sarpedon, another hero of note who traveled to Lycia
was Bellerophon, slayer of the Chimaera, the monster that was terrorizing
the Lycian countryside.
(See also Aegeus, Athens, Bellerophon, Chimaera [the], Crete, Europa,
Sarpedon, Troy, and Zeus.)

LYDIA Lydia was a region of western Asia Minor, having Mysia to the
north, Phrygia to the east, and Caria to the south. Its borders with Phrygia
and Caria shifted over time, and at the height of its power, Lydia controlled
all of Asia Minor west of the River Halys, except Lycia. The region was not
only rich in natural resources, as the legends surrounding the historical and
wealthy king Croesus (reigned circa 560–547 BCE) attest, but lay on
important trade routes between the sea and the rest of Anatolia, factors that
contributed significantly to its wealth and influence on Greek and Roman
culture. The coveted territory of Lydia was absorbed in succession by the
Persians (546–334 BCE), Alexander the Great, and the Romans, under
whom it became part of the Province of Asia in 129 BCE.
Lydia featured heavily in classical mythology. For example, in the
playwright Euripides’s tragedy The Bacchae, the god Dionysus claims to
have come from his home in Lydia to Greece, bringing with him his
religion and a band of Lydian worshippers. Tantalus, who became one of
those undergoing eternal torture in the Underworld, was said to have been a
king of Lydia. One of Tantalus’s children was Pelops, who gave his name to
the Peloponnese, and another was Niobe, who tragically boasted that she
was more fortunate than the goddess Leto because she had more children.
This boast, an affront to the goddess, led to the death of all Niobe’s children
at the hands of Apollo and Artemis, Leto’s two children. In her grief, Niobe
became a weeping rock. Lydia was also the home of Arachne, a skilled
weaver, who made the mistake of challenging the goddess Athena and, as a
consequence, lived the rest of her life as a spider.
 (See also Apollo, Arachne, Artemis, Athena, Croesus, Dionysus, Leto,
Lycia, Niobe, Pelops, Phrygia, Tantalus, and Underworld [the].)

MACEDON Macedon, or Macedonia, was the territory of the Macedonian

tribes, who, according to the Greek poet Hesiod, inhabited Pieria and
Mount Olympus, essentially the region north of Thessaly, west of the Axius
River (modern Vardar), and south of Thrace. Historically, the Macedonians
first became significant under the rule of Philip II (reigned 359–336 BCE),
father of Alexander the Great, who united the area politically.
There were various mythological derivations of the name Macedon:
from a son of the Arcadian king Lycaon, a son of Zeus, or a son of Aeolus.
Among Macedon’s legendary kings was Pierus, father of the Pierides, who
rivaled the Muses in singing.
(See also Aeolus, Arcadia, Lycaon, Muses [the], Olympus [Mount],
Pierides [the], Pierus, Thessaly, Thrace, and Zeus.)

MEGARA Megara, which is situated just less than a mile (1.5 kilometers)
from the Saronic Gulf, is still a settlement site and lies on the Isthmus of
Corinth between the cities of Corinth and Athens. Megara’s territory was
known as the Megaris and was delimited physically to the south by the sea,
to the west by the Gerania Mountains, and to the northeast by the mountains
Cerata, Pateras, and Cithaeron.
The most colorful myth associated with Megara is the tale of the
princess Scylla, who became infatuated with the Cretan king Minos and
sacrificed her family, her honor, and her existence in human form for the
sake of her misguided passion. As for how the city got its name, there were
various accounts. According to the travel writer Pausanias, “Megara” is a
reference to two temples built in the city by a legendary king in honor of
Demeter, each of which was a megaron (temple or hall). Alternatively, as
the Boeotians believed, Megareus, a son of Poseidon, brought an army of
Boeotians to help Nisus, Scylla’s father, wage the war against Minos;
Megareus lost his life in that war, and the city, previously called Nisa, was
renamed Megara in his honor.
The place Megara is, of course, to be distinguished from the heroine of
the same name.
 (See also Athens, Boeotia, Corinth, Crete, Demeter, Megara [heroine],
Minos, Nisus, and Scylla.)

MESSENIA The region of Messenia was the southwestern part of the

Peloponnese, being bounded on the north by Elis and Arcadia, and on the
east by Sparta. Messenia was fertile, as it had both rich soil and an adequate
supply of water from springs, rivers, and precipitation, and it was the site of
important settlements at least as early as the Bronze Age. Especially notable
was the so-called Palace of Nestor at Pylos, the last phase of which dates
from approximately 1400 to 1150 BCE. Much of Messenia’s later history
was dictated by relations with Sparta, which absorbed a large part of
Messenia and reduced its inhabitants to helots, indentured servants or
“public slaves,” as the geographer Strabo calls them.
In terms of mythology, the region’s association with the wise king
Nestor of Pylos, who features significantly in the epic poems of Homer, is
especially important. Messenia also had ties with Hercules, as it was said to
have been ruled by Cresphontes, one of Hercules’s numerous descendants
and then by Cresphontes’s son Aepytus.
(See also Arcadia, Cresphontes, Hercules, Nestor, Pylos, and Sparta.)

MOURNING, THE FIELDS OF (See Fields of Mourning [the].)

MYCENAE Mycenae looms large in Classical mythology as the site of the

palace of Agamemnon, leader of the combined Greek forces that sailed to
Troy with 1,000 ships. The imposing ruins of the Bronze Age palace, built
circa 1400 and destroyed circa 1200 BCE, are situated on a rocky hill in the
northeastern corner of the plain of Argos in the Peloponnese and lies about
8 miles (13 kilometers) from the sea. The location of the palace was
strategic, as the surrounding territory is readily visible from the hilltop, and,
as can be deduced from the site’s massive fortification walls—individual
stones being so large that they were said to have been put in place by
Cyclopes—defensibility was clearly a priority. While there are traces of
settlement at Mycenae dating to the Early Bronze Age (the third millennium
BCE), it was in the later Bronze Age (starting 1600 BCE) that Mycenae
witnessed what appears to be a sudden explosion of wealth and power,
burials having been discovered dating to this period that were filled with
precious objects confirming Homer’s description of Mycenae as “rich in
gold.” The nineteenth-century excavator of the site, Heinrich Schliemann,
named one of the elaborate beehive tombs outside the city walls the Tomb
of Atreus (Agamemnon’s father), another the Tomb of Clytemnestra
(Agamemnon’s wife), and a third the Tomb of Aegisthus (Clytemnestra’s
lover). In one of the two grave circles at the site, Schliemann found what he
believed to be the gold death mask of Agamemnon himself, though all of
these identifications are speculative. Finds from Mycenae were so rich that
the entire culture of Bronze Age Greece has been called Mycenaean.
(See also Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Argos, Atreus, Clytemnestra,
Cyclopes [the], and Troy.)

NAXOS The Greek island of Naxos is one of the largest (166 square miles,
or 430 square kilometers) and most fertile of the Cyclades island group in
the Aegean Sea. Even in antiquity, the island was famed for its grapes and
wine, so it is not surprising that, in mythology, the island had a particular
link to the god Dionysus. The island was one of several places that,
according to the historian Diodorus Siculus, claimed to be the place where
the god was born or raised. It was on this island that Dionysus found his
bride, Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete, whom the Athenian hero
Theseus had ignobly abandoned there although she had helped him in his
quest to slay the Minotaur. It was also on Naxos that the hubristic giants
Otus and Ephialtes were said to have met their end through a stratagem
devised by the goddess Artemis.
(See also Aegean Sea [the], Ariadne, Artemis, Crete, Dionysus, Giants
[the], Minos, Minotaur [the], Otus, and Theseus.)

NEMEA Ancient Nemea was a sanctuary sacred to Zeus and located in the
northeastern Peloponnese, just east of the modern town of Nemea. The site
was said to have derived its name from the nymph Nemea, daughter of the
local river god Asopus. The Nemean sanctuary was the site of the
Panhellenic Nemean Games, which, according to tradition, were established
by the hero Adrastus. Nemea was also the location of the first Labor of
Hercules: killing the invincible Nemean Lion, whose skin the hero wore as
a trophy subsequent to his victory over the beast.
(See also Adrastus, Hercules, Nemean Lion [the], and Zeus.)

NYSA Nysa is best known in mythology as the place where the Hyades,
also called the Nysaean Nymphs, raised the baby Dionysus after his father,
Zeus, rescued him from the incinerated remains of his mother, Semele. The
location of Nysa, and even its precise nature—whether mountain, city,
plain, or valley—was a matter of debate in antiquity. In Homer’s Iliad Nysa
is not a mountain, and in the Homeric Hymns it is a plain. The historian
Herodotus places the town of Nysa in Ethiopia, Arrian locates it in India,
and Diodorus Siculus proposes Arabia and Phoenicia. The Roman
encyclopedist Pliny, meanwhile, refers to Nysa as a town in the Transjordan
region, what is now southern Syria and northern Palestine. The sixth-
century CE geographical writer Stephanus of Byzantium adds to these
locations Mount Helicon, Naxos, Thrace, and the Caucasus Mountains.
These various mythological towns of Nysa are to be distinguished from the
town of that name in Caria, which prospered due the proximity of a
sanctuary of Pluto and Cora (Kore) as well as a therapeutic sulphur spring
and a cave for restorative incubation.
(See also Caucasus Mountains [the], Cora, Dionysus, Ethiopia, Helicon
[Mount], Hyades [the], Pluto, Semele, and Thrace.)

