In classical summaries Cilix is presented as a son of King Agenor and Telephassa (or Argiope) and brother to Cadmus, Phoenix, and Europa. According to the mythic genealogy, when Europa was carried off by Zeus Agenor ordered his sons to search for her and not return until she was found. The search failed; Cilix settled in Asia Minor and the land was said to take his name, becoming Cilicia. Genealogical variants appear in the sources: his mother is named either Telephassa or Argiope in different accounts, and later summaries link him into wider founding genealogies through descendants such as Thebe; some traditions also involve figures like Thasus with uncertain relationship to Cilix.
Ancient sources summarized in the provided materials give no detailed physical description of Cilix as a person; classical treatments present him as a mortal prince and founder without distinctive supernatural attributes. A much later literary retelling (Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales) imaginatively depicts Cilix in a long purple robe wearing a jeweled crown and appearing on a balcony each noontide — a nineteenth‑century fictional elaboration and not a feature of classical mythic descriptions.
In the classical-mythic material Cilix is characterized by human, social, and migratory behavior rather than supernatural powers: he participates in the familial search for Europa, fails to find her, and then settles in Asia Minor, his settlement providing an etiological explanation for the toponym Cilicia. Later literary treatments add psychological motivations (regret, tormented doubts about the search) but do not attribute magic or otherworldly faculties to him. The primary "ability" attributed in the tradition is genealogical: serving as an eponymic founder whose name explains a region.
Cadmus
Cadmus is a legendary Phoenician prince and culture-hero in Greek myth, credited with founding Thebes, slaying a local dragon/guardian, marrying Harmonia, and—by some ancient sources—bringing a Phoenician script to Greece.
Thebe
Thebe is a feminine proper name in Greek myth attached to multiple mythic women (including a nymph daughter of the river-god Asopus) and toponyms derived from them; the name also appears in modern usages (e.g., a moon of Jupiter). The supplied material does not present a single coherent supernatural being with stable powers, appearance, or rituals.
*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]Cilix - Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors, 'Cilix', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopediawiki
- [2]Wikidata entry for Cilix. Wikidata Q1110304other
- [3]Large Impact Structures on Europa (Cilix). NASA / Galileo mission imagery caption archived at Internet Archive: 'The Cilix impact structure is situated at about 180 degrees longitude near Europa's equator. The crater is 20 kilometers (12 miles) across, with rims as high as 500 meters (545 yards).'other
- [4]Topography around Europa's Cilix crater. Archive image and caption related to Europa's Cilix impact structureother
- [5]Tanglewood Tales (retelling of Cilix by Nathaniel Hawthorne). Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tanglewood Tales (19th-century literary retelling of classical myths)literary