The name Damastor appears across multiple narrative registers rather than designating a single continuous being. As a mythic figure, Damastor is listed among the Giants who fight the Olympian gods in the Gigantomachy; secondary summaries record that he seized and hurled a rock into which the fellow Giant Pallas had been turned (modern summaries of the Gigantomachy motif). Separately, Damastor is used as a personal or patronymic name in the Homeric epics: fathers and progenitors (e.g., father of Peristhenes, ancestor lines connected to Dictys and Polydectes) and as the eponymous father of suitors of Penelope (the Damastorides). The Greek etymology Δαμάστωρ literally yields 'tamer' or 'subduer,' a meaning cited in modern reference works and consistent with the name's martial and paternal associations in epic contexts.
Giant Damastor is attested only as a participant in the Gigantomachy; secondary summaries describe him performing the giant-scale action of seizing and throwing a petrified Giant (Pallas) as a missile, implying the colossal, combative form typical of Giants in Greek myth, though no detailed physical portrait survives in the provided sources. The mortal bearers called Damastor (or Damastorides for their sons) appear in Homeric narrative as ordinary human men: fathers, warriors, and suitors. Homeric passages depict the sons of Damastor (for example Agelaus, called 'bold') acting and dying as regular epic-age mortals; no distinctive supernatural physiognomy is attributed to them in the cited texts.
For the Giant named Damastor the only attested action in the accessible summaries is martial: he seized and hurled a massive petrified body/stone (Pallas) at the gods during the Gigantomachy, an act that implies great physical strength consistent with Giant combat but nothing beyond that specific behavior is recorded in the provided materials. The human Damastor figures possess no supernatural powers in the cited epic passages; their agency is social and martial within the epic world (they father children, their sons lead or speak among the suitors, and they fight and can be killed in battle during Odysseus' retribution).
Weaknesses
- otherNo unique vulnerabilities recorded in provided sources
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]Damastor - Wikipedia. Wikipedia, entry 'Damastor' (accessed via provided notes)wiki
- [2]Melangyna damastor - Wikipedia (name etymology). Wikipedia species entry cited in research notes noting modern use of the namewiki
- [3]The Odyssey by Homer, Book XXII (multiple online editions). Homer, Odyssey, Book XXII (online translation excerpts cited in notes describing the slaughter of the suitors and the death of sons of Damastor)literary
- [4]The Odyssey, Book XXII (alternate online edition). Homer, Odyssey, Book XXII (corroborating online text cited in notes)literary
- [5]Goddess Athena — Odyssey 15 commentary (Agelaus reference). Site commentary quoting Odyssey passages identifying Agelaus son of Damastor and his speech-act among the suitorsother
- [6]ToposText — Damastor entries. ToposText indexing of mythic personages (used in research notes to collate occurrences)other
- [7]Was King Polydectes the last petrified by Medusa? — Mythology Stack Exchange (discussion of Gigantomachy motif). StackExchange answer summarizing the motif that Damastor grabbed the petrified Pallas and threw it at the gods (secondary retelling cited in notes)other