OCEANUS Oceanus, also called the River Ocean, was the cosmic river
believed to flow around the disc of the earth, separating earth from the
heavens. According to the Greek poet Hesiod’s account of the origin of the
world, Oceanus was a child of Gaia (“Earth”) and Uranus (“Heaven”).
Homer describes Oceanus as having deep-running waters and as the source
of all rivers, springs, and seas, and insofar as Oceanus was personified,
these rivers and bodies of water were his children. It was thought that the
sun god Helios rose from the streams of Oceanus in the east and, at an
opposite point, also set in them, being subsequently conveyed back to the
east at night in his floating golden cup. Since Oceanus defined the limits of
the earth, it was on this river’s shores that an array of monsters and
mythical peoples were said to reside, among them the Ethiopians, the
grasping Harpies, triple-bodied Geryon, and the golden apple–tending
Hesperides, according to the poets Homer and Hesiod. In an early period,
even Elysium and the Underworld were said to be located there.
As, through time, geographic knowledge increased, Oceanus was
reconceived as a world ocean, or outer sea, lying beyond the Strait of
Gibraltar.
(See also Elysium, Ethiopia, Gaia, Geryon, Harpies [the], Helios,
Hesperides [the], Oceanus [god], Underworld [the], and Uranus.)

OETA, MOUNT Mount Oeta, Modern Greek Iti, is a branch of the Pindus
Range in southern Thessaly, central Greece. It was on this mountain that
Hercules met his end when, wishing to end the agony induced by poison, he
climbed there onto his funeral pyre.
(See also Hercules and Thessaly.)

OLYMPIA The pan-Hellenic sanctuary of Olympia, together with Delphi

the most significant religious center of ancient Greece, is located in the
northwestern Peloponnese in the regional unit of Elis. Olympia, which was
primarily dedicated to Zeus, chief of the gods dwelling on Olympus, lies in
a valley watered by the Cladeos and Alpheus rivers, and is sited on the
northern bank of the latter. Olympia’s walled sacred precinct, which was
called the Altis, contained a host of structures that included the Temple of
Zeus (erected 470–456 BCE), a temple of Hera, altars, and dedicatory
statues. The Temple of Zeus contained a monumental statue (36–39 feet, or
11–12 meters) of Zeus seated on his throne and created by the famed
sculptor Phidias of gold and ivory. The statue was called one of the Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World, and the Greek geographer Strabo notes that
if the sculpted Zeus had stood, he would have burst through the temple’s
roof. The temple was decorated with an array of scenes from myth that
were all related to the site of Olympia. The temple’s east (main) pediment
depicted the tense moment before the hero Pelops’s chariot race with King
Oenomaus of Pisa, a race that, according to tradition, was the founding
event of the Olympic Games, which were held every four years after their
establishment in 776 BCE. The western pediment depicted the battle between
the Lapiths and Centaurs, which has been understood as symbolizing the
defeat of the Persians by the Greeks in the Persian Wars. Meanwhile, the
Twelve Labors of Hercules were depicted over the Temple’s front and back
porches; it was Hercules, according to the Greek poet Pindar, who measured
out the Altis for his father, to whom he consecrated the sanctuary, and
established the Olympic Games.
(See also Centaurs [the], Hera, Hercules, Lapiths [the], Oenomaus,
Pelops, and Zeus.)

OLYMPUS, MOUNT Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece,

its summit reaching 9,570 feet (2,917 meters). Since the mountain rises
between the plains of Thessaly and Macedon, Olympus was variously
considered to be part of Thessaly, as according to the Greek historian
Herodotus, and of Macedon, as the geographer Strabo opines. The Greek
poet Homer repeatedly describes Olympus as tall, rugged, having many
folds, and, at its summit, being free from disturbance by rain, wind, and
snow. Given its imposing height, Olympus, fittingly, was considered to be
the dwelling place of the third and “last” generation of gods, among whom
Zeus, the weather god, was king. Although there was a tradition that there
were twelve Olympian gods, the number of deities who resided on Olympus
varied and could include all but the gods of the Underworld. The typical
cohort of Olympian gods included the siblings Zeus, Hera, Hestia, and
Poseidon; as well as Zeus’s children Athena, Hebe, Artemis, Aphrodite,
Hermes, Ares, Apollo, and Hephaestus. Demeter and Dionysus could also
be included in this group, however, and even the Muses and Hercules,
among others, spent time on Olympus. Each of the Olympian gods was said
to have his or her own palace, outfitted with furnishings created by the
skilled Hephaestus. As the mountain’s summit was so lofty, it was believed
to be inaccessible to humans and thus sometimes indistinguishable in myth
from the heavens.
(See also Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Dionysus,
Hebe, Hephaestus, Hera, Hercules, Hermes, Hestia, Macedon, Muses [the],
Poseidon, Thessaly, Underworld [the], and Zeus.)

ORTYGIA Several places in the Greek world were known as Ortygia,

“Quail’s Land,” and all had links to the goddess Artemis. Among them was
the island of Delos, whose earlier names Asteria and Ortygia were
explained by a myth according to which Asteria, sister of the Titan goddess
Leto, was pursued by Zeus and, in order to escape him, transformed herself
into a quail and plunged (or was flung by Zeus) into the sea. According to
the mythographer Hyginus, a floating island was created from Asteria’s
body, and it was this island, later called Delos, on which Leto gave birth to
the twin deities Apollo and Artemis. According to an alternate tradition
regarding Artemis’s birth, her brother Apollo was born on Delos, but she
was born at a different place called Ortygia, which was identified as a
sacred grove near the city of Ephesus.
A third Ortygia that featured in mythology is the island of this name that
lies off the Syracusan coast of Sicily. It was on this island that Arethusa,
becoming a spring, emerged from her subterranean flight from the river god
Alpheus, who was in hot pursuit. It was Artemis who assisted her in her
escape.
(See also Alpheus [god and place], Apollo, Arethusa, Artemis, Asteria,
Delos, Leto, Sicily, and Zeus.)

OSSA, MOUNT Ossa (modern Kissavos) is a mountain in Thessaly

located between Mount Pelion, which lies to its southwest, and Mount
Olympus to the north, being separated from the latter by the famed Vale of
Tempe. According to legend, the giants Otus and Ephialtes threatened to
pile Mount Ossa on Olympus, and Mount Pelion on Ossa, in order to reach
the heavens so that they could make an assault on the Olympian gods.
(See also Giants [the], Olympus [Mount], Otus, Pelion [Mount], Tempe
[Vale of], and Thessaly.)

PACTOLUS RIVER, THE The Lydian Pactolus River (modern Sart Çayi)
is a tributary of the Hermus River (the modern Gadiz) in what is now
western Turkey. The River originates in the Tmolus Mountains, which are
now called Bozdag, and flows along the ruins of the ancient city of Sardis.
The Pactolus was famous in antiquity as a source of gold, which was said to
have resulted from the legendary King Midas’s washing his hands in its
waters.
(See also Lydia and Midas.)
PAPHOS The town of Paphos, specifically Old Paphos near the modern
town of Kouklia on the island of Cyprus, was the site of the goddess
Aphrodite’s most important sanctuary and was heavily associated in
mythology with that goddess. It was on Cyprus that the goddess, born of the
sea’s foam, was said first to have stepped ashore, in close proximity to the
town of Paphos. There were various related but conflicting tales about the
foundation of Paphos itself. For example, the mythographer Apollodorus
writes that a foreign prince, Cinyras, came to Cyprus, founded Paphos,
successfully won the daughter of the island’s king, Pygmalion, in marriage,
and sired the handsome Adonis, who later would win the goddess’s heart.
Pygmalion, meanwhile, is known to readers of Ovid’s Metamorphoses as
the creator of an ivory statue in female form so lovely that, although having
publicly eschewed the pleasures of the flesh, he became utterly enamored of
her. Aphrodite heard his fervent prayers for the statue’s animation, and a
daughter, who would give her name to Paphos, was ultimately born of their
union. For the mythographer Hyginus the aforementioned Cinyras was the
son of Paphos.
(See also Adonis, Aphrodite, Cinyras, Cyprus, and Pygmalion.)

PARNASSUS, MOUNT Parnassus is a mountain range in the territory of

ancient Phocis that separates northern and central Greece. The portion of
Parnassus best known in Classical mythology is the highest peak of the
range, the southwestern slope of which is the location of Delphi, the famed
sanctuary and oracle of Apollo, and also of the Castalian Spring, which was
sacred to the Muses. It was on the peak of this mountain that the boat of
Deucalion and Pyrrha washed up on the occasion when Zeus unleashed a
Great Flood intended to eradicate wicked humanity. While Parnassus had a
particularly close association with Apollo, that god shared the mountain
with Dionysus, who, as the god of disorder, blurred distinctions, and
transgression, was the opposite of Apollo, the god of clarity, order, and
light.
(See also Apollo, Castalian Spring [the], Delphi, Deucalion, Dionysus,
Muses [the], Pyrrha, and Zeus.)
 PLATE X

The Parthenon: Greek temple dedicated to the goddess Athena

PARTHENON, THE The Parthenon, erected between the years 447 and
432 BCE on the Athenian acropolis and constructed of marble from the local
mountain Pentelicus, was dedicated to Athena as maiden goddess
(Parthenos). The temple’s architects were Ictinus and Callicrates, and the
famed sculptor Phidias oversaw the Parthenon’s extensive sculptural
decoration, all portraying scenes from myth: the birth of Athena, the victory
of Athena over Poseidon for patronage of Athens, and the battles between
the Lapiths and Centaurs, Greeks and Amazons, gods and Giants, and
Greeks and Trojans. Phidias was also responsible for the monumental (38
feet, or 11.5 meters, tall) cult statue of gold and ivory that depicted Athena
as warrior-goddess and was housed inside the temple, which was viewed as
the earthly dwelling place of Athena. The Parthenon was an integral part of
the overarching symbolism conveyed by structures on the Acropolis, which
even in antiquity became a museum of sorts to the heavily mythologized
history of the city.
(See also Acropolis [the], Amazons [the], Athena, Athens, Centaurs
[the], Giants [the], Lapiths [the], Parthenos, Poseidon, and Troy.)

