Epsilon; the uppercase form of the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet; lowercase: ε.
The ancient Greeks did not have lowercase letters in their alphabet; the lowercase letters were not invented until the ninth century CE, i.e. about eleven hundred years ago.
Letters of the Greek alphabet were also used as numerals; the letter epsilon represented the number 5 and was written as a simple ε or as epsilon followed by an acute accent, ε'.
Gaia; the ancient Greek goddess of Earth; she was the second Immortal, after Chaos, to come into existence.
Gaia has a page in the Immortals section of this site ... click on her image to view that page.
The warriors who grew from the teeth of the dragon that Kadmos (Cadmus) killed when he founded the city of Thebes.
After Kadmos killed the dragon, Athene (Athena) knocked the teeth from the dead dragon's head and gave half to Kadmos and the other half to King Aietes (Aeetes) of Kolchis (Colchis); Kadmos planted the teeth and, when the Earth-Born warriors arose from the ground, he threw a stone in their midst and let them fight amongst themselves; the five warriors who survived the fight were called the Sparti and became the founding families of the city of Thebes.
When the Argonauts went to Kolchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece, Jason was required to plant the dragon's teeth that Aietes possessed and fight the Earth-Born warriors as they emerged from the ground; Jason used the same trick as Kadmos and tossed a stone into the group of Earth-Born warriors and let them fight amongst themselves until their numbers were sufficiently reduced so that he could kill the remainder.
Argonautika, book 3, lines 413-15, 1052-1060 and 1278-1407
The aboriginal descendants of Poseidon (lord of the Sea) who lived on the peninsula of Kyzikos (Cyzicus) known as Mount of Bears, Bear Mountain or Bear Island.
The Earth-Born had six arms: two sprouting from their shoulders and four more jutting from their sides; described as insolent and fierce, they shared Bear Island with the Doliones.
Argonautika, book 1, lines 936-946
A name of Apollon used in Sparta when sacrifices were dedicated to him on the seventh of each month; ebdomas = the number seven.
A son of Aktor (Actor) and the husband of Polymele.
When the maiden, Polymele, became the mother of Eudoros by Hermes, Echekles recognized the fact that Eudoros was the child of an Immortal; he married Polymele and raised the boy as if he were his own.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 16, line 189
Iliad (Fagles), book 16, line 224
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 16, line 222
A Trojan soldier; the son of Agenor; Echeklos was killed by Achilles with a sword thrust through the head.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 20, line 474
Iliad (Fagles), book 20, line 536
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 20, line 548
A Trojan soldier killed by Patroklos (Patroclus).
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 16, line 694
Iliad (Fagles), book 16, line 812
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 16, line 796
One of the sons of Nestor and Eurydike (Eurydice); he and his brother, Stratios, participated in an animal sacrifice when Telemachos (Telemachus) visited the home of Nestor.
Odyssey (Lattimore and Loeb), book 3, lines 413 and 439
Odyssey (Fagles), book 3, lines 462 and 490
Odyssey (Fitzgerald), book 3, lines 447 and 474
The second Agiadai king of the city of Sparta who ruled circa 900-870 BCE.
Sparta traditionally had two kings who ruled jointly; one king was required to be a descendant of King Agis I and the other was required to be a descendant of King Eurypon (respectively known as the Agiadai and the Eurypontidai).
Very little is known about Echestratos and the dates given for his rule are extrapolations and should be used only as approximations.
The daughter of Kallirhoe (Callirhoe).
Echidna is "like nothing human," half Nymph with a fair face and the body of an enormous serpent; she lives apart from the other Immortals underground; Echis means Viper.
Echidna was joined in love with Typhaon and their hard-tempered children were: Orthos (the watchdog of Geryon (Geryones)), Kerberos (Cerberus) (the savage dog of Hades) and the Hydra of Lerna; all three of which Herakles (Heracles) faced as part of his Labors.
Also, near the city of Corinth, the hero, Theseus, killed a fierce sow that was the offspring of Echidna and Typhaon; the sow was named after her keeper, Phaia, and it appears that Theseus killed the beast for sport rather than necessity.
Theogony, lines 295-316
The common name for the islands in the Ionian Sea.
A molding with an egg and dart pattern, i.e. closely set, alternating series of oval and pointed forms.
Echion and Erytos were the sons of Hermes and Antianeira; they went with Jason on the quest for the Golden Fleece with their half-brother, Aithalides.
Argonautika, book 1, lines 51-56
A mountain Nymph who was pursued by Pan but resisted his amorous advances; Pan changed her into a voice that can only repeat the last word spoken to her.
Her name literally means "a returned sound."
The stepmother of the monstrous, Otos (Otus) and Ephialtes.
In The Iliad, we are given an amazing story which demonstrates the physical prowess and audacity of Otos and Ephialtes; after a confrontation with the gigantic brothers, Ares (god of War) was bound in chains and imprisoned in a cauldron; Ares remained in that humiliating and helpless situation for thirteen months until he was finally freed when Eeriboia, the stepmother of Otos and Ephialtes, told Hermes of Ares's plight.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 5, line 389
Iliad (Fagles), book 5, line 442
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 5, line 448
A king of the city of Thebes and the father of Andromache.
When Andromache married the Trojan hero, Hector, she was an orphan because Achilles had killed her father, Eetion, and her seven brothers; Achilles honored Eetion by burning his body without stripping his armor and then piling a burial mound over his remains; the Nymphs of the mountains planted elm trees over the mound; Eetion's wife was captured by Achilles and returned for ransom but Artemis killed her with a shower of arrows.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 1, line 366; book 6, lines 395, 396 and 416; book 8, line 187; book 9, line 188; book 16, line 153; book 22, lines 472 and 480; book 23, line 827
Iliad (Fagles), book 1, line 433; book 6, lines 467 and 494; book 8, line 212; book 9, line 226; book 16, line 183; book 22, line 564; book 23, line 918
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 1, line 424; book 6, line 460; book 9, line 227; book 16, line 179; book 22, line 565; book 23, line 951
The husband of Labda and the father of Kypselus (Cypselus); Kypselus, although from a humble family, became the tyrant of the city of Corinth from 655-625 BCE.
In relation to Ionic architecture, closely set, alternating series of decorative oval and pointed forms; also called egg and anchor or egg and tongue.
An empire in northeastern Africa; bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, the east by the Red Sea and on the west by Libya.
Approximately 4,000,000 miles (6,437,376 kilometers) in area and divided by the Nile River which flows south to north and empties into the Mediterranean Sea; called Aegyptus by the ancient Greeks; by the time of the fall of Troy (circa 1250 BCE), Egypt had existed for over 1,500 years.
The daughter of the Old Man of the Sea, Proteus.
When Menelaos (Menelaus) and his companions were stranded on the island of Pharos, Eidothea appeared and told Menelaos that he must capture and question her father, Proteus, in order to find out which of the Immortals was responsible for his forced wanderings and what he must do to gain appeasement.
Eidothea skinned four seals and gave the reeking skins to Menelaos and three of his shipmates to use as disguises so that they could ambush Proteus; she then put ambrosia under their noses so that they could endure the terrible stench of the dead seals and showed Menelaos the cave where Proteus came out of the water to sleep; Menelaos and the three men waited until Proteus was asleep and attacked him; Proteus assumed the guise of a lion, a serpent, a leopard, a boar, fluid water and, finally, a tree but Menelaos would not release his grip; Proteus finally gave up the struggle and agreed to answer Menelaos's questions.
Odyssey (Lattimore), book 4, line 365
Odyssey (Loeb), book 4, line 366
Odyssey (Fagles), book 4, line 408
Odyssey (Fitzgerald), book 4, line 392
An Okeanid, i.e. one of the three thousand daughters of Okeanos (Ocean) and Tethys.
Eidyia was the youngest Okeanid; she became the queen of Kolchis (Colchis) and the wife of King Aietes (Aeetes); she was the mother of Chalkiope (Chalciope) and the sorceress, Medeia (Medea).
In Argonautika Eidyia and Aietes (Aeetes) were the parents of Medeia (Medea) but in Theogony the name of Medeia's mother is given as Idyia.
Zeus gave the Okeanids, Apollon and the Rivers the special obligation of having the young in their keeping.
Argonautika, book 3, lines 243 and 268
Theogony, lines 352 and 961
One of the warriors who fought with the Lapithae in the war which drove the Centaurs from Mount Pelion; father of the Argonaut, Polyphemos (Polyphemus).
Argonautika, book 1, lines 40-44
The goddess of Childbirth; the daughter of Zeus and Hera; the sister of Ares (god of War) and Hebe (goddess of Youth).
There are two dramatic instances where Eileithyia played a major role in the history of the Immortals:
1) The birth of Apollon: the goddess, Leto, was in labor for nine days and nights; she was attended by Rheia (Rhea), Dione, Themis and Aphrodite but Eileithyia, was deliberately distracted by Hera so that she could not know of Leto's needs; finally, the goddesses in attendance sent Iris to Mount Olympos to fetch Eileithyia; Iris drew Eileithyia aside so that Hera would not interfere and told her Leto's plight; Eileithyia immediately went to Leto and Apollon was born without further delay.
2) The birth of Herakles (Heracles): since Herakles was not the son of Hera but the result of another one of Zeus's romantic escapades with a mortal woman named Alkmene (Alcmene); he was subject to her rage; from the very beginning, his life was affected by Hera's vengeance and hostility; when Alkmene was pregnant with Herakles, Hera cleverly made Zeus swear a solemn oath that the next son born in the bloodline of Perseus would become the ruler of Argos; Zeus was sure that Herakles would be that ruler but Hera delayed Eileithyia from attending Alkmene and allowed Eurystheus to be born before Herakles; Herakles was later bound to Eurystheus and required to perform the labors which have become known as the Twelve Labors of Herakles.
Theogony, line 923
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 16, line 187; book 19, line 103
Iliad (Fagles), book 16, line 222 (Lady of Labor); book 19, line 119 (goddess of birth pangs and labor)
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 16, line 220; book 19, line 116
Usually rendered as Helot, i.e. a Spartan surf.
When the Dorians settled the Greek mainland and the Peloponnesian Peninsula in the eleventh century BCE, the pre-Dorian inhabitants were either displaced or enslaved; these slaves became known as helots and name has come to mean Serf.
The helots lived in the south-central Peloponnesian Peninsula and were quickly made into chattel by the Dorian descended Spartans; the helots were bound to the land and were owned by the state; they were not allowed to intermarry with the Spartans and were forced into military service as part of their servitude; although they were greatly outnumbered by the helots (15-1), the Spartans ruled the pastoral helots with ease.
It wasn't until circa 716 BCE that the Spartans became intensely militaristic and so, between the eleventh and the eighth centuries, the Spartans dominated the helots through economic manipulation and political exclusion; however, after 716 BCE, the Spartans became the stereotypical militants that differentiated them from the other Greek states and the helots served the state under the sword and lash.
ee OH nee
One of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris collectively known as the Nereids, i.e. the daughters of the Nereus.
Other than a passing reference to her name, the only Nereid to receive any individual attention in the ancient literature was Thetis; as the mother of Achilles and one of the few goddesses to refuse the amorous intentions of Zeus, Thetis was unique; when the Immortals needed the Nereids, they called upon Thetis to rally her sisters for whatever task was needed.
The Nereids and the Argonauts - After Jason and the Argonauts had taken the Golden Fleece from Kolchis (Colchis), Medeia (Medea), the daughter of King Aietes (Aeetes), helped Jason murder her half-brother Apsyrtos (Apsyrtus) in a rather cowardly way; Zeus swore revenge for such a dastardly act but his sister/wife Hera wanted to protect the Argonauts until Jason and Medeia could be absolved of their crime by the Dread-Goddess Kirke (Circe); Hera called upon Thetis to gather the Nereids so they could quiet the waters of the sea so the Argonauts could safely navigate to Kirke's island; Thetis plunged into the sea and called to her sisters; her call was answered and the Nereids helped save the Argonauts.
The Nereids at the funeral of Patroklos (Patroclus) - In the last year of the Trojan War, Achilles's companion Patroklos was killed; Achilles took Patroklos's death very hard and called out to his mother Thetis for consolation; Thetis and the Nereids rose from the sea and graced the dead body of Patroklos with their divine presence.
The Nereids at the funeral of Achilles - The death of Achilles was one of the most dramatic events of the Trojan War; as the son of Thetis, his death had particular significance to the Nereids; at the funeral of Achilles, Thetis, the Nereids and the Muses all came to pay their respects.
Theogony, line 255
The father of Dia who was killed by Ixion by being thrown into a pit of burning coals after Ixion refused to pay the dowry he had promised for the privilege of marrying Dia.
The goddess of Peace; a daughter of Zeus and Themis; Eirene is one of the Horae (The Hours), i.e. the goddesses of the Seasons; the keepers of Heaven's Gate; her sisters are Eunomia (Harmony) and Dike (Justice).
The Horae assist the Olympians by organizing the Seasons and adding balance to Nature; the Horae guard Mount Olympos (Olympus) with a dark veil and open and close the gates of the sky for the other Immortals as they travel to and from their earthly domains.
In The Iliad, we see the Horae personally attending Hera and her horses; they open the sky and Hera zooms from her home on Mount Olympos to Mount Ida to distract Zeus from the battle for Troy.
Iliad (Lattimore), book 5, (Hours) lines 749 and 750; book 8, (Hours) lines 393 and 433
Iliad (Loeb), book 5, (Hours) line 749; book 8, (Hours) lines 393 and 433
Iliad (Fagles), book 5, (Seasons) line 859; book 8, (Seasons) lines 449 and 498
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 5, (Hours) line 856; book 8, (Hours) lines 444 and 488
Theogony, line 902
A comic play by the Athenian poet, Aristophanes, produced in 421 BCE at the Great Dionysia where it won second prize.
Cast of Characters:
Trygaios
Hermes
Ares
Eirene (Peace)
Hierokles (Hierocles)
Son of Lamachos
Son of Kleonymos (Cleonymos)
Tumult (Omados or Homados)
When this play was presented, the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) had been going on for ten years and the need for peace was becoming urgent; shortly after the production of Peace, Athens and Sparta managed to negotiate a treaty that gave the war ravaged Greeks a five year reprieve from the brutal and unrelenting war.
The story revolves around a common man named Trygaios who has had enough of the war and decides to take his complaint directly to Zeus; he does not intend to pray or sacrifice in order to get Zeus's attention, he intends to go to Mount Olympos (Olympus) and confront Zeus face to face.
Mounting a flying dung-beetle named Pegasos (Pegasus), Trygaios flies to Mount Olympos and is greeted by Hermes; the majority of the gods and goddesses have fled the sacred mountain; Ares (god of War) seems to be in charge of the mountain and he's urgently looking for a pestle for his mortar so he can grind more Greek cities into dust; he is dismayed to find that the Athenian Kleon (Cleon) and the Spartan Brasides have been killed in the war because they were the best pestles he had.
The goddess Eirene (Peace) has been buried in a pit and Trygaios urges the chorus (who represent the various people of Greece) to help him dig her out; the city-folk in the chorus work at cross purposes but the country-folk work together and free Eirene from captivity; there follows a very interesting and highly symbolic scene where Eirene will not speak directly to the chorus but whispers to Hermes and he relates her messages; it seems that the Greeks have called upon Eirene too often with false promises and betrayed her trust; she does not feel that they will give her true homage and therefore will not favor them with her life sustaining voice.
Trygaios persuades Eirene to allow her handmaiden to return to Athens with him so that he can show the Council that Eirene will help them if they will give up their hateful ways; when Trygaios is once again on the earth's surface he faces the audience and tells them that they looked very small and wicked when he flew above them on his dung-beetle and, now that he's closer, they seem even more so.
A sacrifice is made to Eirene and the Athenian tradesmen start to approach Trygaios; the sickle-maker is jubilant because business is booming with the farmers working in their fields again; the craftsmen who made war implements are distraught because their products are now worthless; Trygaios suggests that shields be used as commodes and that helmets have handles attached so they can be used as wine pitchers; in the end, all seems to be as it should be with all the people of Greece reclaiming their peaceful traditions.
Aristophanes's plays are sometimes difficult to appreciate because he was a very contemporary poet, i.e. he was writing for the Athenian audience of his day; he would use puns, parody regional accents and speak directly to the audience in ways that force modern translators to seek out the contextual meaning rather than the literal meaning of the poet's words; for that reason, I suggest that if you find a translation that is difficult to enjoy, please don't blame Aristophanes, simply look for a translation that you can enjoy; when trying to find a readable translator, I suggest Patric Dickinson; you may find his books at your local library in the 882 section but his books are out of print and sometimes difficult to find.
A name for Apollon literally meaning Far-Working; sometimes translated as Far-Shooting or Far-Darting.
Hymn to Hermes, lines 307 and 464
A people's assembly in the city of Athens that was empowered to decide political matters such as war, peace, choosing military leaders and the mobilization of military forces.
Originally, members were not paid for their services but circa 390 BCE a small fee was paid, equal to approximately to the pay offered to oarsmen on warships (three obols per day).
The Women's Assembly; a comic play by Aristophanes produced in 392 BCE.
This is one of Aristophanes's more ribald plays and might not be suitable for younger readers.
It seems that the women of the city of Athens have decided to kill the poet Euripides because of the demeaning way in which he portrays women in his plays; the women put Euripides in the same category as the accursed Persians and declare him an enemy of the state; Euripides persuades his father-in-law Mnesilochos (Mnesilochus) to dress like a woman and attend the Women's Assembly in order to speak out on Euripides's behalf; at first, Mnesilochos speaks well for Euripides and seems to be generating some sympathy for the doomed poet but an informant arrives and tells the women that a male spy has invaded their assembly; it doesn't take long for the women to deduce that the only woman to speak out for Euripides is the intruder.
At this point the play takes a unique turn; I have to admit that I was more than a little surprised when Mnesilochos snatched up a baby from a woman in the assembly and threatened to kill it unless he was allowed to leave the hall unharmed; I won't tell you how the situation is resolved but I will say that it's scenes like this which demonstrate Aristophanes's true comic genius.
After Mnesilochos is taken prisoner and restrained, Euripides enters the scene to save his father-in-law from the wrath of the women; the comic banter between Mnesilochos and Euripides is dialogue taken from Euripides's tragedies and turned into farcical parodies.
Although the play mocks Euripides, there is an element of respect for his work laced throughout the puns and jokes; the net result of reading this play is that I wanted to read more plays by Euripides and Aristophanes.
Aristophanes's plays are sometimes difficult to appreciate because he was a very contemporary poet, i.e. he was writing for the Athenian audience of his day; he would use puns, parody regional accents and speak directly to the audience in ways that force modern translators to seek out the contextual meaning rather than the literal meaning of the poet's words; for that reason, I suggest that if you find a translation that is difficult to enjoy, please don't blame Aristophanes, simply look for a translation that you can enjoy; you may find this play at your local library in the 882 section or you can order it from the Book Shop on this site.
A Greek city located on the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula where the Hellespont enters the Aegean Sea; Elaeus was located near where the modern city of Seddulbahir, Turkey, is today.
Elaphebolion was the ninth month of the year in Attica and approximately corresponds to the third week of February to the third week of March of our calendar; since this month marked the closing month of winter, there were several important festivals:
A festival dedicated to Artemis (goddess of the Hunt) was held in the first week of Elaphebolion which was followed by a day honoring the greatest healer in ancient Greece, Asklepios (Asclepius);
The City Dionysia was one to the most grand festivals of the year; beginning on the ninth of Elaphebolion, the City Dionysia was the venue of the best dramatic performances in all of Greece; this was an Athenian festival in honor of Dionysos (a.k.a. Bacchus, god of Wine) and was notable for the performance of dithyrambs (a wild and irregular choral song or chant), tragedies, comedies and satyr plays (ribald dramas with a chorus of satyrs);
After the City Dionysia, there was the festival of Zeus Pandion which celebrated Zeus as the father of the Immortals and the progenitor of the first kings of Athens.
