Meganeira is not presented as a supernatural origin being but as a personal name in Greek myth. Different traditions attach the name to distinct mortal women: one account makes her daughter of Crocon and Saesara and mother of Apheidas and Elatus by Arcas (thus situating her in Arcadian genealogy); another names her mother, by Diomus, of Alcyoneus of Crisa at the foot of Parnassus (a lineage appearing in a local sacrificial legend); a variant tradition identifies Meganeira with Metanira, wife of King Celeus of Eleusis. Across accounts she functions to link familial lines and local narratives to broader mythic cycles.
No physical description is provided in the cited sources. The references are genealogical and narrative, and make no claim about Meganeira's looks or distinctive physical traits.
The sources attribute no supernatural abilities to Meganeira. Her role in the traditions is familial and narrative—mother, daughter, or wife—serving to connect other named figures (e.g., Arcas, Apheidas, Elatus, Alcyoneus) within mythic genealogies and local stories rather than performing feats or exerting magical influence.
Arcas
Arcas (Ancient Greek Ἀρκάς) is a mythic Greek culture-hero and eponymous founder of Arcadia: a hunter who becomes king, credited with teaching weaving, baking, and agriculture, and whose narrative involves Zeus, Callisto, Lycaon, and apotheosis among the stars.
Apheidas
Apheidas is a personal name attested in ancient Greek mythic genealogies and narratives that refers to multiple distinct figures — including an Arcadian son of Arcas, a centaur at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia, one of Odysseus’ companions slain by the Cyclops Polyphemus, a short-reigning legendary king of Athens, and an eponymous ancestor of a Molossian subgroup. The name appears across epic, genealogical, and local-regional traditions rather than as a single, consistent supernatural class.
Elatus
Elatus (Ancient Greek: Ἔλατος) is a personal name borne by multiple distinct figures in ancient Greek mythic tradition — including an Arcadian founder-eponym, a Lapith prince, a centaur slain in combat with Heracles, and several minor epic personae (charioteer, Trojan ally, suitor). The name functions as an onomastic label across genealogical, foundation, and heroic-age narratives rather than designating a single recurring supernatural class.
Alcyoneus
Alcyoneus (Ancient Greek Alkyoneús, Ἀλκυονεύς) is a colossal monstrous figure in Greek myth, variably presented as one of the Gigantes (Giants) born of Gaia and as a singular enormous hostile herdsman/warrior opposed to Heracles. Noted for prodigious strength and for a peculiar invulnerability tied to his native land, he is defeated when Heracles drags him out of his homeland at Athena's counsel in one influential tradition.
Metanira
Metanira is the mortal queen of Eleusis in Greek myth, wife of King Celeus, who figures in the episode where Demeter, disguised as a nurse, attempts a secret rite to make a royal child immortal. Metanira’s discovery and frightened cry interrupt the goddess’s ritual and thereby alter the outcome, after which Demeter gives the household the gift of agricultural knowledge instead.
Celeus
Celeus (Greek Κελεός, Keleós) is a mythic king of Eleusis in Attica who, as a hospitable mortal, becomes an early recipient of Demeter's favors and teachings; his household events (the attempted immortalization of his son Demophon and the instruction of Triptolemus in agriculture) are foundational to the Eleusinian origin-myths.
*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]Meganeira — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors. "Meganeira." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeirawiki
- [2]Meganeira — Wikidata. Wikidata entry Q3853936: Meganeira. http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3853936wiki