PELION, MOUNT Mount Pelion, Modern Greek Pilio, lies in southeastern

Thessaly in close proximity to Mount Ossa, which is located between it and
Mount Olympus. Indeed, as Homer notes, the giants Otus and Epialtes
planned to stack Mount Ossa on Olympus and Mount Pelion atop the both
of these in order to attack the gods in their heavenly abodes. Also according
to Homer, the densely wooded Pelion yielded the spear of ash that the
Centaur Chiron gave to Peleus, father of Achilles, and that Achilles himself
used as a weapon in the Trojan War. The Greek epic poet Quintus of
Smyrna adds that it was on Mount Pelion that Peleus and Thetis, parents of
Achilles, had wed. Pelion was further known as the very birthplace of the
Centaurs and the location of the cave of Chiron, who raised the infant
Achilles and, by some accounts, the hero Jason as well.
(See also Achilles, Centaurs [the], Chiron, Giants [the], Jason, Olympus
[Mount], Ossa [Mount], Otus, Peleus, Thessaly, Thetis, and Troy.)

PENEUS RIVER, THE There were two Peneus (also spelled Peneius and
Peneios, Modern Greek Pinios) rivers in Greece. One was located in
Thessaly, a region of northern Greece. This large river, which originates in
the Pindus mountains and, flowing into the Thermaic Gulf through the
scenic Tempe Valley (Vale of Tempe) between Mount Olympus and Mount
Ossa, irrigated most of the region. In mythology, Peneus, the god of this
river, was the father of the huntress Daphne, who was desired by the god
Apollo and escaped the god’s aggressive pursuit by being transformed into
a laurel tree.
The other Peneus River is located in the Peloponnese, arising from the
mountains of Arcadia and flowing west into the Mediterranean opposite the
island of Zakynthos. This river supplied water to the city of Elis, which had
athletic facilities comprising gymnasia and palaestras (wrestling grounds),
running tracks, bathing facilities, and other buildings for athletes who came
to the neighboring sanctuary of Olympia to compete in the Olympic Games.
(See also Apollo, Arcadia, Daphne, Olympia, Olympus [Mount], Ossa
[Mount], Peneus [god], and Tempe [Vale of].)

PHERAE Pherae was a city in Thessaly that, according to the

mythographer Apollodorus, was founded by Pheres, a son of Cretheus, king
of Iolcos. Pheres was succeeded as king by his son Admetus, and the city is
best known in myth for its association with the latter. For a time, Admetus
served as the god Apollo’s master and, as a consequence of his kind
treatment of the god, Apollo allowed him to find a substitute when faced
with early death. Tragically, Admetus did not foresee that his wife, Alcestis,
would volunteer to die in his place.
(See also Admetus, Alcestis, Apollo, Iolcos, Pheres, and Thessaly.)

PHLEGETHON, THE River Phlegethon (“Blazing River”), also known as

Puriphlegethon, “Fire-Blazing River,” was one of the rivers of the
Underworld. According to Homer, it was one of the tributaries of the river
Acheron, but in the imagination of the Roman poet Virgil, writing centuries
later, Phlegethon encircled the triple-wall-bounded region of the
Underworld called Tartarus, which was reserved for the greatest sinners.
(See also Acheron [the River], Tartarus, and Underworld [the].)
PHRYGIA Phrygia is the Greek name of an ancient geographic region of
western-central Anatolia (modern Turkey) that was inhabited by the
Phrygians, a people speaking an Indo-European language who likely
immigrated there from the Balkans in Europe perhaps in the ninth century
BCE. For the Greeks and Romans, Phrygia formed part of the exotic,
“barbarian” but seductive East. While the boundaries of Phrygia are
difficult to define, the Phrygians had a more or less cohesive religion and
culture. The rich city of Gordium, founded by the quasi-historical king
Gordius, emerged as the kingdom of Phrygia’s center, and King Midas of
the “golden touch” appears to have ruled there in the eighth century BCE.
Gordium was said to have been destroyed by a nomadic tribe called the
Cimmerians around 800 (or 700) BCE. Phrygia itself was later conquered by
the Lydians from the west, and then incorporated into the empires of Persia,
Alexander the Great, and Rome in succession. The Phrygian mother-
goddess Cybele was introduced both to Athens and to Rome, and Phrygia
had a significant presence in Classical mythology, being the home of not
only Gordius and Midas but also the Satyr Marsyas and of the devout
Baucis and Philemon, for example.
(See also Athens, Baucis, Cybele, Gordius, Lydia, Marsyas, Midas,
Rome, and Satyrs [the].)

PIERIA Pieria was a region of Greece that in antiquity lay between Mount
Olympus and what is now called the Thermaic or Macedonian Gulf.
According to the Greek poet Hesiod, it was in Pieria that the Muses, patron
goddesses of the arts, were born, and it was here, too, that Orpheus was
born and, after his violent death, most of his dismembered body parts laid to
rest. The legendary namesake of the region was the Macedonian king
Pierus, whose nine daughters would rival the Muses in singing. Both the
Muses and Pierus’s daughters could be called Pierides—in the case of the
Muses, this being a nod to their birthplace, and in the case of the daughters
of Pierus, an acknowledgment of their parentage; however, the name was
usually reserved for the Muses alone.
(See also Muses [the], Olympus [Mount], Orpheus, Pierides [the], and
Pierus.)
PILLARS OF HERCULES, THE The Pillars of Hercules, rocky
promontories to either side of the Strait of Gibraltar, were said to have been
shaped or set in their current location by the hero Hercules. One of the
pillars is the Rock of Gibraltar, or rock of Calpe, which is located near the
southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, and the other is Abyla, modern Jebel
Musa in Morocco, which is situated on the African continent opposite the
Rock of Gibraltar. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus recounts several
alternate versions of Hercules’s creation of the pillars, though in all
instances the hero was in the far west while completing his tenth Labor,
seizing the famed cattle of triple-bodied Geryon. According to Diodorus,
Hercules may have set the pillars in place as a means to commemorate his
journey to the far west, which was the edge of the world then known to the
Greeks, or to make the strait narrower so that sea monsters could not pass
from the sea beyond (the Atlantic) into the Mediterranean. Diodorus also
mentions that the rocks may have resulted from Hercules’s cleaving what
was once a continuous land mass, thus creating a separation between
Europe and Africa and a means for ship passage. Diodorus offers no
opinion regarding which of the versions he offers is correct. Instead, he
invites his readers to decide.
(See also Geryon and Hercules.)

PIRENE Pirene (or Peirene) was the name of an important spring that,
according to the geographer Strabo, supplied the ancient city of Corinth
with water. Strabo also notes that its water was clear and good for drinking,
and it is not surprising, therefore, that this spring was said to be a favorite
watering ground of the winged horse, Pegasus, and the place where
Bellerophon was able to catch him. As for the origins of this spring, the
travel writer Pausanias notes that it was named after a nymph of the same
name who, in grief over the accidental death of her son at the hands of the
goddess Artemis, dissolved in her own tears.
(See also Artemis, Bellerophon, Corinth, and Pegasus.)

PYLOS According to Homer, Pylos was the kingdom of the elderly, wise
king Nestor who features in the Iliad as a trusted advisor of the Greeks
fighting at Troy. In the Odyssey, Odysseus’s son Telemachus visits Nestor at
Pylos in order to gather information about the fate of his father, who had
been away from home for twenty years. Homer describes Nestor’s palace as
“well-built” and the kingdom as being both “sandy” and having the river
Alpheus in close proximity. Taken together, these descriptions caused
confusion regarding the actual location of Nestor’s Pylos even in antiquity.
Consequently, the geographer Strabo notes that, in his time, there were
three candidates, all in the Peloponnese and all claiming to be Nestor’s
Pylos: one in the area of Triphylia near modern Kakovatos; another in
Messenia (near modern Ano Englianos), where richly fresco-decorated
remains of a Mycenaean Bronze Age palace (destroyed circa 1200 BCE)
have been found; and a third in the territory of Elis.
According to legend, Pylos was founded by Neleus, who, together with
eleven of his twelve sons, was slain by Hercules, leaving his twelfth son,
Nestor, as king.
(See also Alpheus [place], Mycenae, Neleus, Nestor, Odysseus,
Telemachus, and Troy.)