A Greek city in southwestern Italy slightly north of the modern city of Ascea, Italy, and about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) from the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea; founded originally by the Phoenicians; the Eleatic School of philosophy, founded by Parmenides and Zeno, was named after this city.
Noting or pertaining to a school of philosophy, founded by Parmenides and Zeno at the Greek city of Elea in southwestern Italy, which investigated the phenomenal world, especially with reference to the phenomena of change.
One of the more notable doctrines of the Eleatic School was Zeno's Paradox which can be stated formally as: the relation of the Discrete to the Continuous and requiring the concept of Limit for its satisfactory explanation; as a practical example of Zeno's Paradox, if you were ten feet away from a wall and you move halfway towards it and then stop and then move halfway towards it again and then stop and then move halfway towards it again and then stop and on and on in this fashion, you will never reach the wall because you will always have another half the distance to traverse; the distance to the wall is clearly Finite but you have made it Infinite simply by your method of measurement.
A death mask made of Electrum found at Mycenae.
A metal alloy which occurs naturally and is comprised of gold and silver with traces of other metals; the first coins were probably made of electrum in Lydia and Ionia circa 650 BCE and were widely used until circa 345 when they were replaced with gold or silver coins.
Before its use in coins, electrum was apparently used in the manufacture of armor because the poet, Hesiod, said that the shield which was made by Hephaistos (Hephaestus) and used by Herakles (Heracles) was made of ivory and electrum.
Shield of Herakles, line 142
One of the seven daughters of Atlas known as the Pleiades.
The hunter, Orion, relentlessly pursued Elektra and her sisters until they were changed into pigeons by Zeus and eventually put into the night sky as the constellation, the Pleiades; to see the Pleiades from the northern hemisphere, the sisters are located above and to the right of the constellation of Orion in the zodiacal house of Taurus.
Elektra's sisters are: Alkyone (Alcyone), Asterope, Kelaeno (Celaeno), Maia, Merope and Taygete.
The daughter of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra (Clytemnestra).
When Agamemnon returned from the Trojan War, he was murdered by his wife and her lover, Aegisthus (Aigisthos); Elektra's brother, Orestes, was forced to flee Mycenae but Elektra stayed with her mother and endured a life of quiet misery; the historical account of how her mother, Klytemnestra, was actually killed is sadly lacking but according to poets such as Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles, Orestes did the actual killing of his mother but Elektra assisted him in one way or another.
One of the best presentations of the tragic story of Agamemnon, Elektra and Orestes is a trilogy known as The Oresteia by Aeschylus; you may find these plays at your local library in the 882 section or you can order them from the Book Shop on this site.
An Okeanid, i.e. one of the three thousand daughters of Okeanos (Ocean) and Tethys; she was the wife of Thaumas and the mother of the goddess Iris and the winged-women known as the Harpies, i.e. Aello and Okypete (Ocypete).
Zeus gave the Okeanids, Apollon and the Rivers the special obligation of having the young in their keeping.
Theogony, lines 266 and 349
A play by Sophocles; a tragic continuation of the aftermath of the murder of Agamemnon by his wife, Klytemnestra (Clytemnestra), and her lover, Aegisthus (Aigisthos).
Cast of Characters:
Elektra (Electra)
Orestes
Klytemnestra (Clytemnestra)
Aegisthus
Paedagogus
Chrysothemis
Elektra still lived with her murderous mother but was secretly plotting to avenge her father by killing Klytemnestra and Aegisthus; her brother Orestes returned from exile and revealed himself to Elektra and completed the deadly revenge as an act of justice.
I personally recommend the translations compiled by Richmond Lattimore and David Grene, Euripides II (ISBN 0226307654); you can find this and other plays by Euripides in the 882 section of your local library or you can order them from the Book Shop on this site.
A tragedy by Euripides which was produced circa 413 BCE.
Cast of Characters:
Elektra (Electra)
Orestes
Pylades
Klytemnestra (Clytemnestra)
This play sheds more light on the tragedy that surrounded the murder of the Argive hero, Agamemnon, and the terrible deeds committed by his family.
When Agamemnon returned as the victor of the Trojan War his wife Klytemnestra (Clytemnestra) and her lover Aegisthus (Aigisthos) killed him as he was taking a bath; he was without a weapon, guards or armor when Klytemnestra attacked him and he died an ignoble death not suitable for a man of such honor and courage.
With Agamemnon out of the way, Aegisthus forced Klytemnestra to disown her children, Orestes and Elektra; Orestes was sent into exile and Elektra, when she was old enough, was given in marriage to a man with no influence or resources; Aegisthus was afraid that if Elektra married a man of noble birth or wealth she would eventually persuade him to take revenge for the murder of her father and try to claim Elektra's rightful inheritance.
Although she was doomed to a life of poverty and disgrace, Elektra was fortunate in that her pauper husband was a man of honor and understanding; he knew that Elektra was his wife only because of the greed and fears of Aegisthus and that, being of noble birth, she should have been allowed to marry a man of equal social station; he took Elektra as his wife in name only and refused to consummate their marriage; he somehow knew that she would eventually be freed from the oppression of Aegisthus and, at that time, she would want to be pure and therefore worthy of a suitable husband.
In this play, Euripides gives Elektra a noble spirit and portrays her as a young woman of impeccable morals; she is understandably disappointed in her circumstances but she bravely accepts her miserable existence and insists on helping her husband with the menial household chores; while she is getting water from the well, two strangers approach her and ask about her long lost brother, Orestes; the strangers are Orestes and his companion, Pylades, but since Elektra was only a child when he had been exiled, she did not recognize Orestes; at first she was fearful but the strangers seemed like men of honor and they said that they had news of her brother and she is anxious to hear anything about him; Orestes continues the charade so that he can get a clear picture of the situation in Argos; Elektra tells Orestes that the situation is very sad indeed; the people despise Aegisthus and Klytemnestra but are afraid to rise up against them; Agamemnon's pyre is neglected and there are no sacrifices or libations offered in his honor; Aegisthus lives in constant fear that Orestes will return to exact justice so he is always wary and well guarded.
Elektra's husband invites Orestes and Pylades into his hovel even though he knows that he does not have enough food or drink to offer them adequate hospitality; Elektra suggests that her husband (who is not named in the play) fetch an old man who was once a servant of her father to see if he would give them one of the animals from his flock to serve to the strangers; the old man came to the hovel and immediately recognized Orestes; the joyful reunion was cut short when brother and sister began to plot the murder of Aegisthus and their mother, Klytemnestra; they decided to act at once and kill Aegisthus as he prepared a sacrifice outside the protective city walls and then lure Klytemnestra to Elektra's house and kill her before she can realize her danger.
Orestes found Aegisthus in the fields and killed him without mercy; Aegisthus's guards raised their weapons but backed down when Orestes identified himself and he and Pylades stood ready and able to defend themselves; Elektra sent a messenger to her mother to falsely claim that she had just given birth to a child and asked that her mother come to offer a proper sacrifice for the health of the baby; when Klytemnestra arrived and saw that she had been deceived, she quickly realized her situation and, instead of begging for compassion, boldly claimed that killing Agamemnon was justified and within her rights as a wronged woman.
Klytemnestra said that she had loved her husband and had been a faithful wife until he had taken her daughter, Iphigenia, and killed her like a sacrificial animal; Agamemnon had sent word that he wanted to marry Iphigenia to the greatest warrior in Greece, Achilles, but he actually wanted a human sacrifice to guarantee favorable winds for his fleet and bless his efforts to destroy the city of Troy.
Klytemnestra called her sister Helen a wanton woman and blamed her for all the woes that the Trojan War engendered; she also said that if she had killed Orestes as a human sacrifice, Agamemnon would have murdered her without the slightest hesitation and that the people of Argos would have praised his actions as justifiable; her final excuse for killing Agamemnon was that he brought Kassandra (Cassandra) back from Troy as his concubine; Klytemnestra called Kassandra a madwoman and was infuriated that Agamemnon would take such a woman to his bed and expect his wife to approve.
Elektra would not accept any excuses or justifications for the cold blooded murder of her father; she blamed her mother for allowing Aegisthus to force Orestes into exile even though he was only a child; Elektra was also inconsolably bitter for being punished with poverty for the crimes and cowardice of her mother and her mother's contemptible lover; she blamed her mother for being an unfaithful wife long before there were any noble justifications for murder; Elektra had seen her mother spend countless hours in front of a mirror so that she could appear beautiful for other men and furthermore, she said that for a woman to try to make herself attractive for anyone other than her husband was disgraceful; after she had said her piece, Elektra and Orestes killed their mother; this murder was not as easy as killing Aegisthus; both children were wracked with guilt and doubt, especially Orestes.
At this point in the play, the image of Kastor (Castor) appears; Kastor is the brother of Klytemnestra and Helen; he is now immortal and has come to ease the guilt of his niece and nephew; Kastor says that killing their mother was justified but still worthy of shame and consequence; he decrees that Elektra should marry Orestes's companion, Pylades, and be blessed with a long and full life but that she must flee Argos and never return; Kastor says that Orestes must go to Athens and embrace the statue of the goddess Athene (Athena) before the Furies can find him and exact their brutal punishment.
This play provokes thought and asks questions that are not easily answered in any moral framework; there are several diversions from the plotline that, as is typical with Euripides's plays, give insight into other myths; his diversion to describe the shield that Hephaistos (Hephaestus) made for Herakles (Heracles), his discussion of Pan and the description of a blood sacrifice to the Nymphs of the rocks are all informative as well as interesting.
I personally recommend the translations compiled by Richmond Lattimore and David Grene or the Bantam Classic Ten Plays by Euripides translated by Moses Hadas and John McLean (ISBN 0553213636); you can find this and other plays by Euripides in the 882 section of your local library or you can order them from the Book Shop on this site.
The Amber Islands; a name given by the Greeks in later times to the islands of the North Sea.
A word used to mean Amber or Pale-Gold, i.e. one part silver and four parts gold.
A son of Perseus; the king of Mycenae; he was the father of Alkmene (Alcmene) and the uncle of her husband, Amphitryon.
As Elektryon was leaving to avenge the murder of his sons by the Teleboeans, he was accidentally killed by Amphitryon, consequently before Amphitryon could consummate his marriage to Alkmene he had to complete Elektryon's blood feud and avenge the death of her brothers; while Amphitryon was off on this quest, Zeus came to Alkmene disguised as Amphitryon and from that union came the mighty hero Herakles (Heracles).
Shield of Herakles, lines 3 and 84
Eoiae, chapter 99(2), line 20
The Greek name for an elephant or its ivory.
The mention of elephants was quite rare in early Greek literature; the historian, Herodotus, referred to elephants when he was discussing Egypt and Plato said that there were elephants on the continent of Atlantis; a generation after Plato, Aristotle discussed elephants in his book, Historia Animalium.
Aristotle, Histories
Plato, Critias
The Eleusinia was a festival in honor of the goddesses, Demeter and Persephone; the Eleusinia was held from the fifteenth to the eighteenth day of Metageitnion (approximately the second week of August by our calendar) and consisted of athletic contests at Eleusis.
The Eleusinian Mysteries celebrated the return of Persephone after she had been abducted by her uncle, Hades (lord of the Underworld); the festival of the Greater Mysteries was celebrated at the city of Eleusis which is 15 miles (24 kilometers) northwest of Athens; the ceremonies and procession for the sacred event began in Athens on the fifteenth day of Boedromion (approximately the second week of September by our calendar) and lasted from seven to nine days.
The Eleusinian Mysteries included the worship of Demeter, Persephone and Iakchos (Iacchos) as Bacchus (a.k.a. Dionysos, god of Wine); most of the ceremonies were public but only initiates were allowed to participate in the final rituals; the rites are called Mysteries because the Greek word Mystes means One Initiated; there were several stages of initiation; the rites of the Lesser Mysteries were held in the spring and dedicated to Persephone; the Lesser Mysteries involved the ritual purification of the candidates for initiation; the Greater Mysteries were held in the fall and dedicated to Demeter; the initiates were called Epoptes, i.e. One Who Has Seen; the only Greek citizens who were excluded from the ceremonies were people with Blood Guilt, i.e. those who had killed; men, women and slaves were allowed to take part in the ceremonies; all Greek cities honored the sanctity of the celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries by instituting a truce which would halt war and conflicts; this would allow participants to travel to and from Athens and Eleusis without worrying about local and national disputes.
The rituals of the Greater Mysteries were scrupulously guarded and ancient writers who dared to expound on the subject were probably just guessing as to the actual rites performed at Eleusis; the rites performed in Athens were more public and conducted at the City Eleusinion which was a temple for Demeter and Persephone located between the Acropolis and the Agora; in preparation for the procession to Eleusis, sacred ritual objects were brought from the temple at Eleusis and stored in the Eleusinion.
After a ritual cleansing and purification, participants would gather at the Sacred Gates near the Kerameikos cemetery and then walk from Athens to Eleusis on what was called the Sacred Way; the priests and priestesses of Demeter would lead the procession carrying a wooden statue of Iakchos and other sacred objects hidden in wooden boxes destined for the Telesterion in Eleusis where the final and most secret rites were performed; the members of the procession chanted the name of Iakchos as they walked and would stop briefly at shrines of Apollon and Aphrodite along the road; masked men were stationed along the Sacred Way to insult the participants and humble them before they reached Eleusis.
Upon reaching Eleusis, the participants would fast until the following morning; the initiates were then permitted to enter the Telesterion where the sacred objects were revealed; all that the initiates were permitted to say about the ceremonies was that things were spoken, seen and performed; once the final rites were complete, a night of feasting and revelry began; a bull was sacrificed and libations were poured honoring the dead.
A Greek city in ancient Attica approximately 10 miles (16 kilometers) north and west of Athens.
Eleusis was the site of the temple of Demeter where the Eleusinian Mysteries originated; when her daughter, Persephone, was kidnapped by Hades (lord of the Underworld), Demeter disguised herself as an old woman and took refuge at Eleusis; she was at Eleusis when Zeus commanded Hades to release Persephone but it took several attempts by the Immortals to persuade Demeter to leave Eleusis and return to Mount Olympos (Olympus) for the reunion with her daughter.
Approximate East Longitude 23º 32' and North Latitude 38º 02'
(1766-1841) Thomas Bruce was the seventh Earl of Elgin and earned his place in history as the man responsible for the removal of a good number of the marble decorations from the Parthenon in Athens; the many statues and reliefs he secured were finally placed on display in a special gallery of the British Museum.
Lord Elgin was the British Ambassador in Constantinople for only four years (1799-1803) but his brief tour of duty resulted in saving many of the ancient marble reliefs which decorated the Parthenon; in 1801 Lord Elgin organized a team to record the ancient Greek buildings and sculptures; at that time, Greece had been ruled by the Ottoman Empire for over 350 years; when Lord Elgin learned of the alarming rate at which the Parthenon was being defaced, he petitioned Mehemmed Raschid Aga, the highest ranking Ottoman official in Athens, and received permission to remove the Parthenon marbles; in 1802 Lord Elgin began making overtures to the British Museum but it wasn't until 1816 that the British Parliament voted special funds for the purchase of the marbles so that they could be placed in the British Museum.
The so called Elgin Marbles are now on display in the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum; the construction of the new gallery for the Parthenon sculptures was funded by Sir Joseph (later Lord) Duveen in 1931; the architect was the American, John Russell Pope, who also designed the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.
A group of Greek sculptures of the fifth century BCE; originally on the Parthenon in Athens and supposedly sculptured under the direction of Phidias.
The sculptures are presently on display in the British Museum in London; they were named after Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin (1766-1841) who arranged for their removal from Athens.
An ancient territory and city in southern Greece on the northwestern side of the Peloponnesian Peninsula; the territory of Elis was centered around the basin of the Peneios (Peneus) River and settled by Dorians from Aitolia (Aetolia).
When Agamemnon assembled an army to attack Troy (1250 BCE), the Eleians sent forty ships which would have been approximately 4,700 men; the captains of the Eleians Thalpios (Thalpius), Amphimachos (Amphimachus), Diores and Polyxeinos (Polyxeinus); each of the captains commanded ten ships.
While at Troy, Nestor related a curious story from his youth where the Eleians had raided cattle from Pylos; in the fight for the cattle, Nestor killed an Eleian man named Itymoneus and then returned the stolen cattle to Pylos where his father Neleus took a herd of cattle as repayment for an old insult inflicted on him by King Augeias of Elis; when Neleus had been racing his chariot team in Elis, Augeias took his horses and sent Neleus home in disgrace; when Nestor brought the captured cattle to Pylos, Neleus was finally avenged for the crimes of King Augeias.
The Eleians became responsible for officiating the Olympic Games in 572 BCE after a protracted dispute with the neighboring Pisatians; to better administer the Olympic Games and to demonstrate their adherence to propriety, the Eleians sent men to consult with the Egyptians about the way in which the Olympic Games were conducted; compared to the Greeks, the Egyptians were a very old civilization and their wisdom was widely respected; King Amasis of Egypt (569-526 BCE) said that the Games could not be justly administered if men from Elis were allowed to compete because of the possibility of favoritism.
When the Persians invaded Greece in 490 BCE, the Athenians asked all Greek cities to join them on the plains of Marathon to fight the Persians; for a variety of reasons and excuses, almost none of the other Greek cities came to fight and the Athenians were left to stand against the Persians more or less alone; after the glorious victory of the Athenian army, the troops from Elis finally arrived; the people of Elis were so shamed by the inaction of their leaders that they forced them into exile.
When the Persians attempted to conquer Greece a second time in 480 BCE, the Eleians were not hesitant to muster an army; along with other cities of the Peloponnesian Peninsula, the Eleians established a defensive line at the Isthmus of Corinth but the Persians were forced to retreat before they engaged the Eleians because of their humiliating naval defeat in the waters of the Saronic Gulf just south of Corinth.
The scattered cities of Elis were ruled by an oligarchy until circa 471 BCE; at that time, democracy replaced the oligarchy and the city of Elis was established more or less in the center of the territory; the Eleians were constantly at odds with other cities of the Peloponnesian Peninsula, especially the Spartans; during the Peloponnesian War, Elis became allies of Sparta but joined the Athenians in 420 BCE; after the Spartans won the Peloponnesian War, they punished the Eleians by taking some of their territory but as hosts to the Olympic Games, Elis was able to capitalize on the neutrality the Games afforded and remain an independent territory until the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Another name for Dido.
Dido was a princess of the city of Tyre; her name was originally Elissa; she was the daughter of King Matgenos and the sister of Pygmalion; she married her uncle, Sychaeus, but he was murdered by Pygmalion; she took Sychaeus's fortune and fled to northern Africa and founded the city of Carthage; the African king, Iarbas, wanted to marry Dido but she burned herself on a pyre rather than become his bride.
The modern Greek name for Greece; usually rendered as Hellas because the initial E is aspirated, i.e. pronounced with strong breathing.
A city in Thessaly founded by the mythical founder of the Greeks, Hellen, i.e. Ελλεν.
The companion of Odysseus on his voyage home to the island of Ithaka (Ithaca).
Elpenor fell from the roof of Kirke's (Circe's) palace and was never given a proper burial; when Odysseus went to the entrance of the Underworld to seek the advice of the seer, Teiresias, he encountered Elpenor's "shade" and was moved to promise "the barrow and the burial" for his fallen companion.
Odyssey (Lattimore and Loeb), book 10, line 552; book 11, lines 51 and 57; book 12, line 10
Odyssey (Fagles), book 10, line 608; book 11, lines 57 and 62; book 12, line 10
Odyssey (Fitzgerald), book 10, line 610; book 11, lines 54 and 60; book 12, line 11
A Spirit; the personification of Hope.
After Epimetheus accepted Pandora from Zeus, all the evils of the world were unleashed except for Elpis; she remained in order to make the world and its sorrows bearable.
Works and Days, line 96
The abode of the blessed dead.
People who lead righteous, generous lives dwell in the Elysian Fields when they die; a land of easy life for mortals with mild weather provided by Zephyros (West Wind); also known as the Islands of the Blest and thought to lie in the far west in the stream of Okeanos (Ocean).
