Apemosyne is presented in the sources as a daughter of King Catreus of Crete, placing her in the royal house descended from Minos. According to the genealogical narrative preserved in summaries of Apollodorus, an oracle that one of Catreus's children would kill him led to secrecy and flight: Apemosyne and her brother Althaemenes left Crete for Rhodes. While living on Rhodes, the god Hermes fell in love with her. The narrative recounts that Hermes first failed to overtake her because she ran faster, then resorted to trickery at a spring by laying freshly flayed hides across her path so that she would slip; Hermes then seized and raped her. When Apemosyne told Althaemenes what had happened, he disbelieved or became enraged and kicked her to death. Modern commentators such as Arthur Bernard Cook have offered interpretive readings relating the tale to Cretan–Rhodian relations and possible etiological explanations, but those are scholarly interpretations rather than elements recorded in the primary mythic summaries.
Surviving literary accounts provide no physical description of Apemosyne. The sources refer to her by social role and actions—daughter of Catreus, sister of Althaemenes, fugitive to Rhodes, and the object of Hermes's pursuit—but do not record bodily features, clothing, or distinguishing marks. Thus no physical attributes beyond these narrative roles are preserved in the cited materials.
The sources attribute to Apemosyne an exceptional mortal swiftness: in the account preserved from Apollodorus she ran faster than Hermes and initially escaped his pursuit. This episode is framed as a narrative detail (her superior speed in flight) rather than as a supernatural power. Her primary behaviours in the tale are flight from Crete with her brother in response to their father's oracle, resistance to Hermes's advances, reporting the assault to Althaemenes, and subsequently being killed by him.
Weaknesses
- othervulnerability to Hermes' trick of laid skinned hides at the spring
- conditionvulnerability to familial violence and disbelief (killed by her brother)
Wards
None recorded.
*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]Apemosyne — Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 'Apemosyne' (summary drawing on Apollodorus and other sources)wiki
- [2]Apemosyne — Wikidata. Wikidata entry for Apemosyneother
- [3]Europa (LP0020) — archival reproduction of classical genealogical material. Archive reproduction containing passages of classical genealogical narratives including material on the house of Minos and descendantsliterary
- [4]Europa (LP0020) — Joel's Album reproduction. Archive reproduction containing passages of classical genealogical narratives including material on the house of Minos and descendantsliterary