ROME The ancient city of Rome lay on the left (eastern) bank of the Tiber
river about 19 miles (30 kilometers) from the sea. A character in the Roman
historian Livy’s monumental history of Rome extolls the site chosen for the
city’s foundation, praising it for its healthful air, wide river, and distance
from the sea, being close enough to ensure ease of commodity transfer but
far enough away to ensure defensibility. Further, there was sufficient open
space to allow for expansion. According to Roman tradition, Rome was a
colony of the Latin city of Alba Longa, which had been founded by
Ascanius (Iulus), son of the Trojan Aeneas. Rome itself was founded by
Romulus and Remus, Alban princes who had been left to die in the Tiber as
newborns but were rescued by a she-wolf. As the new city began to rise on
the Palatine Hill, Romulus killed his brother in a dispute and became
Rome’s first king and namesake. Rome’s population expanded, in part as a
result of forcible recruitment, as in the case of the Romans’ “theft” of
women from the neighboring Sabines. Also according to tradition, Rome
came to comprise settlements on the remaining of the seven hills (the
Capitoline, Aventine, Esquiline, Quirinal, Viminal, and Caelian) that would
form the ancient city’s core, a union that required draining the swamp that
lay in their midst and its transformation into the Roman Forum. In broad
strokes, this tradition has been substantiated by archaeology. Traces of
human habitation, or at least presence, have been found dating to the
Bronze Age (circa 1400 BCE) on the Palatine, Capitoline, and Esquiline.
Remains of huts, a clear indicator of settlement, on the Palatine Hill date to
as early as the late tenth or early ninth centuries BCE, and the eighth century,
in agreement with the traditional date of 753 BCE, witnessed expansion and
fortification of the Palatine site. The Capitoline, later Rome’s most sacred
hill, appears also to have been inhabited in these periods. As the Palatine
settlement expanded, burial sites shifted to the Esquiline and Quirinal, and
the swampy area at the Palatine’s base was partially drained to
accommodate an early Forum. From its humble beginnings, Rome would
evolve from a city in Italy to a world city and the center of a seemingly
“limitless empire,” in the words of the Roman poet Virgil. That increasingly
unwieldy empire would begin its decline from at least the fourth century CE
and fall in the late fifth.
(See also Alba Longa, Capitoline Hill [the], Romulus, Sabines [the], and
Tiber River [the].)

SALAMIS The island of Salamis, best known for being the site of a
decisive naval battle (480 BCE) in which the Greeks defeated the Persian
king Xerxes and his forces, lies in the Saronic Gulf off the coast of Attica,
the territory of the city of Athens. Now known as Salamina, this island was
reputedly named after Salamis, daughter of the god of the river Asopus in
the Peloponnese. By the god Poseidon, Salamis became the mother of
Cychreus, who, according to the travel writer Pausanias, first settled the
island after liberating it from the threat of a particular snake, thus making it
habitable, and named it after his mother. Cychreus, the island’s first king,
had no sons and made Telamon, from the island of Aegina, his successor,
giving him his daughter Glauce in marriage. This Telamon and Glauce
would become the parents of Ajax (the Great), one of the foremost fighters
of the Greeks in the Trojan War. Pausanias adds that Philaeus, a grandson of
Ajax, gave the island over to the Athenians, after being granted Athenian
citizenship. As for Cychreus, there was, in fact, a sanctuary dedicated to
him on the island where he was worshipped in the form of a snake-man,
part human and part snake. It was reported that a snake, a manifestation of
the hero Cychreus, appeared to help the Athenian forces in the Battle of
Salamis.
(See also Ajax [the Great], Athens, Attica, and Telamon.)

SCAMANDER RIVER, THE The Scamander River, modern

Karamenderes, rises from Mount Ida in what is now Turkey and flows into
the Hellespont (Dardanelles). The Scamander played a significant role in
the legends surrounding the city of Troy. The god of the river, who was a
personification of it, was said to have been the father of Teucer, first king of
the Troad, the region controlled by Troy after that city’s founding.
Scamander’s children reputedly included Callirrhoe, grandmother of Ilus,
founder of Troy, which he originally called “Ilium” after himself. The
importance of the river to Troy was underscored by the fact that the Trojan
prince Hector’s son Astyanax was also called Scamandrius.
(See also Asytanax, Hector, Hellespont [the], Ida [Mount], Ilus, Teucer,
and Troy.)

SCHERIA Scheria (or Scherie) was the mythical island kingdom of the
Phaeacians, who, according to Homer’s Odyssey, had been brought there by
their former king Nausithous, so that they might escape continued
harassment by the neighboring Cyclopes. When Odysseus arrived on
Scheria, he encountered a well-ordered society and was hospitably received
by the king Alcinous, his family, and the people over whom he ruled. It was
from Scheria that Odysseus returned to Ithaca, the former being the last
foreign place to which he traveled on his ten-year journey home. Later
Classical authors identified Homer’s Scheria as Corcyra (Corfu).
(See also Alcinous, Cyclopes [the], Ithaca, Odysseus, and Phaeacians
[the].)

SCYROS Scyros (or Scyrus), modern Greek Skiros, lies in the Aegean Sea
and is part of the Sporades island group east of Euboea. The island had
important links with the heroes Achilles and Theseus. It was to this island
that a young Achilles was sent by his mother, the goddess Thetis, so as to
avoid being taken to fight at Troy, where she knew he would be killed.
Achilles, disguised as a girl, lived among the daughters of the island’s king,
Lycomedes, until Odysseus came to find him and tricked him into revealing
himself. While on the island, Achilles impregnated one of Lycomedes’s
daughters, becoming with her the father of Neoptolemus, who would also
go to fight at Troy, where he displayed both skill as a warrior and
extraordinary cruelty. As for the Athenian hero Theseus, he reputedly fled
to this island when, after his attempted abduction of Helen and Persephone,
the Athenians had turned against him and no longer wanted him as king.
According to the mythographer Apollodorus, King Lycomedes eventually
killed Theseus, throwing him to his death from a cliff. In historical times
(476/5 BCE) the Athenians transferred what were reputedly Theseus’s bones
to Athens from Scyros after the ghost of Theseus appeared to assist the
Greeks as they fought in the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE) against the
Persians, as the Greek historian and biographer Plutarch reports.
(See also Achilles, Aegean Sea, Athens, Helen, Lycomedes,
Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Persephone, Theseus, Thetis, and Troy.)

SERIPHUS The island of Seriphus is one of the group of Aegean islands

known as the Cyclades (“Circlers”) that encircled Apollo’s sacred island of
Delos. It was on this island that Danae, whom Zeus had impregnated by
assuming the form of a shower of golden rain, and her infant son Perseus
washed ashore, thus escaping death at sea. When the island’s king
Polydectes later wished to marry Danae, he sent Perseus to fetch the head of
the Gorgon Medusa in the expectation that Perseus would certainly perish,
thus ceasing to constitute an obstacle to his intended marriage.
(See also Aegean Sea [the], Apollo, Danae, Delos, Medusa, Perseus,
Polydectes, and Zeus.)

SICILY Sicily, which has a surface area of 9,927 square miles (25,711
square kilometers), is the largest island in the Mediterranean and played a
significant part in the geography of myth. The name Sicily is derived from
the Sicels, inhabitants of the island who are thought likely to have arrived
on the island from the Italian mainland at the end of the second millennium
BCE. Trinacria, the mythical island housing the cattle of Helios, became
identified with Sicily, and, according to the Roman poet Virgil, the Trojan
Aeneas stopped on Sicily on his way to Italy, leaving some of those who
had followed him from Troy on that island to live with King Acestes. The
craftsman Daedalus was said to have fled to Sicily from Crete, where he
had been held captive by King Minos, and the nymph Arethusa fled to the
island of Ortygia, off the coast of Syracuse, in her effort to escape the
amorous pursuit of the river god Alpheus. Enceladus, one of the giants who
had attacked the gods on Mount Olympus, was thought to lie buried under
Mount Etna, still to this day breathing fire through that mountain’s open
crater. Another source of Etna’s flames was the forge of the Cyclopes, who,
deep under the earth, made the lightning bolts of Zeus.
(See also Acestes, Aeneas, Alpheus [god and place], Arethusa [nymph
and place], Crete, Cyclopes [the], Daedalus, Enceladus, Giants [the],
Helios, Minos, Olympus [Mount], Ortygia, Trinacria, Troy, and Zeus.)

SIDON Sidon was the most important city in Phoenicia, modern Lebanon,
until it was overshadowed politically and economically in the early first
millennium BCE by the Phoencian city of Tyre. Indeed, Sidon could be
invoked to refer to all of Phoenicia. Among the best-known mythological
characters hailing from Phoenicia were King Agenor, who was known
variously as a king of Tyre or Sidon, Europa, and Cadmus. Agenor was the
father both of Europa, whom Zeus, in the guise of a tame, beautiful white
bull, abducted, and of Cadmus, the founder of the city of Thebes, a city that
he populated by sowing dragon’s teeth.
(See also Agenor, Cadmus, Europa, Thebes, and Zeus.)