Odyssey (Lattimore and Loeb), book 4, line 563
Odyssey (Fagles), book 4, line 635
Odyssey (Fitzgerald), book 4, line 599
A district of Macedon west of the river Axios and sometimes synonymous with the whole of Macedon.
An epithet given to Alexander the Great; the name comes from the district of Emathia which was sometimes synonymous with Macedon.
(circa 490-430 BCE) A Greek philosopher and statesman from the city of Akragas (Acragas) on the island of Sicily; he is perhaps most famous for his division of the phenomenal world into the four elements: earth, air, fire and water.
A frightening creature that could assume various shapes and might be compared to the modern imp or goblin.
In the play Frogs, by Aristophanes, the main character, Dionysos (a.k.a. Bacchus, god of Wine), encounters a phantom creature that he identifies as the she-beast, Empousa, as he and his servant enter the Underworld.
In the Scythian homeland, an Enareis is a hermaphrodite.
When the Scythians invaded what we call the Middle East, they marched through Syria; most of the soldiers did not plunder or harm the Syrians but some of them looted the ancient temple of Aphrodite Orania in the city of Askalon (Ascalon).
The looters and their descendants were afflicted by the goddess of Love with a disease which is generally called the "female sickness" and caused loss of virility; the Scythians call the victims of this illness, Enareis, which is equated to a hermaphrodite.
These stricken Scythian men-women assumed the role of soothsayers in their native land; they would split the bark of a lime tree and foretell the future as they braid the strips of bark.
Histories, book 1.105; book 4.67
The wife of Aiakos (Aeacus) and most notably, the mother of Peleus and Telamon and thus the grandmother of Achilles and Aias (Ajax).
The son of Kalyke (Calyce) and Aethlios (Aethlius); he was loved by Selene (the Moon) and kept forever youthful through eternal sleep; the father of Aetolus.
The name given by Hesiod in the poem, Shield of Herakles (Hercules) as the wife of King Kreon of the city of Thebes.
In the poem Antigone, Sophocles uses the name Eurydike (Eurydice) but since Hesiod predates Sophocles we should assume that Enioche was, in fact, the name of King Kreon's wife.
Shield of Herakles, line 83
Enkelados was one of the huge monsters collectively known as the Giants; the Giants were the children of Gaia (Earth) engendered by the blood of Ouranos (the Heavens).
The Giants waged an unsuccessful war on the Olympians and were severely punished after their defeat; the poet Hesiod states that the Giants were banished to the Underworld but Apollodorus of Athens clearly describes the brutal death of the Giants.
The Giants were mostly human in form but their bodies were massive and they were invincible in their might; they had long drooping locks on their heads and chins; their feet had scales like a dragon or serpent; whether they actually had the feet of dragons or whether they were simply scaled was a point of contention among several of the ancient authors; the traveler and historian, Pausanias, disputed the fact that the Giants literally had dragon feet but ancient artwork generally represented the Giants with serpent-like feet.
The origin of the Giants was either Phlegrae or Pallene but it has been suggested that the two names represent the same place; the Immortals were given an oracle which stated that the Giants could not be killed by a god or goddess so they decided to enlist the aid of Herakles (Heracles) to do the actual killing; when Gaia learned of the oracle, she began the preparation of a drug that would protect her awful children but Zeus culled a cunning brew of his own that would make the Giants vulnerable to the wrath of the Immortals; in order to have the time necessary for the creation of the drug, Zeus forbade Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to shine until his task was complete.
The goddess Athene (Athena) summoned Herakles and the war against the Giants began:
Enkelados tried to run away but Athene dropped the island of Sicily on him; his brothers all met a similar fate:
Alkyoneos (Alcyoneus) - Alkyoneos was one of the two most powerful of the Giants; he was brazen in his contempt for the Olympian Gods and even stole the cattle of Helios from Erythia; he was immortal as long as he remained on his home soil, i.e. he could not be killed by man, god or beast as long as he remained in the land of his birth; he was, however, the first of the Giants to die; Herakles shot Alkyoneos with an arrow and the mighty Giant fell to the ground where he was revitalized by the earth and began to recover from the wound; at the advice of Athene, Herakles dragged Alkyoneos out of Pallene where he was no longer protected by his native soil and he died.
Porphyrion - Alkyoneos and Porphyrion were the two most powerful Giants; while Alkyoneos and Herakles were fighting, Porphyrion joined the battle but was immediately distracted by an intervention from Zeus; an irresistible longing for the goddess Hera overcame Porphyrion and he began to tear at the goddesses' garments; Herakles killed Alkyoneos while Porphyrion was lustfully distracted and Zeus struck the unsuspecting Giant with a thunderbolt and rendered him helpless but not dead; Herakles shot Porphyrion with an arrow and killed him.
Ephialtes was shot with an arrow in the left eye by Apollon and then in the right eye by Herakles.
Eurytos (Eurytus) was killed by Dionysos (a.k.a. Bacchus, god of Wine) with a thyrsus, i.e. a wand wreathed in ivy and vine leaves with a pine cone at the top.
Klytios (Clytius) was killed by the goddess Hekate (Hecate) with torches; presumably he was burned to death.
Mimas was killed when Hephaistos (Hephaestus) showered him with missiles of hot metal.
Polybotes was chased by Poseidon to the island of Kos (Cos) where the god broke off a piece of the island (called Nisyrum) and hurled it at the desperate Giant.
Hippolytus (Hippolytos) was killed by Hermes who was wearing the Helm of Hades which made him invisible.
Gration was killed by Artemis; Agrios (Agrius) and Thoas were beaten with brazen clubs by the Fates; the other (unnamed) Giants were struck by thunderbolts from Zeus; Herakles shot and killed each of the Giants with arrows as they lay suffering.
Pausanaus, book vii, chapter 29
Library, book I, chapter VI
Theogony, line 185
Battle of Frogs and Mice, line 283
An epithet of Poseidon (lord of the Sea) meaning Earth-Shaker.
A name used to denote the goddess, Hekate (Hecate) which literally means "by the way," i.e. beside the road; the name could also be applied to any god or goddess with a statue by the roadway.
In relation to Ionic architecture, the entire upper portion between the columns and the eaves including the architrave, cornice and frieze.
The foul and evil accomplice of wretched mortals.
Works and Days, line 195
A name for Ares (god of War); the name means The Warlike.
In the quest for the Golden Fleece, the Argonaut, Idas, sneered at the seer, Mopsos, and said that real men should not heed the signs of birds but rather call upon the name of Enyalios and resolve their problems with the sword; true to his own philosophy, Idas later died by the sword.
Argonautika, book 3, lines 555-563
An island in the Euxine (Black Sea) known as the Island of Ares.
On their way to retrieve the Golden Fleece, the Argonauts came upon the island of Enyalios and were attacked by a flock of fierce birds; the birds protected the island by dropping their feathers, which struck like arrows, on the sailors; the Argonauts used a trick similar to the one Herakles (Heracles) used during his Sixth Labor (by using krotalon (castanet-like clappers) to frighten the Stymphalian Birds); the Argonauts put on their plumed helmets and pounded on their shields with their swords; the movement of the plumes and the noise from the clanging shields frightened the war-birds away and the Argo was able to land on the island with only one sailor being wounded by the projectile-like feathers.
Argonautika, book 3, lines 320-366
One of the Graiae (the Gray Sisters); a daughter of Keto (Ceto) and Phorkys (Phorcys).
Enyo has a page in the Immortals section of this site ... click on her name to view that page.
The Eoiae, or Great Eoiae, is usually referred to as the Catalogue of Women which is attributed to the poet Hesiod; the Catalogue was widely quoted in the ancient world and many fragments survive.
Each chapter of the Catalogue began with the English equivalent of the word "Eoiae" which can be translated as "Or like her ... ," the poem would then go on to name a particular woman and then tell the story of her ancestors and descendants, for example: from the beginning of the Shield of Herakles which tells the story of Alkmene (Alcmene), "Or like her who left the home of her fathers and came to Thebes with warlike Amphitryon, even Alkmene, daughter of the leader of men, Elektryon ... etc."
The Catalogue of Women was an attempt by Hesiod to trace the Greek families as they descended through the mothers rather than the fathers because, it is assumed, the Immortals would seed the mortal race through the women they seduced; the only complete poem from The Catalogue of Women to survive is The Shield of Herakles.
For the complete translations of the Catalogue of Women, I recommend the Loeb Classical Library volume 57, ISBN 0674990633; you can sometimes find this book at the library or you can order it from the Book Shop on this site.
An indefinitely long period of time.
The Dawn; the sister of Helios (the Sun) and Selene (the Moon); the mother of Zephyros (West Wind), Boreas (North Wind) and Notos (South Wind).
Eos has a page in the Immortals section of this site ... click on her photo to view that page.
The daughter of Eos (Dawn); the Morning-Star that we call Venus when seen before dawn; the father, if any, of Eosphoros is unknown; also called Aosphoros.
The son of Io and Zeus; the consort of Memphis and the father of the Nymph, Libya.
The historian Herodotus mentions Epaphos in relation to the Egyptian bull-deity, Apis and, since Io was the heifer-maiden, Epaphos is considered to be bull-like in appearance.
Histories, book 2.38
eh pee OHS
The man who designed the Wooden Horse which is also called the Trojan Horse; the Wooden Horse was used to gain entrance to the city of Troy and end the Trojan War.
At the suggestion of Odysseus and with the inspiration of the goddess Athene (Athena), Epeios designed a large wooden troop carrier in the form of a horse; the idea was to leave the Wooden Horse in front of the gates of Troy to entice the Trojans to accept it as a peace offering declaring the end of the Trojan War.
After ten years of an unsuccessful siege on the walls of Troy, the Achaean Greeks needed a new plan to gain entrance to Troy; by all accounts, Odysseus was a clever man and it should not be surprising that he would conceive such a novel idea as constructing the Wooden Horse; Athene was clearly on the side of the Achaean Greeks in the Trojan War and her inspiration helped Epeios build a large, hollow horse which could conceal a small group of warriors; the Wooden Horse was left outside the gates of Troy with the warriors inside.
Some of the Trojans thought that the Wooden Horse was a symbol of peace and a tribute to the goddess Athene; others thought that the Wooden Horse was a trick and should be burned where it stood; the Trojan seer Laokoon (Laocoon) tried to warn King Priam that the Wooden Horse was a trick and not a peace offering but Poseidon (lord of the Sea) sent one of his giant sea-serpents to kill Laokoon and one (or both) of his sons; Priam assumed that Laokoon was killed because he was giving false prophecy and ordered the Wooden Horse to be brought inside the walls of the city.
The Trojan War was not simply a dispute between nations or a feud over territory; the war was started and perpetuated by the Immortals with the intention of ridding the earth of a good portion of the human population; a beautiful young woman from Sparta was used as the bait to lure a handsome prince of Troy; the love affair between Helen and Alexandros (Paris) was all that was needed to set the mainland Greeks against the Trojans; the Trojans were actually Greeks even though they lived on the coast of Asia Minor but their common heritage did not prevent the war.
Zeus decreed that the walls of Troy would eventually be toppled but he was also intent that it would be a slow and bloody process; the construction of the Wooden Horse was the signal that the war was coming to an end; with the Achaean Greeks apparently gone and the Wooden Horse inside the city walls, the Trojans were ecstatic; they believed that they had survived ten years of fierce fighting and that their city would become prosperous again.
Helen had been living with the Trojans for ten years and was sympathetic to their survival even though her Spartan husband, Menelaos (Menelaus), was in the Greek army fighting to free her from her supposed captivity; Helen knew the Greeks well and suspected a trick when she saw the Wooden Horse; when the horse was brought into the city, Helen walked around it imitating the voices of different men's wives to see if any of the men she suspected to be hiding in the horse would answer; with one exception, all the men hiding inside the horse remained silent; Odysseus forcefully restrained a man named Antiklos (Anticlus) when he tried to answer Helen's convincing imitation of his wife.
After a day and night of celebration, the Trojans collapsed into a state of exhaustion; the soldiers inside the Wooden Horse emerged from hiding and opened the gates of the city; the entire invading army entered the city, leveled the walls of Troy and killed or enslaved every Trojan citizen.
The first mention of the Wooden Horse is in The Odyssey and there are very few details as to the size of the horse or exactly how many men were concealed inside; we are simply told that the best of the Achaean warriors were inside the horse; Menelaos, Odysseus, Diomedes and Antiklos were listed as being inside the horse but the other warriors are not named; however, later authors seem to have had no trouble in filling in the blanks; the number of warriors inside the horse began to vary from thirty to fifty and then seemed to stabilize at forty; also, the names of the men inside the Wooden Horse were finally revealed by authors writing fifteen hundred years after the Trojan War and seven hundred years after Homer.
Modern authors have proposed that the Trojan Horse was not a hollow troop carrier in the shape of a horse but instead a battering ram, i.e. a long wooden pole with a horse head on the end; others have speculated that the Trojan Horse was an earthquake brought on by Poseidon who is credited with giving mankind the horse; Poseidon, a.k.a. the Earth Shaker, wanted Troy to fall and he created the horse, therefore the Trojan Horse was an earthquake; the correlation is strained at best; another far reaching explanation of the Trojan Horse is that it was not a wooden structure but simply the Achaean Greeks disguised as a Trojan cavalry unit which gained access to the city by just riding through the gates; the problem with all these explanations is that Homer did not use the term Trojan Horse, he consistently called it a Wooden Horse and said that there were men concealed inside.
I mention these alternate explanations because it seems that some of us have not yet learned the lesson so clearly demonstrated by Heinrich Schliemann; Mr. Schliemann (1822-1890 CE) proposed that there had been a real city named Troy in antiquity; he was promptly ridiculed by contemporary scholars who were convinced that Troy was a mythical city in a fictional story; since Homer and other ancient authors spoke of Troy as a real place and Alexander the Great and Julius Cesar both claimed to have visited the ruins of Troy, Heinrich Schliemann reasoned that Troy actually existed and that the ruins could be found by following the clues found in The Iliad and The Odyssey; Mr. Schliemann found Troy and history had to be rewritten; let's apply the same logic to the Wooden Horse and assume that the Greeks actually built a huge Wooden Horse and that Trojans unwittingly took the horse into their doomed city.
The Little Iliad, fragment 1, line 19
Odyssey (Lattimore and Loeb), book 4, lines 271-280; book 8, lines 492-520; book 11, lines 522-532
Odyssey (Fagles), book 4, lines 304-324; book 8, lines 552-576; book 11, lines 596-609
Odyssey (Fitzgerald), book 4, lines 289-311; book 8, lines 526-550; book 11, lines 621-639
The feast in honor of Artemis in the city of Ephesus (Ephesos).
An ancient coastal city in western Asia Minor which became famous as the site of the monumental Temple of Artemis.
Ephesus was one of the most important cities of Ionia and located in Karia (Caria) on the southern side of the narrow estuary of the Cayster River (modern Kucuk Menderes); the Ionian colonists who settled Ephesus were led by a man named Androklos (Androclus) who was the son of the legendary King Kodros (Codrus) of Athens; Androklos drove the native Karians and Legeges from the area which was to become Ephesus and established a strong Greek presence, complete with customs, festivals and currency; the seventh century BCE coins from Ephesus are thought to be the oldest examples of coins with inscriptions.
Ephesus remained self governing and independent until King Kroesus (Croesus) became ruler of Lydia in 560 BCE; it was at that time that construction began on the Temple of Artemis which was to become the most recognized temple in Asia Minor; Ephesus was the first of many Greek Ionian colonies to be subjugated by Kroesus but he was defeated by King Cyrus II of Persia in 546 BCE and Ephesus came under Persian domination.
Although Ephesus was located in Persian territory and under Persian suzerainty, the architecture of the city and culture remained Greek; poets such as Hipponax and philosophers such as Heraklitus (Heraclitus) were natives of Ephesus; the city paid tribute (taxes) to Athens from 454 BCE until 412 BCE when, during the Peloponnesian War, Ephesus and other Ionian cities sided with Sparta against Athens; after the Peloponnesian War ended, Sparta had no interest in the Ionian colonies and Ephesus was ceded to the Persians in 387 BCE.
The Persians were forced out of Ephesus by Alexander the Great in 333 BCE as part of his invasion of Asia Minor and liberation of Greek cities in Persian territory; circa 294 BCE, Ephesus came under the control of Lysimachus who tried to change the character of the city by bringing in new citizens and renaming the city Arsinoeia; this was an era of wealth and prosperity for Ephesus and the city's independence endured until well into Roman times.
Ephesus is perhaps most famous as the site of the Temple of Artemis which was one of the Seven Wonders of the World; six of the Seven Wonders of the World were constructed by the Greeks and the most amazing of the Greek structures was the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
The site on which the Temple of Artemis was built had been a center of worship for an Anatolian Mother Goddess since prehistoric times; when King Kroesus conquered Karia, of which Ephesus was the primary city, he built the first Temple of Artemis on the ruins if the Mother Goddess temple which was on the estuary of the Cayster River (modern Kucuk Menderes); construction began circa 560 BCE, under the supervision of the engineer/architect Chersiphron.
The temple was utterly destroyed in 356 BCE when a man named Herostratus set fire to the wooden roof; the flames were so intense that the building, although mostly constructed of marble, was ruined; Herostratus is reputed to have arrogantly boasted that the men who built the temple would be forgotten but he would always be remembered as the man who destroyed it.
The new temple was gigantic by Greek standards and was larger than the Parthenon at Athens or the Temple of Zeus at Olympia; the temple was built on the same site as the previous temples and although the proposed design was traditional, the scope and budget surpassed any previous construction project except for those in Egypt and Babylon; the temple was a massive structure and measured 425 feet (130 meters) in length and 225 feet (78 meters) wide; the 60 foot (18 meter) columns were set on a 10 foot (3 meter) base and surmounted by a wooden roof that added another 20 feet (6 meters) to the overall height; the base of the temple had fourteen pairs of columns on each side and six pairs on each end.
A gold and ivory statue of Artemis was the centerpiece of the temple but there were numerous other statues decorating the interior and exterior; the building was surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens and glades full of wild beasts suitable for the habitat of Artemis as the Goddess of the Hunt.
The temple supported a large staff of musicians as well as a choir and was well financed by Persian and Greek benefactors; the temple was a magnet for travelers and pilgrims not only because of its grandiose beauty but also because of its location in Asia Minor rather than on the Greek mainland; Persians, Greeks and Europeans revered the goddess Artemis and found a commonality in her worship.
The city of Ephesus was devoted to the goddess and each spring there was a festival in her honor where contributions of jewels, gold, silver, silk and other valuable gifts were presented to the priests and priestesses; the city of Ephesus and the temple were plundered in 262 CE by the Goths; the temple was rebuilt but never restored to its former grandeur; finally, in 401 CE, the Patriarch of Constantinople supervised the utter destruction of the temple; the remaining temple artifacts were looted and the massive stones were used to build churches and civic buildings.
After hundreds of years of peaceful splendor, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus became relegated to the mist of legend and the once powerful symbol of Greek culture was doomed to be lost in time until the ruins were finally excavated in 1858 CE by the English engineer, John T. Wood.
The court at Athens created by Drako (Draco) to try cases of homicide; usually rendered as The Ephetae.
In 621 BCE, Drako was given special authority and a mandate to revise the laws of the city of Athens; the laws he instituted were revisions and improvements of the existing laws and were considered necessary in order to purge the antiquated legal system of Athens from its history of vigilante justice and punishment without the benefit of a public trial.
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Ephialtes and his brother Otos were the monstrous sons of Iphimedia (Iphimedeia) and Poseidon (lord of the Sea); Iphimedia was married to a man named Aloeus but she was seduced by Poseidon and the magnificently terrible brothers were the result of that union; although they were incredibly large, Ephialtes and Otos were really quite beautiful; second only to the mighty hunter Orion, Ephialtes and Otos were the most handsome men (demigods) to ever exist; the two brothers were by far the tallest men ever to reside on the earth; when they were nine years old, they were nine cubits across and nine fathoms tall; the units of measurement (yards, cubits and fathoms) varies with each translator but the number nine is used consistently.
