Ctimene appears in Homeric genealogies as a daughter of Laertes and Anticlea, reared in the household of Laertes on Ithaca. In the Odyssey she is said to have been raised alongside the swineherd Eumaeus and later sent in marriage to Same (receiving a splendid dowry), forming part of the household and political alliances reflected in epic-age marriage practices (Odyssey 15.361–379).
Homeric and related lexicographic sources give no physical description of Ctimene. The surviving references record social actions — being raised in Laertes's household, reared alongside the servant Eumaeus, and being sent in marriage to Same — rather than bodily traits. Her presence in the texts is thus defined by household context and familial position rather than appearance.
Sources portray Ctimene as a mortal human and an Ithacan princess with no divine or magical attributes. Her recorded behaviors are social and domestic: she was raised in her father's oikos, treated almost as an equal to the servant Eumaeus while in the household, and was married to Eurylochus, a union described in the sources primarily in terms of alliance and dowry rather than personal agency or supernatural action.
Odysseus
Odysseus is a legendary mortal king of Ithaca from ancient Greek epic tradition, best known as the protagonist of Homer's Odyssey. Celebrated for his intellect, craft (mêtis), and long nostos (homecoming), he functions as an exemplar of heroic cunning rather than a supernatural being.
La Llorona
The Weeping Woman of Mexican folklore — the ghost of a mother who drowned her children and now wanders rivers and lakes, weeping for them and taking other children she finds at night.
Eumaeus
Eumaeus is a mortal character of the Homeric Odyssey: the loyal swineherd and household attendant of Odysseus, raised in his master's household and notable for his hospitality, fidelity, and practical skill in animal husbandry during Odysseus's return to Ithaca.
*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]The Odyssey, Book 15 (translation). Homer, Odyssey 15.361–379 (Internet Classics Archive translation).literary
- [2]Ctimene — Wikipedia. Wikimedia contributors, 'Ctimene', Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctimenewiki
- [3]Ctimene — Wikidata. Wikidata entry Q5191780other
- [4]Ctimene | Facts, Information, and Mythology (Pantheon). Pantheon.org entry on Ctimeneother
- [5]Ctimene (moth) — Wikipedia. Wikimedia contributors, 'Ctimene (moth)', Wikipediawiki