In the theogonic networks of Greek myth Apate is a primordial personification of deceit. The provided sources identify her as a daughter of Nyx (Night) and Erebus (Darkness), placing her among the older elemental personifications rather than the later Olympian order. The material also notes that variant theogonies exist in the tradition (minor/orphic variants are attested in broader scholarship), and that Roman mythographers equate her with Fraus and pair her with a masculine counterpart, Dolus.
Classical sources provide limited physical description. In Nonnus' Dionysiaca (as summarized in the provided material) Apate is characterized chiefly by a Kydonian girdle or cincture about her hips that is described poetically as containing the mechanisms of human guile — trickery, cajoling seduction, shifting guile, and perjury. This girdle functions as a symbolic/magical attribute in the mythic episode; no sustained anthropomorphic portrait (facial features, coloration, stature) is given in the supplied texts.
Attested powers are literary and symbolic: Apate embodies deception and, in Nonnus' account, provides a magical sash that effects deceitful outcomes — the girdle is described as able to instigate trickery, seduction, perjury, and to influence mortal and divine minds. She is an agent who can be petitioned by other gods (Hera seeks and receives her girdle) and in later philosophical reception (Proclus, Plotinus as cited in summaries) the concept of Apate is used to explain illusion and the role of deceptive appearance in desire and sensory cognition. The supplied sources do not record routine manifestations, possessions, or a catalogue of additional magical abilities beyond the mythic transfer of the girdle and the conceptual role in philosophical texts.
*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]Apate — Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 'Apate' (entry summarizing parentage, Nonnus passage, opposites, Roman equivalent, and philosophical reception).wiki
- [2]Apate — Wikidata. Wikidata entry for Apate (identifier and short data record).other
- [3]Nonnus, Dionysiaca (summary as cited on Wikipedia). Summarized passage from Nonnus' Dionysiaca quoted in the Wikipedia entry describing Apate's Kydonian cincture and the episode in which Hera obtains the girdle.literary
- [4]Gescinska, A.: Hijos de Ápate. Breve Filosofía de la Verdad, la Posverdad y la Mentira. Modern usage of the name Apate in a 2023 Spanish-language book title (archival reference provided in research notes).other
- [5]CIA Reading Room (archival item listed in research notes). Archival item listed among provided materials (not a classical source on the deity; retained as provided).other