Classical Mythology A to Z

ABYDUS Abydus was a city located on the narrowest part of the Dardanelles, or Hellespont, as it was called in antiquity. This city, founded in the seventh century BCE, was situated on the Asian side of the strait, and as the Greek historian Herodotus noted, it was there that the Persian king Xerxes constructed a bridge spanning the Hellespont so as to facilitate passage for his massive army to Greece. Abydus was notable in Classical mythology as the home of Leander, a young man whose beloved Hero, a priestess of the goddess Aphrodite, lived in Sestus, on the Hellespont’s opposite shore. Leander would swim to meet her at nightfall until their liaison took a tragic turn, his drowning occasioning Hero’s suicide.

(See also Aphrodite, Hellespont [the], Hero, and Leander.)

ACHELOUS RIVER, THE The Achelous River, Modern Greek Akheloos Potamos, is one of the longest rivers (approximately 137 miles, or 220 kilometers) in Greece. Rising in the Pindus Range, it flows into the Ionian Sea and, in antiquity, formed a natural border between the regions of Aetolia and Acarnania in central Greece. This river was of such importance that its deified personification, the river god Achelous, could be invoked as the deity of all rivers, and both the river and its god featured in a number of myths. For example, Achelous was reputedly the father of Castalia, namesake of the Castalian Spring, which was sacred to the Muses; Alcmaeon, son of one of the Seven Against Thebes, purified himself in this river’s waters after killing his mother, Eriphyle, for her repeated treachery; and Hercules wrestled with Achelous in order to win the hand of his last wife, Deianeira. In the course of the wrestling match with Hercules, Achelous was said to have assumed the form of a serpent and then of a bull. The geographer Strabo explains these myths by relating them to physical features of the river itself: its serpentine course and the bull-like roar generated by its rushing waters.

(See also Alcmaeon, Castalian Spring [the], Deianeira, Hercules, Muses [the], and Seven Against Thebes [the].)

ACHERON, THE RIVER Acheron was believed to be one of the main rivers in the Underworld, the geography of which shifted over time. In fact, the name of the river was sometimes used to refer to the Underworld in its entirety. According to Homer, who is the earliest source of information about the location and nature of this river, Acheron lay beyond the river Oceanus, which encircled the world of the living, and by the Grove of Persephone. It was there, at the point where the rivers Phlegethon and Cocytus, a branch of the river Styx, flowed into Acheron, that Odysseus dug a pit from which he conjured the souls of the dead. In Virgil’s Aeneid, by contrast, Acheron is identified with the Styx and is the river over which Charon ferried the souls of the dead.

(See also Aeneas, Charon, Cocytus [the River], Oceanus [god and place], Odysseus, Persephone, Phlegethon [the River], Styx [the River], and Underworld [the].)

ACROPOLIS, THE The Acropolis is a massive, flat-topped, limestone outcropping in the Attic plain that served as Athens’ old citadel and later its religious center. It rises to a height of approximately 492 feet (150 meters) and has a greatest length and width of about 885 feet (270 meters) and 512 feet (156 meters), respectively. The term “acropolis,” which means “high city” or “highest part of the city,” can refer to the upper town of any city in Greece. For purposes of defense, there was a tendency to build settlements on hilltops, often fortified, and when populations expanded, to build in the areas surrounding the original town center. In the case of Athens, whose acropolis is the best known, the upper city was fortified in the Bronze Age (thirteenth century BCE) and, in that period, contained a palatial building. After the destruction of the palace and the close of the Bronze Age, the Acropolis, having become the symbolic center of the city, saw several phases of temple and monument construction, the most ambitious being undertaken by the tyrant Peisistratus in the sixth century BCE and the statesman and general Pericles in the fifth century BCE. Ruins of the monuments now visible on the Acropolis stem from the building program of Pericles, whose aim was to make Athens a showcase and “school” for all of Greece.

As the goddess Athena was the patron goddess of Athens, she figured heavily in the symbolism of the Acropolis monuments. The Parthenon, constructed in the years 447–432 BCE in Athena’s honor and dedicated to her as maiden goddess (Parthenos), contained a monumental (38 feet, or 11.5 meters, tall) cult statue of gold and ivory that depicted Athena as warrior-goddess wearing a helmet, which was decorated with a sphinx, griffins, and Pegasus, and wearing a breastplate, the latter bearing the head of Medusa. With her left hand, the Parthenos statue supported a shield bearing scenes from the legendary battle of the Athenians, led by Theseus, against the Amazons and from the battle of the gods and Giants, and in her right hand held a small winged Nike (personification of victory). On her sandals appeared scenes from the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, and on the statue’s base, the myth of Pandora. At her feet lay curled a serpent, a depiction of the early Athenian king Erechtheus. Myths featured on the statue reappeared on the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon itself, in particular the battles of the Lapiths and Centaurs, the Athenians and Amazons, and the gods and Giants, which, together with scenes from the Trojan War, have been interpreted as symbolizing the victory of the Greeks over the Persians in the Persian Wars (492–449 BCE) and, as a consequence, the god-sanctioned victory of civilized Greece over “the barbarian” writ large. The temple’s pediments, for their part, featured the spectacular birth of Athena from the head of Zeus and her triumph over Poseidon in the contest for patronage of Athens.

Another Athena, made of bronze and allegedly visible to sailors as far away as Sounion (Sunium), stood outside the Parthenon by the formal entrance to the upper Acropolis precinct and represented Athena, again armed, as Promachos, defender of the city and leader of the battle ranks. The Acropolis also housed the temple known as the Erechtheum, which is distinguished by its caryatid porch and was sacred to Athena Polias (guardian of the city) and to the legendary Athenian kings Erechtheus and Cecrops, as well as to Poseidon, the mark of whose trident striking the Acropolis’s rock could be seen in the temple. In close proximity to the Erechtheum stood the olive tree that Athena produced in her contest with Poseidon. The Acropolis also housed the small temple of Athena in the guise of goddess of victory, Nike, and a shrine of Artemis. At the base of the Acropolis lay the theater of Dionysus who, in addition to being the god of wine, was the patron god of the theater.

