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Achilles
Son of Peleus and Thetis; greatest Greek hero in the Trojan War; central character of Homer's Iliad. He is king of Phthia, or ‘Hellas and Phthia’, in southern Thessaly, and his people are the ...
aegis
In classical art and mythology, an attribute of Zeus and Athena (or their Roman counterparts Jupiter and Minerva) usually represented as a goatskin shield. The word (denoting armour or a shield, ...
Aphrodite
In Greek mythology, the goddess of beauty, fertility, and sexual love. She is variously described as the daughter of Zeus and Dione, or as being born from the sea. Her cult was of Eastern origin, ...
Arcadia
A bleak and mountainous district in the central Peloponnese which became, as a result of references in Virgil's Eclogues, the traditional and incongruous location of the idealized world of the ...
Athena
In Iliad 5 Homer describes how Athena took off the finely wrought robe ‘which she herself had made and worked at with her own hands’ and ‘armed herself for grievous war’. This incident encapsulates ...
Attic cults and myths
Most Greek states honoured most Greek gods; the differences between them are of emphasis and degree. As characteristic Athenian emphases one might mention: the extraordinary prominence of Athena, ...
Cyclopes
Are one‐eyed giants. In Homer they are savage and pastoral, and live in a distant country without government or laws. Odysseus visits them in his wanderings and enters the cave of one of them, ...
Daedalus
The ‘cunning artificer’ of Greek mythology, he was an inventor, artist, and architect, responsible for creating the labyrinth at Knossos, Crete. Medieval architects identified with Daedalus as his ...
Danel and Aqhat
The Canaanite tale of King Danel and his son, the hero Aqhat, is contained in fragments of three Ugaritic tablets from Ras Shamra. As the tale opens, Danel is performing ...
Dares Phrygius
A Trojan priest mentioned by Homer (Iliad, 5. 9). He was supposed to have been the author of De Excidio Troiae, an account of the fall of Troy dating probably from the 5th cent. ad. This work, ...
epithets, divine
GreekIt is necessary to distinguish between epithets or surnames appearing only as literary (esp. epic) ornaments and those known to have been used in cult. Thus we have no proof that Athena was ever ...
Erechtheum
A marble temple of the Ionic order built on the Acropolis in Athens c. 421–406 bc, with shrines to Athene, Poseidon, and Erechtheus, a legendary king of Athens. A masterpiece of the Ionic order, it ...
Erichthonius
An Athenian hero connected with the Acropolis and its cults. He may originally have been identical with Erechtheus, the older attested name. He is distinguished from his near homonym by the emphasis ...
Ericthonius
The Greek smith god Hephaistos assaulted the goddess Athene and in the ensuing struggle he ejaculated onto her thigh. The disgusted goddess flung the semen onto the earth—that is, onto ...
fire
One of the four elements in ancient and medieval philosophy and in astrology (considered essential to the nature of the signs Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius).fire and brimstone torment in hell; often ...
Goibniu
[OIr. gobae, smith].Smith of the Tuatha Dé Danann and one of the three gods of craft, na trídé dána, along with Credne and Luchta. Goibniu is seen most vividly in Cath Maige Tuired [The (Second) ...
Greek Gods
[This entry includes two subentries, on the twelve Olympian gods and on lesser gods. For discussion of Roman gods, see Mythology, Roman.]The Greek pantheon includes countless divinities, worshipped ...
Greek mythology
The religion or religions associated with the ancient Greeks produced one of the world's most complex and sophisticated mythologies, one that has particularly influenced the cultures of the Western ...
Hephaestus Reference library
Fritz Graf
The Oxford Classical Dictionary (4 ed.)
Greek god of *fire, of blacksmiths, and of artisans (see artists). The name, of uncertain etymology, has no certain attestation in Linear B, though there is the possibility of reading a ...
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