According to Roman literary and local tradition, Catillus the Arcadian, described as a son of Amphiaraus, together with his sons (one of whom also bears the name Catillus) and his sons Coras and Tiburtus, escaped the mass slaughter at Thebes. They traveled to the Aniene plateau, expelled the inhabitants reported in the tradition, and founded a city called Tibur (modern Tivoli), named in honor of Tiburtus. The family and their eponymous toponym appear in Roman epic contexts linking Greek-Arcadian mythic genealogies to Latin local origins.
Classical sources present Catillus as a mortal legendary founder and warrior; the supplied materials provide no physical description or supernatural iconography for either Catillus the elder or his sons.
The tradition attributes human-scale deeds to Catillus and his sons: flight from Thebes, migration and settlement of the Aniene plateau, forcible removal of existing inhabitants according to the legend, founding the city of Tibur, and, in later epic narrative (Virgil's Aeneid, Book VII), the younger Catillus and his brother Coras leaving Tibur to fight in Latium as allies of Turnus against Aeneas. No supernatural powers are recorded in the provided sources.
Abandinus
Abandinus is a locally attested Romano‑Celtic theonym known from a single inscribed bronze feather (votive object) dedicated at Godmanchester (the Roman fort Durovigutum) in Cambridgeshire. Scholars interpret him as a local god or male spirit tied to a specific place and possibly associated with a nearby spring or stream; this association is tentative and based on etymological readings of the name.
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.
Abellio
Abellio is a theonym attested in Roman‑period inscriptions from the Comminges area of the Pyrenees and reported as worshipped in the Garonne Valley of ancient Gallia Aquitania. Surviving evidence is limited to a small number of inscriptions; scholars have variously hypothesized solar or arboreal associations and compared the name to forms of Apollo or to Celtic Belenus, but the deity's precise role in local cosmology remains uncertain.
Abnoba
Abnoba is a Gaulish theonym and toponym attested in Roman-era sources and inscriptions: a localized deity associated with woods, springs and the sources of rivers (notably the Danube) and simultaneously the name applied to a mountain or mountain range in the Black Forest/Baar/Odenwald region. Roman altars equate her with Diana, reflecting syncretic cult practice in frontier provinces.
Aborigines (mythology)
A mytho-historical label used in Roman and general reference sources to denote the oldest inhabitants of a region (specifically central Italy in the cited Roman context). The term functions as an identity/category for original human populations rather than as a characterized supernatural being in the provided sources.
Abundantia
Abundantia is the Roman divine personification of abundance and material plenty, used primarily in imperial propaganda and public iconography to signify secure grain supplies, wealth, and the promise of a 'Golden Age' under the emperor. She also appears in later medieval European folklore as Domina Abundia / Dame Habonde, a household benefactor in accounts condemned by ecclesiastical writers.
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.
Acerbas
Acerbas (also recorded as Sychaeus, Sycharbas, Zacherbas) is a figure in classical Greco‑Roman accounts of Phoenician/Tyrian tradition: a wealthy priest of Melqart (the Tyrian Hercules) whose concealed riches and murder by King Pygmalion precipitate Elissa/Dido's flight from Tyre and the foundation of Carthage. He is presented as a human priestly figure of high social rank rather than as a supernatural being.
Acestes
Acestes is a Roman/Greek founder-hero associated with the Sicilian city Segesta (Aegesta/Acesta). Presented as son of a Trojan woman and, in one tradition, the Sicilian river-god Crinisus (in animal form), he hospitably receives Aeneas and the Trojans, participates in the funeral games in Virgil's Aeneid (Book V), and functions as an eponymous culture-founder and local ruler.
Achaemenides
Achaemenides is a literary mortal figure introduced into Virgil's Aeneid as a marooned member of Odysseus' crew whom Aeneas rescues on Sicily. In Roman epic he functions as a chance survivor and eyewitness who helps link the Homeric tradition to the Trojan refugees and to illustrate Aeneas' magnanimity.
Community Record
- [1]Catillus — Wikipedia. Wikipedia, entry 'Catillus'wiki
- [2]Virgil, Aeneid 7.672 (as cited in notes). Classical citation noted in compiled sources: Virgil (Aeneid 7.672) records the name 'Cātillus' and places the younger Catillus and Coras as allies of Turnus in Book VII.literary
- [3]Horace, Odes (as cited in notes). Classical citation noted in compiled sources: Horace (Odes 18.2) records the name as 'Cātilus'.literary
- [4]Silius Italicus and Statius (as cited in notes). Classical citation noted in compiled sources: Silius Italicus and Statius use the form 'Cātillus' and 'Catillus' respectively in their works referring to the founder tradition.literary
- [5]Alchetron — Tivoli, Lazio (Tibur tradition). Local/topographic traditions connecting Tibur (Tivoli) and mons Catilli to the Catillus legend as compiled in secondary references.other