(See also Amazons [the], Artemis, Athena, Athens, Attica, Cecrops, Centaurs [the], Dionysus, Erechtheus, Giants [the], Gorgons [the], Griffins [the], Lapiths [the], Medusa, Nike, Pandora, Parthenon [the], Pegasus, Poseidon, Sphinx, Theseus, Troy, and Zeus.)

AEAEA Aeaea is the mythical island inhabited by the enchantress goddess Circe, who detained Odysseus for a full year in the course of his ten-year journey home from Troy. According to Homer’s Odyssey, she resided there with a group of nymphs and an entourage of tamed wolves and lions. The hero Jason, accompanied by the barbarian princess Medea, also visited this island in search of Circe, who was Medea’s aunt and from whom they sought purification from the pollution of murder. In antiquity, the island was variously believed to be in the Far East, at the edge of the known world, or in the West, according to the Roman poet Virgil, located somewhere off the Italian coast between Cumae, where the Sibyl resided, and Latium, where the Trojan hero Aeneas and his band of Trojan refugees would eventually settle.

(See also Aeneas, Circe, Cumae, Jason, Latium, Medea, Odysseus, Sibyl of Cumae [the], and Troy.)

AEGEAN SEA, THE The Aegean Sea lies between the coast of Greece and Turkey, extending from the Hellespont to Crete, as defined by the Greek historian Herodotus. Among the legendary etymologies for the sea’s name is derivation from the name of the Athenian king, Aegeus, who plunged to his death in this body of water because he thought his son, Theseus, had perished while attempting to kill the Minotaur.

(See also Aegeus, Athens, Minotaur [the], and Theseus.)

AEGINA The island of Aegina lies in the Saronic Gulf approximately 13 miles (20 kilometers) southwest of Athens. This island, which was settled as early as the fourth millennium BCE, is notable among other things for the imposing remains of its temple of the fertility goddess Aphaea, the sculptural decoration of which depicted scenes from the first and second Trojan wars, both of which had connections with the island’s mythology. According to legend, the island took its name from the nymph Aegina, whom Zeus abducted to the island of Oenone, which he subsequently renamed after her. By Zeus, Aegina became the mother of Aeacus, a later king of the island who would repopulate his plague-decimated island with ant-people. Aeacus, for his part, was the father of Peleus, later Achilles’s father, and Telamon, who would become the father of the Ajax the Great. Achilles and Ajax fought in the second and best known Trojan War, while Telamon helped Hercules in his battle, an earlier Trojan war, against Troy’s king Laomedon.

(See also Achilles, Aeacus, Ajax [the Great], Hercules, Laomedon, Peleus, Telamon, Troy, and Zeus.)

ALBA LONGA The town of Alba Longa was located in the region of Latium on Mount Albanus, modern Monte Cavo, southeast of Rome. According to legend, Alba Longa was founded by Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, who had brought a group of Trojan refugees to Italy after the fall of Troy to the Greeks in the Trojan War. Alba Longa would remain the capital of Latium until the founding of Rome by Romulus and was allegedly destroyed in the middle of the seventh century BCE by the Roman king Tullus Hostilius.

(See also Aeneas, Ascanius, Latium, Rome, Romulus, and Troy.)

ALPHEUS RIVER, THE Alpheus, Modern Greek Alfios, is the largest river in the Peloponnese and one of the largest in Greece. Rising in southern Arcadia and flowing by Olympia into the Ionian Sea, its course is some 70 miles (110 kilometers) in length. The Alpheus is featured in the Labors of Hercules, who diverted its course in order to clean the stables of Augeas, and as in the case of all rivers, the Alpheus was conceived of not only as a place but also as a deity, the river god Alpheus, who was a personification of this river. The god Alpheus was one of the many children of Oceanus and developed a passion for the nymph Arethusa, whom he pursued to Sicily, where she became a spring and their waters mingled.

(See also Alpheus [god], Arcadia, Arethusa, Augeas, Hercules, Oceanus [god], and Sicily.)

ARCADIA Arcadia was a rugged, mountainous region in the central Peloponnese more suited to hunting and animal husbandry than to agriculture. Its boundaries were largely defined by mountains (clockwise from the northeast, by Mount Erymanthus, Mount Cyllene, Mount Aroania, Mount Cyllene, Mount Oligyrtus, Mount Parthenius, the foothills of the Parnon and Taygetos ranges, Mount Nomia, and Mount Elaeum), and it was slightly smaller in area than the modern regional unit of the same name. Arcadia’s most important river, the Alpheus, is also the principal river in the Peloponnese. Other Arcadian bodies of water well known from mythology are Lake Stymphalus, home of the dangerous Stymphalian Birds, and even the Underworld’s river Styx, which made a short aboveground appearance in the region. The Arcadians claimed that they were descendants of the most ancient inhabitants of Greece, the Pelasgians, who were named after Pelasgus, the culture hero responsible for teaching the Arcadians how to build huts and make clothing from animal hides. The namesake of Arcadia was said to be Arcas, a son of Zeus and the bear-woman Callisto. In keeping with the region’s rustic character, Arcadia was considered the home of the god Pan, the birthplace of Hermes, and a favorite hunting ground of the goddess Artemis.

(See also Alpheus River [the], Arcas, Artemis, Callisto, Erymanthus [Mount], Hermes, Pan, Pelasgus, Stymphalus, Styx, and Zeus.)

