Echepolus appears within the narrative world of Homeric epic as a Trojan warrior who takes part in the fighting when the truce is broken in Book IV of the Iliad. The sources do not provide a mythic birth-story or cultic origin for him; rather, he is introduced as one of the many named combatants whose brief fates are narrated by the poet to punctuate the violence of the battlefield. Modern summary sources sometimes cite a patronymic, identifying him as son of Thalysios (son of Lord Thalysius), but primary-text citation for that patronymic is not present in the provided extracts and alternative, conflicting brief attributions (e.g., a passing line in an ancillary collection) make the parentage uncertain.
The surviving attestations give only battle-related imagery rather than a full portrait. Homeric phrasing describing his death emphasizes martial panoply: he wears a helmet with a high (horsehair) crest which is shattered when struck, and a bronze weapon drives through the helmet into his head. Other sources call him a 'Trojan captain' or 'valiant Trojan,' but no extended physical description or individualizing features are provided beyond the helmet, crest, and the fatal wound.
No supernatural powers or extraordinary abilities are attributed to Echepolus in the sources. His 'abilities' are those of a mortal Homeric warrior: he stands on the front line, leads or commands in battle (referred to as a captain in some summaries), and, like other named fighters in the epic, his presence and death serve dramatic and ethical functions in the poem. The tradition records him as being slain by Antilochus; subsequent combat around his corpse (attempts to strip armor) also feature in related passages.
Weaknesses
- conditionmortal vulnerability
Wards
None recorded.
Antilochus
Antilochus is a princely warrior of Pylos in the Homeric epic tradition, son of Nestor and a youthful Achaean fighter at Troy. He is famed for his swiftness, beauty, charioteering skill, close companionship with Achilles, role in the funeral games for Patroclus, and for dying in later epic-cycle accounts while saving his father.
Elephenor
Elephenor (Ancient Greek: Ἐλεφήνωρ) is a mortal king of the Abantes of Euboea in Greek mythic-historical tradition, known as a captain of a contingent to the Trojan War, a purifying figure in one homicide episode, and as the subject of variant local foundation or exile traditions after the war.
*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 Iliad, Book IV (translation/excerpts). Homer, Iliad, Book IV (passage describing Antilochus killing a Trojan captain and the detail of the helmet-crushing blow).literary
- [2]Iliad Book 4 - Summary. Summary and notes on Book IV noting Antilochus as the slayer of Echepolus and describing battlefield events.literary
- [3]Echepolus | Facts, Information, and Mythology (Pantheon). Modern summary entry noting Echepolus as a Trojan killed by Antilochus; places him among named Homeric warriors.other
- [4]Elephenor (Wikipedia). Entry referencing the episode in which Elephenor is killed by Agenor while attempting to drag off the body of Echepolus, linking that event to Echepolus' corpse.wiki
- [5]Wikidata: Q3718502 (Echepolus). Wikidata entry listing Echepolus and giving a patronymic in some summaries ('son of Thalysios'); used as a modern attestation of the name and brief identifications.other
- [6]Polytropy commentary on Chapman’s Homer—Iliad Book IV. Commentary and notes on the Book IV combat scenes referencing named victims and killers such as Antilochus and the Trojan captain Echepolus.other
- [7]12 Deaths from The Iliad, as Translated by Emily Wilson. Modern selection of Homeric death-scenes that includes the passage describing the helmet-piercing blow and identifies the combatants involved.other
- [8]Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (ancillary collection). Contains a brief, ambiguous line in collected materials that elsewhere in the research notes is cited as giving an alternative or conflicting patronymic (an uncertain attestation).literary