In The Iliad, we are given an amazing story which demonstrates the physical prowess and audacity of Ephialtes and Otos; after a confrontation with the gigantic brothers, Ares (god of War) was bound in chains and imprisoned in a cauldron; Ares remained in that humiliating and helpless situation for thirteen months until he was finally freed when Eeriboia, the stepmother of Ephialtes and Otos, told Hermes of Ares's plight.
Before the two boys reached adulthood, they brought about their own doom by daring to try and reach the heavens; the two rebellious boys tried unsuccessfully to pile Mount Ossa on top of Mount Olympos (Olympus) and then put Mount Pelion on top of that; their intentions were so outrageous that Zeus commanded Apollon to kill Ephialtes and Otos with a rain of arrows.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 5, lines 384-390
Iliad (Fagles), book 5, lines 384-390
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 5, lines 384-390
Odyssey (Lattimore and Loeb), book 11, lines 305-320
Odyssey (Fagles), book 11, lines 348-363
Odyssey (Fitzgerald), book 11, lines 352-371
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Ephialtes was one of the huge monsters collectively known as the Giants; the Giants were the children of Gaia (Earth) engendered by the blood of Ouranos (the Heavens).
The Giants waged an unsuccessful war on the Olympians and were severely punished after their defeat; the poet Hesiod states that the Giants were banished to the Underworld but Apollodorus of Athens clearly describes the brutal death of the Giants.
The Giants were mostly human in form but their bodies were massive and they were invincible in their might; they had long drooping locks on their heads and chins; their feet had scales like a dragon or serpent; whether they actually had the feet of dragons or whether they were simply scaled was a point of contention among several of the ancient authors; the traveler and historian, Pausanias, disputed the fact that the Giants literally had dragon feet but ancient artwork generally represented the Giants with serpent-like feet.
The origin of the Giants was either Phlegrae or Pallene but it has been suggested that the two names represent the same place; the Immortals were given an oracle which stated that the Giants could not be killed by a god or goddess so they decided to enlist the aid of Herakles (Heracles) to do the actual killing; when Gaia learned of the oracle, she began the preparation of a drug that would protect her awful children but Zeus culled a cunning brew of his own that would make the Giants vulnerable to the wrath of the Immortals; in order to have the time necessary for the creation of the drug, Zeus forbade Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to shine until his task was complete.
The goddess Athene (Athena) summoned Herakles and the war against the Giants began:
Ephialtes was shot with an arrow in the left eye by Apollon and then in the right eye by Herakles; his brothers all met a similar fate:
Alkyoneos (Alcyoneus) - Alkyoneos was one of the two most powerful of the Giants; he was brazen in his contempt for the Olympian Gods and even stole the cattle of Helios from Erythia; he was immortal as long as he remained on his home soil, i.e. he could not be killed by man, god or beast as long as he remained in the land of his birth; he was, however, the first of the Giants to die; Herakles shot Alkyoneos with an arrow and the mighty Giant fell to the ground where he was revitalized by the earth and began to recover from the wound; at the advice of Athene, Herakles dragged Alkyoneos out of Pallene where he was no longer protected by his native soil and he died.
Porphyrion - Alkyoneos and Porphyrion were the two most powerful Giants; while Alkyoneos and Herakles were fighting, Porphyrion joined the battle but was immediately distracted by an intervention from Zeus; an irresistible longing for the goddess Hera overcame Porphyrion and he began to tear at the goddesses' garments; Herakles killed Alkyoneos while Porphyrion was lustfully distracted and Zeus struck the unsuspecting Giant with a thunderbolt and rendered him helpless but not dead; Herakles shot Porphyrion with an arrow and killed him.
Eurytos (Eurytus) was killed by Dionysos (a.k.a. Bacchus, god of Wine) with a thyrsus, i.e. a wand wreathed in ivy and vine leaves with a pine cone at the top.
Klytios (Clytius) was killed by the goddess Hekate (Hecate) with torches; presumably he was burned to death.
Mimas was killed when Hephaistos (Hephaestus) showered him with missiles of hot metal.
Enkelados (Enceladus) tried to run away but Athene dropped the island of Sicily on him.
Polybotes was chased by Poseidon to the island of Kos (Cos) where the god broke off a piece of the island (called Nisyrum) and hurled it at the desperate Giant.
Hippolytus (Hippolytos) was killed by Hermes who was wearing the Helm of Hades which made him invisible.
Gration was killed by Artemis; Agrios (Agrius) and Thoas were beaten with brazen clubs by the Fates; the other (unnamed) Giants were struck by thunderbolts from Zeus; Herakles shot and killed each of the Giants with arrows as they lay suffering.
Pausanaus, book vii, chapter 29
Library, book I, chapter VI
Theogony, line 185
Ephialtes of Malis; Ephialtes was the man who showed the Persians how to circumvent the Spartan defenses at Thermopylae in 480 BCE and, by using a mountain path, attack the outnumbered Greeks from the rear.
The narrow pass at Thermopylae allowed the greatly outnumbered Greeks to hold back the Persian army because the Persians could not bring their full strength to bear on the defenses of the Spartan king, Leonidas; after several days of failed frontal assaults on the Greek defenses, Ephialtes informed the Persian king, Xerxes, that there was a way to attack the Greeks from the rear and thus avoid the narrow pass of Thermopylae.
After the defeat of the Greeks, a price was put on Ephialtes's head and he was eventually killed by a man named Athenades for reasons other than his treason but the Spartans honored Athenades just the same.
Herodotus, book 7.213
The name of a creature who inhabited nightmares comparable to the modern bogeyman.
The Spartan government was ruled by a group of five Ephors who in turn exerted control over the two Spartan kings; the word literally means Overseer or Guardian.
The oldest name of the city of Corinth.
The Iliad and The Odyssey are what we consider to be the story of the Trojan War; The Epic Cycle also dealt with this momentous event in the form of poetic epics and lays that filled in certain details on which The Iliad and The Odyssey neglected to elaborate; usually referred to as The Trojan Cycle.
Also included in The Epic Cycle is the Theban Cycle and other fragmented references such as: The War of the Titans, The Story of Oedipus, The Thebais, The Epigoni, The Kypria (Cypria), The Aethiopis (Aithiopis), The Little Iliad, The Sack of Ilion (Troy), The Returns and Theogony.
The Epic Cycle has come down to us in fragments but it still captures the spirit and drama of the interaction of the heroes and the Immortals in shaping the Greek culture.
For the complete translations of The Epic Cycle, I recommend the Loeb Classical Library volume 57, ISBN 0674990633; you can sometimes find this book at the library or you can order it from the Book Shop on this site.
An early fifth century BCE Greek comic poet from the city of Magara, on the island of Sicily.
Little is known of his early life and we only have references to him by other classical writers, such as Horace, to document his life.
An ancient town in southern Greece in Argolis; the main center of worship for the god of healing, Asklepios (Asclepius); the outdoor theater there is still in use; during the siege of the city of Troy, the soldiers from the city of Epidaurus were under the command of Diomedes.
As the son of Apollon, Asklepios was semi-divine and became known as the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing; several shrines were established in honor of Asklepios including one in Athens and another at Epidaurus; patients would sleep in the temple and either they would be cured in the night or they would have dreams that would indicate the correct treatment for their ailments; some were healed with calming incantations, some were given potions and others were cured with surgery.
The above photo is of the ruins of the sanctuary of Asklepios; at one time, circa 400 BCE, there was a circular structure where the rites of worship were performed; the main hall was called the Abaton; the sick and injured pilgrims would make a sacrifice, participate in a ceremony and then be left to have a healing sleep; there are several inscriptions left by people who were cured by the divine powers of Asklepios and his priests.
The amphitheatre of Epidaurus is truly breathtaking; the simplicity and grandeur of the structure are simultaneously subtle and overwhelming; the estimated seating capacity is 20,000; the dramatic and musical presentations at this amphitheatre were intended to promote healing and health; despite the size of this amphitheatre, the seating arrangements and acoustic properties allowed everyone to see and hear clearly.
epee GOH nee
The After-Born; the sons of the Seven Against Thebes.
The Epigoni consisted of:
Thersandros (Thersander) - The son of Polyneikes (Polyneices);
Aigialeus (Aegialeus) - The son of Adrastus (Adrestos);
Alkmaeon (Alcmaeon) - The son of Amphiaraus (Amphiaraos);
Sthenelos (Sthenelus) - The son of Kapaneus (Capaneus);
Polydoros (Polydorus) - The son of Hippomedon;
Promachos (Promachus) - The son of Parthenopaeus;
Diomedes - The son of Tydeus.
The fathers of the Epigoni were under the leadership of Polyneikes and their goal was to attack and capture the city of Thebes; after the self-imposed exile of King Oedipus of Thebes, Polyneikes and his brother Eteokles (Eteocles) decided to share the throne with one brother at a time as king; Eteokles was the eldest and the first to take the throne; when the time came for Eteokles to surrender the throne to his brother Polyneikes, he banished Polyneikes and declared himself the one and only king of Thebes.
Polyneikes went to Argos and was given sanctuary by King Adrastus of Sikyon (Sikyon) in Argos; while in Argos, Polyneikes married Adrastus's daughter and had a son named Thersandros; Polyneikes nursed his hatred for his brother until he finally had the support he needed to take Thebes by force; he found six suitable men to command armies and counting himself as a commander, each of the seven armies would attack one of the seven gates of Thebes; they became known as the Seven Against Thebes.
Circa 1265 BCE, the Seven attacked Thebes and with the exception of Adrastus, all the commanders were killed; Polyneikes and Eteokles died on each other's spears.
Ten years later, circa 1255 BCE, the Epigoni mounted another assault on Thebes and were successful in breaching the walls and capturing the city; Aigialeus, the son of Adrastus, was the only Epigoni commander to die in the fighting; because of the loss of his beloved son, Adrastus died of grief on his return to Argos.
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The Epigoni (After-Born); one of the fragmentary remains of The Epic Cycle which originally described the successful assault on the city of Thebes by the sons of the Seven Against Thebes.
The Epigoni survives only in three short fragments which might be summarized as follows:
Fragment 1 - Homer composed the Epigoni in seven thousand verses and begins by calling on the Muses to sing of the younger men, i.e. the sons of the Seven Against Thebes.
Fragment 2 - The Teumesian Fox was sent by the Immortals to punish the descendants of Kadmos (Cadmus) and thus all of Kadmos's descendants were excluded from kingship of Thebes; an Athenian named Kephalos (Cephalus), the son of Deion, killed his wife Prokris (Procris) and was purified of the crime by the Kadmeans, i.e. the Thebans; Kephalos owned a hound which no beast had ever escaped; the hound was loosed to hunt the Teumesian Fox; when the hound overtook the fox, they were both turned to stone near Teumessus.
Fragment 3 - Manto, the daughter of the Theban seer Teiresias, was taken captive and sent to Delphi as a tribute to Apollon; after arriving at Delphi, Manto was freed by the priestesses of Apollon and told to marry the first man she met after leaving the sanctuary; obeying the oracle's command, Manto met and married a Mycenaean man named Rhakios (Rhacius); when she arrived at Kolophon (Colophon), she wept for the destruction of her country.
For the complete translations of The Epic Cycle I recommend the Loeb Classical Library volume 57, ISBN 0674990633; you can sometimes find this book at the library or you can order it from the Book Shop on this site.
More commonly called Jocasta but her name is more properly rendered as Iokaste.
Iokaste and her husband, Laius, the king of the city of Thebes, were warned by the Oracle at Delphi that if they had a son, he would kill Laius and take his throne; when the son was born, Iokaste and Laius gave the infant to a shepherd with instructions to kill the child; the shepherd pierced the child's ankles and intended to leave him in the wilderness to die but instead, the would-be killer gave the boy to another shepherd with the assumption that the boy would never be seen again and that Laius and Iokaste would never find out that he had disobeyed them.
The infant was taken to the city of Corinth where he was adopted by the king, Polybos; the orphaned child with the injured ankles was named Oedipus (which means "swollen ankles"); upon reaching manhood, Oedipus was told by the Delphic oracle that he would be the murderer of his father; Oedipus loved Polybos, who he assumed to be his natural father, and fled Corinth so that the prophecy could not be fulfilled.
While traveling, Oedipus met a nobleman on the road and after suffering insults and blows, Oedipus killed the nobleman and all but one of his guards and then proceeded to Thebes; he had no idea that the man he had just killed was his father, Laius.
Before he reached Thebes, Oedipus was stopped by a creature called the Sphinx which menaced and killed travelers on the road to Thebes; the Sphinx would ask riddles and if the travelers could not give the correct answers, she killed them; Oedipus was stopped and asked to answer a riddle before he could pass; Oedipus answered the riddle correctly and the Sphinx killed herself.
When Oedipus reached Thebes he was welcomed as a hero and, since King Laius was now dead, Oedipus was made the king of Thebes and allowed to unwittingly marry his mother, Iokaste.
Many years and four children later, she and Oedipus learned the truth of their unholy relationship; she hanged herself and Oedipus blinded himself and spent the rest of his life as a wanderer.
Oedipus and Iokaste had four children: Ismene, Antigone, Eteokles (Eteocles) and Polyneikes (Polyneices); the children suffered the curse of their parents and lived lives of sorrow and rejection.
One of the three tribes which made up the Lokrians (Locrians); they occupied an area on the Maliac Gulf.
The other two tribes were named: the Opuntian and the Ozolian; the Lokrian colonists who went to Italy near Mount Zephyrium were called the Zephyrians or the Epizephyrians.
(circa 342-270 BCE) A Greek philosopher and the founder of what we call the Epicurean school of philosophy.
Epikurus believed that there was no supernatural or mystical powers which governed human existence and that nature should be the sole source of motivation and that wise conduct was the best way to live a healthy life; his doctrine was that the external world is a series of fortuitous combinations of events and that the highest good is pleasure, interpreted as freedom from disturbance or pain.
According to Diogenes of Oenoanda, Epikurus was to have said, Good can be attained ... Evil can be endured.
His name may also be rendered as Epikouros or Epicouros.
A name given to Nymphs as the Flock-Protectors.
The legendary prophet from the island of Crete of the early sixth century BCE.
Epimenides was said to have fallen into a coma as a boy and awakened fifty seven years later; he is credited with the famous quote, All Cretans are liars, beasts and slow bellies.
A son of the Titan, Iapetos, and the Okeanid, Klymene (Clymene); the brother of Prometheus, Menoitios and Atlas.
His name literally means After-Thought; Prometheus warned him to be suspicious of gifts from Zeus but Epimetheus could not resist the god-made woman, Pandora, when she was offered to him by Zeus and, by accepting her, unwittingly unleashed all the evils upon the world.
Theogony; line 512
Works and Days, lines 60-105
A traditional Greek choral tribute to the victor of battle or athletic competition.
ee pee OH nee
The wife of the once mortal man, Asklepios (Asclepius), who became the god of Healing; circa 160 CE, the traveler, Pausanias, reported seeing statues of Epione at Epidaurus which was the sacred healing site of Asklepios; it might be assumed that Epione was the mother of the two physicians, Machaon and Podaleirios, who were with the Greeks at the siege of Troy.
Pausanias, Corinth, 22.5 and 24.1
A coastal district in northwestern Greece where the ancient Oracle of Zeus at Dodona is located.
The Oracle of Zeus was established at Dodona when two Egyptian priestesses with the skill of divination were carried away by Phoenicians and sold as slaves; one was sold in Libya and the other was sold in Greece at Dodona; the inhabitants of Dodona told the historian, Herodotus, that the first oracle arrived, not as a woman, but as a black dove with human speech; Herodotus discounted this story but did not doubt the veracity or antiquity of the oracle.
In Greek comedy, a number of episodic songs and speeches which resolve the arguments proposed by the Agon.
The classifications into which modern scholars have divided Old Comedy are usually expressed in six elements:
1) Prologue (setting the theme of the play);
2) Parodos (introduction of the chorus);
3) Agon (argumentation);
4) Parabasis (choral ode);
5) Episodes (resolving the Agon); and
6) Exodos (celebratory conclusion).
A comedy by Menander of Athens (circa 342-292 BCE); the title means Arbitration but has also been rendered as The Arbitrants, Those who Submit Their Case to Arbitration and Desperately Seeking Justice.
We only have about half of the original text of this play but trying to remain faithful to Menander's style, several "complete" copies of the play have been published; the following synopsis was derived from a reconstruction/translation by Sheila D'Atri and Palmer Bovie.
Cast of characters:
Charisios - the husband of Pamphile
Pamphile - the wife of Charisios
Chairestratos - the neighbor of Charisios
Smikrines - the father of Pamphile
Karion - a cook
Onesimos - a slave of Charisios
Habrotonon - a harp-girl
Syros - a slave of Chairestratos
Daos - a shepherd
Pietho - the goddess of Persuasion
Chorus - revelers in the street
This was the first play I read by Menander and as with all poets, it takes a little time to grasp their wit and flow; the play revolves around a baby who was abandoned in the wilds and the arbitration, from which the play derives it's name, concerns the personal effects left with the abandoned baby and who should keep them.
The play begins with two household slaves arguing about the strife and confusion that has become part of their owner's lives; Charisios has left his wife Pamphile and moved into his neighbor's house because he believes his wife has been unfaithful; to irritate Pamphile, Charisios pretends to have an affair with a harp-girl named Habrotonon; the neighbor, whose name is Chairestratos, is secretly infatuated with Habrotonon but since Charisios is his friend, Chairestratos won't make his feeling known.
The plot thickens; a baby has been left in the wilds and found by a bachelor shepherd named Daos; a man named Syros begs Daos for the baby so that the child can have a mother and father; Daos gives the baby to Syros but will not surrender the ring and other ornaments which were found with the baby; the two men cannot settle the argument as to who should have the ornaments so they go in search of an arbitrator.
It would seem that if you wanted a dispute settled, you would not go to a home where the household disputes and arguments are spilling out into the streets, but that's exactly what Daso and Syros do; they find themselves outside Charisios's house confronted by the most angry and confused person in the play, Pamphile's father Smikrines; of course, Daso and Syros ask Smikrines to arbitrate their dispute.
The threads of the play start to intertwine at this point; the slave Onesimos is the pivot for the dialogue and the harp-girl Habrotonon is the voice of reason and deduction; Habrotonon comically deduces the identity of the parents of the abandoned baby and they are none other than Charisios and Pamphile; husband, wife and baby are reunited, and Chairestratos now has a chance to become more than friends with Habrotonon.
One of the best lines in the play is delivered by Habrotonon when she says that Smikrines looks like a philosopher, "three times full of gloom and doom"; all in all, an interesting play which seems to bend a very crooked plot line into a straight-out comical satire.
A poetic meter represented by a series of long and short syllables in the sequence: long short long.
Lokrian (Locrian) colonists from mainland Greece who settled near Mount Zephyrium in southern Italy; also called the Zephyrian.
A poetic meter developed by Archilochos (Archilochus) in which a longer line is followed by a shorter line.
"That which gives its name," i.e. usually a mythical person who is thought to be the source of the name of a city, river, era or the like.
Literally meaning "a word" but used in the plural by the ancient Greeks to denote epic poetry.
The fifth letter of the Greek alphabet; uppercase: Ε; lowercase: ε.
The ancient Greeks did not have lowercase letters in their alphabet; the lowercase letters were not invented until the ninth century CE, i.e. about eleven hundred years ago.
Letters of the Greek alphabet were also used as numerals; the letter epsilon represented the number 5 and was written as a simple ε or as epsilon followed by an acute accent, ε'.
An epic in brief, i.e. a short poem with an epic mythological theme.
(circa 300-250 BCE) A Greek physician and physiologist from Antioch in Syria; in his study of anatomy, he differentiated the motor nerves from the sensory nerves.
One of the Thirty Tyrants elected to rule the city of Athens after the end of the Peloponnesian War (404 BCE).
