Crotopus appears in the legendary past of Argive tradition as the eighth king of Argos. In the principal account summarized in the sources, his daughter Psamathe bears a child by Apollo; Crotopus condemns or executes Psamathe, and the exposed child (named Linus in the tradition) is later killed by the king's sheepdogs. Apollo punishes Argos with a plague. An oracle directs the veneration of the mother and child and prescribes remedies; in Conon's version the oracle further requires Crotopus to banish himself and found a city in the Megarid called Tripodiscium (Tripodiskion). Variant accounts (e.g., Pausanias, Statius) substitute a hero, Coroebus, who slays a monster called Poena that had been snatching babies, and in those versions the penance of founding the tripod city falls on the hero rather than the king.
The supplied sources give no physical or iconographic description of Crotopus. He is represented as a dynastic/royal figure in king-lists (identified as son of Agenor in some summaries and as successor in Argive lineage). One summary notes a reign-length of twenty-one years placed within mythic chronological markers (contemporaneous with accounts of Phaethon and Deucalion in some sources), but no bodily attributes are recorded in the provided materials.
No supernatural powers are attributed to Crotopus in the provided sources; he is portrayed as a human king exercising judicial and familial authority. His notable actions are punitive: he condemns his daughter Psamathe and thus sets in motion divine retaliation by Apollo. In at least one account he accepts oracle-imposed expiation by leaving Argos and founding Tripodiscium, acting as a penitent political agent rather than a supernatural actor.
Weaknesses
- conditionmortality
- othersubject to oracle-imposed penance and communal accountability
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]Crotopus — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors, 'Crotopus', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopediawiki
- [2]Crotopus — Wikidata. Wikidata entry Q1132777other
- [3]Who's Who in Classical Mythology (archive). Who's Who in Classical Mythology (archive summary listing)other
- [4]Butterfly Taxa Discovery Via Genomic Analysis (archive). Archive item referencing a modern taxonomic allusion to Crotopusother