Discover Telamon, king of Salamis and father of Ajax, who sailed with the Argonauts and joined Heracles in the first legendary sack of Troy in Greek mythology. Previous Greek Next > Telamon Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Τελαμών (Telamṗn) Pronunciation TEL-uh-mon Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Son of Aeacus, The Argonaut, The Sacker of Troy, The Father of Ajax, The King of Salamis Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 13th-12th century BCE (mythical era); 8th-5th century BCE (literary attestation) Symbol Lion-skin Cloak & Shield Tags greek, telamon, ajax, heracles, argonauts, troy, salamis, aeacus, peleus Introduction - Overview Telamon is the son of Aeacus, the king of the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf and one of the three judges of the dead in the Underworld, and the brother of Peleus, the mortal father of Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Trojan War. He is the hero who sailed with Jason on the Argo, the ship built from the sacred oak of Dodona, as one of the fifty Argonauts who sought the Golden Fleece in distant Colchis on the Black Sea. He is the companion of Heracles who helped sack Troy long before the Trojan War, joining the greatest hero in the assault on King Laomedon's city and receiving Hesione, the Trojan princess, as his prize. He is the king of Salamis, the island off the coast of Attica near Athens, where he established a kingdom after being exiled from Aegina for the murder of his half-brother Phocus. And he is the father of Ajax the Great, the mighty warrior who was second only to Achilles at Troy, and of Teucer, the finest archer in the Greek army, a legacy of strength and war that made his name one of the most honoured in all Greece. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Telamon Telamon was born to Aeacus, the king of the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf, and Endeis, the daughter of the centaur Chiron, the wise creature who was half man and half horse and who trained the greatest heroes of Greece, though some say his mother was Plutia, a daughter of the river god Asopus. His brother was Peleus, who would later marry the sea nymph Thetis and become the father of Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Trojan War. Telamon also had a half-brother named Phocus, the son of Aeacus and the Nereid Psamathe, a sea nymph of extraordinary beauty, who was so skilled at athletics that he outshone both Telamon and Peleus in the games. The jealousy of the legitimate brothers grew until, during a discus throw or a quarrel over a game, they killed Phocus, either accidentally or by design, and hid his body in a wood or threw it into the sea. When Aeacus discovered the murder, he banished both Telamon and Peleus from Aegina forever. Telamon sailed to the island of Salamis, which lay off the coast of Attica near Athens, and there he found a kingdom in need of a king. The king of Salamis, Cychreus, had no male heir, and Telamon married his daughter, who was called Glauce in some tellings and Periboea in others, and inherited the throne. He ruled Salamis with justice and strength, and his fame as a warrior grew until he was counted among the greatest heroes of his generation. When Jason, the son of Aeson and rightful heir to the throne of Iolcus, assembled the Argonauts to sail for the Golden Fleece, Telamon was one of the first to join, bringing his own ship or sailing aboard the Argo, the vessel built from the sacred oak of Dodona and fitted with a speaking beam that warned the crew of danger. The voyage of the Argo was only the beginning of Telamon's adventures. He also took part in the Calydonian Boar Hunt, the great expedition sent by King Oeneus of Calydon to kill a monstrous boar that had been sent by Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt, to ravage the king's lands because he had failed to honour her in his harvest sacrifices. Telamon stood among the hunters, which included Meleager, the prince of Calydon, Atalanta, the swift-footed huntress, and many other heroes, and he fought the beast with spear and courage. The boar was eventually killed by Meleager, but the hunt ended in tragedy when Meleager murdered his uncles in a quarrel over the hide, and Telamon returned to Salamis with the memory of a hunt that had brought glory to some and death to others. The most famous campaign of Telamon's life was the sack of Troy, not the great war of Agamemnon and Achilles that would come a generation later, but an earlier assault led by Heracles, the hero forced to complete twelve impossible labours. King Laomedon of Troy, the father of Priam who would later rule the city during the Trojan War, had cheated Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Apollo, the god of music and prophecy, of their wages after they built the walls of his city. Heracles gathered an army to punish the king, and Telamon sailed with him as his closest companion. When the Greeks assaulted the walls of Troy, Telamon was the first to breach them, throwing himself into the city with a fury that even Heracles admired. Heracles had promised that the first man to enter the city would receive the fairest prize, and when Telamon leaped through the gap in the wall, Heracles feared that the glory would go to another. He drew his sword and rushed after Telamon, but Telamon, seeing the hero's face, understood the danger and quickly began to pile stones into a heap, declaring that he was building an altar to Heracles the Glorious Victor. Heracles, flattered, sheathed his sword, and the two men sacked the city together. Laomedon and all his sons were killed except for Priam, who was ransomed, and Hesione, the king's daughter, was given to Telamon as his prize. She bore him two sons: Ajax, who would grow to be the mightiest warrior in Greece after Achilles, and Teucer, who would become the finest archer in the Greek army. Telamon lived to see his sons sail to Troy with the Greek fleet, a war that was in some ways the continuation of the campaign he had fought with Heracles. Ajax the Great, as he was called to distinguish him from the lesser Ajax of Locris, was a tower of strength at Troy, second only to Achilles in prowess, and when Achilles was killed by Paris, the Trojan prince whose abduction of Helen had caused the war, Ajax claimed the dead hero's armour as the rightful successor. But Odysseus, the cunning king of Ithaca, won the armour by trickery, and Ajax, driven mad by the shame, fell upon his own sword. Teucer survived the war but was banished by Telamon for failing to bring Ajax home alive, or in some versions for failing to avenge his brother's death, and the old king died in grief and anger, his heart broken by the loss of the son who had been his greatest pride. Telamon was buried on Salamis, and his tomb was honoured by the islanders for centuries as the resting place of a hero who had stood beside Heracles and sacked the city that would one day destroy his own line. Summary Telamon endures as one of the great heroes of the generation before the Trojan War, the king of Salamis whose name was spoken with honour in every corner of Greece. From the murder of Phocus to the sack of Troy, from the Argo to the walls of Laomedon's city, his life was one of strength, loyalty, and the terrible cost of heroic ambition. Every son who has had to leave his father's house in disgrace, every warrior who has breached a wall before his commander, and every father who has buried a son who died too young carries his memory. Telamon reminds us that the hero's path is paved not only with glory but with exile, jealousy, and the grief that outlasts every victory. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Telamon From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Hesione Person Hesione Peleus Person Peleus Jason Person Jason Ajax the Greater Person Ajax the Greater Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pindar, Isthmian Ode 6 (c. 480 BCE) - the birth of Telamon and Peleus, the murder of Phocus - Pindar, Nemean Ode 3 (c. 475 BCE) - Telamon at the sack of Troy and the birth of Ajax - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.8.2, 2.6.4, 3.12.6-7 (2nd century BCE) - Telamon in the Calydonian Hunt, the sack of Troy, and his marriage to Hesione - Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.32.1-6, 4.49.1-7 (1st century BCE) - Telamon with Heracles at Troy and the siege of Laomedon - Homer, Iliad 2.557-558, 8.224-226, 12.370-371 (c. 750 BCE) - Ajax as son of Telamon and his prowess at Troy - Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.35.2, 1.42.4, 2.29.9 (2nd century CE) - the tomb of Telamon on Salamis and his cult - Sophocles, Ajax (c. 440 BCE) - the death of Ajax and Teucer's relationship to Telamon - Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.476-478, 11.211-217 (c. 8 CE) - Telamon in the Calydonian Hunt and the exile from Aegina - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - pp. 218-221 on Telamon and the pre-Trojan sack - March, Jennifer, Cassell's Dictionary of Classical Mythology (1998) - pp. 892-893 on Telamon's life and lineage - Kearns, Emily, The Heroes of Attica (1989) - Chapter 3 on the cult of Telamon on Salamis and his heroic status - Willcock, Malcolm M., A Companion to the Iliad (1976) - the role of Telamon's sons in the Homeric tradition Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Aristeas of Proconnesus, soul-travelling poet of the lost Arimaspeia who journeyed beyond Scythia and returned with tales of griffins and Arimaspians. Previous Greek Next > Aristeas Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ἀριστέας (Aristeas) Pronunciation air-iss-TEE-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Aristeas of Proconnesus, The Shaman-Poet, The Soul-Traveller, The Raven of Apollo Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 7th century BCE Symbol Raven & Arrow Tags greek, proconnesus, arimaspeia, apollo, shaman, issedones, arimaspians, hyperborea, soul-travel Introduction - Overview Aristeas is the poet who died in a fuller's shop and came back to life, the shaman whose soul flew from his body as a raven and travelled to the edge of the known world. He is the native of Proconnesus, an island in the Sea of Marmara, who wrote the lost epic Arimaspeia and gave the Greeks their first map of the northern wilderness beyond Scythia. He is the servant of Apollo who entered a trance so deep that his body seemed dead, whose spirit journeyed past the Issedones to the land of the one-eyed Arimaspians, the gold-guarding griffins, and finally the blessed Hyperboreans who live beyond the north wind. He is the ghost who appeared in Metapontum in southern Italy years after his death, telling the citizens to build an altar to Apollo and leaving his name inscribed on a bronze arrow as proof. And he is the most enigmatic traveller in early Greek literature, a man who blurred the boundary between poet and prophet, between life and death, and between the geography of the earth and the geography of the soul. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Aristeas Aristeas was born on the island of Proconnesus, a Greek settlement in the Propontis, the inland sea that connects the Black Sea to the Aegean. The island was famous for its white marble, but Aristeas would make it famous for something far stranger. He was a devotee of Apollo, the god of poetry, prophecy, and the sun, and he carried the god's inspiration in a form that his neighbours found terrifying. One day, while walking through the streets of Proconnesus, he entered a fuller's shop and fell down dead. The fuller, a man who cleaned woollen garments for a living, was horrified. He sent word to Aristeas' family, who came to mourn. But when they opened the door of the shop to take the body away, it had vanished. There was no sign of Aristeas anywhere on the island. His family searched in vain, and the people of Proconnesus concluded that the god had taken him. Seven years later, Aristeas returned to Proconnesus. He walked into the agora, the public square, and told the assembled citizens that he had not been dead. His soul had left his body and travelled north, carried by Apollo beyond every land the Greeks knew. He had reached the country of the Issedones, a people who lived beyond the Scythians on the inner steppes of Central Asia. From them he learned of the peoples still further north: the one-eyed Arimaspians, the griffins that guarded gold in the mountains, and beyond them the Hyperboreans, the blessed race who lived at the back of the north wind where the sun never set in summer. He wrote all this down in a poem called the Arimaspeia, a work in three books that is now lost but whose contents were preserved in the writings of later historians. The Arimaspeia described a chain of peoples that stretched from the familiar to the fabulous. The Issedones were the first step into the unknown, a people who honoured their dead by eating their flesh and keeping their skulls as drinking cups. Beyond them lived the Arimaspians, fierce horse-riding warriors with a single eye in the centre of their foreheads, who waged perpetual war with the griffins over gold dug from the northern mountains. The griffins themselves were not mere beasts but divine guardians, lion-bodied and eagle-headed, who nested in the Rhipaean Mountains and defended their treasure with absolute ferocity. Beyond the griffins and their gold lay the Hyperboreans, a blessed people who knew no war, no disease, and no old age, who sent sacred offerings to Apollo at Delos wrapped in sheaves of wheat, passing them from hand to hand through every nation between their land and Greece. Aristeas claimed to have seen all this not with his body's eyes but with his soul's, travelling in a state of divine possession that left his earthly form behind. Years after his return and his second disappearance, Aristeas appeared again, this time not in his homeland but in Metapontum, a Greek city on the gulf of southern Italy. The citizens were astonished to see a man they did not recognise walking through their streets, carrying a message from Apollo. He told them that the god commanded them to build an altar in the middle of their city, and that Apollo would come to them himself if they obeyed. Then he vanished. The Metapontines, uncertain whether to believe a stranger who had appeared from nowhere, sent a delegation to Delphi, the most famous oracle of Apollo in Greece, to ask the god if the command was genuine. The Pythia, the priestess who spoke Apollo's words from a tripod over a chasm in the earth, confirmed everything. She told them that Aristeas of Proconnesus had indeed come among them, and that they should build the altar. She added a detail that made their hair stand on end: Aristeas had visited them not in the body but in the spirit, for his physical form was dead and buried in Proconnesus. When the Metapontines built the altar and made their offerings, they placed beside it a bronze statue of Aristeas holding a raven, the bird into which his soul was said to transform when it left his body. Some said they also found a bronze arrow in the temple with his name inscribed upon it, the very arrow with which Apollo had once slain the Python, the great serpent that guarded Delphi before the god claimed the sanctuary for his own. Summary Aristeas remains the most mysterious figure in early Greek literature, a poet whose body was a temporary lodging for a soul that ranged across continents and returned with news from the edge of the world. From the fuller's shop in Proconnesus to the bronze arrow in Metapontum, from the Issedones on the steppe to the griffins in the northern mountains, his story is one of divine possession and geographical imagination. Every map that extends beyond the known, every tale of a shaman's soul-flight, every poet who claims to have seen what mortal eyes cannot carries something of Aristeas in it. He reminds us that before the Greeks became historians, they were travellers of the spirit, and that the farthest north was sometimes reached not by ship but by trance. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Aristeas From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Arimaspians Group Arimaspians Apollo Deity Apollo Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Aristeas of Proconnesus, Arimaspeia (c. 650-550 BCE, lost poem, fragments preserved in Herodotus) - the original account of the northern journey - Herodotus, Histories 4.13-16 (c. 440 BCE) - the fuller's shop, the disappearance, the return, and the Metapontum epiphany - Herodotus, Histories 4.24-27 (c. 440 BCE) - the contents of the Arimaspeia and the chain of northern peoples - Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.6 (c. 150 CE) - the statue of Aristeas with the raven at Metapontum - Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.174 (77 CE) - Aristeas' soul leaving the body and the raven transformation - Bolton, J.D.P., Aristeas of Proconnesus (Oxford, 1962) - the standard scholarly monograph - Dowden, Ken, European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2000) - pp. 157-159, shamanic elements in Greek religion - Kingsley, Peter, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic (Oxford, 1995) - Chapter 2, Aristeas and the tradition of ecstatic travel - Phillips, E.D., "The Legend of Aristeas: Fact and Fancy in Early Greek Notions of East Russia, Siberia and Inner Asia" (Artibus Asiae 18.2, 1955) - pp. 161-177 Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Horus, the Egyptian falcon god who avenged Osiris, defeated Set, and became the divine model for every pharaoh. - Mythopouch