Daughter of Talaus of Argos and wife of the seer Amphiaraus, Eriphyle belongs to a royal Argive lineage (sister to Adrastus in the narrative frame). When Polynices sought allies to attack Thebes, he bribed Eriphyle with the Necklace (or peplos) of Harmonia. By invoking a household pledge or previously arranged authority over domestic disputes, she compelled Amphiaraus to join the expedition of the Seven against Thebes. After Amphiaraus died in the war, their son Alcmaeon killed Eriphyle in revenge; subsequent traditions record that this matricide brought haunting or pursuit by the Erinyes and required oracle guidance and purification for Alcmaeon.
Surviving sources provide no sustained physical portrait of Eriphyle in life beyond her social identity (daughter of Talaus; wife of Amphiaraus; mother of Alcmaeon and Amphilochus). Poetic and epic afterlife scenes portray her among the lamented or punished dead: Homer (Odyssey xi) places her in Hades with other 'misfortunate or malicious women,' and Virgil (Aeneid VI) pictures her in the 'Mourning Fields' where she 'still bears the wounds inflicted by her son' (i.e., visible marks of matricidal violence). Later epic treatment (e.g., Statius) treats the Necklace/peplos as the pivotal object tied to her narrative identity.
Eriphyle's chief agency is social and political: she exercises household authority and decision‑making by invoking an oath or preexisting pledge to compel Amphiaraus to go to war. She accepts Polynices' bribe (the Necklace or peplos of Harmonia), an act narrated as betrayal. After her murder by Alcmaeon, traditions diverge: some depict her as a furious ghost whose haunting drives Alcmaeon mad; others attribute his torment to the Erinyes. These posthumous functions locate her on the interface between human crime and the moral/ritual forces that punish or manifest guilt.
Weaknesses
- conditionMortal human status (primary role is a living woman rather than an autonomous supernatural force)
- otherNarrative containment by ritual and oracle: post‑murder effects are addressed by oracle counsel and purification (i.e., institutional remedies curb the consequences attributed to her)
Wards
- ritualOracle guidance and purification (not a ward against Eriphyle herself)
- otherNo attested apotropaic wards specifically directed at Eriphyle in the cited sources
Erinyes
The three avenging Furies of Greek myth — Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone — who pursued and tormented those guilty of crimes against blood kin, especially murder of family members.
Amphiaraus
Amphiaraus is a legendary Greek seer and chthonic hero, famed as one of the Seven against Thebes. After his death—when the earth opened and swallowed him—he was venerated at the Amphiareion of Oropos as a healing and oracular figure whose sanctuary received petitioners seeking dream-delivered solutions.
*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.
Abandinus
Abandinus is a locally attested Romano‑Celtic theonym known from a single inscribed bronze feather (votive object) dedicated at Godmanchester (the Roman fort Durovigutum) in Cambridgeshire. Scholars interpret him as a local god or male spirit tied to a specific place and possibly associated with a nearby spring or stream; this association is tentative and based on etymological readings of the name.
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.
Abellio
Abellio is a theonym attested in Roman‑period inscriptions from the Comminges area of the Pyrenees and reported as worshipped in the Garonne Valley of ancient Gallia Aquitania. Surviving evidence is limited to a small number of inscriptions; scholars have variously hypothesized solar or arboreal associations and compared the name to forms of Apollo or to Celtic Belenus, but the deity's precise role in local cosmology remains uncertain.
Abnoba
Abnoba is a Gaulish theonym and toponym attested in Roman-era sources and inscriptions: a localized deity associated with woods, springs and the sources of rivers (notably the Danube) and simultaneously the name applied to a mountain or mountain range in the Black Forest/Baar/Odenwald region. Roman altars equate her with Diana, reflecting syncretic cult practice in frontier provinces.
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.
Aborigines (mythology)
A mytho-historical label used in Roman and general reference sources to denote the oldest inhabitants of a region (specifically central Italy in the cited Roman context). The term functions as an identity/category for original human populations rather than as a characterized supernatural being in the provided sources.
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.
Abundantia
Abundantia is the Roman divine personification of abundance and material plenty, used primarily in imperial propaganda and public iconography to signify secure grain supplies, wealth, and the promise of a 'Golden Age' under the emperor. She also appears in later medieval European folklore as Domina Abundia / Dame Habonde, a household benefactor in accounts condemned by ecclesiastical writers.
Community Record
- [1]Eriphyle — Wikipedia article (summary of classical sources). Wikipedia, 'Eriphyle'wiki
- [2]Homer, Odyssey (book xi references to women in Hades). Homer, Odyssey, book xi (classical reference as cited in summaries)literary
- [3]Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI (Mourning Fields depiction). Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI (as summarized in source material)literary
- [4]Apollodorus, Bibliotheke (account of Eriphyle and Alcmaeon). Apollodorus, Bibliotheke iii.4.2 (as cited in summaries)literary
- [5]Pausanias, Description of Greece ix.41.2 (genealogical and local tradition notes). Pausanias, Description of Greece ix.41.2 (as cited in summaries)literary
- [6]Statius, Thebaid (role of the Necklace in epic tradition). Statius, Thebaid (as referenced in summaries)literary