Sidero is a mortal in Greek folklore, from Elis (Greece). Sidero (Ancient Greek: Σιδηρώ, 'the Iron One') is a mythological mortal woman in Greek tradition, known as the second wife of King Salmoneus of Elis and the cruel stepmother of Tyro. Her murder atop the altar of Hera by Tyro's sons Pelias and Neleus is narrated as a transgression against a sacred precinct that engendered Hera's lasting hostility in the mythic account.
Sidero appears in the cycle of myths surrounding Salmoneus, Tyro, and her sons Pelias and Neleus. Presented as the second wife of King Salmoneus of Elis, she is said to have mistreated her stepdaughter Tyro. When Tyro's twin sons reached adulthood they sought revenge; Sidero fled into the district of the goddess Hera but was killed by Pelias on the altar to Hera. Classical summaries (as preserved in mythographic compilations) link this sacrilegious killing on a cultic structure to the subsequent enmity of Hera toward those involved.
Ancient sources and the modern summaries consulted do not provide any physical description of Sidero. No details of age, clothing, iconography, or distinctive features are recorded in the cited materials; she is known in the tradition only by name, familial role, and the actions attributed to her within the narrative.
Sidero is a mortal figure in the mythic narrative and is not described with any supernatural abilities in the available sources. Her role and significance derive from interpersonal behavior—specifically, her mistreatment of her stepdaughter Tyro—and from the ritual-religious consequences that follow her violent death within a sacred precinct rather than from any magical power.
Pelias
Pelias (Πελίας) is a mortal king of Iolcus in Greek myth who usurped power in Thessaly, sent Jason to fetch the Golden Fleece, and was ultimately killed through Medea's deception when his daughters dismembered him in an attempted false rejuvenation.
Neleus
Neleus (Greek Νηλεύς) is a mythological heroic-age king of Pylos in Greek tradition, son of Poseidon and Tyro in most accounts, husband of Chloris, and father of Nestor and other sons. He appears in genealogical and foundation narratives and is notably killed by Heracles after refusing to purify him for the murder of his family.
Tyro
Tyro (Ancient Greek: Τυρώ, Tyrō) is a mortal woman in Greek myth, an Elean princess who becomes Queen of Iolcus. Her unions with mortal and divine partners and the actions she takes (including exposure of infants and, in some accounts, killing children to avert prophecy) make her a key genealogical figure in the ancestry of heroes such as Jason.
Salmoneus
Salmoneus (Greek Σαλμωνεύς) is a mythic early king and eponymous founder of Salmonia/Salmonē in Elis. In classical tradition he is remembered as an impious ruler who imitated Zeus’s thunder and lightning, ordered worship to himself, and was struck down by Zeus (later Roman tradition places him in Tartarus).
Hera
Hera is an ancient Greek goddess, queen of the Olympian gods, and a principal tutelary deity of marriage, women, and family. She functions in myth and cult as protector of lawful marriage and women in childbirth, a civic tutelary figure (notably of Argos), and a sometimes-jealous consort of Zeus with archaic fertility associations in certain local rites.
*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]Sidero. Wikipedia: Siderowiki
- [2]Sidero - in ancient sources. Attalus: name index entry for Sideroother