Having lost the war to the Spartans, the citizens of Athens elected thirty men to lead the new post-war government; these men became known as the Thirty Tyrants; the short lived government they comprised was an oligarchy; an oligarchy is a system of government allowing a few select people or families to rule a city or region based on the assumption that their bloodline or intellect gave them a superior predisposition and right to rule.
The tyrants immediately began to prosecute Athenians who had been Spartan informers and collaborators during the long, hard war; the punishment of the guilty seemed appropriate to the common citizens and aristocrats alike but it soon became clear that the executions and banishments were going beyond the bounds of necessity or prudence; open hostilities soon developed between members of the Thirty and their authority and rule came to an end after one year.
Hellenica, book 2.3
One of the nine Muses, her name means, The Lovely; usually associated with love poetry.
For more information on Erato and her sisters, I suggest that you consult the Muses page in the Immortals section of this site.
Theogony, line 78
eh rah TOH
One of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris collectively known as the Nereids, i.e. the daughters of the Nereus; her name means, The Lovely.
Other than a passing reference to her name, the only Nereid to receive any individual attention in the ancient literature was Thetis; as the mother of Achilles and one of the few goddesses to refuse the amorous intentions of Zeus, Thetis was unique; when the Immortals needed the Nereids, they called upon Thetis to rally her sisters for whatever task was needed.
The Nereids and the Argonauts - After Jason and the Argonauts had taken the Golden Fleece from Kolchis (Colchis), Medeia (Medea), the daughter of King Aietes (Aeetes), helped Jason murder her half-brother Apsyrtos (Apsyrtus) in a rather cowardly way; Zeus swore revenge for such a dastardly act but his sister/wife Hera wanted to protect the Argonauts until Jason and Medeia could be absolved of their crime by the Dread-Goddess Kirke (Circe); Hera called upon Thetis to gather the Nereids so they could quiet the waters of the sea so the Argonauts could safely navigate to Kirke's island; Thetis plunged into the sea and called to her sisters; her call was answered and the Nereids helped save the Argonauts.
The Nereids at the funeral of Patroklos (Patroclus) - In the last year of the Trojan War, Achilles's companion Patroklos was killed; Achilles took Patroklos's death very hard and called out to his mother Thetis for consolation; Thetis and the Nereids rose from the sea and graced the dead body of Patroklos with their divine presence.
The Nereids at the funeral of Achilles - The death of Achilles was one of the most dramatic events of the Trojan War; as the son of Thetis, his death had particular significance to the Nereids; at the funeral of Achilles, Thetis, the Nereids and the Muses all came to pay their respects.
Theogony, line 246
Eratosthenes of Kyrene (Cyrene) (276-195 BCE); a Greek mathematician, geographer and astronomer.
Eratosthenes was born in the Greek colony of Kyrene (Cyrene) on the northern coast of Africa where he studied under Kallimachus (Callimachus) and Lysanias; he eventually moved to Athens and where he was introduced to the teachings of Arkesilaos (Arcesilaus) and Ariston of Chios.
In 236 BCE, he was invited by Ptolemy III Euergetes to Alexandria, Egypt, to become the head of the famed Library of Alexandria; he was reunited with Kallimachus while he was in Alexandria and was accepted as a competent, but not superior, writer and researcher; regardless of what the Alexandrian scholars thought of Eratosthenes, he was honorably mentioned by the acclaimed inventor Archimedes and referenced by other writers such as Heron, Strabo and Suetonius; fragments of his work survives but most of what we know of his work is found in brief quotes by other writers.
We know that Eratosthenes wrote twelve "books" on the subject of Greek comedy which dealt with the substance, history, authorship and production of the plays; he also tried to establish a practical historical and literary chronology in which used the fall of Troy as the foundation of his dating system.
Perhaps Eratosthenes's most notable achievements were in the field of mathematics and geography; he made a very commendable effort to determine the size of the earth but the original text, On the Measurement of the Earth, has been lost.
The following explanation of Eratosthenes's experiment has been abbreviated for the sake of simplicity but it does capture the essence of the experiment.
Regardless of the figures Eratosthenes used, his method was ingenious; with a complete understanding of Euclid's geometry, Eratosthenes used several well founded assumptions to measure the circumference of the earth.
It was common knowledge to educated men of Eratosthenes's age that the earth was round; by extension, the other heavenly bodies, including the sun, were also known to be round; the sun was large enough and far enough away to assume that the light from the sun was parallel to the earth's surface no matter where you were on the face of the earth; that is to say, the light from the sun could be considered to be arriving in straight lines.
The geography of Egypt, where Eratosthenes lived, was well understood; the country was mapped accurately and then remapped after each flooding of the Nile to recalculate property boundaries; it was known that at noon on the summer solstice in Syene, Egypt, the sun was directly overhead, i.e. light from the sun would cast no shadow on any vertical surface at Syene; using the zero angle of shadow at Syene as a reference, Eratosthenes placed a vertical rod in the ground at Alexandria in order to measure the angle made by the sun at noon on the solstice; the distance between Syene and Alexandria had been established at 5000 stades; a stade was a unit of measure which can be roughly equated with a yard or meter; Eratosthenes determined the angle of the sun at Alexandria to be 7.2 degrees; dividing 360 degrees (the number of degrees in a complete circle) by 7.2 equals 50; multiplying 50 times the 5000 stades between Syene and Alexandria yields a total of 250,000 stades, which would be the earth's circumference; Heron of Alexandria later quoted 252,000 stades as Eratosthenes's figure but the addition of 2000 stades is treated more as a mystery than a correct accounting of Eratosthenes's calculations.
As clever as Eratosthenes was, his figures were still wrong; but just how wrong was he?
The exact length of a stade becomes crucial at this point; there were at least four different lengths ascribed to a stade when Eratosthenes conducted his experiment; depending on which stade was used, Eratosthenes's error in determining the earth's circumference might have been 10 to 30 percent too large but without the original text, we will never know exactly how accurate or flawed Eratosthenes's figures were.
Eratosthenes died in Alexandria, Egypt, in 195 BCE.
One of the Thirty Tyrants elected to rule the city of Athens after the end of the Peloponnesian War (404 BCE).
Having lost the war to the Spartans, the citizens of Athens elected thirty men to lead the new post-war government; these men became known as the Thirty Tyrants; the short lived government they comprised was an oligarchy; an oligarchy is a system of government allowing a few select people or families to rule a city or region based on the assumption that their bloodline or intellect gave them a superior predisposition and right to rule.
The tyrants immediately began to prosecute Athenians who had been Spartan informers and collaborators during the long, hard war; the punishment of the guilty seemed appropriate to the common citizens and aristocrats alike but it soon became clear that the executions and banishments were going beyond the bounds of necessity or prudence; open hostilities soon developed between members of the Thirty and their authority and rule came to an end after one year.
Hellenica, book 2.3
The spawn of the primal Chaos.
Erebos is the Darkness Under the Earth but above Tartaros (Tartarus); thought to be the abode of the wicked after death; Nix, also a child of Chaos, and Erebos conceived Aither (the Upper Air) and Hemera (Day).
Theogony, line 123
The Erechtheum is one of the oldest temples on the Acropolis of Athens; the original temple was the abode of King Erechtheus but it was destroyed when the Persian King Xerxes burned Athens in 480 BCE; when Pericles was archon of Athens, the temple was rebuilt but Pericles died before the construction was completed in 406 BCE; the architects of the new Ionic style temple were Philokles and Archilochos (Archilochus).
The most striking and memorable aspect of the rebuilt Erechtheum is the porch which has the distinctive Karyatids (Caryatids) supporting the roof; the six women-shaped columns have been replaced with replicas so that the originals will not be damaged by the soot and smog of modern Athens.
The Erechtheum was originally the residence of King Erechtheus and housed a wooden statue of the goddess Athene (Athena) which fell from the sky to signify her protection of the city; in the precincts of the Erechtheum were the olive tree which Athene gave to the city and the salt pool which Poseidon (lord of the Sea) created on the Acropolis; the two Immortals, Athene and Poseidon, competed for dominance of the city and Athene's gift of the olive tree was the most pleasing to the citizens, thus the city was named Athens; after King Xerxes burned the Acropolis, he allowed some of the captive Athenians to go to the Acropolis and make sacrifices as they deemed fit; when the Athenians went to the Erechtheum, they found that a shoot had run up from the stock of the olive tree about a cubit in length; the worshipers interpreted the revitalization of olive tree as a sign that the goddess had not abandoned the city.
The Erechtheum also housed the grave of King Kekrops (Cecrops) and was the lair of a giant snake which was sacred to Athene; we can assume that shortly after the Trojan War (circa 1250 BCE), King Erechtheus still lived in the Erechtheum because we are told in The Odyssey that Athene flew to Athens and entered the abode of Erechtheus; she did not enter is former abode or his shrine, she entered the abode of Erechtheus.
A statue of the snake which once inhabited the Erechtheum.
eh reh hee THEE ohs
Erechtheus was one of the first kings of Athens; according to Homer, Erechtheus was born of the soil itself and nurtured by the goddess Athene (Athena); his name literally means The Render.
Erechtheus was the son of Pandion and the father of Sikyon (Sicyon) and Orithyia; his daughter Orithyia was abducted by Boreas (North Wind) and eventually became his wife.
Before Erechtheus ruled Athens, the people of that area were called the Kekropidae (Cecropidae) after King Kekrops (Cecrops); before that, the people of Attica and Athens were descendants of the Pelasgians and called themselves the Kranai (Cranai) which might be interpreted to mean Those Who Rule; Erechtheus called his people Athenians after the goddess Athene because she had given the olive tree to Athens and was thus honored as the initiator of the city's success; the name Athenians was thereafter used as the designation for the people of Athens but they also called themselves Ionians after Ion became their ruler; it wasn't until the time of Theseus (circa 1290 BCE) that the rule of Athens was irrevocably extended to the surrounding region of Attica.
There was a shrine on the Acropolis of Athens which was called the Erechtheum (Erechtheion) and dedicated to Erechtheus Earth Born; the shrine housed the sacred gifts given to the city by Poseidon (lord of the Sea) and Athene; during the time of King Kekrops a contest was held between these two Immortals for possession of Athens; Poseidon created a salt pool and Athene created an olive tree; King Kekrops judged that the olive tree was the most remarkable of the two creations and made Athene the patron goddess of the city; when the Persians burned Athens in 480 BCE, they destroyed the shrine of Erechtheus and burned the scared olive tree; on the following day, the tree put forth a live shoot which proved that the blessings of the goddess were still upon the city.
The Athenians were not the only Greeks to honor Erechtheus; the Epidaurians were in desperate straits because their land would not yield crops and when they consulted the Oracle at Delphi, the Pythia (priestess of Apollon) instructed then to make images of Damia (Increase) and Auxesia (Fertility) and assured the Epidaurians that things would change for the better; the Epidaurians then asked if they should make the effigies of stone or bronze; the Pythia told them to make the statues of olive wood; the Epidaurians went immediately to Athens for the olive tree wood they needed; there are two possible reasons why the Epidaurians went to the Athenians: 1) the olive trees of Athens were the most holy because the goddess Athene had given the Athenians the first olive tree, or 2) the only place in Greece that had olive trees was the countryside around Athens; regardless, the Athenians agreed to give the Epidaurians the wood they needed with the stipulation that the Epidaurians make yearly offerings to Athene Polias (Athene, Guardian of the City) and to Erechtheus; the Epidaurians kept their agreement and their crops began to grow again.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 2, line 547
Iliad (Fagles), book 2, line 638
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 2, line 645
Odyssey (Lattimore and Loeb), book 7, line 81
Odyssey (Fagles), book 7, line 93
Odyssey (Fitzgerald), book 7, line 85
Histories, book 5.82; book 7.189; book 8.44 and 8.55
Catalogues of Women, fragment 73
According to Apollonius of Rhodes, Eretheis was one of the daughters of Nix (Night), known collectively as the Hesperides.
Eretheis and her sisters lived in the mythical West and guarded the Golden Apples which were a wedding gift to Hera from Gaia (Earth) upon her wedding to Zeus; the Eleventh Labor of Herakles (Heracles) was to retrieve the Golden Apples of the Hesperides.
The Hesperides are: Eretheis, Hespere and Aegle; when the Argonauts were stranded in the Libyan desert, they encountered the Hesperides; Aegle appeared as the trunk of a willow tree, Eretheis as an elm tree and Hespere as a poplar tree; Aegle told the story of how Herakles (Heracles) had killed the dragon that guarded the Golden Apples and had created a spring of fresh water by kicking a rock; she showed the Argonauts the spring that Herakles had created and the Argonauts drank their fill before they continued through the inhospitable desert.
Argonautika, book 4, lines 1422-1449
Theogony, line 215
A city on the island of Euboea; located on the central-eastern coast opposite the mainland city of Delium.
Approximate East Longitude 23º 48' and North Latitude 38º 24'
A son of Poseidon (lord of the Sea); one of the Argonauts.
The Argonauts were a company of the greatest heroes and adventurers in ancient Greece; the Argonauts were assembled by Jason to assist him in retrieving the Golden Fleece from the land of Kolchis (Colchis); their name was derived from their ship, the Argo (Argo + nautes = Argo-seamen); the Quest for the Golden Fleece can be assumed to have occurred circa 1285 BCE.
Erginos was the father of the legendary architects, Trophonius (Trophonios) and Agamedes, who were credited with building the temple of Apollon at Delphi.
Argonautika, book 1, lines 185-189
A name for Zeus meaning Loud-Thundering.
King Erichthonios; the son of Dardanos (Dardanus) and one of the early rulers of the country that was to become known as Troy.
Zeus and Elektra (Electra) (daughter of Atlas) had two sons, Dardanos and Iasion; when Iasion was a young man he lusted after the goddess Demeter and was killed by Zeus with a thunderbolt for his impudence; Dardanos fled his island home on Samothrake (Samothrace) and settled on the mainland westward of the island; the area was ruled by Teucros (Teucer) and the inhabitants called themselves Teucrians; Dardanos married Teucros's daughter, Bateia; he was given some land and founded a city which he named after himself; after the death of Teucros, Dardanos inherited the entire kingdom and called it Dardania.
Dardanos and Bateia had two sons: Ilos and Erichthonios; Ilos died without producing children; Erichthonios married Astyoche (a daughter of Simoeis) and had a son named Tros; when Tros inherited the kingdom, he renamed it after himself, i.e. Troy.
Library, book III, chapter 139
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 2, line 547
Iliad (Fagles), book 2, line 638
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 2, line 645
Little Iliad, fragment 2
Catalogue of Women, fragment 121
Erichthonius was the half-man/half-snake son Gaia (Earth) and the god Hephaistos (Hephaestus); Gaia gave the infant Erichthonius to the goddess Athene (Athena) for protection; Athene put Erichthonius in a chest and gave it to the three daughters of King Kekrops (Cecrops) of Athens to guard, with the admonition that they never open the chest; even after being warned by the goddess, the young women could not resist opening the chest; when they beheld the snake-like appearance of Erichthonius, they went mad and threw themselves from the rocky plateau of the Acropolis of Athens.
King Kekrops was the first true king of the city of Athens and also known to be snake-like in appearance; the daughters of Kekrops should have been accustomed to the part-reptile form of their father so the fact that they went mad after seeing Erichthonius would indicate that Erichthonius was not only reptilian, he must have been truly frightening; the time in which Kekrops and Erichthonius lived is not known but since we are dealing with the original founding of Athens, it is not hard to imagine that the Athens of Kekrops and Erichthonius was well before any historical mention of the city; according to Plato, the original Athens was founded during the age of Atlantis which would have been approximately 11000 years ago; the first iteration of Athens was destroyed after their successful war against the Atlantians and then re-founded with the continued benevolence of Athene.
Goddess of Hate; the sister and companion of the brutal war god, Ares.
Erida has a page in the Immortals section of this site ... click on her name to view that page.
A river god; one of the many sons of Tethys and Okeanos (Ocean).
The river which Eridanos inhabited is thought to be the modern Po or perhaps the Rhine.
When the son of Helios (the Sun), Phaethon, drove his father's chariot too close to the earth, Zeus struck Phaethon with a thunderbolt and he fell into the river Eridanos.
Zeus gave the Rivers, Apollon and the Okeanids the special obligation of having the young in their keeping.
Theogony, line 338
A small river which flowed through Athens.
The daughter of Ikarius (Icarius).
When Dionysos (a.k.a. Bacchus, god of Wine) was traveling in Attica, he was entertained by a kindly man named Ikarios (Icarius); as a reward for his hospitality, Dionysos gave Ikarios the gift of wine which was unknown to mortal men at that time; when Ikarios shared the wine with his neighbors, they became drunk, murdered Ikarios and hid his body; knowing something was wrong, Ikarios's daughter Erigone used the faithful dog Maira (Maera) to search for her father; when Erigone found Ikarios's dead body she was so overwhelmed with sadness that she committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree; with Erigone and Ikarios both dead, the faithful dog Maira was placed in the sky as the brightest star and called the Dog Star and thereafter named Sirius, the Scorcher.
In ancient Attica her suicide was celebrated at a festival called The Aiora; during the festival, dolls were swung from trees to commemorate Erigone's suicide; (aiora means swing).
A Greek poetess from the small island of Telos in the Mediterranean Sea.
Only a few fragments of her works remain; she died at the age of nineteen and is most noted for the heartfelt poem she wrote to her lost love, Baukis (Baucis); he either married someone else or died before he and Erinna could consummate their love.
The Mist-Walking and The Kindly One; punisher of the unfaithful.
Erinys has a page in the Immortals section of this site ... click on her image to view that page.
The wife of Oileus, king of Lokris (Locris), and mother of Lesser Aias and step-mother of Medon.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 13, line 697; book 15, line 336
Iliad (Fagles), book 13, line 806; book 15, line 390
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 13, line 799; book 15, line 390
An epithet for Hermes meaning Luck-Bringer.
The wife of the doomed seer, Amphiaraus, and the mother of Alkmaeon (Alcmaeon).
Eriphyle accepted an irresistible bribe from Polyneikes (Polyneices) and induced her husband to go on the ill fated quest to capture the city of Thebes; Polyneikes gave Eriphyle the Necklace of Harmonia which he had inherited as a direct descendant of Kadmos (Cadmus) and Harmonia; the necklace was thought to be cursed and the death of Amphiaraus gave credence to that belief.
The goddess of Discord and Strife.
Eris has a page in the Immortals section of this site ... click on her name to view that page.
The primal god of Love; using arrows of gold and lead, he would wound the hearts of mortals and Immortals alike.
Eros has a page in the Immortals section of this site ... click on his photo to view that page.
He and his brother, Boutes, were the sons of Teleon and both brothers became Argonauts.
The Argonauts were a company of the greatest heroes and adventurers in ancient Greece; the Argonauts were assembled by Jason to assist him in retrieving the Golden Fleece from the land of Kolchis (Colchis); their name was derived from their ship, the Argo (Argo + nautes = Argo-seamen); the Quest for the Golden Fleece can be assumed to have occurred circa 1285 BCE.
After the Argonauts had successfully captured the Golden Fleece, and were making their perilous voyage home, Erybotes and Boutes could not resist the call of the Sirens as the Argo sailed past the island of Anthemoessa; the two heroes jumped overboard and would have died on the rocky shore if Aphrodite (goddess of Love) had not plucked them from the sea and transported them safely to Libya.
Argonautika, book 1, lines 71-76 and 885-921
A savage boar which menaced the countryside around Mount Erymanthus; Herakles (Heracles) was required to capture the boar alive as his Fourth Labor and return it to his cousin, Eurystheus.
Mount Erymanthus; a mountain in southern Greece, on the north-central Peloponnesian Peninsula, due south of the port city of Patrae on the thirty-eighth parallel; 7,295 feet (2,224 meters) in height; also called Olonos.
eh ree SEE khthon
The son of Triopas and father of the shape-shifter, Mestra; he is also called Aethon, meaning Hunger.