SPARTA The Greek city of Sparta was the principal city of Laconia in the
southern Peloponnese. The region of Laconia had Messenia to the west,
Arcadia and Argos to the north, and the sea to the south and east. The city
of Sparta itself was located on the Eurotas River in the valley between
Mount Taygetus and Mount Parnon. Though Sparta became the dominant
land power in Greece in the seventh century BCE, the historian Thucydides
(fifth century BCE) noted that if Sparta, which was also called Lacedaemon,
were to become depopulated and only the temples and foundations of the
public buildings were left, posterity would be suspicious of Sparta’s
renowned power. Yet, he continued, the Spartans occupied two-fifths of the
Peloponnese, led the rest of it, and had numerous allies in addition. Since
Sparta was neither densely built up nor adorned with magnificent temples
and public buildings, but rather was composed of a collection of villages, its
remains would not create much of an impression. If, on the other hand,
Athens were to suffer the same misfortune, that city would, because of the
grandeur of its buildings, appear to be twice as powerful as it actually was.
The mythographer Apollodorus provides a brief summary of Sparta’s
geographic mythology: Taygete, one of the daughters of Atlas, was
impregnated by Zeus and gave birth to a son named Lacedaemon, who
became the king and namesake of the territory that Sparta would control.
Lacedaemon married Sparta, after whom he named his capital. Sparta, for
her part, was a daughter of the hero Eurotas and granddaughter of Lelex,
who was born of the soil and one of the first inhabitants of Laconia.
Lacedaemon and Sparta became the parents of a son, whom they called
Amyclas, and a daughter, Eurydice, whom King Acrisius of Argos married.
Amyclas, in turn, became father to the fair youth Hyacinth, whom the god
Apollo loved and accidentally killed with a throw of his discus.
The legendary kings of Sparta included Tyndareus, father of the
Dioscuri Castor and Pollux as well as of Clytemnestra, the murderous wife
of Agamemnon, and stepfather of the beautiful Helen, Sparta’s future
queen. It was by virtue of marriage to Helen that Agamemnon’s brother
Menelaus became king of Sparta, and it was while he was king that the
Trojan prince Paris arrived and made off with Helen, prompting the Trojan
War.
(See also Acrisius, Agamemnon, Apollo, Argos, Castor, Clytemnestra,
Dioscuri [the], Eurydice [nymph], Helen, Hyacinth, Menelaus, Paris,
Pollux, Troy, and Tyndareus.)

STYMPHALUS Stymphalus was the name of a town and also a lake in that
town’s vicinity. The travel writer Pausanias visited Stymphalus in the
second century CE, remarking that an older town of Symphalus had been
replaced by a new one, and that the town was in his time part of a league of
cities in the territory of Argos. Pausanias adds that Stymphalus clearly had
been part of Arcadia originally, as its founder, Stymphalus, was a grandson
of Arcas, Arcadia’s legendary namesake, who was the son of Callisto, one
of Zeus’s ill-fated love interests. Pausanias notes of Stymphalus’s
geography that in the town’s territory, there was a spring that formed a
small lake in winter. According to legend, Lake Stymphalus was home to
the feather-shooting (or, by some accounts, flesh-eating) birds that Hercules
was sent to chase off as his sixth Labor.
(See also Arcadia, Arcas, Argos, Callisto, Hercules, and Stymphalian
Birds [the].)

STYX, THE RIVER According to Classical mythology, the Styx, or as

Homer calls it Stygos Hydor (“Water of Horror”), was the principal river of
the Underworld. For the early Greek poet Hesiod, the quasi-personified
Styx was the most important (and/or eldest) among the older generation of
the daughters of Oceanus, who had 3,000 watery daughters in total. Hesiod
notes, too, that she became the mother of Zelus (“Emulation”), Nike
(“Victory”), Cratos (“Strength”), and Bia (“Force”). For her assistance to
him in his battle with the Titan gods, Zeus made Styx the patron goddess,
and thus guarantor, of oaths, which were henceforth sworn by her waters. In
the Roman poet Virgil’s vision of the Underworld, the depersonified Styx
winds nine times around the realm of the dead, and it is this river (or
sometimes the Acheron) over which the ferryman Charon conveyed the
souls of the dead in their passage from the world of the living to that of the
dead.
The Styx, flowing in a thin stream of poisonous waters, was believed to
have emerged above ground for a short distance in Arcadia, according to
the ancient authors Strabo and Pliny the Elder. There was speculation in
antiquity that it was water from the Arcadian Styx—having been carried in
a hollowed hoof, this being the only material able to withstand the waters’
chill and corrosiveness—that was used to kill Alexander the Great in
Babylon at the age of thirty-two in the year 323 BCE.
(See also Acheron, Arcadia, Babylon, Charon, Nike, Oceanus [god and
place], Titans [the], and Zeus.)

SYMPLEGADES, THE The Symplegades, “Clashing Rocks,” were two

rock formations identified even in antiquity with the Cyanean Rocks, two
rocky islands located just west of the point where the Bosphorus joins the
Euxine (Black) Sea. According to the Greek poet Apollonius of Rhodes, the
Argo, which belonged to the Thessalian hero Jason, was the first and only
ship to pass through these rocks successfully. As the seer Phineus told Jason
and his crew, these rocks were not rooted to the sea’s bottom and often
collided. As it was necessary for the Argo to pass through these rocks on its
way to Colchis, the location of the Golden Fleece, Phineus advised Jason
and his Argonauts to allow a dove first to pass through the rocks, and if the
dove should make it through, then to pass through as swiftly as possible,
rowing with all their might. The dove was successful, losing only the tips of
its tailfeathers, and thus the Argo, too, secured safe passage, losing only a
bit of the stern. As a consequence of the Argo’s passage, with which the
goddess Athena had assisted, the Symplegades became fixed, separated for
all time.
(See also Argonauts [the], Athena, Bosphorus [the], Colchis, Euxine Sea
[the], Jason, Phineus, and Thessaly.)

TARPEIAN ROCK, THE The Tarpeian Rock was a precipice on the

southeastern side of Rome’s Capitoline Hill. It was from this rock that
murderers and traitors were reputedly thrown to their deaths. The Tarpeian
Rock was named after the treacherous Tarpeia, daughter of the Roman
commander Spurious Tarpeius, who, out of greed, betrayed Rome to the
Sabines and was the first to be hurled from the rock.

(See also Capitoline Hill [the], Sabines [the], Tarpeia, and Rome.)

TARTARUS Tartarus was the deepest, darkest, most terrifying part of the
Underworld. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Tartarus came into being
very early on in the creation of the universe, arising from Chaos’s great
primordial void together with Gaia (“Earth”) herself. It was in Tartarus that
Zeus imprisoned the Titan gods who challenged his authority, their prison
lying as far beneath the earth as heaven is above it. According to Hesiod, an
anvil of bronze dropped from the heavens would fall for a full nine nights
and days before reaching the earth upon the tenth; dropped from the earth’s
surface into the earth’s depths, it would require a further nine days and
nights to arrive in Tartarus. For Hesiod, Tartarus was bounded by a fence of
bronze, and dark night wrapped itself around the region in triple bands like
a necklace. It was the location of the House of Hades guarded by the
hellhound Cerberus, and there, too, resided Hypnus (“Sleep”), Thanatos
(“Death”), and the river Styx. Above it had grown the roots of the earth and
unfruitful sea. The Roman poet Virgil expands on this vision of Tartarus,
making it a distinct, well-defined region of the Underworld and the
counterpart of Elysium (Elysian Fields). For Virgil, Tartarus lay at the base
of a bristling crag, was ringed by three walls, and was surrounded by the
flaming river Phlegethon. The walls had impenetrable gates of adamant and
an iron tower from which the Fury Tisiphone kept watch. From inside the
walls could be heard the sinners’ groans as well as the clanking and
dragging of the chains that bound them. The region’s portals were guarded
by the monstrous Hydra, and Tartarus itself gaped widely, being twice as
deep as the distance from earth to the heavens. In Tartarus resided the
Titans, the giants Otus and Ephialtes, and the sinners Tantalus, Sisyphus,
and Ixion; it was the region reserved for murderers, cheaters, liars, misers,
adulterers, warmongers, and all manner of other evildoers.
(See also Cerberus, Chaos, Elysium, Furies [the], Gaia, Giants [the],
Hades [god and place], Hypnus, Ixion, Otus, Phlegethon [the River],
Sisyphus, Somnus, Styx [the River], Tantalus, Thanatos, Tisiphone, Titans
[the], and Zeus.)

TEMPE, VALE OF The Vale of Tempe, Modern Greek Tembi, is a gorge,

6 miles (10 kilometers) long and 89–164 feet (27–50 meters) wide, in
Thessaly situated between Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa. The Peneus
River flows through Tempe into the Aegean Sea, and it is the story of the
river god Peneus’s daughter Daphne that is perhaps the best-known myth
associated with this lush, narrow valley. As the god Apollo ran in pursuit of
her, Daphne called to her father for help and was transformed into a laurel
tree, which would remain Apollo’s sacred tree. The valley had other
associations with Apollo, too, as it was in the waters of Peneus that the god
reputedly cleansed himself after slaying Python, the serpent or dragon that
had guarded the oracular site of Delphi.
 (See also Aegean Sea [the], Apollo, Daphne, Delphi, Olympus [Mount],
Ossa [Mount], Peneus [god and place], Python, and Thessaly.)

THEBES The ancient city of Thebes, site of the modern village of Thiva,
was located in the plains of southern Boeotia in central Greece and
separated from the territory of Athens, its rival, by the Cithaeron range. The
scant remains of the ancient city are a poor indicator of the city’s
importance in antiquity from the Bronze Age (roughly middle of the
fourteenth century BCE) onward; the rich mythology of Thebes suggests
otherwise, however. The city’s legendary founder was Cadmus, who
populated Thebes by sowing dragon’s teeth. Cadmus was a brother of
Europa, the Phoenician princess abducted by Zeus, who had transformed
himself into a handsome bull in order to lure her. With Harmonia, Cadmus
became the father of Semele, the mother of Dionysus by Zeus. Cadmus also
was the grandfather of Pentheus, who met a gruesome end on Mount
Cithaeron due to his disparagement of his divine cousin. At Thebes, Dirce,
evil wife of the Theban king Lycus, likewise met a terrible end, being
dragged to her death by a bull; her punishment was devised in part by
Zethus, after whose wife, Thebe, the city was named, according to the
mythographer Apollodorus. The clever Oedipus became a ruler of Thebes
before his tragic demise, which was occasioned by unknowingly murdering
his father and marrying his mother. Oedipus’s kingdom then became the
object of strife between his sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, again with tragic
results extending to their descendants. Significantly, Thebes was also the
birthplace of Hercules.
(See also Athens, Boeotia, Cadmus, Cithaeron [Mount], Dionysus,
Dirce, Europa, Harmonia, Hercules, Lycus, Oedipus, Pentheus, Polyneices,
Semele, Zethus, and Zeus.)