ARETHUSA Arethusa, Fonte Aretusa in Italian, is a spring on the Sicilian island of Ortygia, which is the historic center of Syracuse. The spring is said to have taken its name from the Peloponnesian nymph Arethusa who fled the amorous pursuit of the river god Alpheus to arrive on Ortygia, where she became a spring. The nymph Arethusa, who personified this spring, appeared as the emblem of Syracuse on coinage issued by that city in antiquity.

(See also Alpheus [god and place], Ortygia, and Sicily.)

ARGOS Argos, which is sited about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the coast, was the principal city in the Argolis region of the eastern Peloponnese and is the site of a modern town of the same name. According to the Greek geographer Strabo (64 BCE–19 CE), the greater part of Argos was situated in a plain, and it had a citadel called Larisa, a moderately fortified hill upon which there was a temple of Jupiter. Argos was reputedly the oldest city in Greece, and its mythology was complicated and confused even in antiquity. By some accounts, Argos was originally inhabited by the ancestors of Pelasgus, namesake of the pre-Greek, aboriginal inhabitants of Greece called Pelasgians and a descendant of the local Argive river god Inachus. As the mythographer Apollodorus writes, Argus, who gave his name to Argos, was a brother of Pelasgus. There are physical remains of a Bronze Age settlement and fortifications at Argos that point to the city’s importance in that period, especially the late fourteenth to thirteenth centuries BCE, but its height of power and influence came later, beginning in the middle of the eighth century BCE through the sixth century BCE, in the so-called Archaic Period, when its territory extended along the eastern coast of the Parnon peninsula to the island of Cythera. While Argos lost territory and power to its neighbor Sparta, it did control the sites of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Lerna, all of which, including Argos, play a significant role in mythology. Among Argos’s most notable legendary figures are Io, Inachus’s daughter, who was transformed into a cow; the selfless and heroic Cleobis and Biton; Danae, whose prison the god Zeus accessed in the form of a golden shower and with her became father of the Gorgon-slayer Perseus; Adrastus, leader of the Seven Against Thebes; and Eurystheus, the king for whom Hercules performed his Labors. Among the gods, it was Hera to whom Argos was most sacred.

(See also Adrastus, Cleobis, Danae, Eurystheus, Gorgons [the], Hera, Hercules, Inachus, Io, Lerna, Mycenae, Pelasgus, Perseus, Seven Against Thebes [the], Sparta, Tiryns, and Zeus.)

ATHENS Athens, which according to legend was named after its patron goddess Athena, was and still is the principal city of the region of Attica. The city lies on a plain that is surrounded by the Aegaleos, Parnes, Pentelicon, and Hymettus mountains. Piraeus, the city’s port, lies on the northeastern edge of the Saronic Gulf, and was connected by a system of long walls (a walled access “corridor” approximately 4 miles (6 kilometers) to the walls of Athens proper, on either side of which ran the Ilissus and Eridanus rivers. Athens is dominated by the Acropolis, the ancient city’s citadel and religious center, which houses Athena’s most important temple, the Parthenon. Already in antiquity, the Acropolis became a museum of sorts to Athenian mythological history, containing structures that alluded to the many roles assumed by the city’s patron goddess as well as to the city’s legendary founders and early kings, among them the earth-born Cecrops, the snake-man Erechtheus, and the hero Theseus, notable for reputedly slaying the Minotaur of Crete, uniting the various settlements in Attica, and repulsing an attack on his city by the Amazons.

(See also Acropolis, Amazons [the], Athena, Attica, Cecrops, Crete, Erechtheus, Ilissus River [the], Minotaur [the], and Theseus.)

ATTICA Attica, modern Attiki, is the territory of Athens. In antiquity, Attica could be defined as the triangular peninsula at the eastern edge of central Greece, being separated from Boeotia to its north by Mount Parnes and Mount Cithaeron and from Megara to the west by Mount Cerata. Modern Attica is somewhat larger, including Megara, the Saronic Islands, the island of Cythera, and a portion of the Peloponnese.

Prior to the ascendancy of Athens, Attica contained a number of separate communities that, according to tradition, were twelve in number at the time of the legendary king Cecrops. These eventually united to form a single Athenian state, which development was attributed to the Athenian hero Theseus. The sanctuary of Eleusis (modern Elefsina), sacred to the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, and the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron (modern Vraona) were located in Attica, the former northwest of Athens’s center and the latter to its southeast. Another mythologically significant site in Attica is Colonus, which was situated just outside the walls of Athens and was the site of the death and heroization of Oedipus as well as of the sacred grove of the Eumenides.

(See also Artemis, Athens, Cecrops, Cithaeron [Mount], Colonus, Demeter, Eleusis, Eumenides [the], Megara [place], Oedipus, Persephone, and Theseus.)

AULIS Aulis was a town on the eastern coast of Boeotia just south of the Euripus channel, which separates the island of Euboea from the Greek mainland. The travel writer Pausanias visited Aulis and intimates that it was named after the daughter of Ogygus, a legendary Boeotian king. He saw there both a temple of Artemis containing two marble statues of the goddess, one holding torches and the other shooting an arrow, and the very plane tree that, at the time of the Trojan War, had become the locus of an important omen: a snake appeared before the Greeks gathered there and, winding its way up the tree’s trunk, proceeded to devour a sparrow’s eight nestlings and the mother sparrow herself. As Homer writes, the Greek seer Calchas interpreted this as a sign that the Greeks would be victorious at Troy, but that the war would last a full nine years, with Troy falling in the tenth. Indeed, Aulis is best known as the gathering point of the Greek forces bound for Troy, and as the site where the Mycenean king Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigeneia was sacrificed at the bidding of Artemis.

(See also Agamemnon, Artemis, Boeotia, Calchas, Euboea, Iphigeneia, and Troy.)

