Apollodorus, sometimes anachronistically called Apollodorus of Athens, (born c. 180 BC) was a Greek writer most famous for a verse chronicle of Greek history from the fall of Troy in the 12th century BC to 144 BC. A pupil of the scholar Aristarchus, he left Alexandria around 146 BC for Pergamum and eventually settled in Athens.
Apollodorus' chronicle gave dates by referring to the archons of Athens. Most archons only held office for one year, allowing scholars to pin ...
In Greek mythology, the centaurs (Greek: Κένταυροι) are a race part human and part horse, with a horse's body, including all four legs, and a human head and torso with arms. The human portion is joined at the waist to the horse's shoulders where the head and neck would be.
The general character of centaurs is that of wild, lawless and inhospitable beings, the slaves of their animal passions. Two exceptions to this rule were Pholus and Chiron, who expressed their "good" nature, wise and kind centaurs. They are variously ...
Adonis, an annual vegetation life-death-rebirth deity, imported from Syrian into Greek mythology, always retained aspects of his Semitic Near Eastern origins and was one of the most complex cult figures in classical times. He had multiple roles and there has been much scholarship over the centuries of his meaning and purpose in the Greek religious beliefs. His Semitic counterpart is Tammuz. His Etruscan counterpart was Atunis. (Some mythologists believe he was later exported to Germania, and his counterpart in Germanic mytholog ...
Amphitrite, in ancient Greek mythology, was a sea-goddess, and wife of Poseidon, identified with the Salacia the wife of Neptune in Roman mythology.
She was daughter of Nereus and Doris according to Hesiod's Theogony but of Oceanus and Tethys according to Apollodorus. But Apollodorus actually lists her also among the Nereids.
Amphitrite ("the third one who encircles (the sea)") was so entirely confined in her authority to the sea and the creatures in it, that she was never associated with her husband either ...
In Greek mythology, Actaeon (or Aktaion), son of Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a hunter who suffered the wrath of Artemis.
Artemis was bathing in the woods near Boeotian Orchomenos when the hunter Actaeon stumbled across her, thus seeing her naked. He stopped and stared, amazed at her ravishing beauty. When she saw him, Artemis punished him by declaring that he must never speak again — if he tried to speak, he would be changed into a stag — for his unlucky profanation of her virgin's mysteries. Upon hearing h ...
Aeneas (Greek: Αινείας, Aineías) was a Trojan hero, the son of prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite (Venus in Roman sources). He was also the cousin of King Priam of Troy. The journey of Aeneas from Troy, which led to the founding of the city that would one day become Rome, is recounted in Virgil's Aeneid. He is considered an important figure in Greek and Roman legend and history. Aeneas is a character in Homer's Iliad and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.
In the Iliad, ...
For the 5th century BCE Spartan by the same name, see Aristodemus (Spartan).
In Greek mythology, Aristodemus was a son of Aristomaches and brother of Cresphontes and Temenus. He was a great-great-grandson of Heracles and helped lead the fifth and final attack on Mycenae in the Peloponnesus.
Aristodemus and his brothers complained to the Oracle that its instructions had proved fatal to those who had followed them (the Oracle had told Hyllas to attack through the narrow passage when the third fruit was ripe). They r ...
In Greek mythology, Selene (Σελήνη, "moon") (the Roman moon goddess being Luna) was an ancient lunar deity, and the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia.
A moon goddess is invariably a major role. If her name is Greek it is connected with selas "light" (Kerenyi p. 197). Selene was eventually largely supplanted by Artemis, thus, later writers sometimes describe her like Artemis as a daughter of Zeus, or of Pallas. In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, with its characteristically insistent patrilineality, she is "bright Selene, ...
In addition to the twelve main Gods and the innumerable lesser deities, ancient Greeks used to worship an Unknown God (spelled Agnostos Theos in Greek). In Athens, there was a temple specifically dedicated to that God and very often Athenians used to swear "in the name of the Unknown God" (Νή τόν Άγνωστον). Apollodorus, Philostratus and Pausanias wrote about that God as well.
According to the Bible, when the Apostle Paul visited Athens, he saw an altar with an inscription dedicated to that god, so whe ...
In Greek mythology, four people were known as Cycnus or Cygnus. Most of them ended up being transformed into swans. The most famous Cycnus however, was the son of Ares.
Cycnus (Kyknos), son of Ares was sired upon Pelopia or Pyrene. Cycnus was a bloodthirsty and cruel man in Macedonia who was so murderous he aspired to build a temple to his father constructed from the skulls and bones of travelers, whom Cycnus would kill in passing. His building days came to an end however, when Cycnus encountered Heracles near the River ...
In Greek mythology, Argea (or Argeia) was a daughter of King Adrastus of Argos. She was married to Polynices, the exiled king of Thebes.