THESSALY The modern Greek administrative region of Thessaly

(Thessalia) in northern Greece is largely coterminous with ancient Thessaly,
which was bounded by a series of lofty mountains: Ossa and Pelion to the
east, Olympus to the north, Pindus to the west, and Othrys to the south. Of
these mountains, Olympus, Ossa, and Pelion loomed especially large in
myth. Olympus was home of the Olympian gods; the giants Otus and
Ephialtes planned to pile Olympus, Ossa, and Pelion on top of one another
as a means to attack the gods; and Pelion was home of the Centaur Chiron.
Other important physical features of Thessaly are the lovely Vale of Tempe
and the river Peneus, whose god was the father of the ill-fated Daphne.
Thessaly is known to have been inhabited by hunter-gatherers as early as
the Paleolithic (circa 9000 BCE) and to have been densely populated,
especially in its fertile eastern lowlands, in the Neolithic period (roughly
4000–2000 BCE) by people practicing farming. From a mythological
perspective, it comes as no surprise that Iolcos, home base of Jason and his
Argonauts, emerged as a significant palace center in the subsequent Bronze
Age. Thessaly was also the home of Achilles, best of the Greeks who
fought at Troy; of Admetus, kind master to the god Apollo; and of the
hybrid Centaurs.
(See also Achilles, Apollo, Argonauts [the], Centaurs [the], Chiron,
Daphne, Iolcos, Olympus [Mount], Ossa [Mount], Otus, Pelion [Mount],
Peneus [god and place], Tempe [Vale of], Troy, and Zeus.)

THRACE The Thrace of antiquity, being considered to be coterminous

with the northern edge of the known world, had indeterminate boundaries,
essentially comprising all of Europe to the north and east of Macedon to the
edges of the Aegean and the Black Sea. Although much or most of
Classical mythology is marked by violence, it appears to be the case that
this reputedly strange, barbarian land accrued some of the most violent
legends. Among the mythical kings of Thrace were Tereus, who raped and
mutilated his sister-in-law; Diomedes, who fed his horses human flesh;
Polymestor, who murdered the young Trojan prince Polydorus for his
money; and Lycurgus, who attacked the god Dionysus and his nurses. And
it was a group of Thracian women that dismembered the gifted singer
Orpheus, who, in grief over the death of his wife, had refused their
attentions.
(See also Aegean Sea [the], Diomedes, Dionysus, Lycurgus, Macedon,
Orpheus, Polydorus, Tereus, and Troy.)

TIBER RIVER, THE The Tiber is the most important river in central Italy.
The Tiber’s waters rise from the Apennine Mountains and flow some 250
miles (400 kilometers) to the Tyrrhenian Sea, carrying along the way a
significant amount of silt, giving them a brown tinge that the Roman poet
Virgil described as flavus (yellow). Its waters were not potable, but the river
was navigable from its mouth at Ostia to the city of Rome itself. Since
Rome rose along the Tiber’s banks, spreading to either side, the Tiber,
logically, plays a significant role in the mythology of the city. It was in the
Tiber’s stream that the twins Romulus and Remus, Rome’s founders, were
set afloat after their birth to Rhea Silvia by the god Mars. It was there, too,
that the twins failed to meet their end, being rescued by a she-wolf.
Although the source of the river’s name is uncertain, the Roman
grammarian Festus notes that the river had once been named Albula
because of the white color (albus) of its water, but it was later given the
name Tiber after Tiberinus Silvius, a king of Alba Longa, who perished in
it.
(See also Alba Longa, Mars, Remus, Rhea Silvia, Rome, and Romulus.)

TIRYNS The center of the ancient city of Tiryns was located on a low,
rocky hill in the Argolid, a region of the northeastern Peloponnese that
encompassed Argos, which ultimately became its dominant city; Tiryns;
Mycenae; Epidaurus; and Nauplion (modern Nafplio). Situated just 1 mile
(1.5 kilometers or so) from the sea, Tiryns achieved particular prominence
in the Bronze Age, when it became the site of a notable, fresco-decorated,
fortified palace (1400–1200 BCE) and certainly one of the most powerful
mainland palace centers in that period along with Mycenae. Tiryns declined
greatly in power at the end of the Bronze Age and fell increasingly under
the thumb of the neighboring city of Argos, which destroyed the city around
470 BCE.
In mythology, Tiryns had a connection with an array of Greece’s most
important heroes, among them Bellerophon, Perseus, and Hercules. Proetus,
king and founder of Tiryns, sent Bellerophon to Lycia, where the latter
would be tasked with killing the Chimaera; Perseus became a king of Tiryns
before founding Mycenae; and Hercules performed his Labors for
Eurystheus, another king of Tiryns.
(See also Bellerophon, Chimaera [the], Eurystheus, Hercules, Lycia,
Mycenae, and Perseus.)
TRINACRIA Trinacria (or Thrinacria), “Three Points,” was the mythical
island in the vicinity of Scylla and Charybdis that, according to Homer,
housed the cattle and sheep, 350 each, of the sun god Helios. It had been
prophesied that if Odysseus and his men could abstain from slaughtering
any of these, they would return home, albeit after much suffering. They
could not, and all but Odysseus perished. In antiquity, Trinacria became
identified with the three-pointed island of Sicily, its points being at the
cities known as Lilybaeum, Pachynus, and Peloris in antiquity.
(See also Charybdis, Helios, Odysseus, Scylla, and Sicily.)

TROY The remains of Troy are located on the mound of Hisarlik, which
overlooks the plain along the Turkish Aegean coast in ancient Anatolia. The
site is about 4 miles (6.5 kilometers) from the coast, 3 miles (4.8
kilometers) from the southern entrance to the Dardanelles (the ancient
Hellespont), and near the modern city of Canakkale, Turkey. The city lay on
a bay that has become filled with silt over the centuries by the Scamander
and Simois rivers, a fact that obscures the reality of what must have been
Troy’s enormous importance as a cultural bridge between the Balkans,
Anatolia, and the Aegean and Black Sea regions. As such, it was a coveted
site and, as it turns out, likely subjected to war and destruction not once but
several times. Hisarlik was first identified as the location of Troy in 1820 by
Charles Maclaren, who was followed by Frank Calvert in 1863 and 1865,
and, most famously, by Heinrich Schliemann, who excavated the site in a
series of campaigns between 1870 and 1890. Notably, the site has
undergone archaeological exploration continuing to the present day. Nine
major settlement layers have been discovered on Hisarlik, each built upon
an earlier one. Troy I, the oldest stage of building, dates to the early Bronze
Age (circa 3000–2500 BCE). Troy II (circa 2550–2300 BCE) yielded finds
that prompted Schliemann to conclude that this was Homer’s Troy: remains
of several grand houses or structures as well as an abundance of artifacts
made of gold, electrum, silver, carnelian, and lapis lazuli. As Homer’s
Trojan War is thought to have taken place considerably later, the well-
fortified Troy VI (circa 1750–1300 BCE) became a candidate for Homer’s
Troy, though its dates, too, have been deemed too early. Although more
humble, Troy VIIa (circa 1300–1180 BCE) has appeared to be the most
likely choice, unless Homer’s Troy is a conflation of several Troys, which
may well be the case.
In ancient literary sources, Troy, named after the hero Tros (a son of
Erichthonius), was variously called Ilios and Ilion (or Ilium) after its
founder Ilus. The Trojans, meanwhile, were called Dardanians and
Teucrians after Dardanus and Teucer (a son of the god of Scamander River
and a nymph of Mount Ida), legendary early kings of the Troad (region
around Troy). Ilus’s city was said later to have been ruled by Laomedon
and, later still, by Priam, in the course of whose reign the Trojan War took
place and whose son Paris caused the war by abducting the lovely Helen
from her home in Sparta. Among the best-known heroes who fought at Troy
were Achilles, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Ajax, and Odysseus on the Greek
side, and Prince Hector on the side of the Trojans. After ten years of
fighting, it was through a ruse devised by Odysseus—a massive, hollow,
warrior-filled wooden horse left ostensibly as an offering for Athena—that
the city fell.
(See also Achilles, Agamemnon, Ajax [the Great], Athena, Dardanus,
Erichthonius, Hector, Helen, Ida [nymph and Mount], Ilus, Laomedon,
Menelaus, Odysseus, Paris, Priam, Sparta, Teucer, and Tros.)

