In the surviving compilations and summaries, Glaucus is presented as a son of Sisyphus and as a king whose local attribution differs by tradition: some sources call him Glaucus Potnieus, king of the Boeotian town Potniae, while other local Corinthian accounts make him king of Ephyra/Corinth. He appears in genealogical chains of the heroic age and, in certain Corinthian traditions cited in modern dramatic prefatory material, is named as an ancestor of Bellerophon. He was the subject of a lost tragedy by Aeschylus titled Glaucus Potnieus, fragments of which are preserved in Oxyrhynchus papyri; beyond this notice and laconic summaries, narrative details are fragmentary and most storytelling context is lost.
Classical sources preserved and cited here do not provide a fixed physical portrait or iconography for Glaucus. Literary notices identify him as a king and an accomplished horseman, and some traditions attach the epithet Potnieus (linking him to Potniae). Aside from these social markers (royal dress and horsemanship implied by his role), there are no extant descriptions of his bodily appearance or distinguishing features in the cited materials.
The surviving material attributes to Glaucus skill in horsemanship—his defining myth involves a violent death resulting from equestrian activity—while portraying him as a dynastic ruler whose main function in the tradition is genealogical. The sources do not ascribe any supernatural powers, recurring magical actions, or spirit-like capacities; his significance is that of a mortal king and exemplary figure within heroic genealogies.
Sisyphus
Sisyphus is a legendary mortal king of Ephyra (Corinth) in classical Greek myth, famed for his exceptional craftiness and for twice cheating death; as punishment he is condemned in the underworld to an eternal, futile labor of rolling a great boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down.
Bellerophon
Bellerophon is a heroic figure of ancient Greek tradition, famed as a slayer of monsters and the tamer of Pegasus. Various accounts present him as of mixed divine and mortal lineage and as an exemplar of heroic achievement enabled by divine aid and constrained by social-ritual norms.
*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]Glaucus (son of Sisyphus) — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors, 'Glaucus (son of Sisyphus)', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopediawiki
- [2]Bellerophon (modern Greek lyrical theatre drama) — Archive.org. Bellerophon: A lyrical theatre drama in Modern Greek verse — prefatory notes on genealogical traditionliterary
- [3]LP0077 - III Argonauts - The Library of Apollodorus (Archive.org). Archive recording of introductions to Argonaut lists (contextual mythic genealogies)literary
- [4]LP0087 - XIII Argonauts - Ovid's Metamorphoses (Archive.org). Archive recording of Ovid selections (contextual mythic milieu)literary