Amphimachus is presented in the epic-catalogue tradition as an Epeian leader from Elis, son of Cteatus (son of Actor). In the assembled Homeric forces he is one of four local captains whose companies of ships join the pan-Hellenic expedition against Troy; later mytho-historical summaries of Elis place him within local genealogies and legendary histories of the region. His martial role and family connections define his place in the tradition rather than any supernatural origin.
Homeric passages give only battlefield sartorial detail: Amphimachus is described wearing a bronze helm fitted to the temples and heavy armour which clanged when he fell after being struck by Hector. No extended physical portrait (height, hair, facial features) or distinctive iconography is supplied in the cited sources; the emphasis is on his panoply and his being cast down amid the din of battle.
Sources do not ascribe supernatural powers. Amphimachus's capacities are those of an aristocratic war-leader: he commands men and ships (the tradition records he brought ships to Troy — the catalogue tradition assigns ten ships per leader in his division and some summaries note he brought forty ships overall), fights on the frontline in Homeric combat, and is vulnerable to mortal death in the mêlée. His notability derives from leadership, lineage, and participation in the Trojan War.
Weaknesses
- conditionmortal vulnerability
Wards
None recorded.
Diores
Diores (Ancient Greek: Διώρης, Diṓrēs) is not a single supernatural entity but a recurring personal name borne by several distinct mortal figures in Greek and Roman epic and mythographic tradition. The name appears attached to at least four human characters — fathers, leaders, princes, and husbands — across Homeric, mythographic, and Virgilian narratives.
Polyxenus
Polyxenus (Greek Πολύξενος / Πολύξεινος) is a personal name attested across multiple mortal figures in ancient Greek mythic-historical tradition — notably early priests of Demeter, kings of Elis, a suitor of Helen who fought at Troy, and an alternate name for a son of Jason and Medea. The bearers are placed within legendary genealogies and cultic topography rather than the category of supernatural beings.
Hector
Hector is a Trojan prince and the foremost warrior of Troy in the Homeric Iliad, celebrated as a devoted husband, father, son, and defender of his city. Portrayed as exemplary in duty and martial skill, his mortal fate is shaped by combat, family obligations, and the interventions of gods.
*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]Amphimachus I of Elis (Wikipedia). Wikipedia, 'Amphimachus I of Elis'.wiki
- [2]The Kingdom of Elis (Legendary Passages) - Archive LP0052. Archive.org, 'The Kingdom of Elis' (Legendary Passages summary).other
- [3]Homer, Iliad (catalogue and battle passages). Homer, Iliad — Catalogue of Ships and battlefield narrative describing Amphimachus son of Cteatus being struck by Hector; armour clanging at his fall (as cited in research notes).literary