UNDERWORLD, THE The Underworld was variously known as Hades,

the House of Hades, Acheron, and Tartarus in Classical mythology, and just
as beliefs surrounding death and the afterlife changed over time, so too did
conceptions of the Underworld’s geography. The geography that emerges
from the hero Aeneas’s visit to the Underworld in the Roman poet Virgil’s
epic the Aeneid is the most complete and colorful, though not without its
ambiguities. Near the cave of the prophetic Sibyl at Cumae was the
stagnant, gloomy, vaporous lake of Avernus, which was an entrance to the
Underworld. Passage to the House of Hades itself was achieved through a
cave, and in the antechamber of Hades were clustered an array of horrors:
Cares, Disease, Old Age, Fear, Famine, and Sleep, the brother of Death.
Beyond these was located an enormous elm tree swarming with false
dreams, as well as War, the Eumenides’s iron chambers, crazed Discord,
Centaurs, Scyllas, Gorgons, Harpies, a Hecatoncheir (“Hundred-Hander”),
and the Hydra, all being monsters so terrifying that Aeneas drew his sword
in fear. Just beyond, the waters of Cocytus and Acheron converged in a
sludgy, belching vortex, and the souls of the dead, eager for passage over
the river Styx, thronged the river’s banks. The squalid, flame-eyed
ferryman, Charon, could take only the souls of the buried dead, while the
unburied were consigned to roam for one hundred years. Beyond the Styx
was stationed the watchdog Cerberus, serpents bristling at his neck, who, in
his cave, guarded the Underworld proper. Not far from Cerberus could be
found wailing infants who had died no sooner than their lives began, those
wrongfully condemned to death, suicides, and Minos sitting in judgment
over all the souls in order to determine their proper place in the afterlife:
Tartarus or Elysium. Here, in a neutral zone, lay the Fields of Mourning, in
which resided those who died of broken hearts, among them the
Carthaginian queen Dido, as well as places inhabited by more of those
prematurely dead. Beyond these regions the road led in two directions, one
to Tartarus and one to Elysium. Dreaded Tartarus lay at the base of a cliff,
was bounded by a triple wall, and was surrounded by the fiery streams of
the river Phlegethon. The Fury Tisiphone stood watch there, whips in hand
and ready to strike the wicked, their punishments having been determined
by the judge Rhadamanthus. Within its walls, Tartarus gaped black and
deep, holding in its maw the likes of Sisyphus, Tityus, and Ixion. As for
Elysium, this was the afterlife paradise of those who had lived good and
virtuous lives. This region was as open and lush, bright and flower-filled, as
Tartarus was dark and cheerless.
(See also Acheron [the River], Aeneas, Carthage, Centaurs [the],
Cerberus, Charon, Cocytus [the River], Dido, Elysium, Eumenides [the],
Furies [the], Gorgons [the], Harpies [the], Hecatoncheires [the], Hydra of
Lerna [the], Ixion, Minos, Phlegethon [the River], Rhadamanthus, Scylla,
Sisyphus, Styx [the River], Tartarus, Tisiphone, and Tityus.)
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 APPENDIX OF GODS

GREEK PRINCIPAL GODS / ROMAN EQUIVALENTS

Zeus / Jupiter Hera / Juno
Poseidon / Neptune Demeter / Ceres Athena / Minerva Apollo / Apollo
Artemis / Diana Ares / Mars
Aphrodite / Venus Hephaestus / Vulcan Hermes / Mercury Hestia / Vesta
Dionysus / Bacchus Hades or Pluto /
Dis or Pluto

PRIMORDIAL GODS
Chaos (void)
Gaia (earth)
Uranus (sky)
Ourea (mountains) Pontus (sea)
Tartarus
(underworld)
Erebus (darkness) Nyx (night)
Aether (light) Hemera (day)
Eos (dawn)
Helios (sun)
Selene (moon)
Aeolus (wind)

WIND GODS
Boreas (north wind) Notus (south wind) Zephyrus (west wind) Eurus (east
wind) MUSES
Calliope (epic poetry) Clio (history) Erato (love poetry) Euterpe (music)
 Melpomene (tragedy) Polyhymnia (sacred poetry)
Terpsichore (dance) Thalia (comedy) Urania (astronomy) GRACES
(CHARITES) Aglaia (Resplendent One) Thalia (Blooming One)
Euphrosyne (Good Cheer)

FATES (MOIRAI) Clotho (Spinner) Lachesis (Caster of Lots) Atropos (Unturnable One)

FURIES (THE ERINYES) Tisiphone (Avenger of Murder)

Megaera (Envious One) Alecto (Implacable One) THE TITANS
Asteria, 2nd generation Astraeus, 2nd
generation
Atlas, 2nd generation Clymene, 2nd
generation
Coeus, 1st generation Crius, 1st generation Cronus, 1st generation Dione,
2nd generation?
Eos, 2nd generation Epimetheus, 2nd generation
Eurynome, 2nd
generation
Hecate, 3rd generation Hyperion, 1st
generation
Iapetus, 1st generation Leto, 2nd generation Menoetius, 2nd generation
Metis, 2nd generation Mnemosyne, 1st generation
Oceanus, 1st generation Perses, 2nd generation Phoebe, 1st generation
Prometheus, 2nd generation
Rhea, 1st generation Selene, 2nd generation Styx, 2nd generation Tethys,
1st generation Theia, 1st generation Themis, 1st generation
 GLOSSARY OF ANCIENT
SOURCES

AELIAN [Claudius Aelianus] (circa 170–235 CE)—a Roman rhetorician and author of
Historical Miscellany, a cultural-historical work in Greek that is filled with moralizing
anecdotes and short biographies of illustrious personages as well as descriptions of the world’s
natural wonders and diverse cultures.

AESCHYLUS (525/4?–456/5 BCE)—together with Sophocles and Euripides, one of the most
famous Greek tragedians. He reputedly authored seventy to ninety plays, only seven of which
have survived: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, a trilogy known as The Oresteia;
Suppliants; Persians; Seven Against Thebes; and Prometheus Bound.

ALCMAN (mid? to late seventh century BCE)—a Greek lyric poet who worked in Sparta but
was possibly born in Lydia, modern Turkey. His works, short poems performed to the
accompaniment of the lyre (or other instrument), are now known in only fragmentary form.

ANTONINUS LIBERALIS (second or third century CE)—a grammarian and author of a

collection of myths written in Greek and known as the Collection of Tales of Metamorphosis.
The details of his life have not been preserved, and the Collection is his only surviving work.

APOLLODORUS (first or second century CE)—the name that, likely in error, has become
associated with an encyclopedic summary in Greek of Greco-Roman myth and legend. That
work is entitled The Library.

APOLLONIUS OF RHODES (first half of the third century BCE)—author of the Greek epic
poem Argonautica (Voyage of the Argo), centered on the hero Jason’s quest for the Golden
Fleece.
APULEIUS [Lucius Apuleius] (circa 125–? CE)—a Roman author and rhetorician born in
Madaura, a Roman-Berber city in what is now Algeria. His best-known work is the only
complete novel in Latin to have survived from antiquity. This work, known under the titles The
Golden Ass and Metamorphoses, presents a first-person account of the adventures of the tale’s
hero, who is named Lucius and is transformed into a donkey.

ARATUS (315?–240 BCE)—a Greek poet born in Cilicia, the southern coast of Asia Minor
(modern Turkey). His only surviving work is a 1,154-hexameter verse poem entitled
Phenomena on the positions, risings, settings, and mythology of the most important stars and
constellations.

ARRIAN [Lucius Flavius Arrianus] (circa 86–160 CE)—a Greek historian as well as military
commander and public official of the Roman Empire. Born in Bithynia, central-northern
Turkey, his work The Anabasis of Alexander is an important source on the campaigns of
Alexander the Great.

ATHENAEUS (active circa 200 CE)—author of a fictional account in Greek of one or more
dinner parties in Rome. Its title variously translated as The Connoisseurs in Dining or Learned
Diners, the work recounts the guests’ conversations on food and a variety of other subjects.

BACCHYLIDES (520?–450? BCE)—a Greek lyric poet from the island of Ceos, now known as
Kea or Tzia. According to Greek tradition, he was one of the foremost nine composers of lyric
poetry, short poems performed to the accompaniment of the lyre or other instrument.

CALLIMACHUS (circa 310/305–240 BCE)—a notable Greek poet and scholar who was born in
Cyrene in what is now northeastern Libya and became a major literary figure in Alexandria,
Egypt. While he was reputedly very prolific, most of his works, which included poems on
mythological subjects, have been entirely lost or survive only in fragmentary form.

CATO, MARCUS PORCIUS (218–202 BCE)—Roman statesman and military figure who rose
to prominence in Rome’s wars against Hannibal and Carthage. A staunch advocate of
traditional lifestyles, morality, and government, his writings include a work On Agriculture that
covers topics including the cultivation of olives, grapes, and other fruit as well as pasturage for
domesticated animals. Cato’s historical work Origins, begun in 168 BCE and incomplete at the
time of his death, describes the early history of Rome until the year 149 BCE.
CATULLUS [Gaius Valerius Catullus] (84?–55? BCE)—a Roman poet from the Italian town of
Verona, whose slim book of poems, a libellus (little book), as he calls it, reveals that he was a
member of the Roman Republic’s “high society,” and includes references to the orator and
statesman Cicero, Julius Caesar, and Caesar’s rival the general Pompey the Great, among
others.

DIODORUS (active circa 60–20 BCE)—known as Diodorus Siculus, “the Sicilian.” He authored
The Library of History, an extensive history of the known world from mythical times to
Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. His work, written in Greek, includes discussions of Egypt,
Mesopotamia, India, Scythia, Arabia, North Africa, Greece, and Europe.

DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS (circa 60 BCE–7? CE)—a Greek historian and rhetorician

who came from Halicarnassus to Rome at some time after 30 BCE, living and working there in
the reign of the emperor Augustus. Dionysius’s major work was the twenty-book (or chapter)
Roman Antiquities, a history of Rome from the city’s mythical origin to the first Punic War (264
BCE).