Sources include:
Apollodorus 3.6.1
Euripides in The Phoenician Women and Suppliants, who mentions the wedding without giving her name.
Hyginus, who in his Fabulae (Latin) calls her Argia.
Robert Graves in his popular The Greek Myths (106c) prefers the spelling Aegeia.
Other related
In Greek mythology, Antiope was the name of the daughter of the Boeotian river-god Asopus, according to Homer (Od. xi. 260); in later poems she is called the daughter of King Nycteus of Thebes or Lycurgus. Her beauty attracted Zeus, who, assuming the form of a satyr, took her by force (Apollodorus iii. 5). After this she was carried off by Epopeus, king of Sicyon, who would not give her up till compelled by her uncle Lycus. On the way home she gave birth, in the neighbourhood of Eleutherae on Mount Cithaeron, to the twins Amphi ...
Aglaulus is a figure in Greek mythology, daughter of Cecrops. According to Apollodorus, Hephaestus attempted to rape Athena but was unsuccessful. His semen fell on the ground, impregnating Gaia. Gaia didn't want the infant Erichthonius, so she gave the baby to Athena. Athena gave three sisters: Herse, Pandrosus and Aglaulus the baby in a small box and warned them to never open it. Aglaulus and Herse opened the box which contained the infant and future-king, Erichthonius. The sight caused Herse and Aglaulus to go insa ...
Aesacus or Aisakos in Greek mythology was a son of King Priam of Troy. Aesacus sorrowed for the death of his wife or would-be lover, a daughter of the river Cebren, and was transformed into a bird.
Apollodorus (3.12.5) makes Aesacus son of Priam's first wife Arisbe daughter of Merops. Apollordorus and Tzetzes (Scholiast on Lycophron 224) also make Aeascus a seer who has learned the interpretation of dreams from his grandfather Merops. For them Aesacus is the interpreter of Hecabe's dream when Hecabe gives birth to Paris. In Apollodorus the deceased daughter of Cebren for w ...
In Greek mythology, the Ἀμαζόνες, Amazons were either an ancient legendary nation of female warriors or a contemporary land of women at the outer edges of the world. The legends appear to have a nugget of factual basis in warrior women among the Scythians, but classical Greeks never ceased to be astounded at such role-reversals. In early modern usage, the word was often used to refer to strong and independent women, in contrast to conventional stereotypes of women as weak and passive (see "damsel in distress"), but now "amazo ...
In Greek mythology, Amymone (the "blameless" one) was a daughter of Danaus. As the "blameless" Danaid, her name identifies her, perhaps, as identical to Hypermnestra ("great wooing" or "high marriage"), also the one Danaid who did not assassinate her Egyptian husband on their wedding night, as her 49 sisters did. (See the myth at the entry for Danaus.) Apollodorus, in his list of names for the Danaids, does mention both Hypermnes ...
In Greek mythology, Andromeda ("ruler of men") was the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, king and queen of the Ethiopians.
Cassiopeia, having boasted herself equal in beauty to the Nereids, drew down the vengeance of Poseidon, who sent an inundation on the land and a sea-monster, which destroyed man and beast. The oracle of Ammon having announced that no relief would be found until the king exposed his daughter Androm ...
In Greek mythology, Andromache was the wife of Hector and daughter of Eetion, and sister to Podes. She was born and raised in the city of Cilician Thebes (=Thebe-under-Placus), over which her father ruled.
During the Trojan War, Hector was killed by Achilles. Their infant son Astyanax was killed by Achilles' son Neoptolemus. Neoptolemus took her as a concubine and Hector's brother, Helenus, as a slave.
With Hector, Andromache had a son named Astyanax. By Neoptolemus, she was the mother of Molossus.
When Neoptolemus died, Andromache married Helenu ...
In Greek mythology, Cresphontes was a son of Aristomaches and brother of Temenus and Aristodemus. He was a great-great-grandson of Heracles and helped lead the fifth and final attack on Mycenae in the Peloponnesus. He became King of Messene.
Cresphontes and his brothers complained to the oracle that its instructions had proved fatal to those who had followed them (the oracle had told Hyllas to attack through the narrow passage when the third fruit was ripe). They received the answer that by the "third fruit" the "third generati ...
In Greek mythology Kālypsō (Greek: 'Καλυψώ', 'I will conceal'), or Calypso, was a sea nymph, daughter of Atlas, who delayed Odysseus on her dark and depressing island (Ogygia) for seven years.
Athena intervened and asked Zeus to order her to let him go. Zeus sent Hermēs and Kalypsō reluctantly agreed. She had promised him immortality if he stayed. He left to be with his beloved Penelope. Kalypsō died in grief. With Odysseus, she was the mother of Nausinous.
Homer, O ...
