Aleus is presented as son of Apheidas and grandson of Arcas in the genealogical accounts; he succeeds his father as king of Tegea and, after the death of Aepytus, is said to become king of all Arcadia with Tegea as his capital. He is credited as the eponymous founder of the city Alea and as the builder/founder of the sanctuary and cult epithet Athena Alea. His immediate family includes sons (commonly named Lycurgus, Amphidamas, Cepheus) and daughters (notably Auge; some sources also name Alcidice) and his descendants and kin are woven into heroic cycles.
Surviving summaries and sources do not provide a physical description of Aleus himself. Literary and travel accounts note pictorial programs at the temple of Athena Alea (for example scenes featuring Ancaeus on the gable described in Pausanias), but the cited materials do not record any explicit iconographic or bodily depiction of Aleus.
Aleus is not attributed supernatural powers in the cited materials; his role is political, familial, and cultic. He acts as king and founder, establishing or credited with establishing the sanctuary/epithet Athena Alea at Tegea, arranging priestly status for his daughter, making dynastic decisions intended to secure succession, and enforcing measures in response to a Delphic oracle warning concerning his family. His agency is that of a mortal ruler whose actions drive narrative consequences within the heroic-age myths.
Weaknesses
- conditionmortal vulnerability / subject to fate and oracle
- otherfamily curse / fulfillment of Delphic prophecy (oracle that a grandson would kill his sons)
Wards
None recorded.
Heracles
Heracles is the greatest hero of Greek myth whose career bridges mortal hero-cult and full divinization. Celebrated for his Twelve Labours, martial prowess, and travels between the mortal world, the underworld, and Olympus, he functioned as a civic patron, ancestor of royal lines (the Heracleidae), and object of cult that treated him both as chthonic hero and as god.
Argonauts
A band of human heroes in Greek myth who sailed aboard the ship Argo under Jason to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece. Their identity is defined by membership in the celebrated voyage and by shared heroic lineages; membership lists and details vary by source.
*Péh₂usōn (reconstructed)
Péh₂usōn is a hypothetical Proto‑Indo‑European pastoral guardian reconstructed by comparative scholars from parallels in Greek and Vedic traditions. Proposed as a Graeco‑Aryan ancestor‑figure, the reconstruction describes a protector of flocks, roads, and travellers rather than an attested historical cultic personality.
Aba (disambiguation / name-form)
Aba is a polyvalent name-form attested across many unrelated contexts (place names, personal names, animal names, and brief mythological listings). The provided sources do not support a single, coherent supernatural entity called "Aba" and offer no descriptive or ritual material for such a being.
Abarbarea
Abarbarea is a name attested in classical Greek and Roman sources for freshwater nymphs (naiads). The name appears for at least two individual mythic figures — a naiad wife of Bucolion and a naiad counted among ancestors of the Tyrians — and Hesychius records plural forms that may indicate the name was also used as a class-name (Abarbareai / Abarbalaiai).
Abas
Abas (Ancient Greek: Ἄβας, gen.: Ἄβαντος) is not a single mythic being but a recurring personal name borne by multiple mortals and minor mythic figures in Greek epic and genealogical traditions — kings, founders, seers, warriors, attendants, a centaur, and a youth transformed by a goddess. The name is glossed in the sources as 'guileless' or 'good-hearted' and appears across Argive, Theban, Trojan, Euboean, and other local cycles.
Abderus
Abderus (Ancient Greek: Ἄβδηρος, romanized Ábdēros) is a mortal heroic figure in Greek myth closely associated with Heracles, remembered as the youth left in charge of the Mares of Diomedes who was killed by them. He functions as an eponymous local/divine-hero ancestor for the city of Abdera and received funerary commemoration and athletic agones at his tomb.
Abomination of Desolation
An apocalyptic prophetic phrase originating in the Book of Daniel designating a profaning thing or act that renders the Jerusalem Temple cult desolate; later reused in the Synoptic Gospels as an eschatological sign prompting urgent flight. The term denotes ritual/cultic impurity (Hebrew shiqquts) and is variously interpreted as pagan offerings or altar, a foreign cult statue, or (in some New Testament readings) an acting agent.
Absyrtus
Absyrtus (Ancient Greek: Ἄψυρτος) is a Colchian prince in the Greek Argonautic cycle, son of King Aeëtes and brother or half-brother of Medea. He appears in variant traditions either as a companion taken by Medea during her flight with Jason and murdered/dismembered to delay pursuit, or as a pursuer sent by Aeëtes who is overtaken and slain by Jason; his death functions as a key narrative device in the escape from Colchis.
Acacallis
Acacallis (Ancient Greek: Ἀκακαλλίς; also Acalle) is a mythological princess of Crete in Greek tradition, daughter of King Minos and Pasiphae. She functions primarily as a dynastic and etiological figure: in varying accounts she is mother, by gods such as Hermes (Mercury) or Apollo, of eponymous or founder-figures like Cydon (founder of Cydonia), Miletus, or Lydon/ Lydus.
Acacus
Acacus (Ancient Greek: Ἄκακος) is, in Arcadian Greek tradition, a mortal eponymous founder-king of Acacesium and is remembered as the foster-father who reared the infant Hermes (Mercury) in that local tradition. He is presented in genealogies as a son of Lycaon and functions as a local ancestral/onomastic figure rather than a supernatural spirit.
Academus
Academus (Greek: Akádemos / Hekádemos) is an Attic hero-eponym tied to a sacred grove (Akademeia) on the Cephissus near Athens. In myth he revealed where Helen was hidden to the Dioskouroi, an act said to have saved the city, and the place bearing his name became a long-lived sacred precinct, later the site of Plato's Academy.
Acamas
Acamas (Ancient Greek: Ἀκάμας) is a personal name recurrent in ancient Greek narrative traditions applied to multiple human characters (warriors, princes, suitors), once to a Cyclops, and once as a hound's name. Rather than a single supernatural entity, bearers of the name appear episodically across the Trojan War, Theseid, and Theban cycles as mortal actors whose deeds intersect with gods and fate.
Acantha
Acantha (Ancient Greek: Ἀκάνθα, 'thorn') is a late or secondary mythological figure known from modern retellings as a nymph transformed into the acanthus plant. The tale that she scratched Apollo and was changed into a spiny-leaved plant is not attested in surviving classical corpora and appears to be a modern compilation or invention rather than a firmly documented ancient myth.
Community Record
- [1]Aleus — Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 'Aleus'wiki
- [2]Wikidata entry Q1536527. Wikidata: Aleus (Q1536527)other
- [3]The Museum of the Goddess Athena — Tegea. Pausanias and temple program summaries as cited on 'Museum of the Goddess Athena' site (Tegea: Athena Alea)other
- [4]Aleus in Greek Mythology - Greek Legends and Myths. GreekLegendsAndMyths.com, 'Aleus in Greek Mythology'folk
- [5]Telephos (summary). Telephos summary page (accounts of Auge and Telephus variants)other
- [6]Cepheus (son of Aleus) — Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 'Cepheus (son of Aleus)'wiki
- [7]Sophocles, Aleadae: a Reconstruction (article). Scholarly reconstruction discussing the Aleadae traditions and variantsacademic