EURIPIDES (485?–406 BCE)—together with Aeschylus and Sophocles, one of the most famed
Greek tragedians. He authored some ninety plays on mythological subjects, eighteen of which
survive: Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, Andromache, Hecuba, Trojan Women, Phoenician Women,
Orestes, Bacchae, Helen, Electra, Heraclidae (Children of Hercules), Hercules, Suppliant Women,
Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Ion, and Cyclops.

FESTUS [Sextus Pompeius Festus] (late second century CE)—scholar and author of an
abridged version of the grammarian Verrius Flaccus’s (55 BCE?–20? CE) De Verborum
Significatu (On the Meaning of Words).

HELLANICUS (480?–395? BCE)—a chronicler, mythographer, and ethnographer from the

Greek island of Lesbos. Among his works, which survive only in fragmentary form, were a
complete history of Athens, Atthis, as well as the Troica, a myth-history of Troy. His
ethnographic writings covered a wide geographic range, from Greece to Egypt, Cyprus,
Scythia, and Persia.

HERODOTUS (480?–425 BCE)—known as the “father of history,” he was the first to make the
events of the past the subject of investigation. His history in Greek of the Greco-Persian Wars
(490–479 BCE), The Histories, contains a wealth of geographical, mythological, political, and
ethnographic information.

HESIOD (active circa 725 BCE)—according to Greek tradition, the author of two highly
influential, instructional epic poems: the Theogony, which treats the origins of the universe and
of the gods, and the Works and Days, which includes reflections on social and religious conduct
as well as a farmer’s calendar.

HOMER (eighth century BCE)—according to Greek tradition, author of the Iliad and Odyssey,
together constituting the earliest extant examples of literature in the Western world. The so-
called Homeric Hymns, a collection of poems celebrating the Greek gods and of unknown
authorship, are wrongly attributed to him.

HYGINUS (second century CE?)—known, probably falsely, as the author of a handbook of

mythology compiled from a variety of Greek sources and a manual of astronomy, also with
mythological content: Fabulae (Stories) and Astronomica (Poetical Astronomy), respectively.

JUVENAL [Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis] (active late first and early second centuries CE)—a noted
Roman satirist about whose life little is now known. His sixteen satirical poems are collected as
Satires.

LIVY [Titus Livius] (59 BCE–17 CE)—author of a history of Rome from the origins of the city to
the time of Augustus. Published in installments, his 142-chapter work, Ab Urbe Condita (From
the Founding of the City), won immediate acclaim.

NONNUS (active third quarter of the fifth century CE?)—a Greek poet from the city of
Panopolis (Akhim) in Egypt. His epic poem The Dionysiaca (Things about Dionysus) centers on
the life and exploits of the god Dionysus.

OVID [Publius Ovidius Naso] (43 BCE–18 CE)—among the best known and highly acclaimed of
Latin poets. His work includes the Metamorphoses, that epic poem which for centuries has been
the primary source of Greek and Roman myth and legend. His other works include the
controversial Ars Amatoria (Art of Love), a manual on the arts of seduction; Heroides
(Heroines), a series of fictional letters in verse from heroines in mythology to their lovers; and
Fasti (Calendar), a poetic work that goes through the official Roman calendar month by month,
indicating festival days as well as their origins and mythology.

PARTHENIUS (first century BCE)—a Greek scholar and poet from Nicaea, a Greek city in
northwestern Anatolia, modern Turkey. A war captive brought to Italy and later freed, he
greatly influenced important Roman poets such as Virgil. His works are known only in
fragmentary form apart from the Erotika Pathemata (Sufferings from Love), a work in prose
collecting stories told in the works of Greek poets.

PAUSANIAS (circa 115–180 CE)—author of a description in Greek of mainland Greece based

on his own travels. Cast as a travel guide, The Description of Greece provides a wealth of
information regarding many now-lost sites, monuments, and artworks as well as the customs
and beliefs of those regions that he visited.

PINDAR (active circa 498–446 BCE)—Greek lyric poet known chiefly for his commemoration of
victors at the Olympic and Pythian Games, which were held in a religious context at the
sanctuaries of Olympia (sacred to Zeus) and Delphi (sacred to Apollo) respectively.

PLATO (428/7–348/7 BCE)—Athenian philosopher and founder of the philosophical community

or school that came to be called the Academy. Among Plato’s many writings is The Republic, a
discourse on the ideal state, which features Socrates (by whom Plato had been deeply
influenced) as a character.

PLINY THE ELDER [Gaius Plinius Secundus] (23/24–79 CE)—Roman statesman, admiral, and
scholar who was among the victims of Mount Vesuvius’s eruption. A prolific writer on topics
that included grammar, oratory, military science, and biography, he is chiefly remembered for
his extensive encyclopedic work on natural history, The Natural History, which encompasses
topics including astronomy, botany, geology, horticulture, medicine, mineralogy, and zoology.

PLUTARCH [Lucius? Mestrius Plutarchus] (45?–125 CE)—biographer and moral philosopher.

A prolific writer, he is remembered primarily for his work on morality and his biographies of
eminent Greek and Roman political and military figures. His Lives of the Noble Greeks and
Romans, which is also known as the Parallel Lives or Plutarch’s Lives, included fifty biographies
of prominent figures including Alexander the Great, the legendary Athenian king Thesius, and
Numa, one of the legendary kings of Rome and the reputed successor of Romulus.
PROPERTIUS [Sextus Propertius] (second half of the first century BCE)—a Roman elegiac
poet born in the Italian town of Assinium (modern Assisi). He enjoyed the patronage of the
emperor Augustus and is best known as an author of poetry on the theme of love. His surviving
work consists of four books of Elegies.

QUINTUS OF SMYRNA (third or fourth century CE)—author of a surviving epic poem in

Greek entitled The Things that Happened Between the Iliad and Odyssey, in Greek Ta meth’
Homeron.

SAPPHO (late seventh century BCE)—a lyric poet of such high repute that she was called the
“Tenth Muse” in antiquity. Sappho was born and lived on the Greek island of Lesbos; apart
from that, details of her life are uncertain. She is known for the passionate, female-centered
nature of her poetry. Of her collected poems, it is largely only fragments that survive.

SENECA [Lucius Annaeus Seneca] (4? BCE–65 CE)—a Roman statesman, philosopher, and
dramatist. Born in Cordoba, Spain, Seneca was educated in Rome and became first tutor and
then political advisor to the emperor Nero. Among his works are a group of tragedies on
mythological themes: Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), Troades (The Trojan
Women), Phoenissae (The Phoenician Women), Medea, Phaedra, Oedipus, Agamemnon, and
Thyestes.

SERVIUS [Marius Servius Honoratus] (active circa 400 CE)—a Roman grammarian and
commentator best known for his extensive commentary on the works of Virgil.

SOPHOCLES (495/495?–406/405 BCE)—an Athenian playwright, and the most popular in his
day. He was the author of 120 plays, among them Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at
Colonus, Philoctetes, Ajax, Women of Trachis, and Electra.

STATIUS [Publius Papinius Statius] (second half of the first century CE)—a Roman poet whose
surviving works are an epic entitled Thebaid, focusing on the campaign of the Seven Against
Thebes; an unfinished epic entitled Achilleid, centering on the life of Achilles; and Silvae, a
collection of poems on assorted subjects.

STESICHORUS (active circa 600–550 BCE)—a Greek lyric poet who was a contemporary of
the poetess Sappho of Lesbos. Stesichorus’s poems, which were known in antiquity to have
been numerous, have survived only in fragments. Of considerable fame in antiquity,
Stesichorus is thought to have been born either in Sicily or in southern Italy.

STRABO (circa 65 BCE–25 CE)—historian and geographer. He is known primarily for his wide-
ranging work in Greek on geography, inclusive of Spain, Gaul, Italy, the Balkans, Asia Minor,
India, Egypt, northern Africa, and more. His seventeen-part work is known simply as
Geographia (Geography).

TACITUS [Publius? Cornelius Tacitus] (55?–117 CE)—a Roman historian and statesman. He
was born in Gaul, but came to Rome by 75 CE. His surviving works are: Agricola (The Life of
Agricola); Germania; Dialogus de oratoribus (Dialogue on Oratory); Historiae (Histories),
focusing on the reign of the Roman emperors from Galba to Domitian; and the Annales, a
history covering the ascendancy of the emperor Tiberius to that of Nero.

THEOCRITUS (early third century BCE)—a Greek author of pastoral poems entitled the Idylls.
Theocritus, who is called the creator of the bucolic genre of poetry, was likely born in Syracuse
and then spent time working on the island of Cos as well as in Alexandria, Egypt. While thirty
of the Idylls attributed to him have survived, not all were actually authored by him nor are all
of the poems pastoral (dealing with the charms of country life) in content.

THUCYDIDES (460?—400 BCE)—an Athenian general and historian, known as the author of
the first fact-based historical work, The Peloponnesian War.

VIRGIL [Publius Vergilius Maro] (70?–19 BCE)—illustrious author of the Aeneid, an epic poem
recounting the founding of Rome and the origins of the Roman people. Virgil, who enjoyed the
patronage of the emperor Augustus, was also the author of the Eclogues, a group of pastoral
poems, and the Georgics, a didactic poem as much about agriculture as it is about the social
and political concerns of the day.

VITRUVIUS [Marcus Vitruvius Pollio] (circa 80/70–15 BCE)—Roman architect and engineer
who lived and worked during the regimes of Julius Caesar and the emperor Augustus. He is
known chiefly for his De Architectura (On Architecture), the earliest known and vastly
influential work on architecture and the art of building.