In the Theban mythic-historical sequence preserved by classical mythographers, Polydorus is one of the children born to Cadmus and Harmonia. Sources such as Apollodorus list him among their sons and daughters and place him in the sequence of Theban rulers: he succeeds earlier kings (in some synopses his reign follows the troubled reign of Pentheus) and is the father of Labdacus, thereby forming the immediate dynastic link to Laius and the later Theban tragedies. The tradition presents him as a human member of the Cadmean household whose genealogical position explains subsequent regencies and successions (for example the interventions of Nycteus and Lycus when heirs are minors) rather than as a divine or magical founder figure (Apollodorus; Pausanias; modern summaries).
Classical sources and the provided summaries supply no physical or iconographic description of Polydorus. He is treated in surviving texts as a named genealogical person and king in lists and narrative summaries rather than as a described physical presence; thus extant accounts represent him through lineage and office (son of Cadmus and Harmonia, husband of Nycteis, father of Labdacus) rather than through bodily features or attributes (Apollodorus; Pausanias; modern summary).
No supernatural powers or distinctive magical abilities are attributed to Polydorus in the sources cited. His role is political and genealogical: he marries Nycteis (daughter of Nycteus), fathers Labdacus, and occupies a place in the Theban king-list after earlier generations such as Pentheus and before his son Labdacus. Where later narratives describe regency or usurpation, Polydorus’ absence (by death or removal from power) explains why figures like Nycteus and Lycus administer Thebes on behalf of underage heirs—his importance is structural within dynastic history rather than active or miraculous (Apollodorus; Pausanias; modern summary).
Cadmus
Cadmus is a legendary Phoenician prince and culture-hero in Greek myth, credited with founding Thebes, slaying a local dragon/guardian, marrying Harmonia, and—by some ancient sources—bringing a Phoenician script to Greece.
Harmonia
Harmonia is the ancient Greek goddess who personifies harmony, concord, and the principle of fitting or joining that underwrites civic and cosmic order. She appears in myth chiefly as the wife of Cadmus, mother of important Theban figures, and as the legendary source or eponym of a famed cursed heirloom (the Necklace or peplos) whose misfortunes affect later generations.
Lycus
Lycus (Ancient Greek: Λύκος, lit. 'wolf') is not a single supernatural being but an ancient Greek personal name and toponym applied to multiple mythological human figures (notably regents and rulers in Theban cycles) and to several rivers across the classical world. The extant sources present Lycus primarily as mortal mythic actors or as geographic names rather than as an independent class of spirit or creature.
Amphion
Amphion is a figure (or set of figures sharing a name) in Greek myth best known as the son of Zeus and Antiope, twin brother of Zethus, husband of Niobe, and famed in some traditions for using music to raise the walls of Thebes. The name also appears for several minor mythic characters (an Argonaut, an Achaean at Troy, a centaur), indicating multiple onomastic uses in the Greek corpus.
*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]Polydorus (son of Cadmus) — Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 'Polydorus (son of Cadmus)' (summary)wiki
- [2]Apollodorus, The Library (summary references to Cadmus' children and king-lists). Apollodorus, summary as provided in research notes (Source 3)literary
- [3]Pausanias, Description of Greece — summaries of Theban topography and king-list. Pausanias, Description of Greece (summarized in research notes; Source 2 and 4)literary