Erysichthon angered the goddess Demeter when he cut down one of her sacred groves; as punishment for his sacrilege, Demeter inflicted Erysichthon with an insatiable hunger; no matter how much he ate, Erysichthon was always at the point of starvation; in order to satisfy his unquenchable appetite, Erysichthon would sell his daughter Mestra and use the money to buy food; after being sold or promised in marriage for a dowry, Mestra would transform into an animal and return to Erysichthon so that they could repeat the same deception over and over again.
The clever scheme finally ended when Erysichthon promised Mestra to Glaukos (Glaucus), the son of the notorious trickster, Sisyphus (Sisyphos); Sisyphus was not a man to be manipulated, so he appealed to the goddess Athene (Athena) to deliberate the dispute with Erysichthon; Athene essentially said that "a deal is a deal" but Zeus wanted to further punish Mestra by declaring that the descendants of Glaukos would not be left among human beings.
Erysichthon ended his doomed life in Athens where he was cared for by Mestra.
Catalogue of Women (Erysichthon), fragment 70
Catalogue of Women (Triopas's son), fragment 69.3
Catalogue of Women (Aethon), fragments 69.5; 69.61; 70 and 71
The home of the three-bodied warrior, Geryon (Geryones), slain by Herakles (Heracles) in the course of his Tenth Labor (Taking the Cattle of Geryon).
The location of Erytheia is simply given as a land in the far West; on the long journey to Erytheia, Herakles became so weary of the burning heat of Helios (the Sun), he raised his bow and shot an arrow at the burning god; Helios was so amused at Herakles's impudence that he gave the hero a golden bowl to traverse the western sea.
The name implies the color of blood and was used to designate the Red Sea, the Arabian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and, later, the Persian Gulf.
Erytos and Echion were the sons of Hermes and Antianeira; they went with Jason on the quest for the Golden Fleece with their half-brother, Aithalides.
Argonautika, book 1, lines 51-56
eh REEKS
A mountain in the northwestern part of the island of Sicily; now called Mount Erice.
The mountain was named after Eryx who was the son of King Butas and Aphrodite (goddess of Love).
King Eryx challenged Herakles (Heracles) to a wrestling match and wagered his land against the cattle Herakles had stolen from Geryon (Geryones) as part of his Tenth Labor; Herakles won the wrestling match and put Eryx's land in the keeping of the local inhabitants on the condition that if one of his descendants wanted to reclaim the land it would be given to him; many generations later, Dorieus of Sparta came to Sicily and reclaimed the land.
The area around Mount Eryx was the site of an important sect devoted to the worship of Aphrodite and remained in the Greek sphere of influence for hundreds of years but the region was forcibly taken over by the Carthaginians when Dorieus built the city of Herakleia (Heracleia); a Greek city on the western coast of Sicily would have violated the traditional boundaries the Greeks and Carthaginians had made on the island with the Greeks on the east and the Carthaginians on the west.
Mount Erice is 2,461 feet (750 meters) above sea level at East Longitude 12º 31' and North Latitude 38º 02'.
Diodorus Siculus, book 4.23.1 and 4.23.2
Histories, book 5.43
eh REEKS
The son of Aphrodite (goddess of Love) and King Butas of the island of Sicily.
When King Butas died, he gave his land and wealth to Eryx; the country King Eryx ruled was in northwestern Sicily and gave his name to the mountain which dominated the region; Mount Eryx is now called Mount Erice.
When Herakles (Heracles) came to Sicily after securing the cattle of Geryon (Geryones), he made a circuit of the island and encountered the proud and strong Eryx who challenged Herakles to a wrestling match; Herakles wagered the cattle he possessed and insisted that Eryx surrender his land if he lost; at first Eryx was not satisfied with the wager but Herakles explained that if he lost the cattle he was required to deliver to his cousin Eurystheus as part of his Tenth Labor, he would lose his chance to become immortal and therefore had more to lose than just the herd of cattle; Eryx accepted the wager and the two began to fight.
Eryx lost the fight and passed into obscurity; Herakles took Eryx's land and divided it amongst the local inhabitants of the region under the condition that they were to surrender the land to one of his descendants if and when they demanded it back; many generations later, Dorieus of Sparta came to Sicily to reclaim the land; he built the city of Herakleia (Heracleia) but the Carthaginians, fearful of the Greek intrusion on the western portion of the island, completely destroyed it so that it would not be rebuilt.
Diodorus Siculus, book 4.23
The word literally means "of evening" but Esperos was the ancient Greek name for the planet Venus when it appeared in the evening sky; the name also applies to the Esperides (Hesperides), i.e. the Nymphs who lived in the far west; the Hesperides are: Eretheis, Hespere and Aegle.
The seventh letter of the Greek alphabet; uppercase Η; lowercase: η; Eta is pronounced as a long E.
The ancient Greeks did not have lowercase letters in their alphabet; the lowercase letters were not invented until the ninth century CE, i.e. about eleven hundred years ago.
Letters of the Greek alphabet were also used as numerals; the letter eta represented the number 8 and was written as a simple η or as eta followed by an acute accent, η'.
The eldest son of King Oedipus and Iokaste (Jocasta) of the city of Thebes.
Before Oedipus was born, the Oracle at Delphi predicted that he would kill his father and marry his mother; the prophecy came true and the children of this profane union between mother and son were also cursed; Eteokles was the son and brother of Oedipus.
After his father blinded himself and went into exile, Eteokles took control of the government of Thebes; he exiled his brother, Polyneikes (Polyneices), but when Polyneikes returned with seven armies to depose Eteokles they both died on each other's spear and the rule of Thebes fell to Eteokles's uncle, Kreon (Creon).
Kreon decreed that Eteokles would receive a hero's funeral because he was defending Thebes but that Polyneikes's body was to be left to the dogs and vultures because he had come to plunder and destroy Thebes.
Eteokles's sisters were Ismene and Antigone.
The son of the river Kephisos (Cephisus) and brother of Narkissos (Narcissus).
Eteoklos is credited with introducing the worship of the Graces by offering sacrifices to them.
Catalogues of Women and Eoiae, fragment 26
A Nymph; the wife of King Merops and the mother of Eumelus; she was slain by the goddess, Artemis, for irreverence.
Ethiopia is mentioned several times in The Iliad, The Odyssey and The Histories; the primary city of Ethiopia was Meroe which was, according to the historian Herodotus, forty days on foot and twelve days by boat south of the city of Elephantine on the Nile River; in another part of his narrative, Herodotus says that the Ethiopians lived in Libya towards the southern sea.
The exact location of Ethiopia was, at best, nebulous to the Greeks of Herodotus's time; there seems to have been two conceptions of Ethiopia: one was the historical land coveted by the Persian Empire and the other was a mythical Ethiopia that Poseidon (lord of the Sea) favored with personal visits.
Homer says that the Ethiopians were the most distant of men and lived in two separate lands that were identified as where the Titan, Hyperion, rose and sat; when the Greek hero, Menelaos (Menelaus), was making his meandering way back to Sparta after the sack of the city of Troy, he said that he traveled to Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya which only implies that Ethiopia was somewhere in Africa.
Dionysos (a.k.a. Bacchus, god of Wine) was born on Mount Nysos (Nysa) which, according to Herodotus, was in Ethiopia.
Histories, book 2.29 and 2.146; book 3.17
Odyssey (Lattimore and Loeb), book 1, lines 22 and 23; book 4, line 84
Odyssey (Fagles), book 1, lines 25 and 26; book 4, line 94
Odyssey (Fitzgerald), book 1, lines 36 (sunburnt races) and 38 (sunset lands); book 4, line 90 (sun-burnt races)
The "long lived" race who lived to the south of Egypt; they are mentioned several times by the historian, Herodotus, and the poet, Homer, but the exact location of their homeland is not made clear.
Herodotus comments that the Ethiopians became more like the Egyptians after the two hundred and forty thousand Egyptian soldiers garrisoned at Elephantine deserted their posts and were given asylum by an Ethiopian king and were assimilated into the native population; Herodotus also reports that of the three hundred and thirty kings of Egypt, one was a woman and eighteen were Ethiopians, the rest were Egyptian men.
During the reign of the blind Egyptian king, Anysis, an Ethiopian named Sabakos (Sabacos) invaded Egypt and ruled for fifty years; Sabakos left Egypt of his own free will because of an oracle and a dream; the oracle said he would rule Egypt for only fifty years and his dream implied that if he did not leave Egypt on the fiftieth year, he would be punished by gods and men; the legacy of Sabakos was that, while king of Egypt, he sentenced criminals to work on civic improvement projects, primarily the building of embankments around cities to protect them from the flooding Nile River.
In the Histories, Herodotus tells how the Persian ruler, Kambyses (Cambyses) sent spies to Ethiopia to see if the Table of the Sun actually existed; the Table of the Sun was a meadow where the Ethiopians in authority would nightly bring food and leave it for anyone who wanted it; the spies that Kambyses sent were Egyptians called Fish-Eaters from Elephantine, a city on the Upper Nile, i.e. the southern portion of the river.
The Ethiopians were reputed to be some of the tallest and most beautiful people in the world and Kambyses was aware that the Ethiopian kings were chosen only from the tallest and proportionally strongest men of their race; he sent beautiful gifts because he wanted to impress them with his generosity and lull them into thinking he was potentially their friend; when the Fish-Eaters gave the Ethiopian King Kambyses's gifts, the king rejected the cloth, the myrrh and the gold but pronounced the wine to be good; he explained that the Ethiopians only ate boiled meat and drank only milk and that they lived at least one hundred and twenty years; they also bathed in a spring whose water smelled of violets and was so light that nothing would float on the water.
Seeing through Kambyses's feigned friendship, the Ethiopian king gave the Fish-Eaters an enormous bow and told them that the Persians should not consider attacking them until they could string the bow and to be thankful that the Ethiopians were not greedy and aggressive because, if that was so, the Persians would lose their lives and land to the superior men of Ethiopia.
Herodotus also mentions another aspect of the Ethiopians which would make it seem that he regarded most of the non-Egyptian Africans to be "Ethiopians"; in describing the geography of Libya, Herodotus tells of the cave-dwelling Ethiopians; they ate snakes, lizards and other reptiles; they were fleet of foot and had voices like the squeaking of bats; another tribe of Libyans, the Garamantes, hunted the Ethiopians with four-horse teams but whether the Garamantes hunted the cave-dwellers for sport or food is not clear.
Herodotus also mentions Ethiopians from Asia and their tribute to the Persian Empire; the Asian Ethiopians who fought in the army of Xerxes had straight hair and were teamed with the Indians whereas the Ethiopians who were teamed with the Arabians were from Africa and had wooly hair; other than their hair and speech, the Asian and African Ethiopians seemed to be of the same race; the nation of Cyprus had Ethiopians in its population.
Histories, book 2.11, 2.29, 2.30, 2.100, 2.104, 2.110, 2.137, 2.139 and 2.161; book 3.17-26 and 3.94; book 4.183; book 7.70 and 7.90
Mount Etna; an active volcano on the eastern side of the island of Sicily; the height of the volcano is variously given as being anywhere between 10,791 and 10,935 feet (3,289 and 3,333 meters); Mount Etna is the highest active volcano in Europe and perhaps the oldest recorded active volcano in the world.
Approximate East Longitude 14º 59' 42.5'' and North Latitude 37º 44' 58''
evah GOH ree
One of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris collectively known as the Nereids, i.e. the daughters of the Nereus; her name could be interpreted as Good-Sport.
Other than a passing reference to her name, the only Nereid to receive any individual attention in the ancient literature was Thetis; as the mother of Achilles and one of the few goddesses to refuse the amorous intentions of Zeus, Thetis was unique; when the Immortals needed the Nereids, they called upon Thetis to rally her sisters for whatever task was needed.
The Nereids and the Argonauts - After Jason and the Argonauts had taken the Golden Fleece from Kolchis (Colchis), Medeia (Medea), the daughter of King Aietes (Aeetes), helped Jason murder her half-brother Apsyrtos (Apsyrtus) in a rather cowardly way; Zeus swore revenge for such a dastardly act but his sister/wife Hera wanted to protect the Argonauts until Jason and Medeia could be absolved of their crime by the Dread-Goddess Kirke (Circe); Hera called upon Thetis to gather the Nereids so they could quiet the waters of the sea so the Argonauts could safely navigate to Kirke's island; Thetis plunged into the sea and called to her sisters; her call was answered and the Nereids helped save the Argonauts.
The Nereids at the funeral of Patroklos (Patroclus) - In the last year of the Trojan War, Achilles's companion Patroklos was killed; Achilles took Patroklos's death very hard and called out to his mother Thetis for consolation; Thetis and the Nereids rose from the sea and graced the dead body of Patroklos with their divine presence.
The Nereids at the funeral of Achilles - The death of Achilles was one of the most dramatic events of the Trojan War; as the son of Thetis, his death had particular significance to the Nereids; at the funeral of Achilles, Thetis, the Nereids and the Muses all came to pay their respects.
Theogony, line 257
ev AR nee
One of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris collectively known as the Nereids, i.e. the daughters of the Nereus.
Other than a passing reference to her name, the only Nereid to receive any individual attention in the ancient literature was Thetis; as the mother of Achilles and one of the few goddesses to refuse the amorous intentions of Zeus, Thetis was unique; when the Immortals needed the Nereids, they called upon Thetis to rally her sisters for whatever task was needed.
The Nereids and the Argonauts - After Jason and the Argonauts had taken the Golden Fleece from Kolchis (Colchis), Medeia (Medea), the daughter of King Aietes (Aeetes), helped Jason murder her half-brother Apsyrtos (Apsyrtus) in a rather cowardly way; Zeus swore revenge for such a dastardly act but his sister/wife Hera wanted to protect the Argonauts until Jason and Medeia could be absolved of their crime by the Dread-Goddess Kirke (Circe); Hera called upon Thetis to gather the Nereids so they could quiet the waters of the sea so the Argonauts could safely navigate to Kirke's island; Thetis plunged into the sea and called to her sisters; her call was answered and the Nereids helped save the Argonauts.
The Nereids at the funeral of Patroklos (Patroclus) - In the last year of the Trojan War, Achilles's companion Patroklos was killed; Achilles took Patroklos's death very hard and called out to his mother Thetis for consolation; Thetis and the Nereids rose from the sea and graced the dead body of Patroklos with their divine presence.
The Nereids at the funeral of Achilles - The death of Achilles was one of the most dramatic events of the Trojan War; as the son of Thetis, his death had particular significance to the Nereids; at the funeral of Achilles, Thetis, the Nereids and the Muses all came to pay their respects.
Theogony, line 259
The long, narrow island located close to the eastern coast of mainland Greece in the western Aegean Sea; the island borders the coast of Greece from Athens, in the south, to Thermopylae in the north; Euboea is the second largest island in the Aegean Sea (Crete is the largest); approximately 106 miles (170.5 kilometers) long and a width varying between 4 and 30 miles (6.4 and 48 kilometers).
The name, Abantian, was used for the island of Euboea in ancient times and was derived from one of the early tribes of that island, the Abantes; Aristotle states that the Abantes were Thracians from Abae in Phokis (Phocis); the Abantes provided forty ships for the siege of Troy and were commanded by Elephenor; Homer said that the Abantes were furious spearmen with their hair grown long in the back.
The Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 2, line 535-545
The Iliad (Fagles), book 2, line 625-636
The Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 2, line 632-643
(405?-circa 330 BCE) An Athenian statesman and activist; he rose from a minor financial official to a position where he assumed control of all of the city's finances.
Athens was in a state of economic crisis after a decade of failed military excursions into the upper Aegean, in particular: the city of Amphipolis and the Chersonese; circa 355 BCE, Eubulus came to prominence; his skilled economic policies propelled Athens to levels of prosperity which the city had not enjoyed for over 150 years.
The public disgust with recent military expenditures allowed Eubulus to institute an innovative policy where the city's revenue would only be directed towards military missions if the security of Athens was threatened; Eubulus encouraged a policy which would create a Common Peace with like minded Greek cities and reduce the need for military expeditions in order to protect Athens's colonial properties.
The most aggressive Greek nation of the time was led by Philip of Macedon and Eubulus unwillingly accepted the treaties negotiated with Philip by another Athenian, Demosthenes, in 346 BCE; Philip ignored the treaties and as he began to expand his dominion, the cry for war was soon heard again in Athens; by 342 BCE, Eubulus lost all political clout and the war-party was in full control of the city and the city's money; resistance to Philip proved futile; Eubulus disappeared from public life and by circa 330 BCE he was dead.
(circa 300 BCE) A Greek geometrician and educator at Alexandria, Egypt.
Few facts are known about Euclid's life because few of his works survive; he is noted for his work in number theory and musical tones; more properly known as Eukleides or Eucleides.
The twenty-second Eurypontidai king of the city of Sparta who ruled 331-305 BCE.
Sparta traditionally had two kings who ruled jointly; one king was required to be a descendant of King Eurypon and the other was required to be a descendant of King Agis I (respectively known as the Eurypontidai and the Agiadai).
The twenty-forth Eurypontidai king of the city of Sparta who ruled 275-244 BCE.
Sparta traditionally had two kings who ruled jointly; one king was required to be a descendant of King Eurypon and the other was required to be a descendant of King Agis I (respectively known as the Eurypontidai and the Agiadai).
The twenty-sixth Eurypontidai king of the city of Sparta who ruled 241-228 BCE.
Sparta traditionally had two kings who ruled jointly; one king was required to be a descendant of King Eurypon and the other was required to be a descendant of King Agis I (respectively known as the Eurypontidai and the Agiadai).
A student of Aristotle; thought to be the editor of the work, Eudemian Ethics, by Aristotle.
ev DOH rah
One of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris collectively known as the Nereids, i.e. the daughters of the Nereus; her name might be translated to mean, Still-Sea.
Other than a passing reference to her name, the only Nereid to receive any individual attention in the ancient literature was Thetis; as the mother of Achilles and one of the few goddesses to refuse the amorous intentions of Zeus, Thetis was unique; when the Immortals needed the Nereids, they called upon Thetis to rally her sisters for whatever task was needed.
The Nereids and the Argonauts - After Jason and the Argonauts had taken the Golden Fleece from Kolchis (Colchis), Medeia (Medea), the daughter of King Aietes (Aeetes), helped Jason murder her half-brother Apsyrtos (Apsyrtus) in a rather cowardly way; Zeus swore revenge for such a dastardly act but his sister/wife Hera wanted to protect the Argonauts until Jason and Medeia could be absolved of their crime by the Dread-Goddess Kirke (Circe); Hera called upon Thetis to gather the Nereids so they could quiet the waters of the sea so the Argonauts could safely navigate to Kirke's island; Thetis plunged into the sea and called to her sisters; her call was answered and the Nereids helped save the Argonauts.
The Nereids at the funeral of Patroklos (Patroclus) - In the last year of the Trojan War, Achilles's companion Patroklos was killed; Achilles took Patroklos's death very hard and called out to his mother Thetis for consolation; Thetis and the Nereids rose from the sea and graced the dead body of Patroklos with their divine presence.
The Nereids at the funeral of Achilles - The death of Achilles was one of the most dramatic events of the Trojan War; as the son of Thetis, his death had particular significance to the Nereids; at the funeral of Achilles, Thetis, the Nereids and the Muses all came to pay their respects.
Theogony, line 244
One of the five daughters of Atlas who was placed in the heavens as a star and, with her sisters, formed the asterism, Hyades, in the constellation Taurus (the Bull); her sisters are: Phaesyle, Kleeia (Cleeia), Phaeo and Koronis (Coronis).
The Astronomy, chapter 2
An Okeanid, i.e. one of the three thousand daughters of Okeanos (Ocean) and Tethys; her name might be translated to mean, Still-Sea.
Zeus gave the Okeanids, Apollon and the Rivers the special obligation of having the young in their keeping.
Theogony, line 360
The son of Hermes and the maiden, Polymele; Eudoros fought with the Greeks at the siege of Troy; he inherited fleetness of foot from his father.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 16, line 179
Iliad (Fagles), book 16, line 211
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 16, line 218
One of the rulers of the city of Salamis on the island of Cyprus; the father of Siromos.
