Demoptolemus appears within the narrative fabric of the Odyssey as one of the named men who courted Penelope during Odysseus’s absence. The primary identification of Demoptolemus comes from Homeric listings of the suitors present in Odysseus’s household; later summaries and compilations (as reflected in modern secondary sources) record him among the suitors who came from Dulichium. He functions in the epic as a member of the collective antagonists whose occupation of the house culminates in the hall massacre recounted in Book XXII of the Odyssey.
Primary Homeric passages and the cited translations provide no individualized physical description of Demoptolemus beyond his presence among the armed suitors in Odysseus’s hall. He is named as a combatant in the scene of the slaughter but is not given distinct clothing, stature, or other distinguishing corporeal traits in the provided sources.
Demoptolemus’s recorded abilities are those of an ordinary Homeric mortal: he participates in the suitors’ courtship of Penelope, resides within Odysseus’s household, and takes part as an armed combatant during the battle in the palace hall. Multiple translations and summaries state that Odysseus killed Demoptolemus in the hall (reported in translations as slain by Odysseus, in some renderings by spear). No supernatural powers or special abilities are attributed to him in the cited material.
Weaknesses
- conditionmortal vulnerability (killed in combat by Odysseus)
Wards
None recorded.
Amphimedon
In Homer's Odyssey, Amphimedon (Ancient Greek: Ἀμφιμέδων) is an Ithacan, son of Melaneus, one of the suitors of Penelope who fights in Odysseus's hall, is killed during the slaughter of the suitors, and (within the Homeric narrative) later appears among the dead in the Underworld to recount the events of that slaughter. The same name is also used in modern biological taxonomy for a genus of sponges; that referent is distinct.
Agelaus
Agelaus (Ancient Greek: Ἀγέλαος) is not a single supernatural being but a personal name borne by multiple mortal figures in Greek myth, epic, and local history. Bearers include a herdsman who raised the exposed infant Paris, several minor warriors in the Trojan cycle, mythic princes (e.g., sons of Oeneus, Stymphalus, Temenus, and in some lists a son of Heracles), a suitor of Penelope, and a historical official of Naupactus in the Aetolian League.
*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]Demoptolemus - Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 'Demoptolemus' entrywiki
- [2]The Odyssey, Book XXII (Translation). Homer, Odyssey, Book XXII (translated); online at The Internet Classics Archiveliterary
- [3]The Odyssey, Book XXII (alternate online text). Homer, Odyssey, Book XXII (online text)literary
- [4]Does your name belong in the Odyssey? (name-meaning discussion). Colin Gorrie, discussion of Homeric name-meaning; notes gloss 'Demoptolemus' as 'Peoples-War'other
- [5]Demoptolemus | Facts, Information, and Mythology. Pantheon.org summary of Demoptolemus as a suitor killed in Odysseus's hallother
- [6]The Courtship of Penelope - by Daniel Lavery - The Chatner. Secondary commentary identifying named suitors and narrative contextother