Ancyor is presented in the surviving summary tradition as one of the many sons of King Lycaon of Arcadia. In the standard account preserved in mythographic compilations and summarized in modern references, Lycaon and his sons were notorious for impiety; to test them Zeus visited in the guise of a peasant. According to these summaries, Ancyor and his brothers mixed the entrails of a child into the god's meal (an act of sacrilege and implied cannibalism), whereupon Zeus revealed his divinity or reacted with divine wrath and destroyed Lycaon, his sons (including Ancyor), and in some variants the household by a thunderbolt. Primary classical authors such as Apollodorus and Pausanias are cited in the modern summaries for the broader Lycaon narrative, while Ancyor appears as an itemized name in genealogical lists collected by modern compendia and databases.
No physical description of Ancyor is provided in the available source material; he is treated as a named member of Lycaon's brood rather than an individuated figure with distinct iconographic attributes. The surviving references list him among genealogical rosters of Arcadian princes and give no details of dress, stature, or distinguishing marks. Modern summaries and name-lists likewise do not attribute any iconographic tradition or literary portrait to Ancyor.
The sources do not ascribe any supernatural abilities or ongoing agency to Ancyor; he is presented as mortal. His reported behavior is participation in the collective impiety of Lycaon's sons—specifically the act of serving human entrails to a guest who was Zeus in disguise—which results in immediate divine retribution. The Lycaon cycle in broader tradition contains motifs of transformation and divine punishment (e.g., Lycaon's own transformation in certain versions), but no sources provided here attribute powers to Ancyor himself.
*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]Ancyor — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors, 'Ancyor,' Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.wiki
- [2]ToposText: People — Ancyor (Lycaon son list). ToposText entry for Ancyor (son of Lycaon), catalogue of mythic personages.other
- [3]Person: Ancyor (UVic Myth Index). University of Victoria Myth Index, entry 'Ancyor'.other
- [4]Wikidata: Q12872985 — Ancyor. Wikidata entry Q12872985 for Ancyor, son of Lycaon.other
- [5]Lycaon 2 — Greek Mythology Link (name-lists and summaries). Compilation and name-list for Lycaon's offspring; summarizes variants of the Lycaon myth.other