BABYLON The ancient city of Babylon was located on the Euphrates River in what is now southern Iraq. Situated in the Fertile Crescent, Babylon was settled from at least the third millennium BCE and, rising to prominence during the reign of Hammurabi (1792–1750 BCE), famed for his code of laws, the city served during his reign as the political, religious, and cultural center of the ancient Near East. Babylon’s Hanging Gardens, called one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, but not yet found by archaeologists, were reputedly created over 1,000 years later by the king Nebuchadnezzar II (reigned 604–562 BCE), under whom the city again flourished and, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, became the most splendid city in the known world. Nebuchadnezzar’s extensive building campaign also produced (in rebuilt form) the Marduk temple Esagil and the ziggurat Etemanaki that served as the axis connecting heaven and earth and that came to be known as the Tower of Babyl. In the Roman poet Ovid’s tale of the star-crossed Babylonian lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, which is the best-known Classical myth involving the city, the legendary Assyrian queen Semiramis is credited with building Babylon and its remarkable walls.

(See also Pyramus, Semiramis, and Thisbe.)

BOEOTIA Boeotia is a region of central Greece, the modern regional unit (Viotia) of this name being slightly larger than the district was in antiquity. Ancient Boeotia lay northwest of Athens and was divided from the territory of Athens and Megara by Mount Cithaeron and Mount Parnes. It was separated from Phocis on its western border by Mount Helicon, and was further delimited geologically by the Gulf of Corinth to the southwest and the Gulf of Euboea to the northeast. Boeotia was settled as early as the Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age), and enjoyed prominence first in the Bronze Age (the second millennium BCE), being the site of two notable Mycenaean palace centers, one at Orchomenos and the other at Thebes. Of these two cities, it was Thebes that became the most powerful in the region, and for this reason, the city has an extraordinarily rich mythological tradition: for example, it was the city populated by warriors sprung from dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus and home, too, of Oedipus. As regards the region more broadly, Boeotia was the birthplace of Narcissus, who loved no one but himself, and it was the site of Mount Helicon, which was sacred to the Muses.

(See also Cadmus, Cithaeron [Mount], Helicon [Mount], Megara [place], Muses [the], Narcissus, Oedipus, Thebes, and Zeus.)

BOSPHORUS, THE The Bosphorus (or Bosporus) is the narrow strait connecting the Black Sea, called the Euxine Sea in antiquity, with the Sea of Marmara, the ancient Propontis. The Bosphorus and Hellespont separate the European and Asian continents and allow passage for ships between the Mediterranean and Black Sea. According to the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, the Bosphorus took its name from the heroine Io who, having been transformed into a cow as a result of the goddess Hera’s jealousy of her, was driven by a gadfly from Greece to Egypt, the Bosphorus being her point of crossing.

(See also Hellespont [the], Hera, Io, and Zeus.)

CALYDON The city of Calydon was located on the banks of the Evenus River in the ancient region of Aetolia in west-central Greece. According to legend, the city was named after its founder, Calydon, a son of Aetolus, after whom the region of Aetolia is named, and grandson of Endymion, a king of Elis who became the lover of the moon goddess Selene. A later regent of Calydon, Oeneus, failed to make sacrifice to the goddess Artemis, who sent a boar to ravage the land. This resulted in the famous Calydonian Boar hunt, as a consequence of which the hero Meleager met an early death, his mother having thrown the log that constituted the measure of his life into the fire.

(See also Aetolia, Aetolus, Artemis, Endymion, Meleager, Oeneus, and Selene.)

CAPITOLINE HILL, THE The Capitoline Hill is one of the Seven Hills of Rome, and although it is the smallest of these, it was the most important, evolving from the original settlement’s citadel to the later city’s religio-political center. Its northeast summit was known as the Arx, and was the location of the citadel proper, while the southwest summit, which overlooked the Roman Forum, was called the Capitol (Capitolium). According to the Roman historian Livy, the Temple of Jupiter Feretrius was the first temple to have been built on the Capitoline, and it was Romulus himself, Rome’s founder, who was responsible, commissioning the temple in order to commemorate a military victory that he attributed to the assistance of Jupiter. The most important temple on the Capitoline was that on the Capitolium dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno, and Minerva, the so-called Capitoline Triad of deities. It was at this temple that victorious generals celebrating a triumph as well as magistrates assuming office made sacrifice. The temple and the entire hill came to be called “Capitolium,” a name that, according to the Roman historian Livy, was derived from the discovery on the site of an oversize human skull by those constructing the temple; this discovery was interpreted as a sign of the future greatness of Rome, the citadel being destined to become the “head” (caput in Latin) of a world empire. In addition to other shrines and monuments, the Capitoline Hill was the location of the Tarpeian Rock, the precipice that was named after the treacherous Tarpeia and from which traitors were thrown to their deaths. At the foot of the Capitoline in the Forum stood the majestic temple of Saturn, to whom the entire hill had once belonged.

(See also Juno, Jupiter, Minerva, Rome, Romulus, Saturn, and Tarpeia.)

CARTHAGE According to tradition, the city of Carthage was founded in the late ninth century BCE by Phoenician colonists on what is now the Tunisian coast of North Africa. Because of its strategic position, Carthage became a rival to Rome and, inevitably, these two powers clashed in the Punic Wars (264–146 BCE). In the course of the conflict, the Carthaginian general Hannibal marched over the Alps into Italy, much to the horror of Rome. Carthage was annihilated by the Romans in 146 BCE, only to rise again a century later but now firmly under the Roman thumb as capital of the Roman province of Africa.

The Roman rivalry with Carthage was powerfully reflected in the tale of the Phoenician queen Dido, legendary founder of Carthage, who lost her dignity and her life as a consequence of her fateful love affair with the Trojan Aeneas, who was destined to travel to Italy where he would become the ancestor of the Romans. Hannibal, according to the Roman poet Virgil, would be Dido’s avenger.

(See also Aeneas, Dido, Rome, and Troy.)