Previous Egyptian Next > Horus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s ḥr (Egyptian) Pronunciation HOR-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Heru, Horus the Elder, Horus the Younger, Harpocrates, Horus of Edfu, Horus the Avenger, the Falcon of the Sky, the Uniter of the Two Lands, Lord of the Horizon Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Ancient Egypt Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Deity Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period c. 6000 BCE (predynastic worship) - Roman period Symbol The falcon, the wedjat eye, the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, the winged sun disk Tags egyptian, horus, falcon, osiris, isis, set, edfu, wedjat-eye Introduction - Overview Horus is the falcon-headed god of the sky who avenged his father's murder and claimed the throne of Egypt, the divine prototype of every pharaoh who ever ruled. He is the son of Isis, the great enchantress who gathered the scattered fragments of her murdered husband, and Osiris, the green-skinned lord of the afterlife who judged the dead. He is the lord of Edfu, the temple city where his granite sanctuary still stands as one of the best-preserved monuments of the ancient world. He is the god who battled Set, the crimson-haired storm-lord of the desert, for eighty years in the most famous lawsuit ever heard by the divine tribunal. He is the falcon whose right eye was the sun and whose left eye was the moon, the healer whose restored eye became the most powerful protective symbol in Egypt. And he is the eternal king, the living Horus in whom every pharaoh was incarnated, the divine right that made Egypt the longest-lived civilisation on earth. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Horus Horus was ancient before the first dynasty, worshipped in the predynastic period around 6000 BCE when the falcon was already the sacred bird of the Nile valley. In the earliest form he was Horus the Elder, a sky god whose eyes were the sun and the moon, born from the union of Geb, the green earth god, and Nut, the star-spangled sky goddess whose arched body was the canopy of heaven. But the Horus who would dominate Egyptian religion for four millennia was Horus the Younger, the son of Osiris and Isis. When Set, the god of chaos and desert storms, murdered Osiris and usurped the throne, Isis fled to the reed-beds of the northern Delta to hide her unborn child. She gave birth in secret and raised Horus among the papyrus thickets, protecting him from Set's assassins with magic and cunning. The boy grew to manhood in the marshes, and when he was old enough he set out to claim the inheritance that Set had stolen. The central drama of Horus's life was the Contendings of Horus and Set, the eighty-year lawsuit that the gods heard before the divine tribunal. Horus claimed the throne as the son of Osiris, arguing that legitimacy passed through the bloodline. Set claimed it as the brother of Osiris, arguing that strength and seniority were the rightful measures of kingship. The gods met in the Hall of the Ennead, where the nine great gods of Heliopolis sat in judgment, and the debate raged for decades. Set challenged Horus to a series of contests, from hippopotamus hunts to stone boat races, each designed to destroy the younger god. In one episode, Set tore out Horus's left eye, the lunar eye, and tore it into pieces. But Thoth, the ibis-headed scribe who kept the sacred records of the gods, gathered the fragments and restored the eye with his magic, creating the wedjat, the sound eye that became the most powerful amulet in Egypt. The climax of the conflict came when the gods finally ruled in Horus's favour. Set, enraged, transformed into a red hippopotamus and hid in the waters of the Nile. Horus harpooned him, and the battle raged for days. Isis intervened and bound Set with her magic, but Horus, furious that his mother had shown mercy to his father's murderer, struck off her head in a moment of rage. Thoth restored her with a cow's head, and the tribunal finally awarded the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt to Horus. Set was cast out into the desert, condemned to be the thunderstorm that raged beyond the fertile valley, while Horus was crowned king in the great temple at Heliopolis, the city of the sun. The ceremony was the template for every royal coronation that followed, and the pharaoh who sat on the throne was called the Living Horus, the god incarnate. Horus's power was not confined to myth. Every pharaoh from Narmer, the first king of a unified Egypt, to Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh, identified himself with Horus in life and with Osiris in death. The king wore the double crown that Horus had won, the white crown of Upper Egypt and the red crown of Lower Egypt combined into one. The temple of Edfu, built between 237 and 57 BCE, was the greatest monument to Horus in Egypt, a granite fortress-temple whose walls tell the entire story of his battle with Set in carved reliefs that still glow in the desert light. The winged sun disk, the image of Horus as a falcon with outstretched wings and a solar orb upon his head, was carved above the doorways of every temple as a protective emblem. In the afterlife, Horus led the deceased to Osiris and offered the restored wedjat eye as a symbol of wholeness and health. Horus did not die in the Egyptian tradition. He was eternal, the living king who passed the throne to his son and then ascended to the sky. But his human incarnation, the pharaoh, did die, and at that moment the king became Osiris while his son became the new Horus. This cycle of father and son, death and rebirth, was the engine of Egyptian civilisation for three thousand years. The Greeks called the child Horus Harpocrates, and they carried his image to the farthest corners of their empire. In modern times, the wedjat eye is worn as a protective charm across the world, and the falcon remains the symbol of sovereign vision. Horus endures as the eternal prototype of legitimate kingship, the son who avenged his father and restored order to a world that chaos had nearly destroyed. Summary Horus endures as the supreme image of divine kingship and filial vengeance, the falcon-headed god whose eighty-year struggle against Set defined the moral order of Egypt. From the reed-beds of the Delta where Isis hid him to the granite halls of Edfu where his temple still stands, from the restored wedjat eye to the double crown of every pharaoh, he spans six millennia as the living king. Every royal coronation, every protective amulet, every winged sun disk carries the mark of his ancient falcon head. In the human imagination, Horus remains the eternal avenger, the proof that legitimacy outlasts violence and that the son's duty to his father is older than the state itself. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Horus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Eye of Horus (Wedjat) Artifact/Object/Weapon Eye of Horus (Wedjat) Thoth Deity Thoth Set Deity Set Isis Deity Isis Osiris Deity Osiris Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pyramid Texts (5th-6th Dynasty, c. 2345-2181 BCE) - earliest references to Horus as divine king and son of Osiris - Coffin Texts, Spell 148 (Middle Kingdom, c. 2055-1650 BCE) - Horus's protection of the deceased and the wedjat eye - Contendings of Horus and Set, papyrus Chester Beatty I (20th Dynasty, c. 1186-1077 BCE) - the eighty-year lawsuit and the divine tribunal - Book of the Dead, Spell 17 (New Kingdom, c. 1550-1070 BCE) - Horus as the son of Osiris and avenger of his father - Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride (c. 100 CE) - the murder of Osiris, Horus's upbringing, and the battle with Set - Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 2003) - Horus's iconography, cult, and role as divine king - Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford UP, 2002) - the Contendings and the Edfu temple - David P. Silverman, "The Nature of Kingship in Ancient Egypt" in Ancient Egyptian Kingship (Brill, 1995) - Horus as the theological basis of pharaonic authority Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Gildas, the sixth-century British monk who wrote De Excidio, condemned five kings and became famous for never naming Arthur in his surviving history. Previous Arthurian Next > Gildas Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Gildas Sapiens, Gildas Badonicus, Gildas the Wise, Gweltaz (Breton), Gildas Albanicus Pronunciation GIL-das Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Wisest of Britons, The Monk of the Ruin, The Scourge of Kings, The Father of British History, The Man Who Ignored Arthur, The Voice of the Groans Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Romano-British/Celtic Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Historical