Euelthon is noted for the remarkable censer (an incense burner) he dedicated to the temple at Delphi and also as the ruler who rebuked the requests of the refugee from Libya, Pheretime, when she asked Euelthon to supply her with an army so that her son might reclaim his throne in Kyrene (Cyrene).
Euelthon gave Pheretime many gifts but would not give her an army; to make his point perfectly clear, he finally gave her some wool, a golden spindle and distaff thus informing her that these were the proper gifts for a woman.
Histories, book 4.162
The river god; one of the many sons of Okeanos (Ocean) and Tethys; father of Marpessa.
Zeus gave the Rivers, Apollon and the Okeanids the special obligation of having the young in their keeping.
Iliad (lattimore and Loeb), book 9, line 557
Theogony, line 345
(circa 300 BCE) A Sicilian Greek mythographer.
Euhemerus is most noted for his "discovery" of the imaginary island of Panchaea in the Indian Ocean; he claimed that this island was the home of the Immortals and the heroes of ancient myth.
A name of the god of Wine, Bacchus (a.k.a. Dionysos), taken from the cry "Evoi" used by his worshipers.
The twenty-eighth Eurypontidai king of the city of Sparta who ruled 227-222 BCE.
Sparta traditionally had two kings who ruled jointly; one king was required to be a descendant of King Eurypon and the other was required to be a descendant of King Agis I (respectively known as the Eurypontidai and the Agiadai).
Eukleides of Megara; the founder of the Megarian School of Philosophy; he was a student of Socrates and essentially believed that the most important aspect of the "real world" was the moral character of the individual.
One of the Thirty Tyrants elected to rule the city of Athens after the end of the Peloponnesian War (404 BCE).
Having lost the war to the Spartans, the citizens of Athens elected thirty men to lead the new post-war government; these men became known as the Thirty Tyrants; the short lived government they comprised was an oligarchy; an oligarchy is a system of government allowing a few select people or families to rule a city or region based on the assumption that their bloodline or intellect gave them a superior predisposition and right to rule.
The tyrants immediately began to prosecute Athenians who had been Spartan informers and collaborators during the long, hard war; the punishment of the guilty seemed appropriate to the common citizens and aristocrats alike but it soon became clear that the executions and banishments were going beyond the bounds of necessity or prudence; open hostilities soon developed between members of the Thirty and their authority and rule came to an end after one year.
Hellenica, book 2.3
ev KRAHN tee
One of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris collectively known as the Nereids, i.e. the daughters of the Nereus.
Other than a passing reference to her name, the only Nereid to receive any individual attention in the ancient literature was Thetis; as the mother of Achilles and one of the few goddesses to refuse the amorous intentions of Zeus, Thetis was unique; when the Immortals needed the Nereids, they called upon Thetis to rally her sisters for whatever task was needed.
The Nereids and the Argonauts - After Jason and the Argonauts had taken the Golden Fleece from Kolchis (Colchis), Medeia (Medea), the daughter of King Aietes (Aeetes), helped Jason murder her half-brother Apsyrtos (Apsyrtus) in a rather cowardly way; Zeus swore revenge for such a dastardly act but his sister/wife Hera wanted to protect the Argonauts until Jason and Medeia could be absolved of their crime by the Dread-Goddess Kirke (Circe); Hera called upon Thetis to gather the Nereids so they could quiet the waters of the sea so the Argonauts could safely navigate to Kirke's island; Thetis plunged into the sea and called to her sisters; her call was answered and the Nereids helped save the Argonauts.
The Nereids at the funeral of Patroklos (Patroclus) - In the last year of the Trojan War, Achilles's companion Patroklos was killed; Achilles took Patroklos's death very hard and called out to his mother Thetis for consolation; Thetis and the Nereids rose from the sea and graced the dead body of Patroklos with their divine presence.
The Nereids at the funeral of Achilles - The death of Achilles was one of the most dramatic events of the Trojan War; as the son of Thetis, his death had particular significance to the Nereids; at the funeral of Achilles, Thetis, the Nereids and the Muses all came to pay their respects.
Theogony, line 243
ev lee MEH nee
One of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris collectively known as the Nereids, i.e. the daughters of the Nereus; her name might be translated as, Good-Harbor.
Other than a passing reference to her name, the only Nereid to receive any individual attention in the ancient literature was Thetis; as the mother of Achilles and one of the few goddesses to refuse the amorous intentions of Zeus, Thetis was unique; when the Immortals needed the Nereids, they called upon Thetis to rally her sisters for whatever task was needed.
The Nereids and the Argonauts - After Jason and the Argonauts had taken the Golden Fleece from Kolchis (Colchis), Medeia (Medea), the daughter of King Aietes (Aeetes), helped Jason murder her half-brother Apsyrtos (Apsyrtus) in a rather cowardly way; Zeus swore revenge for such a dastardly act but his sister/wife Hera wanted to protect the Argonauts until Jason and Medeia could be absolved of their crime by the Dread-Goddess Kirke (Circe); Hera called upon Thetis to gather the Nereids so they could quiet the waters of the sea so the Argonauts could safely navigate to Kirke's island; Thetis plunged into the sea and called to her sisters; her call was answered and the Nereids helped save the Argonauts.
The Nereids at the funeral of Patroklos (Patroclus) - In the last year of the Trojan War, Achilles's companion Patroklos was killed; Achilles took Patroklos's death very hard and called out to his mother Thetis for consolation; Thetis and the Nereids rose from the sea and graced the dead body of Patroklos with their divine presence.
The Nereids at the funeral of Achilles - The death of Achilles was one of the most dramatic events of the Trojan War; as the son of Thetis, his death had particular significance to the Nereids; at the funeral of Achilles, Thetis, the Nereids and the Muses all came to pay their respects.
Theogony, line 247
The faithful swineherd of Odysseus.
When Odysseus returned home to Ithaka (Ithaca) in disguise, Eumaios welcomed "the stranger" and later fought by Odysseus's side to reclaim his wife and home; Eumaios was from the island of Syria where he was kidnapped by traders when he was a young boy and eventually sold into slavery to Odysseus's father, Laertes.
Odyssey (Lattimore and Loeb), book 14, lines 55, 165, 360, 440, 442, 462 and 507; book 15, lines 307, 325, 341, 381 and 486; book 16, lines 7, 8, 60, 69, 135, 156, 461 and 464; book 17, passim; book 20, lines 169 and 238; book 21, lines 80, 82, 203 and 234; book 22, lines 157, 194 and 279
Odyssey (Fagles), book 14, lines 63, 142, 408, 499, 502, 525 and 574; book 15, lines 341, 362, 378, 428 and 543; book 16, lines 9, 10, 68, 77, 153, 175, 507 and 515; book 17, passim; book 20, lines 185 and 265; book 21, lines 92, 230 and 261; book 22, lines 165, 203 and 298
Odyssey (Fitzgerald), book 14, lines 62, 147, 504, 519, 521 and 601; book 15, lines 381, 400 and 419; book 16, lines 10, 71, 80, 159, 565 and 570; book 17, passim; book 20, line 261; book 21, lines 84, 229 and 262; book 22, lines 174 and 309
One of the Thirty Tyrants elected to rule the city of Athens after the end of the Peloponnesian War (404 BCE).
Having lost the war to the Spartans, the citizens of Athens elected thirty men to lead the new post-war government; these men became known as the Thirty Tyrants; the short lived government they comprised was an oligarchy; an oligarchy is a system of government allowing a few select people or families to rule a city or region based on the assumption that their bloodline or intellect gave them a superior predisposition and right to rule.
The tyrants immediately began to prosecute Athenians who had been Spartan informers and collaborators during the long, hard war; the punishment of the guilty seemed appropriate to the common citizens and aristocrats alike but it soon became clear that the executions and banishments were going beyond the bounds of necessity or prudence; open hostilities soon developed between members of the Thirty and their authority and rule came to an end after one year.
Hellenica, book 2.3
Eumelus of Corinth; the poet who was credited as the author of The War of the Titans which was part of The Epic Cycle; Arktinus (Arctinus) is also listed as the author and we may never know with certainty who actually wrote this portion of the epic.
The son of King Merops and the Nymph, Ethemea.
The Kindly Ones; three of the daughters of Nyx (Night); Alekto (Alecto), Megaera and Tisiphone.
They are called by many names but are usually referred to as the Furies; they are also known as the Erinys (Mist-Walkers) and the Semnai (the Holy); they are depicted as winged women of fierce countenance but, according to Pausanias (fl. 160 CE), their images on the Acropolis at Athens were not fierce or supernatural.
One of the seven surviving tragedies by the Athenian playwright Aeschylus.
Cast of Characters:
Pythia
Apollon
Ghost of Klytemnestra (Clytemnestra)
Orestes
Athene (Athena)
The Eumenides (The Furies)
This play is the third in the Oresteia trilogy dealing with the murder of Agamemnon by his wife, Klytemnestra, and the revenge meted out by his son, Orestes.
The play opens at the oracle ofApollon at Delphi as the Pythia invokes the gods and goddesses of prophecy to guide her in her sacred task; as she enters the sanctuary, she is appalled to see the Eumenides asleep inside; Apollon has enchanted them so that Hermes can take Orestes to Athens where he can beg for the assistance of Athene and be absolved of the crime of matricide.
After Orestes makes his escape, the ghost of Klytemnestra appears in the sanctuary and tries to arouse the sleeping Furies; she cries out for justice and insists that she might have committed a crime by murdering her husband but Orestes had done the unthinkable, killing his mother, which in this case is her (Klytemnestra); the Furies are roused and Apollon demands that they leave his shrine because they are despicable and blood soaked; they defend themselves and say that they are a necessary part of the family of Immortals because sins must be punished and evildoers should not escape revenge.
The Furies depart Delphi and find Orestes in Athens under the protection of Athene; the Furies explain to Athene that their divine mission is to chase and torment men who shed other men's blood and make sure that they never find happiness; Athene questions Orestes and he insists that he acted on the command of Apollon when he killed his mother and that he has been absolved of all sin be being forgiven by other men and by making proper sacrifices to the gods.
The Eumenides want Orestes to be found guilty of murder but Athene demands mercy, saying that Orestes acted in the name of "justice" and not "revenge"; Athene placated the Eumenides by offering them a shrine on the Acropolis.
The first two plays of the Oresteia trilogy are: 1) Agamemnon and 2) The Libation Bearers (Choephore).
This is a fine play and well worth reading; if you wish to read this play I suggest The Complete Greek Tragedies, Aeschylus I, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, ISBN 0226307786; you can find this book at your library in the 800 section or you can order it from the Book Shop on this site.
The son of Jason and Hypsipyle; during the siege of Troy, Euneos brought provisions from the island of Lemnos for the Greek army.
Iliad (Lattimore), book 7, line 468; book 23, line 746
Iliad (Loeb), book 7, line 468; book 23, line 747
Iliad (Fagles), book 7, line 541; book 23, line 830
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 7, line 559; book 23, line 857
ev NEE kee
One of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris collectively known as the Nereids, i.e. the daughters of the Nereus; her name means Rosy-Armed.
Other than a passing reference to her name, the only Nereid to receive any individual attention in the ancient literature was Thetis; as the mother of Achilles and one of the few goddesses to refuse the amorous intentions of Zeus, Thetis was unique; when the Immortals needed the Nereids, they called upon Thetis to rally her sisters for whatever task was needed.
The Nereids and the Argonauts - After Jason and the Argonauts had taken the Golden Fleece from Kolchis (Colchis), Medeia (Medea), the daughter of King Aietes (Aeetes), helped Jason murder her half-brother Apsyrtos (Apsyrtus) in a rather cowardly way; Zeus swore revenge for such a dastardly act but his sister/wife Hera wanted to protect the Argonauts until Jason and Medeia could be absolved of their crime by the Dread-Goddess Kirke (Circe); Hera called upon Thetis to gather the Nereids so they could quiet the waters of the sea so the Argonauts could safely navigate to Kirke's island; Thetis plunged into the sea and called to her sisters; her call was answered and the Nereids helped save the Argonauts.
The Nereids at the funeral of Patroklos (Patroclus) - In the last year of the Trojan War, Achilles's companion Patroklos was killed; Achilles took Patroklos's death very hard and called out to his mother Thetis for consolation; Thetis and the Nereids rose from the sea and graced the dead body of Patroklos with their divine presence.
The Nereids at the funeral of Achilles - The death of Achilles was one of the most dramatic events of the Trojan War; as the son of Thetis, his death had particular significance to the Nereids; at the funeral of Achilles, Thetis, the Nereids and the Muses all came to pay their respects.
Theogony, line 246
The goddess of Order; a daughter of Zeus and Themis; Eunomia is one of the Horae (The Hours), i.e. the goddesses of the Seasons; the keepers of Heaven's Gate; her sisters are Eirene (Peace) and Dike (Justice).
The Horae assist the Olympians by organizing the Seasons and adding balance to Nature; the Horae guard Mount Olympos (Olympus) with a dark veil and open and close the gates of the sky for the other Immortals as they travel to and from their earthly domains.
In The Iliad, we see the Horae personally attending Hera and her horses; they open the sky and Hera zooms from her home on Mount Olympos to Mount Ida to distract Zeus from the battle for Troy.
In The Iliad, we see the Horae personally attending Hera and her horses; they open the sky and Hera zooms from her home on Mount Olympos to Mount Ida to distract Zeus from the battle for Troy.
Iliad (Lattimore), book 5, (Hours) lines 749 and 750; book 8, (Hours) lines 393 and 433
Iliad (Loeb), book 5, (Hours) line 749; book 8, (Hours) lines 393 and 433
Iliad (Fagles), book 5, (Seasons) line 859; book 8, (Seasons) lines 449 and 498
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 5, (Hours) line 856; book 8, (Hours) lines 444 and 488
Theogony, line 902
The forth Eurypontidai king of the city of Sparta who ruled circa 805-775 BCE.
Sparta traditionally had two kings who ruled jointly; one king was required to be a descendant of King Eurypon and the other was required to be a descendant of King Agis I (respectively known as the Eurypontidai and the Agiadai).
Very little is known about Eunomos and the dates given for his rule are extrapolations and should be used only as approximations.
A master builder from the city of Megara; son of Naustrophus; credited as the builder of an aqueduct on the island of Samos.
The aqueduct which Eupalinus dug under Mount Kastro has fascinated and baffled engineers throughout the ages; the aqueduct went from the Agiades Spring, through the mountain and supplied fresh water to the city of Samos (modern Pythagoreio); the tunnel was constructed between 530 and 520 BCE; the baffling aspect of this aqueduct is the fact that it was dug through the mountain at a continuous and gentle grade so the water would flow from the source to the other side of the mountain; the engineering techniques Eupalinus used to achieve this feat must have been very clever and sophisticated.
The historian Herodotus reported that the aqueduct was 4,620 feet (1,408 meters) long but recent excavations dispute that figure and place the length at only 1,100 feet (335 meters); Herodotus said that this aqueduct was one of the three greatest works to be seen on any Greek land.
The other two engineering feats Herodotus mentioned were:
The mole (breakwater or causeway) which was built between 540 and 523 BCE and jutted a quarter of a mile into the sea creating a harbor; and
The Temple of Hera (the Heraion) which was built circa 700 BCE; the temple was destroyed by the Persians during the rule of Cyrus the Great (559-529 BCE); the master-builder Rhoikos (Rhoicos) rebuilt the temple but it was again destroyed by the Persians circa 520 BCE; the task of rebuilding the temple fell to Rhoikos's son, Theodoros; Herodotus cited the Temple of Hera as the largest structure in the Greek world.
Histories, book 3.60
The son of Poseidon (lord of the Sea) who could run across the sea with only his toes touching the waves; he was one of the Argonauts.
The Argonauts were a company of the greatest heroes and adventurers in ancient Greece; the Argonauts were assembled by Jason to assist him in retrieving the Golden Fleece from the land of Kolchis (Colchis); their name was derived from their ship, the Argo (Argo + nautes = Argo-seamen); the Quest for the Golden Fleece can be assumed to have occurred circa 1285 BCE.
After obtaining the Golden Fleece, the Argonauts were stranded in Libya and were forced to carry their ship, the Argo, across the desert; when they came to lake Trito, they set up a tripod as a tribute to Apollon and prayed for guidance; from the waters of the lake arose another son of Poseidon, Triton; the half-man, half-fish shaped god, Triton, gave Euphemos a clod of earth as a gift and showed the Argonauts the passage that would take them back to the sea.
Several nights later, Euphemos had a divinely inspired dream about the clod of earth that Triton had given him; he took the clod and threw it into the sea and an island emerged from the depths of the sea.
Argonautika, book 1, lines 179-184 and 1755-1764
The son of the tragic poet, Aeschylus.
Euphorion of Chalkis (Chalcis); (fl. 235 BCE); a Greek author of epic poetry from the island of Euboea and the head of the library of Antioch in ancient Syria.
(fl. 360 BCE) A sculptor and painter from the city of Corinth credited with the statue of Apollon Patroos and three works on the Colonnade of Zeus at Athens: the Cavalry Battle, The Twelve Gods and Theseus.
The river which flows from Asia Minor, through Syria and, after joining the Tigris River in central Iraq, empties into the Persian Gulf; approximately 2,230 miles (3,589 kilometers) in length.
The city of Babylon was located on the Euphrates River which contributed to the Babylonian Empire's wealth and, according to Herodotus, the river was the means by which the Persians (led by Cyrus captured the city; the Persians diverted the Euphrates River and entered the city in the shallow river bed.
Histories, book.191
A master painter from the late sixth century BCE.
One of the Graces, i.e. Charities; her name means, Mirth and Merriment; her sisters are Aglaia and Thalia.
Theogony, lines 907-911
The daughter of Myrmidon and Peisidike (Peisidice); with Hermes, she was the mother of the Argonaut, Aithalides.
Argonautika, book 1, lines 51-56
ev POH bee
One of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris collectively known as the Nereids, i.e. the daughters of the Nereus; her name might be translated to mean, Happy Issue.
Other than a passing reference to her name, the only Nereid to receive any individual attention in the ancient literature was Thetis; as the mother of Achilles and one of the few goddesses to refuse the amorous intentions of Zeus, Thetis was unique; when the Immortals needed the Nereids, they called upon Thetis to rally her sisters for whatever task was needed.
The Nereids and the Argonauts - After Jason and the Argonauts had taken the Golden Fleece from Kolchis (Colchis), Medeia (Medea), the daughter of King Aietes (Aeetes), helped Jason murder her half-brother Apsyrtos (Apsyrtus) in a rather cowardly way; Zeus swore revenge for such a dastardly act but his sister/wife Hera wanted to protect the Argonauts until Jason and Medeia could be absolved of their crime by the Dread-Goddess Kirke (Circe); Hera called upon Thetis to gather the Nereids so they could quiet the waters of the sea so the Argonauts could safely navigate to Kirke's island; Thetis plunged into the sea and called to her sisters; her call was answered and the Nereids helped save the Argonauts.
The Nereids at the funeral of Patroklos (Patroclus) - In the last year of the Trojan War, Achilles's companion Patroklos was killed; Achilles took Patroklos's death very hard and called out to his mother Thetis for consolation; Thetis and the Nereids rose from the sea and graced the dead body of Patroklos with their divine presence.
The Nereids at the funeral of Achilles - The death of Achilles was one of the most dramatic events of the Trojan War; as the son of Thetis, his death had particular significance to the Nereids; at the funeral of Achilles, Thetis, the Nereids and the Muses all came to pay their respects.
Theogony, line 261
A Greek dramatist; he was born at the close of the second Persian invasion of Greece (480 BCE) and lived through the majority of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE).
His plays were not "historical" but used historical themes to place his characters in situations of high drama and noble sacrifice.