CASTALIAN SPRING, THE The Castalian Spring on the slopes of Mount Parnassus near Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi reputedly took its name from the spirit that inhabited it, namely the nymph Castalia, a daughter of the river god Achelous. Castalia had leaped into the spring’s waters in order to escape pursuit by the god Apollo. The spring was sacred to the Muses and, for those who imbibed its waters, was thought to be source of musical and poetic inspiration. The travel writer Pausanias describes the spring as both sweet to drink and pleasant to bathe in. Those wishing to consult the oracle at Delphi purified themselves with the spring’s water.

(See also Achelous [god], Apollo, Delphi, Muses [the], and Parnassus [Mount].)

CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS, THE The Caucasus Mountains, a range 684 miles (1,100 kilometers) in length and up to 37 miles (60 kilometers) wide, extend from the Black (Euxine) Sea to the Caspian Sea, forming what was considered a natural barrier between Europe and Asia. As these mountains constituted what the Greeks viewed as the northern edge of the civilized world, the Caucasus region was believed to be the home of a variety of mythological creatures and legendary “barbarian” tribes or peoples such as the Griffins, hybrid creatures that were part bird and part lion; the warlike Amazons; the mysterious Arimaspi; and the Hyperboreans, who enjoyed a felicitous existence. It was in the Caucasus Mountains, too, that the Titan Prometheus was said to have been shackled and his continually regenerating liver eaten by a vulture as punishment for helping humankind.

(See also Amazons [the], Arimaspi [the], Euxine Sea [the], Griffins [the], Hyperboreans [the], Prometheus, and Titans [the].)

CEPHISSUS RIVER, THE There were several rivers by the name of Cephissus in Greece, among them one in Boeotia, two in the territory of Athens, and one in the territory of Argos. The deity personifying the Boeotian Cephissus was said to be the father of the lovely youth Narcissus, who pined away out of love for himself. The deity of the Argive Cephissus, for his part, was reputedly one of the judges in the contest between Hera and Poseidon for patronage of Argos, a contest in which Hera prevailed.

(See also Argos, Athens, Boeotia, Hera, Narcissus, and Poseidon.)

CHIOS The Greek island of Chios lies in the Aegean Sea in relatively close proximity to the coast of Asia Minor (4 miles, or 7 kilometers). There was a tradition that Chios was colonized by Greeks from the island of Euboea in the ninth century BCE. The island had a reputation for being a rich, fertile land and a good source of pine: the Greek historian Thucydides remarks on its prosperity, the island’s inhabitants being the wealthiest people in Greece. It was Oenopion, a legendary king of this island, who was said to have put out the eyes of the enormous Orion for violating, or wooing, his daughter Merope.

(See also Aegean Sea [the], Merope, and Orion.)

CITHAERON, MOUNT Mount Cithaeron (or Kithairon) is a mountain, or, more properly, a mountain range north of the Isthmus of Corinth and separating the territory of Athens (Attica) and Megara from Boeotia. Cithaeron was sacred to a host of deities, among them Zeus, Dionysus, Hera, and Pan, and was the location of numerous myths associated with these deities and others. It was in a cave on Cithaeron that Dionysus was said to have been reared, and the infant Oedipus was left to die on this mountain’s slopes. Oedipus survived, but Actaeon, one of his ancestors, met his gruesome end while hunting on this mountain, as did Pentheus, Dionysus’s cousin.

As for the mountain’s name, the travel writer Pausanias notes that it was named after a legendary Boeotian king who, being quick of wit, helped Zeus when confronted, as he often was, with the jealousy of his wife, Hera. Cithaeron advised the philandering Zeus to place a wooden effigy of his new love interest in a wagon, seeing to it that Hera would discover it. Pulling the veil from its head, Hera was relieved to discover a statue, and not a woman, in her husband’s possession.

(See also Actaeon, Dionysus, Hera, Megara [place], Oedipus, Pan, Pentheus, and Zeus.)

CLASHING ROCKS, THE “Clashing Rocks” is a translation of the Greek “Symplegades,” name of the great rock formations that were believed to lie to either side of the northern end of the Bosphorus and that would quickly move together and clash, crushing ships between them.

(See also Bosphorus [the] and Symplegades [the].)

CNOSSUS Cnossus (or Knossos), site of the famed palace of King Minos, is located in a fertile valley just southeast of the modern city of Heraklion on the island of Crete. The site itself was occupied as early as 7000 BCE (the Neolithic Period), and the expansive, multilevel palace, which was subsequently repeatedly modified until its destruction around 1300 BCE, saw its initial phase of construction in the early second millennium BCE. The first systematic excavations of the palace were conducted in the early twentieth century by Sir Arthur Evans and published in his multivolume work The Palace of Minos at Knossos. The efforts of Evans and his successors established Cnossus as the political, religious, and artistic center of the so-called Minoan civilization of Crete. In mythology, the palace at Cnossus was not only King Minos’s seat of power but also the location of the labyrinth that Minos compelled the Greek craftsman Daedalus to construct as a prison for the Minotaur, Minos’s wife Pasiphae’s monstrous child by a bull for which she had developed an unquenchable passion.

(See also Crete, Daedalus, Minos, Minotaur [the], and Pasiphae.)

COCYTUS Cocytus was one of the rivers of the Underworld, its name traditionally derived from the ancient Greek kokyein “to wail,” making it the River of Wailing. According to Homer, the Cocytus was branch of the river Styx and, together with the river Phlegethon, fed the river Acheron. The Roman poet Virgil adds details that heighten the horror of the hero Aeneas’s descent into the Underworld: in the Underworld’s antechamber, Aeneas and the Sibyl who guides him come to a path leading to the river Acheron and a point where the Acheron’s tributaries converge in a vast, seething whirlpool that belches forth the thick sludge carried by the dark waters of Cocytus.

