According to Pausanias, when Lebadus came from Athens the inhabitants of the settlement on the adjacent height went down into the low ground and the city was named Lebadeia after him; Pausanias adds that the locals did not know his father but knew his wife's name, Laonice. In later mythographic summaries and genealogical lists Lebadus is sometimes grouped with Eleuther (Eleutherios) and in variant traditions is presented as connected to Lycaon-family material — for example a summary tradition reports that Eleuther and Lebadus were the only sons of Lycaon who did not share in an abomination and fled to Boeotia. These genealogical placements are variant and not attested by Pausanias, who records only the local foundation-eponym tradition.
Extant sources provide no physical description of Lebadus. He appears in the literary record solely as a named ancestral/founder figure mentioned in foundation and genealogical contexts rather than in descriptive narratives, so no details of appearance are preserved in the cited materials.
The sources attribute no supernatural powers to Lebadus. Descriptively, he is said to have come from Athens and to have effected or been associated with a local migration from a height into the plain that resulted in the settlement being named after him; in some later variants he (with Eleuther) is said to have fled an abominable act connected to Lycaon-family legends. Beyond these civic and narrative roles, no feats or magical capacities are recorded in the provided sources.
Eleuther
Eleuther (Ancient Greek: Ἐλευθήρ) is a personal name borne by several distinct figures in Greek myth — including a Curete, an Arcadian son of Lycaon, a possible variant of the divine epithet Eleutherios (linked to Dionysus), and a son of Apollo credited with musical distinction and with founding a local Dionysian cult. The attestations present Eleuther as eponym, cult-founder, performer, and minor mythic personage rather than as a single ontological class of being.
Mideia (Midea)
Mideia (Ancient Greek Μιδεία / Μιδέα) is a name appearing in ancient Greek tradition applied to several mytho-geographic and genealogical figures: notably a nymph described as mother of Aspledon by Poseidon and multiple eponymous or mortal women whose names are attached to towns or genealogies. The name also denotes ancient place-names in Boeotia and Argolis preserved in Homeric and later geographical accounts.
*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]Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.39.2 (Boetia: Lebadeia). Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.39.2; trans. and text accessed via Theoi Classical Texts Libraryliterary
- [2]Pausanias — Description of Greece, Book 9 (UVic mirror). Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 9 (UVic mirror of classical text)literary
- [3]Wikidata entry: Q106616114 (Lebadus). Wikidata: Lebadus described as 'mythical founder of ancient Lebadeia in Greece'wiki
- [4]Lycaon 2 — Greek Mythology Link (summary of variant genealogies). Maicar.com summary of Lycaon traditions citing variant placements of Eleuther and Lebadus in genealogical listsother
- [5]The Roman and Greek Questions: The Greek Questions (summary traditions). Roman and Greek Questions — Greek Questions (contains later mythographic summaries referencing Eleuther and Lebadus as a variant tradition)literary
- [6]Mideia (Boeotia) — background place-name. Wikipedia entry on Mideia (Boeotia) providing context for the older place-name transformed by the Lebadus traditionwiki