His plays (in chronological order of their assumed production dates) include:
Rhesus circa 455 BCE;
Alkestis (Alcestis), 438;
Medeia (Medea), 431;
The Herakleidae, i.e. The Children of Herakles (Heracles), 429?;
Hippolytus, 428;
Andromache, 426?;
Hekabe (Hecabe), 425?;
The Cyclops 425?;
Suppliants (The Suppliant Women), 423?;
Herakles, 420?; Trojan Women, 415;
Iphigenia in Tauris, 414?;
Elektra (Electra), 413;
Helen, 412; Ion, 412?;
Phoenissae (The Phoenician Women), 410?;
Orestes, 408;
Iphigenia at Aulis, 405;
Bacchae, 406; and
Madness of Herakles, date unknown.
The Gregale, i.e. a strong northeast wind that blows in the central and western Mediterranean Sea.
There are two types of Winds:
1) The divinely created winds, i.e. Boreas (North Wind), Notos (South Wind), Zephyros (West Wind) and the Etesian winds, and
2) The ill-favored winds that were created by the monster, Typhoeus, when Zeus imprisoned him under the earth.
The divinely created winds nourish and bless the earth but the winds of Typhoeus are wild and destructive.
Theogony, lines 869-880
The sister of Kadmos (Cadmus) and the blind seer, Phineus.
Europa was abducted by Zeus when he assumed the form of a bull and took Europa to the island of Crete; she bore Zeus three sons: Rhadamanthys, Minos and Sarpedon; in most instances, she is said to be the daughter of the king of Tyre, Agenor, and Libya but in The Iliad (book 14, lime 321), she and her brothers are said to be the children of Phoinix (Phoenix).
An Okeanid, i.e. one of the three thousand daughters of Okeanos (Ocean) and Tethys.
Zeus gave the Okeanids, Apollon and the Rivers the special obligation of having the young in their keeping.
Theogony, line 357
A river on the Peloponnesian Peninsula which runs north to south in the district of Lakonia (Laconia) just east of the city of Sparta and empties into the Gulf of Lakonia; approximately 50.95 miles (82 kilometers) in length.
The East or Southeast Wind.
There are two types of winds: 1) the divinely created winds, i.e. Boreas (North Wind), Notos (South Wind), Zephyros (West Wind) and the Etesian winds, and 2) the ill-favored winds that were created by the monster, Typhoeus, when Zeus imprisoned him under the earth; Eurus is one of the ill-favored winds.
The divinely created winds nourish and bless the earth but the winds of Typhoeus are wild and destructive.
Theogony, lines 869-880
One of the three sisters known as the Gorgons; her name means Wide-Wanderer.
The Gorgons, with the exception of Medusa, were immortal creatures and all three were hideous to behold; Euryale and her two sisters had snakes on their heads, about their wrists and around their waists; Euryale and her sister, Sthenno, gave chase to Perseus after he beheaded Medusa but could not catch him.
The Gorgons were the daughters of Phorkys (Phorcys) and Keto (Ceto) and sisters of the Graiae (Gray Sisters).
For more detailed information on the Gorgons I suggest that you consult the Immortals section of this site.
Theogony, lines 276+
The daughter of King Minos of the island of Crete.
Euryale, with Poseidon (lord of the Sea), was the mother of the hunter, Orion.
Astronomy, fragment 4
The son of Mekisteus (Mecisteus); one of the co-commanders of the Greeks from Argos during the siege of Troy; Diomedes was the commander and Sthenelos was the other co-commander.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 2, line 565; book 6, line 20; book 23, line 677
Iliad (Fagles), book 2, line 656; book 6, line 23; book 23, line 754
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 2, line 667; book 6, line 21; book 23, line 773
The herald of Odysseus.
When Odysseus came home in disguise, he gave his wife, Penelope, a detailed description of Eurybates in order to convince her that he had personal knowledge of Odysseus's, i.e. his own, travels.
Odyssey (Lattimore and Loeb), book 19, line 247
Odyssey (Fagles), book 19, line 283
Odyssey (Fitzgerald), book 19, line 292
A Titan; the daughter of Pontos (the Sea) and Gaia (Earth); in consort with the Titan Krios (Crius), Eurybia was the mother of Pallas, Astraios (Astraeus) and Perses.
Theogony, lines 239 and 375
The Spartan commander at the time of the Persian invasion of 480 BCE; he was the commander of the united Greek army and navy against the forces of the Persian king, Xerxes.
After the city of Athens had fallen to the Persians, his plan was to remove the remainder of the Greek navy to the Isthmus of Corinth and, if the sea battle was lost, retreat to Sparta; the Athenian commander, Themistokles (Themistocles) convinced him to sail against the Persian navy from the island of Salamis; the victory was stunning and the Persians were forced to flee with their decimated fleet.
Histories, book 8.57-64
One of the Argonauts; the son of Ktimenos (Ctimenos).
The Argonauts were a company of the greatest heroes and adventurers in ancient Greece; the Argonauts were assembled by Jason to assist him in retrieving the Golden Fleece from the land of Kolchis (Colchis); their name was derived from their ship, the Argo (Argo + nautes = Argo-seamen); the Quest for the Golden Fleece can be assumed to have occurred circa 1285 BCE.
Argonautika, book 1, lines 65-68
The dream interpreter, Old Eurydamas; he was the father of the Trojan allies, Abas and Polyidos, who were slain by Diomedes.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 5, line 149
Iliad (Fagles), book 5, line 166
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 5, line 173
The wife of Kreon (Creon) who, according to the poet Sophocles, killed herself because of the suicide death of her son, Haemon.
Kreon became king of the city of Thebes after the two sons of Oedipus, Polyneikes (Polyneices) and Eteokles (Eteocles), were killed in battle; Kreon refused to give Polyneikes a proper burial and imprisoned Oedipus's daughter, Antigone, in a cave when she disobeyed his command and gave Polyneikes a proper burial.
Kreon then decided to free Antigone but before he could free her, she had already killed herself; Kreon's son, Haemon, tried unsuccessfully to kill his father and then, in desperation, killed himself; when Eurydike heard of her son's death, she too committed suicide.
In the poem, Shield of Herakles (Heracles) by Hesiod, Kreon's wife is said to be Enioche; since Hesiod predates Sophocles we should assume that Enioche was, in fact, the name of King Kreon's wife.
Shield of Herakles, line 83
A tree Nymph, a dryad; she is also called Agriope; the wife of Orpheus.
Eurydike was bitten by a poisonous snake and died as she was fleeing from Apollon's son, Aristaios.
After her death, Orpheus was so distraught that he ventured into the Underworld in an attempt to bring her back to the sunlight; Orpheus used his wit and talent to charm Hades (lord of the Underworld) and Eurydike was allowed to return to the surface of the earth provided that Orpheus lead the way and not look back to see if Eurydike was following him; at the very last moment Orpheus was compelled to look around and, by doing so, Eurydike was returned to the land of the dead and lost to Orpheus until he also died.
The daughter of Adrastus; the wife of Ilus.
The eldest daughter of Klymenos (Clymenos) and the wife of Nestor; the mother of: Antilochos (Antilochus), Aretos, Polykaste (Polycaste), Echephron, Stratios, Perseus, Thrasymedes and Peisistratos.
Odyssey (Lattimore), book 3, line 451
Odyssey (Loeb), book 3, line 452
Odyssey (Fagles), book 3, line 508
Odyssey (Fitzgerald, book 3, line 490
The wife of King Amyntas of Macedon and the mother of King Philip II which would make Eurydike the grandmother of Alexander the Great.
The tenth Agiadai king of the city of Sparta who ruled circa 665-640 BCE.
Sparta traditionally had two kings who ruled jointly; one king was required to be a descendant of King Agis I and the other was required to be a descendant of King Eurypon (respectively known as the Agiadai and the Eurypontidai).
Very little is known about Eurykrates and the dates given for his rule are extrapolations and should be used only as approximations.
The twelfth Agiadai king of the city of Sparta who ruled circa 615-590 BCE.
Sparta traditionally had two kings who ruled jointly; one king was required to be a descendant of King Agis I and the other was required to be a descendant of King Eurypon (respectively known as the Agiadai and the Eurypontidai).
Very little is known about Eurykratidas and the dates given for his rule are extrapolations and should be used only as approximations.
A river in southeastern Asia Minor in the district of Pamphylia; the Persian fleet of Xerxes was defeated by Kimon (Cimon) at the mouth of the Eurymedon in 468 BCE.
One of the many daughters of Okeanos (Ocean); the mother of the Graces.
Eurynome has a page in the Immortals section of this site ... click on her name to view that page.
She and Zeus were the great-grandparents of Odysseus; Arkeisios (Arceisios) was the son of Zeus and Euryodia; Arkeisios was the father of Laertes and Odysseus was the son of Laertes.
The first and eponymous Eurypontidai king of the city of Sparta who ruled circa 895-865 BCE.
Sparta traditionally had two kings who ruled jointly; one king was required to be a descendant of King Eurypon and the other was required to be a descendant of King Agis I (respectively known as the Eurypontidai and the Agiadai).
Very little is known about Eurypon and the dates given for his rule are extrapolations and should be used only as approximations.
The family name for the descendants of one of the first kings of the city of Sparta, King Eurypon; the dates of his rule are not known for certain but we can assume that he ruled circa 895-865 BCE.
Sparta traditionally had two kings who ruled jointly; one king was required to be a descendant of King Eurypon and the other was required to be a descendant of King Agis I; their families were respectively known as the Eurypontidai and the Agiadai; the Eurypontidai are also referred to as the Eurypontids.
The son of Aias (Ajax); the name literally means, With Broad Shield.
A king of Mycenae and the cousin of Herakles (Heracles).
Eurystheus was used as the instrument of revenge by Hera upon Zeus; Hera made Zeus promise that the next son born in the line of Perseus would rule Argos; Zeus was sure that his son, Herakles, would be that ruler but Hera delayed the goddess of childbirth, Eileithyia (Eilithyia), and Eurystheus was born before Herakles.
Herakles was later bound to Eurystheus and required to perform the labors known as the Twelve Labors of Herakles.
The herdsman of the three-bodied creature, Geryon (Geryones), who was slain by Herakles (Heracles) in the course of his Tenth Labor.
A Centaur who was slain by Herakles (Heracles).
One of the Argonauts; the son of Iros.
The Argonauts were a company of the greatest heroes and adventurers in ancient Greece; the Argonauts were assembled by Jason to assist him in retrieving the Golden Fleece from the land of Kolchis (Colchis); their name was derived from their ship, the Argo (Argo + nautes = Argo-seamen); the Quest for the Golden Fleece can be assumed to have occurred circa 1285 BCE.
Argonautika, book 1, lines 71-76
He and Kteatos (Cteatus) are believed to be the sons of Aktor (Actor) and Molione.
Eurytos was the king of Oichalia and father of the maiden, Iole; he and his sons were slain by Herakles (Heracles); Eurytos offered his daughter, Iole, in marriage to the winner of an archery competition and refused to honor his promise when Herakles won; Herakles killed Eurytos and his sons and took Iole as his concubine.
It's not clear as to the chronology of some of the events in Herakles's life but two of Eurytos's sons, Iphitos and Klytios, were with Herakles as crew members of the Argo; Herakles was forced to leave the crew of the Argo and return to his Labors; after he had completed his labors, Herakles embarked on a series of adventures known as the praxeis or Deeds; the incident with Iole took place after the voyage of the Argonauts and would be considered as one of his Deeds.
Argonautika, book 1, lines 86-89
Eurytos was a Spartan soldier and accompanied the king, Leonidas, to the narrow pass at Thermopylae to await the invading Persian army; the three hundred Spartans faced perhaps as many as five hundred thousand Persians.
Eurytos and another man named Aristodemus where afflicted by an ailment of the eye and were not fit to fight; Leonidas released both men from their duty but when the Persians finally broke through the Spartan lines, Eurytos had his helot take him into the thick of the fighting where he was killed; his death was one of dignity and in keeping with the Spartan ideals of bravery and manhood.
Histories, book 7.229
Eurytos was one of the huge monsters collectively known as the Giants; the Giants were the children of Gaia (Earth) engendered by the blood of Ouranos (the Heavens).
The Giants waged an unsuccessful war on the Olympians and were severely punished after their defeat; the poet Hesiod states that the Giants were banished to the Underworld but Apollodorus of Athens clearly describes the brutal death of the Giants.
The Giants were mostly human in form but their bodies were massive and they were invincible in their might; they had long drooping locks on their heads and chins; their feet had scales like a dragon or serpent; whether they actually had the feet of dragons or whether they were simply scaled was a point of contention among several of the ancient authors; the traveler and historian, Pausanias, disputed the fact that the Giants literally had dragon feet but ancient artwork generally represented the Giants with serpent-like feet.
The origin of the Giants was either Phlegrae or Pallene but it has been suggested that the two names represent the same place; the Immortals were given an oracle which stated that the Giants could not be killed by a god or goddess so they decided to enlist the aid of Herakles (Heracles) to do the actual killing; when Gaia learned of the oracle, she began the preparation of a drug that would protect her awful children but Zeus culled a cunning brew of his own that would make the Giants vulnerable to the wrath of the Immortals; in order to have the time necessary for the creation of the drug, Zeus forbade Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to shine until his task was complete.
The goddess Athene (Athena) summoned Herakles and the war against the Giants began:
Eurytos was killed by Dionysos with a thyrsus, i.e. a wand wreathed in ivy and vine leaves with a pine cone at the top; his brothers all met a similar fate:
Alkyoneos (Alcyoneus) - Alkyoneos was one of the two most powerful of the Giants; he was brazen in his contempt for the Olympian Gods and even stole the cattle of Helios from Erythia; he was immortal as long as he remained on his home soil, i.e. he could not be killed by man, god or beast as long as he remained in the land of his birth; he was, however, the first of the Giants to die; Herakles shot Alkyoneos with an arrow and the mighty Giant fell to the ground where he was revitalized by the earth and began to recover from the wound; at the advice of Athene, Herakles dragged Alkyoneos out of Pallene where he was no longer protected by his native soil and he died.
Porphyrion - Alkyoneos and Porphyrion were the two most powerful Giants; while Alkyoneos and Herakles were fighting, Porphyrion joined the battle but was immediately distracted by an intervention from Zeus; an irresistible longing for the goddess Hera overcame Porphyrion and he began to tear at the goddesses' garments; Herakles killed Alkyoneos while Porphyrion was lustfully distracted and Zeus struck the unsuspecting Giant with a thunderbolt and rendered him helpless but not dead; Herakles shot Porphyrion with an arrow and killed him.
Ephialtes was shot with an arrow in the left eye by Apollon and then in the right eye by Herakles.
Klytios (Clytius) was killed by the goddess Hekate (Hecate) with torches; presumably he was burned to death.
Mimas was killed when Hephaistos (Hephaestus) showered him with missiles of hot metal.
Enkelados (Enceladus) tried to run away but Athene dropped the island of Sicily on him.
Polybotes was chased by Poseidon to the island of Kos (Cos) where the god broke off a piece of the island (called Nisyrum) and hurled it at the desperate Giant.
Hippolytus (Hippolytos) was killed by Hermes who was wearing the Helm of Hades which made him invisible.
Gration was killed by Artemis; Agrios (Agrius) and Thoas were beaten with brazen clubs by the Fates; the other (unnamed) Giants were struck by thunderbolts from Zeus; Herakles shot and killed each of the Giants with arrows as they lay suffering.
Pausanaus, book vii, chapter 29
Library, book I, chapter VI
Theogony, line 185
One of the nine Muses; the Muse of music and lyric poetry; her name means Delightful.
For more information on Euterpe and her sisters, I suggest that you consult the Muses page in the Immortals section of this site.
Theogony, line 76
A dialogue by Plato in which Socrates and Euthyphro debate the subtleties of religion and piety; the dialogue juxtaposes the philosophy of ancient gods against more modern spiritual beliefs.
The large inland sea which lies between Europe and Asia; the Euxine is now called the Black Sea and is bounded by the Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania; it is connected to the Aegean Sea by the Propontis (Sea of Marmara) and the Hellespont (Dardanelles Straits); numerous rivers flow into the Euxine including: the Ister (Danube) and the Borysthenes (Dnieper); the shoreline and depth of the Euxine have changed since the time of Jason and the Argonauts (circa 1285 BCE) but we can approximate its former size by noting that the modern day Black Sea has a surface area of approximately 178,000 square miles (461,018 square kilometers) and a maximum depth of approximately 7,300 feet (2,225 meters).
At the eastern edge of the Euxine was the land of the Golden Fleece, Kolchis (Colchis); Jason and the Argonauts sailed along the southern edge of the Euxine to reach Kolchis but on their return voyage, after they had secured the Golden Fleece, they chose to enter the Ister in order to escape the pursuers who were sent by King Aietes (Aeetes) of Kolchis.
The Black Sea was originally called Axenos (or Axine) by the ancient Greeks and then later called Euxine or Pontos Euxinus or simply Pontos; the word Axenos literally means, "an inhospitable place" but the name Euxine means, "kind to strangers"; the modern name, Black Sea, harkens back to the "inhospitable place" connotation; if it had been named the Blue Sea or the Green Sea it might sound like a more hospitable and inviting body of water.
A master potter from the late sixth century BCE.
The wife of Kapaneus (Capaneus); Kapaneus was a commander in the army known as the Seven Against Thebes.
The Seven Against Thebes was formed to attack the seven gates of Thebes in order to oust King Eteokles (Eteocles) and replace him with his brother Polyneikes (Polyneices); Polyneikes and Eteokles were in a deadly dispute as to who should be the king of Thebes after the self-imposed exile of their father, Oedipus; Eteokles tricked Polyneikes into thinking that the two of them could take turns sitting on the throne but once on the throne, Eteokles refused to honor his agreement and banished Polyneikes from Thebes; during his exile in Argos, Polyneikes formed an army known as the Seven Against Thebes to attack the seven gates of Thebes and reclaim the throne; Kapaneus became one of the commanders of the Seven Against Thebes.
The Seven Against Thebes lost the battle and with the exception of King Adrastus (Adrestos) of Sikyon (Sicyon), all of the commanders were killed including Polyneikes and Kapaneus; ten years after the failure of the Seven Against Thebes, Adrastus led the sons of the Seven to attack Thebes again; they were called the Epigoni, i.e. After-Born; Kapaneus's son Sthenelos (Sthenelus) was one of the Epigoni and they successfully captured Thebes.
Whether Sthenelos was the son of Evadne is unclear but Evadne was so grief-stricken at the death of Kapaneus, she threw herself on his funeral pyre and perished; the expedition of the Seven Against Thebes took place circa 1265 BCE so we can assume that Evadne died at that time.
Sir Arthur John Evans (1851-1941); Arthur Evans was knighted in 1911 for his exceptional research and excavations at Knossos (Cnossus) on the island of Crete; Sir Arthur is credited with naming the ancient culture of Crete Minoan because of the legendary King Minos.
After discovering the ruins of Knossos, Sir Arthur purchased the site from the Greek government so that it could be protected from amateurish explorers and looters; Sir Arthur worked diligently at Knossos between 1900 and 1931.
As curator of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1884-1908), Sir Arthur made the museum the foremost authority on the culture of ancient Crete; the records of his excavations can be found at the Oxford University Library web site.
The statue in the above photo is prominently placed at the entrance to Knossos.
He was mentioned by Nestor as one of the mighty heroes in the era which proceeded the Trojan War; Nestor and other heroes such as Exadios defeated the Centaurs in their mountain lairs.
Iliad (Lattimore and Loeb), book 1, line 264
Iliad (Fagles), book 1, line 308
Iliad (Fitzgerald), book 1, line 312
A master painter noted for his black-figure vases; circa 540 BCE.
In Greek comedy, the conclusion of the play which typically revolves around some sort of celebration, i.e. a banquet or wedding.
The classifications into which modern scholars have divided Old Comedy are usually expressed in six elements:
1) Prologue (setting the theme of the play);
2) Parodos (introduction of the chorus);
3) Agon (argumentation);
4) Parabasis (choral ode);
5) Episodes (resolving the Agon); and
6) Exodos (celebratory conclusion).
A course, stiff, loose fitting, one-piece garment worn by workmen.