(See also Acheron River [the], Aeneas, Phlegethon [the River], Sibyl, and Underworld [the].)

COLCHIS Colchis was a fertile, natural-resource-rich region that lay at the eastern end of the Black (or Euxine) Sea and was hemmed in by the Greater and Lesser Caucasus ranges. Settlements existed in the region as early as the third millennium BCE, and the Greeks sent colonists there in the sixth century BCE. For the Greeks, Colchis was a mysterious, barbarian land, and in mythology it was known as the destination of young Phrixus, who escaped becoming the victim of human sacrifice on the back of a golden-fleeced ram. At that time, Colchis was the kingdom of King Aeetes, a son of the god Helios and father of the sorceress Medea. It was to Aeetes’s kingdom that the Thessalian hero Jason traveled in order to retrieve the Golden Fleece that, after the ram was sacrificed, hung in a sanctuary of the god Ares.

(See also Aeetes, Ares, Euxine Sea [the], Hera, Jason, Medea, Phrixus, and Thessaly.)

COLONUS Colonus, taking its name from the Greek for a small hill (kolonos), was a region that formed part of the territory of the city of Athens and lay just north of the city in close proximity to the famous Academy, the location of Plato’s school of philosophy. Colonus was the birthplace of the tragedian Sophocles, and it was there that the blind Oedipus, accompanied by his daughter Antigone, stumbled upon a grove sacred to the Eumenides and ultimately met his mysterious end, becoming thereafter honored in cult by the Athenians as their protector and benefactor.

(See also Antigone, Athens, Eumenides [the], and Oedipus.)

CORINTH The ancient city of Corinth was located at the western end of the isthmus separating the Peloponnese from Boeotia and is about 2 miles (3 kilometers) removed from modern Corinth. This city, which possessed an imposing citadel on the heights of Acrocorinth, was strategically positioned and important, being located at a point where roads from the north led into the Peloponnese and ships passed from east to west, and vice versa, through the isthmus.

The mythological history of Corinth is a complicated one, varying in its details from author to author. According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Sisyphus, son of Aeolus, founded Corinth, which was formerly called Ephyra (or Ephyraea). The travel writer Pausanias adds that Corinth received its first name, Ephyra, from a daughter of Oceanus who had lived in that place, but that at a later point, the city was renamed Corinthus after a descendant of the sun god Helios.

As regards the more extended mythology of Corinth, Sisyphus was said to have married Merope, daughter of Atlas, with her having a son named Glaucus, who would become father to the hero Bellerophon, slayer of the monstrous Chimaera. In order to accomplish this feat, Bellerophon needed to tame the winged horse Pegasus, who with his hoof created the Corinthian spring of Pirene. Corinth also had a strong connection to the myth of Oedipus, as it was the Corinthian king Polybus and his wife, Merope, who adopted the infant Oedipus when his birth parents left him to die. Herself a descendant of Helios, the sorceress Medea likewise had ties to Corinth and brought the hero Jason there, only to have him seek an alliance with the Corinthian king Creon through marriage to his daughter Creusa (or Glauce, as she was also known).

(See also Aeolus, Atlas, Bellerophon, Chimaera [the], Creon, Creusa, Glauce, Glaucus [hero], Helios, Jason, Medea, Merope [nymph and heroine], Oceanus [god], Oedipus, Pegasus, Pirene, Polybus, and Sisyphus.)

CRETE Crete, which has a total area of some 3,219 square miles (8,336 square kilometers) is the largest of the Greek islands and lies approximately 99 miles (160 kilometers) south of the Greek mainland. The island’s terrain is varied and mountainous, and its strategic location in the Mediterranean on trade routes from Egypt, Cyprus, and Asia Minor was a major factor in the island’s rise to a position of cultural and political prominence in the Bronze Age (roughly 3000–1150 BCE). The Bronze Age civilization on Crete, which was called Minoan after the legendary Cretan king Minos, flourished, with a number of palace centers being built on the island around 2000 BCE at Phaistos, Malia, Zakro, and Cnossus, which is the best known of these. It was Cnossus that was reputedly the center of Minos’s power, and there that the famed craftsman Daedalus constructed the labyrinth that housed the dreaded Minotaur. The island’s mountains Ida and Dicte, meanwhile, both were credited with being the birthplace of the god Zeus.

(See also Cnossus, Daedalus, Ida [Mount], Minos, Minotaur, and Zeus.)

CUMAE Cumae was a city located on Italy’s Campanian coast. Founded in the middle of the eighth century BCE, it was the first Greek colony to have been established on the Italian mainland. In mythology, Cumae featured principally as the site of a mountain cave that housed the prophetic Sibyl, who led the Trojan hero Aeneas to the Underworld. The Sibyl’s cave was located in close proximity to the deep, sulfurous Lake Avernus, which served as a gateway to the depths of Hades.

(See also Aeneas, Hades [place], Sibyl of Cumae [the], Troy, and Underworld [the].)

CYNTHUS, MOUNT Cynthus is a mountain on the island of Delos. A temple sacred to the goddess Hera was located at the mountain’s foot, and a sanctuary of Zeus and Athena on its peak. Since, according to legend, Cynthus was the birthplace of Apollo and his sister Artemis, they both could be referred to as “Cynthian” (“of Mount Cynthus”).

(See also Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Cynthia, Delos, Hera, and Zeus.)

CYPRUS The island of Cyprus, now the Republic of Cyprus, is the third-largest island in the Mediterranean, having a surface area of 3,572 square miles (9,251 square kilometers), and is located at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, south of Turkey, west of Syria and Lebanon, northwest of Israel and Palestine, and north of Egypt. As a consequence of its strategic position, bridging East and West, Cyprus saw an influx of settlers from Anatolia, Greece, and Phoenicia, among others, and was absorbed into the empires of Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Macedonia (under Alexander the Great), and Rome. In mythology, Cyprus is notable for its connection with Aphrodite, whose most important sanctuary was located on Cyprus at Paphos, reputedly the place where she first stepped on land after her watery birth. Aphrodite’s beloved Adonis was the son of Myrrha, princess of Cyprus, by her own father, the Cypriote king Cinyras. Pygmalion, another king of Cyprus, fell in love with his statue, who became animate through the powers of Aphrodite. It is because of her connection with Cyprus that Aphrodite was called “Cyprian.”

(See also Adonis, Aphrodite, Cinyras, Myrrha, Paphos [place], Pygmalion, and Rome.)

CYRENE The town of Cyrene was founded by Greek colonists from Thera in 61 BCE on the eastern coast of Libya near the Cyre spring, which was deemed sacred to Apollo. A tradition arose according to which the city was named after Cyrene, granddaughter of the river god Peneus, who was abducted by Apollo and who at that place gave birth to the god’s son Aristaeus, bringer of the agricultural arts to humans.

The region surrounding Cyrene, which was rich in grain, olive oil, and silphium, a plant used as a spice, perfume, and medicine, was called “Cyrenaica” and became part of both the Roman and Byzantine empires.

(See also Apollo, Aristaeus, Cyrene [heroine], and Peneus [god].)

CYTHERA Cythera (or Kythira) is a Greek island that lies off the southeastern tip of the Peloponnese, between mainland Greece and Crete. Having good harbors and strategically located for trade, this island was coveted by Argos, Sparta, Athens, and Rome, becoming in succession part of the territory of all of these. In myth, Cythera is principally known for its association with the goddess Aphrodite, since Cythera, which was the location of an important sanctuary to the goddess, claimed to be the place where she first stepped ashore after her birth from the sea, a distinction claimed also by the island of Cyprus.

(See also Aphrodite, Argos, Athens, Cyprus, Rome, and Sparta.)

DELOS The now uninhabited small island of Delos, having a surface area of just 1.3 square miles (3.4 square kilometers), lies in the Aegean Sea at the center of the circle of islands called the Cyclades. In antiquity, the island was one of the most sacred places in the Greek world, as it was considered to be the birthplace of the god Apollo and, by most accounts, also of his twin sister, Artemis. There was a tradition according to which Delos was earlier known as Asteria and/or Ortygia (“Quail”) after the second-generation Titan goddess Asteria, who was pursued by Zeus and, in order to escape him, plunged into the sea in the form of a quail, thereafter becoming this island. It was reputedly the case that Delos was ungrounded and floated in the sea until Asteria’s sister, Leto, arrived there to give birth to the divine twins Apollo and Artemis. While Hera, Zeus, and Athena all had identifiable cult sites on the island, religious activities here centered on Leto, Artemis, and, in particular, Apollo.

In terms of its political history, the island is best known for having become the center and treasury of the defensive confederacy of Greek city states organized in the wake of the Persian Wars, the so-called Delian League (formed 478 BCE). The Athenians, under the statesman and general Pericles, would move the Delian treasury to Athens and transform the confederacy into their empire, which actions occasioned the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) and the political demise of Athens.

(See also Apollo, Artemis, Asteria, Athena, Athens, Hera, Leto, Ortygia, Titans [the], and Zeus.)

DELPHI As the most important sanctuary and oracle of the god Apollo, Delphi was one of the most sacred places in ancient Greece. Dramatically situated, Delphi is located on the lower part of the steep southwestern slope of Mount Parnassus in the region of ancient Phocis, central Greece. The sanctuary looks out over the Pleistos Gorge at the Kirphis Mountains lying opposite it. The Gulf of Corinth, which is only 6 miles (10 kilometers) distant, is also visible from the site. Habitation on the site has been traced to the Bronze Age (fifteenth century BCE), and the active presence of a cult of Apollo there is attested by dedications dating to the eighth century BCE. The roughly rectangular sacred area of the sanctuary itself, the temenos, is enclosed by a wall inside of which were located an array of monuments and small, temple-like treasuries erected by the various city-states of Greece; a theater; the so-called Rock of the Sibyl, perched upon which the first priestess of Apollo was said to have chanted her prophecies; and the Temple of Apollo, to which the Sacred Way wound up the slope. The oracle itself was located inside the Temple of Apollo, where the Pythia, Apollo’s priestess, was seated on a tripod over a fissure from which gas vapors rose, causing the ecstatic “inspiration” or trance that marked her possession by the god. Pilgrims traveled to Delphi from Greece and beyond to put questions to Apollo via the Pythia, his mouthpiece. The Pythia’s responses were uttered in verse and were interpreted by priests. The oracle’s responses were famously misunderstood, as in the case of Oedipus.

The site of Delphi was steeped in lore: the oracle reputedly lay at the center of the world, its location having been chosen by Zeus, who released an eagle from each end of the earth, and the place where their flight paths converged was Delphi. As the world’s center, it was consequently the world’s omphalos, Greek for “navel,” and a sculpted, oversized omphalos resided in the god’s temple. According to legend, the oracle belonged first to the goddess Gaia and was guarded by a serpent, the Python (or Pytho), which Apollo slew. The Python gave its name to the site, which was called Pytho before Delphi, and Apollo’s priestess was consequently called the Pythia. According to the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo, the name of Delphi is to be derived from the word for dolphin in Greek, delphis, since the god assumed the shape of a dolphin to board the ship of a certain crew of men from Crete whom he would make his priests. As for Apollo’s temple, there were said to have been six iterations of it, the first being made of laurel branches from the Vale of Tempe; the second of feathers and wax; the third of bronze, being the handiwork of Hephaestus; the fourth of stone, designed by Trophonius and Agamedes; the fifth a stone replacement erected upon the destruction of the fourth in 548 BCE; and the sixth (completed 320 BCE), again of stone, replacing the damaged fifth. This last temple endured until it was destroyed in 390 CE on the orders of the Roman emperor Theodosius I, who wished thereby to eradicate this potent Pagan threat to Christianity.

(See also Apollo, Crete, Gaia, Oedipus, Parnassus [Mount], Pytho, Tempe [Vale of], and Zeus.)

DODONA Dodona was the site of the most famous oracle of Zeus. The sanctuary of Dodona, which contained this oldest of the Greek oracles, was located in the ancient region of Epirus, part of which now belongs to Greece and part to Albania. At Dodona, oracular responses issuing from Zeus were reputedly delivered by the fluttering of the leaves of the god’s sacred oak tree and by the flight or cooing of doves settling in the tree’s branches. The Greek historian Herodotus recounts two alternative accounts of the oracle’s founding and the role of the doves. He heard at Dodona that two black doves had flown from Thebes in Egypt, one settling at Dodona in an oak where it assumed a human voice, and one settling in Libya, future site of the oracle of Zeus Ammon. By contrast, Herodotus continues, Theban priests maintained that the Phoenicians absconded with two Theban priestesses, one being taken to Libya and the other to Greece, each later founding a place of divination at their new home; it was because the women spoke a language unintelligible to the people among whom they settled that they were called “doves.”

(See also Ammon and Zeus.)

ELEUSIS Eleusis (Modern Greek Elefsina), which formed part of the territory of Athens (Attica), was about 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) west of the city of Athens and situated on the road from Athens to the Isthmus to Corinth on a low hill close to the sea. Eleusis was famous primarily as the site of a sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone, in whose honor the famed Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated, attracting initiates from throughout the Greek world. Tradition underscored the deep links of Eleusis with Demeter. The Eleusinian king Celeus, who had taken Demeter in when she was roaming the earth in search of Persephone, reputedly was responsible both for building the sanctuary of the goddess in his kingdom and for instituting the Mysteries. The travel writer Pausanias records a tradition to the effect that Eleusis was named after the hero Eleusis, a son of the god Hermes and of Daeira, a daughter of Oceanus. By some accounts, according to the mythographer Apollodorus, Eleusis was the father of Triptolemus, a culture hero (bringer of civilization and culture) closely associated with Demeter, but a variant tradition casts Triptolemus, who sowed grain over all the earth from a winged chariot given him by Demeter, as a son of the Eleusinian king Celeus.

(See also Athens, Attica, Celeus, Corinth, Demeter, Hermes, Oceanus [god], Persephone, and Triptolemus.)

ELYSIAN FIELDS, THE (See Elysium.)

ELYSIUM The conception of Elysium (or Elysian Fields) changed over time, beginning as a paradisiacal land inhabited by heroes as an alternative to entering the House of Hades (in other words, to dying) and evolving into a region of the Underworld reserved for those who had led noble, virtuous lives. Elysium is first described by Homer in his Odyssey, where it is prophesied that the hero Menelaus will not die but, in the course of time, will be conveyed by the gods to the Elysian Fields that lie at the ends of the earth, at the western edge of the river Oceanus. This Elysium is a land free from snow and winter’s cold, cooled by breezes from Oceanus’s streams and by the west wind, Boreas. In this land, where life is easy for mortals, Rhadamanthus presides. Homer’s view of Elysium coincided and became conflated with beliefs in a region called the Isles of the Blessed, which were likewise believed to lie at the edges of the earth. According to the Greek poet Pindar, the Isles (or Island) of the Blessed are flooded with the light of the sun, and those who resided there lived free of toil. This land is cooled with breezes and graced with drifts of golden flowers and groves of trees. The inhabitants, who wear wreaths and garlands, include the heroes Peleus, Cadmus, and Achilles. These earlier traditions of Elysium were fused and transformed by Virgil, who, in his epic the Aeneid, offers the most developed picture of the Underworld. There Elysium is a region of the Underworld, and it is gated, lying apart from the dank and terrifying region of Tartarus, which is reserved for sinners. Virgil’s Elysium is a region bathed in roseate light, with its own sun and stars. Its residents engage in sport or sing, dance, and feast, moving freely throughout the region’s shady groves and sun-drenched, grassy, well-watered meadows. It is in Elysium that Aeneas, ancestor of the Romans, meets his father, Anchises, who had died on the journey from Troy to Italy.

(See also Achilles, Aeneas, Anchises, Boreas, Cadmus, Hades [god and place], Menelaus, Oceanus, Odysseus, Peleus, Rhadamanthus, Rome, Troy, and Underworld [the].)

EREBUS Erebus became synonymous with the Underworld, but originally connoted darkness in the earth’s depths, as in the Greek poet Hesiod’s account of the origins of the world, where Erebus is represented in quasi-personified form as the father, with Nyx (Night), of Hemera (Day) and Aether (Upper Air).

(See also Underworld [the].)

ERIDANUS RIVER, THE The Eridanus River features significantly in the myth of Phaethon, the son of Apollo (Helios) who drove his father’s sun-chariot so erratically that he threatened the very existence of the earth and the heaven’s constellations. Phaethon plunged to his death in the Eridanus River, and it was on this river’s banks that his sisters, the Heliades, were transformed into poplar trees that, in eternal grief, shed tears of amber. The hero Hercules also came to the Eridanus and asked the god of that river for guidance when seeking the Garden of the Hesperides.

For all its legendary renown, the Eridanus and its location were controversial even in antiquity, some authors doubting its very existence, among them the geographer Strabo and the historian Herodotus. Key in the attempted identification of the river was its reputedly being a source of amber; for that reason the river Po was identified as a likely candidate, but even the Granicus, Ebro, Rhine, Nile, and the fabled world-river Oceanus were posited as the Eridanus of myth.

(See also Apollo, Heliades [the], Helios, Hercules, Hesperides [the], Oceanus [place], and Phaethon.)