Gender Male Time Period c. 500-570 CE (lifetime); literary tradition from c. 540 CE (De Excidio) to 12th century CE (Lives of Gildas) Symbol Quill as a Boat Tags arthurian, gildas, british, hero, monk, de-excidio, ambrosius-aurelianus, mount-badon, historian, sixth-century Introduction - Overview Gildas is the monk who wrote the only surviving work from sixth-century Britain, a thunderous sermon called De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, "On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain," that condemned five kings as beasts of the Apocalypse and described the Battle of Mount Badon without once mentioning the name Arthur. He is the Romano-British historian born in the same year as the battle that halted the Saxon advance, educated by Illtud the educator of all Britain, who fled the strife of his homeland to become a hermit on an island in the Bristol Channel and later a teacher in Brittany whose most famous student was Taliesin, the greatest bard in Welsh legend. He is the son of Caw, one of twenty brothers, whose own brother Hueil was killed by King Arthur and whose forgiveness of the king became the foundation of a friendship that legend says saved Guinevere from the kidnapper Melwas of the Summer Country. He is the man whose body, laid in a boat upon a river after his death, drifted downstream for three months and was found intact by the monks of Rhuys, a miracle that confirmed his sainthood. And he is the most infuriating source in British history, the eyewitness who tells us everything about the age of Arthur except the one thing we most want to know, a monk whose silence about the greatest king has fuelled eight centuries of debate. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Gildas Gildas was born around the year 500, in the same year that the Battle of Mount Badon was fought, the decisive engagement that halted the Saxon advance and gave Britain a generation of peace. He came from the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, the northern kingdom of the Britons that would one day become Scotland, though some later traditions placed his birth in Powys in Wales. He was educated at a monastery, probably Llantwit Major in Glamorgan, under the tutelage of Illtud, a teacher so renowned that Gildas himself called him the educator of all Britain. The world into which Gildas was born was a world in ruins: the Roman legions had departed a century earlier, the cities were crumbling, and the Saxon invaders were pressing westward from the eastern shores. Yet Gildas was trained in the classical tradition, fluent in Latin, steeped in the Bible, and possessed of a literary style that would make his work the most influential text written in Britain for five hundred years. His masterpiece, De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, was written sometime between 516 and 547, probably in the 540s. It is not a history in the modern sense but a sermon, a thunderous religious polemic that uses the past to condemn the present. Gildas divides his work into three parts. The first is a narrative of Roman Britain from the conquest to his own day, a tale of invasion, rebellion, persecution, and divine punishment that includes the first written mention of the Battle of Mount Badon and the hero Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Romano-British leader who rallied the Britons against the Saxons. The second part is a savage denunciation of five British kings, whom Gildas compares to the beasts of the Apocalypse: Constantine the tyrannical whelp of the unclean lioness of Dumnonia, Aurelius Conanus the lion's whelp, Vortiporus the spotted leopard of the Demetians, Cuneglas the bear, and Maglocune the dragon of the island. Each king is torn apart with biblical rhetoric, his sins laid bare for the world to read. The third part attacks the British clergy, whom Gildas calls fools, shameless, and wily plunderers, ministers who had betrayed their sacred trust. The work is a cry of anguish, a lament for a fallen people, and a warning that the Saxons were God's punishment for British sin. The most famous thing about Gildas is what he did not write. In a work that covers the entire history of post-Roman Britain, that mentions Ambrosius Aurelianus and the Battle of Mount Badon, that condemns kings and bishops by name, there is no mention of Arthur. This silence has haunted historians for centuries. Some have argued that Arthur was not yet famous when Gildas wrote, a minor warlord beneath the notice of a monk who cared only for the great and the sinful. Others have suggested that Gildas deliberately omitted Arthur because of a personal grievance: in the Welsh tradition recorded by Caradoc of Llancarfan in the twelfth century, Gildas was the son of Caw, and his brother Hueil ap Caw was killed by King Arthur. Gildas, preaching in Ireland at the time, was said to have been grief-stricken, but he later forgave Arthur, who performed great penance for the slaying. The tradition grew so strong that by the thirteenth century, poets claimed Gildas had thrown all his books about Arthur into the sea in rage. Whether the omission was deliberate or simply a matter of perspective, the silence of Gildas is the single most important fact in the historical debate over Arthur's existence. Gildas's later life took him far from Britain. The Annales Cambriae record that he visited Ireland in 565, where he preached and restored church order at the request of King Ainmuire. He then made a pilgrimage to Rome and continued to Brittany, where he founded the monastery of St Gildas-de-Rhuys on a peninsula jutting into the Atlantic. There he lived as a teacher and hermit, and there he died around 570. His body was laid in a boat upon the river and allowed to drift downstream, as he had requested. Three months later, fishermen found the boat and the body intact, a miracle that confirmed his sanctity and made him one of the most revered saints in Brittany. His relics were venerated at Rhuys for generations before being transferred to Berry in the tenth century. In the Arthurian legends that grew up centuries after his death, Gildas became a character in the very story he had refused to tell. Caradoc of Llancarfan's Life of Gildas, written around 1130, describes how Gildas and the Abbot of Glastonbury persuaded King Melwas of the Summer Region to release Guinevere, whom Melwas had kidnapped and brought to his stronghold at Glastonbury. Arthur had gathered an army to besiege the stronghold, but Gildas's intervention prevented bloodshed and secured the queen's safe return. In this legend, Gildas is the peacemaker, the monk whose holiness could turn the wrath of kings. In Thomas Hughes's Elizabethan tragedy The Misfortunes of Arthur, Gildas appears on stage to lament the state of Britain after Arthur's death, a voice of prophecy and mourning. The historical Gildas, who wrote with such fury about the sins of his own age, would have recognised the role: he was always a man who spoke truth to power, who saw the ruin of Britain and refused to look away, and whose words outlasted every king he condemned. Summary Gildas endures as the most important voice from the age of Arthur, the monk whose thunderous sermon De Excidio is the only surviving contemporary account of post-Roman Britain and whose silence about the greatest king has fuelled eight centuries of debate. From the banks of the Clyde to the monastery of Rhuys, from the five beasts of the Apocalypse to the boat that carried his body intact down the river, his story is the reminder that history is written by the survivors and that the greatest historian may be the one who refuses to mention the name we most want to hear. He is the wisest of Britons, and the most infuriating. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Gildas From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Thames Location Thames Merlin Person Merlin Uther Pendragon Person Uther Pendragon The Black Dog of Maelgwn Creature/Monster/Animal The Black Dog of Maelgwn King Arthur Person King Arthur Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Gildas, De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, c. 516-547 CE - primary source; the only surviving contemporary work from sixth-century Britain, including the account of Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Battle of Mount Badon, and the condemnation of five British kings - Annales Cambriae (The Annals of Wales), c. 10th century - primary source; the record of Gildas's visit to Ireland in 565 and his death in 570, and his designation as "the wisest of Britons" - Caradoc of Llancarfan, Vita Gildae (Life of Saint Gildas), c. 1130 - primary source; the Arthurian legend of Gildas, his brother Hueil's death at Arthur's hands, his forgiveness of the king, and his rescue of Guinevere from Melwas - Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, c. 731 CE - primary source; Bede's use of Gildas as a source for the early history of post-Roman Britain - Nennius, Historia Brittonum, c. 828 CE - primary source; the Welsh monk's use of Gildas and the development of the Arthurian tradition from Gildas's silence - Thomas Hughes, The Misfortunes of Arthur, 1587 - primary source; the Elizabethan tragedy featuring Gildas lamenting the state of Britain after Arthur's death - Winterbottom, Michael (ed. and trans.), Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Works (Phillimore, 1978) - scholarly critical edition and translation of De Excidio with extensive commentary - Dumville, David N., "Gildas and Maelgwn: Problems of Dating," in Gildas: New Approaches, ed. Michael Lapidge and David Dumville (D.S. Brewer, 1984) - scholarly analysis of the dating of Gildas's work and the historical context of the five kings - Higham, N.J., King Arthur: Myth-Making and History (Routledge, 2002) - scholarly study of Gildas's silence on Arthur and the historical foundations of the Arthurian legend - Charles-Edwards, T.M., "The Arthur of History," in The Arthur of the Welsh, ed. Rachel Bromwich (University of Wales Press, 1991) - scholarly examination of Gildas as a historical source and the relationship between De Excidio and the Arthurian tradition - Lapidge, Michael and David Dumville (eds.), Gildas: New Approaches (D.S. Brewer, 1984) - scholarly collection of essays on Gildas's life, work, and historical significance Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Belus, son of Poseidon and king linked with Egypt and Phoenicia, whose twin descendants Aegyptus and Danaus began the bloody tragedy of the Danaids. Previous Greek Next > Belus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Βῆλος (Bêlos) Pronunciation BEE-lus Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Belos, The Libyan Zeus, King of Egypt, Father of the Danaids, Son of Poseidon Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Egyptian / Phoenician Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period Heroic Age; first attested in Hesiod (8th century BCE) Symbol Flowing Jar, River & Reeds Tags greek, egyptian, phoenician, egypt, danaus, aegyptus, danaids, poseidon, libya, agenor, baal Introduction - Overview Belus is the king who gave Greece its two most famous feuding twins, the ruler of Egypt whose fifty grandsons were murdered by his fifty granddaughters on their wedding night. He is the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Libya, the princess whose name became the land itself, and the twin brother of Agenor, the Phoenician king whose daughter Europa was carried away by Zeus in the form of a white bull. He is the husband of Achiroe, the daughter of the river god Nilus, by whom he fathered Aegyptus and Danaus, the brothers whose rivalry would drive the Danaids across the sea to Argos and stain Greek myth with the most notorious mass murder of bridegrooms ever told. He is the ancestor from whom the Greeks traced their claim to Egypt, the name they gave to a line of kings that stretched back through Memphis and Epaphus to the wandering Io. And he is the echo of Baal, the Canaanite storm-god whose title meant simply "lord," a name that travelled from Phoenician temples to Babylonian ziggurats and finally into the genealogies of the greatest families in Greece. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Belus Belus was born from the union of Poseidon, the earth-shaking god of the sea, and Libya, the daughter of Epaphus and Memphis. Epaphus was himself the son of Io, the priestess of Hera whom Zeus had loved and transformed into a heifer, sending her wandering across Europe and Asia until she reached Egypt and gave birth to a son by the Nile. That son, Epaphus, married Memphis, a nymph of the river, and their daughter Libya gave her name to the whole northern coast of Africa. Poseidon saw Libya and desired her, and from their union came twin sons: Agenor and Belus. The brothers were destined to rule the two halves of the Mediterranean world. Agenor departed for Phoenicia, where he founded the cities of Tyre and Sidon and became the father of Europa, Cadmus, Cilix, and Phoenix. Belus remained in Africa, inheriting the kingdom of his grandfather Epaphus, and ruled as king over Egypt and the lands that bore his mother's name. Belus married Achiroe, whom some call Anchinoe, a daughter of Nilus, the river god whose waters made Egypt the gift of the Nile. By her he fathered at least two sons, and in some accounts many more. The most famous were Aegyptus and Danaus, twin brothers who would become the protagonists of one of Greek mythology's darkest stories. Aegyptus was given Arabia to rule, and Danaus was given Libya. But Aegyptus was not satisfied. He conquered the land of the Melampods, a territory that probably lay within Danaus' own kingdom, and named the conquered country after himself. From that day, the land was called Egypt, and Aegyptus ruled it as his own. Danaus, seeing his brother's power grow, grew fearful. The rivalry between the twins festered until it became intolerable. Aegyptus fathered fifty sons. Danaus fathered fifty daughters, the Danaids. Aegyptus decided that his fifty sons would marry his brother's fifty daughters, binding the two houses together in a union that would end the feud. Danaus saw the proposal for what it was: a plot to absorb his line into his brother's and eliminate his independence. He refused. Aegyptus pressed the matter, and Danaus, in desperation, fled. He built a ship - the first vessel ever constructed, according to some traditions - and sailed with his fifty daughters across the Mediterranean to Argos in Greece. There he claimed the throne from the descendants of Io, his own great-great-grandmother, and established himself as king. But Aegyptus' sons were not deterred. They pursued their cousins across the sea, landed in Argos, and demanded the marriages that their father had arranged. Danaus, unable to refuse outright without starting a war he could not win, agreed. On the wedding night, however, he gave each of his daughters a dagger and commanded them to kill their bridegrooms. Forty-nine of the Danaids obeyed. Only Hypermnestra, the eldest, spared her husband Lynceus, because he had respected her virginity. The forty-nine heads were buried, and the forty-nine murderesses were condemned in the underworld to carry water in leaky jars for eternity. Belus, the grandfather of all hundred children, had set in motion a tragedy that would stain his name forever. But Belus was more than a genealogical node. His very name carried divine resonance. In the ancient Near East, the title Baal meant "lord," and it was applied to storm-gods across Canaan, Phoenicia, and Syria. The Greeks heard this name and incorporated it into their own mythic geography, making Belus a king who stood at the crossroads of Egypt and Phoenicia, of the Nile and the Mediterranean. The late epic poet Nonnus, writing in the fifth century CE, called him "the Libyan Zeus," a title that suggests the Greeks saw in him not merely a mortal king but a local manifestation of the thunder-god himself. Diodorus Siculus, the historian who wrote in the first century BCE, claimed that Belus founded a colony on the river Euphrates and appointed the Chaldean priests-astrologers whom the Babylonians revered, making him a bridge between Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisation. Pausanias, the Greek traveller, recorded that Belus founded a temple of Heracles in Babylon, a claim that links the Greek hero-cult to the ancient East. The family of Belus extended far beyond the Danaids. According to Pherecydes of Athens, an early Greek mythographer, Belus had a daughter named Damno who married her uncle Agenor and bore him Phoenix and two daughters, Isaie and Melia, who in turn married their cousins Aegyptus and Danaus. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women made Belus the father of a daughter named Thronia, on whom Hermes fathered Arabus, the eponym of Arabia. Some sources made him the father of Lamia, the Libyan queen who became a child-eating demon after Hera killed her children. Antoninus Liberalis named him as the father of Thias, who in turn fathered Smyrna, the woman who conceived a passion for her own father and was transformed into a myrrh tree. Euripides added Cepheus and Phineus to the list of Belus' sons, and Nonnus gave him five: Phineus, Phoenix, Agenor, Aegyptus, and Danaus, though Nonnus elsewhere confused the generations and made Phineus a brother of Cadmus. The ancient sources disagree on almost every detail of Belus' family, but they agree on one thing: he was the root from which the royal houses of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Greece all claimed descent. Summary Belus stands as the great genealogical junction of the eastern Mediterranean, the king whose children and grandchildren linked Egypt to Greece, Phoenicia to Argos, and the Nile to the Aegean. From the twin sons who divided Africa and Arabia to the fifty granddaughters who murdered their fifty cousins, from the name that echoed the Canaanite storm-god to the temple of Heracles in Babylon, his story is woven into every claim of divine descent that the Greeks made upon the ancient East. Every dynasty that traces its blood to a god, every mass wedding that ends in blood, every title that makes a mortal king into a local Zeus carries something of Belus in it. He reminds us that in Greek myth, the boundary between king and god was often no thicker than a name. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Belus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Poseidon Deity Poseidon Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fragment 137 (trans. Most) (8th century BCE) - Belus as father of Thronia and Arabus - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.1.4 (1st-2nd century CE) - genealogy of Belus and Agenor as twin sons of Poseidon and Libya - Pausanias, Description of Greece 4.23.10 (c. 150 CE) - Libya as daughter of Epaphus and mother of Belus and Agenor - Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.28.1, 20.41.3-6 (1st century BCE) - Belus as founder of Babylonian colony and Chaldean priests - Pherecydes of Athens, fragment 21 Fowler (5th century BCE, preserved in scholia) - Damno, daughter of Belus, and her marriage to Agenor - Hyginus, Fabulae 124, 157, 168, 273, 274 (2nd century CE) - the family of Belus, the Danaids, and the fifty sons of Aegyptus - Nonnus, Dionysiaca 3.287 ff., 2.686 (c. 450-470 CE) - Belus as "the Libyan Zeus" and father of five sons - Aeschylus, Suppliants 318-319 (c. 463 BCE) - the Danaids claim descent from Belus through Epaphus and Io - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - Volume 1, pp. 207-210, the Egyptian genealogies and the Danaid tradition - West, M.L., The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985) - pp. 84-86, fragment 137 and the Arabus lineage - Fowler, R.L., Early Greek Mythography, Volume 2: Commentary (Oxford, 2013) - pp. 289-290, Pherecydes on Belus and Damno Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Myrtilus, charioteer of Oenomaus who sabotaged his king's race for Pelops, was thrown into the sea and cursed the house of Pelops for many generations. Previous Greek Next > Myrtilus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Μυρτίλος (Myrtílos) Pronunciation MUR-tih-lus Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Charioteer of Oenomaus, The Saboteur of the Race, The Curse-Giver, The Son of Hermes, The Man Who Named the Sea, The Betrayer of the King Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 8th century BCE (literary attestation) Symbol Lynchpin, Broken Chariot Wheel & Falling Body Tags greek, myrtilus, person, pelops, oenomaus, hippodamia, charioteer, curse, hermes, myrtoan-sea Introduction - Overview Myrtilus is the charioteer who betrayed his king for a kingdom and a night with a princess, and who died cursing the man who had promised him both. He is the son of Hermes, the messenger god whose winged sandals carried him faster than the wind, and the charioteer of Oenomaus, the king of Pisa who murdered eighteen suitors rather than give his daughter Hippodamia to any man. He is the mechanic who replaced the bronze linchpins of his master's chariot with pins of wax, knowing that the heat of the race would melt them and send the king to his death. He is the man who helped Pelops, the Phrygian prince, win the hand of Hippodamia by treachery, and who was rewarded with a broken promise and a fall from a cliff into the sea that would bear his name forever. And he is the source of the curse that destroyed the house of Pelops for four generations, the words spoken in mid-air that condemned Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Orestes to the tragedies that would make Greek drama immortal. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Myrtilus Myrtilus was born the son of Hermes, the Olympian god who presided over thieves, travellers, merchants, and charioteers, a deity whose favour was as useful to the cunning as it was dangerous to the trusting. His mother was a mortal woman, a slave or a concubine in the household of Oenomaus, the king of Pisa in Elis, and Myrtilus grew up in the royal stables, learning the care of horses and the craft of the chariot from the men who prepared the king's war-car for battle and for sport. He was not a warrior himself but a mechanic, a man whose skill with wood and metal and harness was more valuable to the king than the strength of a dozen spearmen. The chariot of Oenomaus was famous throughout the Peloponnese, a vehicle drawn by divine horses, a gift from Ares, the god of war, that had never been defeated in a race, and Myrtilus was the only man who knew every joint, every pin, every strap that held it together. The crisis of Myrtilus's life arrived in the form of Pelops, the Phrygian prince who came to Pisa to compete for the hand of Hippodamia. Pelops was handsome, wealthy, and desperate. He had seen Hippodamia and desired her, and he knew that the only way to win her was to defeat Oenomaus in the chariot race that had killed eighteen suitors before him. The race was simple in its cruelty: the suitor would drive away with Hippodamia in his chariot, and Oenomaus would pursue him in his own divine car. If the king caught the suitor before reaching the altar of Poseidon at Corinth, he would kill him with a spear through the back. Pelops knew that no mortal horses could outrun the steeds of Ares, and he knew that he needed help from inside the king's household. He approached Myrtilus with a bargain. The bargain was specific and terrible. Myrtilus was to sabotage the king's chariot, replacing the bronze linchpins that held the wheels to the axle with pins made of wax. In the heat of the race, the wax would melt, the wheels would come loose, and Oenomaus would be thrown from the car and dragged to his death by his own horses. In exchange for this treachery, Pelops promised Myrtilus two things: half the kingdom of Pisa, and one night with Hippodamia, the princess whose beauty had driven nineteen men to risk their lives. Myrtilus, tempted by the kingdom and perhaps by the woman, agreed. He was the son of Hermes, after all, and the god of thieves did not raise his children to be loyal to kings. The race took place on the plain of Olympia, and Myrtilus watched from the starting line as Pelops drove away with Hippodamia and Oenomaus pursued in his sabotaged chariot. The king's horses were faster, as always, and he was closing the gap when the wax pins began to melt. The wheels came loose, the chariot collapsed, and Oenomaus was thrown from the car and caught in the reins. His own horses dragged him across the rocks of the plain until his body was torn to pieces, and he died cursing the charioteer who had betrayed him. Pelops crossed the finish line, married Hippodamia, and claimed the throne of Pisa. The Olympic Games were founded on the grave of the dead king, and Myrtilus waited for his reward. It never came. Pelops, now king and husband, had no intention of sharing his kingdom or his wife with a slave. He invited Myrtilus to a meeting on the cliffs of Geraestus, or in some accounts on a headland overlooking the sea, and there he confronted the charioteer with his treachery. Some versions say that Pelops accused Myrtilus of trying to rape Hippodamia, a charge that may have been fabricated to justify the murder. Others say that Pelops simply told Myrtilus that the bargain was void and that a traitor deserved no reward. Whatever the words, the result was the same. Pelops seized Myrtilus and threw him from the cliff into the sea below, and as Myrtilus fell, he cursed Pelops and all his descendants. The curse was absolute, a spoken doom that would pursue the house of Pelops through every generation. The curse worked. Pelops and Hippodamia had two sons, Atreus and Thyestes, whose feud of adultery, cannibalism, and revenge produced the most terrible crimes in Greek mythology. Atreus killed the children of Thyestes and served them to their father at a feast. Thyestes raped his own daughter to beget a son who would avenge him. Atreus was murdered by his wife and her lover. Agamemnon, the son of Atreus, was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra on his return from Troy. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, killed his mother and was pursued by the Furies to the edge of madness. Every tragedy of the house of Pelops could be traced back to the words that Myrtilus spoke as he fell, and the Greeks understood that a dying man's curse, spoken in the moment of his greatest injustice, was the most powerful magic in the world. The sea into which Myrtilus fell was named the Myrtoan Sea in his memory, a stretch of water between Euboea and the Cyclades islands that remains dangerous to sailors even today. The name was his only monument, for no tomb was raised to him and no sacrifices were offered at his grave. He was a traitor who had been betrayed, a murderer who had been murdered, and the Greeks did not honour such men. But they remembered him, because without his curse there would have been no Oresteia, no Agamemnon, no tragedy at all. Myrtilus was the spark that lit the fire that burned the house of Pelops to the ground. Summary Myrtilus endures as the most consequential charioteer in Greek mythology, the son of Hermes who traded a king's life for a broken promise and whose falling curse destroyed the greatest dynasty in the Peloponnese. From the stables of Pisa to the cliffs of Geraestus, from the wax linchpin to the Myrtoan Sea that bears his name, his story is one of treachery rewarded with treachery and a death that spoke louder than any life. A detail worth remembering: the Greeks believed that a curse spoken while falling into the sea was binding upon the waves themselves, and for four generations the descendants of Pelops drowned in the tragedies that Myrtilus unleashed with a single sentence in mid-air. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Myrtilus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Hippodamia Person Hippodamia Oenomaus Person Oenomaus Pelops Person Pelops Hermes Deity Hermes Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pindar, Olympian Ode 1.67-93 (c. 476 BCE) - Pelops's victory and the role of Myrtilus in the chariot race - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Epitome 2.4-9 (1st-2nd century CE) - Myrtilus's sabotage, his reward, and his death by Pelops - Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, Book 4.73.1-7 (c. 1st century BCE) - the chariot race and Myrtilus's curse - Hyginus, Fabulae 84, 253 (c. 2nd century CE) - Myrtilus as son of Hermes and the curse upon the house of Pelops - Euripides, Orestes, lines 4-11, 995-1012 (c. 408 BCE) - the curse of the house of Atreus and its origin - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 5.10.6-7 (c. 150 CE) - the tomb of Oenomaus and local traditions of the race - Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) - comprehensive analysis of the Myrtilus tradition - Francis Vian, Les origines de Thebes: Cadmos et les Spartes (Klincksieck, 1963) - scholarly study of the Pelops myth and Myrtilus's role Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Dunvalo Molmutius, the legendary British lawgiver who unified the island, established the Molmutine Laws and built the Temple of Concord in London. Previous Arthurian Next > Dunvalo Molmutius Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Dunvallo Molmutius (Latin), Dyfnwal Moelmud (Welsh) Pronunciation dun-VAL-oh mol-MYOO-shee-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Lawgiver of Britain, the Unifier of the Five Kingdoms, the Bald and Silent, the First Monarch of All Britain, the Father of Belinus and Brennius, the Founder of the Temple of Concord Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details British / Celtic Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period 5th century BCE (mythic period); literary tradition c. 1138 CE Symbol The golden crown of Britain, the Temple of Concord, the Molmutine Laws inscribed on stone Tags arthurian, dunvalo-molmutius, person, lawgiver, molmutine-laws, brutus, belinus, brennius Introduction - Overview Dunvalo Molmutius is the legendary king who forged a fractured island into a single realm and gave it laws that would echo down the centuries. He is the son of Cloten, the petty king of Cornwall, who rose from a minor kingdom to conquer the five warring realms of Britain and became the first monarch to wear a golden crown over all the island. He is the warrior who dressed six hundred of his men in the armour of the slain and led a charge that killed two enemy kings in a single day. He is the lawgiver whose Molmutine Laws granted sanctuary to the persecuted, protection to the ploughman, and the right of queens to rule. He is the builder of the Temple of Concord in Trinovantum, where he was buried after forty years of peace. And he is the father of Belinus and Brennius, whose rivalry for his throne would plunge Britain back into the very chaos he had spent his life ending. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Dunvalo Molmutius Dunvalo Molmutius was born into a Britain shattered by civil war. His father was Cloten, the king of Cornwall, a petty realm in the southwest of the island. The great kingdom founded by Brutus, the Trojan exile who had given his name to Britain, had collapsed after the death of King Gorboduc and the murder of his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex. For years the island had been torn apart by the Civil War of the Five Kings, with Pinner ruling Loegria, Rudaucus ruling Cambria, Staterius ruling Albany, and two others carving up what remained. Dunvalo grew to manhood in Cornwall, and when his father died he inherited a small kingdom surrounded by larger, hungrier enemies. The defining campaign of Dunvalo's life began when he marched against Pinner, the king of Loegria, and slew him in battle. This victory brought him to the attention of Rudaucus of Cambria and Staterius of Albany, who feared that the young Cornish king would upset the balance of power they had maintained through the civil war. The two kings allied their armies and marched into Dunvalo's lands, burning and pillaging as they came. Dunvalo met them with thirty thousand men, and for most of a day the battle hung in the balance, neither side gaining ground. Then Dunvalo devised a stratagem of such cunning that it became legend. He selected six hundred of his bravest warriors, including himself, and had them strip the armour from the enemy dead. Dressed as the fallen, they marched deep into the enemy lines until they stood before the two kings themselves. At Dunvalo's command they fell upon Rudaucus and Staterius and killed them both. The enemy army broke and fled, and Dunvalo pursued them from coast to coast, burning their castles and reducing their kingdoms to obedience. With Britain united under his rule, Dunvalo set aside conquest and began the work of law. He caused a golden crown to be made and was crowned the first monarch of all Britain, restoring the island to the unity it had known under Brutus. Then he set about codifying the Molmutine Laws, a body of statutes that would make his name immortal. The laws granted sanctuary to any fugitive who reached a temple of the gods or a city, and extended that protection to the roads leading to those places and to the ploughs of the farmers who fed the realm. They allowed women to inherit the throne, a provision borrowed from the ancient Trojans who had settled Britain before Brutus. They protected the weak, the foreigner, and the bard, and they ended the robbery and murder that had flourished during the civil war. Geoffrey of Monmouth, the twelfth-century chronicler whose History of the Kings of Britain made the legend famous, wrote that the laws were so effective that in Dunvalo's day a man could travel from one end of the island to the other without fear of violence. Dunvalo founded cities and raised monuments to the peace he had won. In Trinovantum, the city that would one day be called London, he built the Temple of Concord, a tribute to the harmony his laws had created. Some later traditions, including the fourteenth-century Short Metrical Chronicle, even claimed that Merlin himself served Dunvalo and built Stonehenge in his honour, though this confused chronology places the wizard centuries before his better-known association with King Arthur, the future king who would one day draw the sword from the stone and found the Round Table. Dunvalo also founded Malmesbury and the town that became known as the Vies, and he gave privileges to temples, to cities, and to the highways that connected them. He reigned in peace and prosperity for forty years, and when he died he was buried in the Temple of Concord on the White Mount, where Brutus himself had been laid to rest and where Bendigeid Vran, the giant king of Welsh legend whose severed head had once been kept as a guardian of the island, had also been interred. Dunvalo Molmutius died not by the sword but in his sleep, an old man who had outlived the wars of his youth. His death, however, undid everything he had built. He left two sons, Belinus and Brennius, both of whom claimed the throne. Their rivalry ignited a new civil war that split Britain once more, proving that even the wisest laws and the strongest crown could not bind what ambition and pride would tear apart. Yet the Molmutine Laws endured. They were translated into Latin by the monk Gildas Priscus, then into English by King Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Saxon ruler who would one day fight off the Viking invasions of England, and they became part of the foundation of English common law. Shakespeare, the playwright whose works would define English literature, would later write in Cymbeline that a British king said: "Molmutius made our laws." The name of the lawgiver outlasted the kingdom he built. Summary Dunvalo Molmutius endures as the legendary architect of British unity, the warrior who ended the Civil War of the Five Kings and the lawgiver who granted sanctuary to the weak and the foreigner. From the battlefields of Cornwall to the Temple of Concord in Trinovantum, from the golden crown to the Molmutine Laws that Shakespeare would later celebrate, his story is the bridge between the Trojan founding of Britain and the Arthurian age that would follow. He is the reminder that even in the darkest age of division, a single man with courage and wisdom can forge a nation. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Dunvalo Molmutius From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, c. 1138 - primary source; the biography of Dunvalo Molmutius, the Civil War of the Five Kings, the battle with Rudaucus and Staterius, the Molmutine Laws, and the Temple of Concord - Anonymous, Short Metrical Chronicle, c. 1307 - primary source; the confused chronology placing Merlin in the service of Dunvalo and the building of Stonehenge in his honour - Holinshed, Raphael, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1577 - primary source; the expanded account of Molmutius's reign, his foundation of Malmesbury, and the translation of his laws - William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, c. 1125 - primary source; reference to the Molmutine Laws and their survival into the Anglo-Saxon period - Flinders Petrie, W.M., "Neglected British History," Proceedings of the British Academy, 1917 - scholarly analysis of the Molmutine Laws as a genuine pre-Roman legal code - Cooper, Bill, The Authenticity of the Book of Tysilio, 1997 - scholarly examination of the Molmutine Laws in Welsh tradition and their attribution to Dyfnwal Moelmud - Higham, N.J., King Arthur: Myth-Making and History, Routledge, 2002 - scholarly analysis of Geoffrey of Monmouth's construction of Dunvalo and the political message of the unified monarchy - Tatlock, J.S.P., The Legendary History of Britain, University of California Press, 1950 - scholarly study of Geoffrey's sources and the place of Molmutius in the pseudohistorical chronology - Lloyd, John Edward, "Moelmud, Dyfnwal," Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 38, 1894 - scholarly biographical examination of the historical and legendary traditions surrounding Dyfnwal Moelmud - Stacey, Robin Chapman, "Dyfnwal Moelmud ap Garbanion," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004 - scholarly analysis of the historical genealogies and their relationship to Geoffrey's legendary account Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Fifty beautiful sea nymphs of the Mediterranean, daughters of Nereus. Thetis, mother of Achilles, was the most famous among them | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Nereids Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (Νηρηΐδες) Pronunciation NEER-ee-idz Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Sea Nymphs; Daughters of Nereus Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Group Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Female Time Period Archaic Greek period (c. 8th century BCE in Hesiod's Theogony) Symbol Dolphin Tags greek, spirit, sea Introduction - Overview The Nereids are the fifty daughters of Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea, and they are the most beloved sea-nymphs in all of Greek mythology, graceful spirits who danced upon the waves and guided sailors through storm and calm. They are the attendants of the sea-god Poseidon, who ruled the oceans from his underwater palace of coral and pearl, and they are the companions of the hero Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Trojan War, who was born of a Nereid mother and mourned by his sea-nymph kin when he fell. They are the rescuers of the Argonauts, the crew of heroes who sailed in search of the Golden Fleece, when their ship was trapped between the crushing rocks of the Symplegades. They are the weepers at the funeral of Patroclus, Achilles' dearest friend, whose death drove the hero to a rage that nearly turned the tide of the Trojan War. And they are the eternal spirits of the Mediterranean itself, the silver shapes that ancient sailors glimpsed in the foam and mist, a reminder that the sea was never empty but always alive with divine presence. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Nereids The Nereids were born to Nereus, a sea-god so ancient that he was called the Old Man of the Sea, a shape-shifter who could transform into any form and who possessed the gift of prophecy. Their mother was Doris, one of the three thousand Oceanids, the daughters of the Titan Oceanus and his sister-wife Tethys, who together encircled the world with their vast waters. The Nereids numbered fifty, each one beautiful and gentle, each one named and known to the poets who sang of them. They lived in a gleaming palace beneath the waves, built of coral and gold, where the light of the surface filtered down in shifting patterns and the fish of the sea swam through their halls as birds fly through the air. Their father Nereus was a kindly god, unlike the stormy and violent Poseidon, and the Nereids inherited his gentle nature. They were not creatures of tempest and shipwreck but of calm seas and safe harbors, of the silver light on gentle waves and the soft murmur of water against a hull. The most famous of the Nereids was Thetis, the mother of Achilles, the hero whose rage and grief defined the course of the Trojan War. Thetis was so beautiful that both Zeus, the king of the gods, and Poseidon, the lord of the sea, had desired her. But a prophecy warned that her son would grow greater than his father, and so the gods arranged her marriage to Peleus, a mortal king, to ensure no god would sire a child who might overthrow heaven itself. When Achilles was born, Thetis tried to make him immortal, dipping him in the waters of the River Styx, the boundary between the world of the living and the dead, which made every part of him invulnerable except the heel by which she held him. When Achilles went to war at Troy, Thetis wept and pleaded with the gods to protect him, and when he was slain by Paris, the prince of Troy whose arrow found the one weak spot on Achilles' heel, Thetis led the Nereids from the sea to mourn him. They came up from the waves in a column of silver and foam, their voices raised in a lament so piercing that it echoed across the battlefield and into the camps of both armies. The Nereids played a crucial role in the voyage of the Argonauts, the band of heroes led by Jason who sailed in the ship Argo to claim the Golden Fleece from the distant kingdom of Colchis. On their return journey, the Argo was caught between the Symplegades, two massive clashing rocks at the mouth of the Black Sea that destroyed any ship that tried to pass between them. The heroes despaired, but the goddess Hera, who favored Jason's quest, sent the Nereids to guide them. The sea-nymphs rose from the water and passed the ship from hand to hand, their silver forms flashing in the spray, moving the Argo through the gap with such speed that the rocks crashed together behind them only on the ship's stern ornament. The heroes escaped, and the Nereids returned to the depths, their task complete. In another tale, the Nereids were associated with the birth and upbringing of the god Dionysus, the deity of wine and ecstatic revelry. When Zeus's mortal lover Semele was destroyed by the sight of the god's true glory, Zeus rescued their unborn child by sewing him into his own thigh. After Dionysus was born, the Nereids were said to have received him into their care, hiding the infant god in the depths of the sea to protect him from the vengeful Hera, queen of the gods, who hunted the children of Zeus's affairs with relentless fury. In the Nereids' underwater palace, the young god was kept safe until he was old enough to claim his divine power and begin his wanderings across the earth. The Nereids were worshipped across the Greek world, particularly in coastal cities where sailors and fishermen depended upon the mercy of the sea. They had shrines and altars at harbors, and sailors would pour libations of wine and oil into the water to honor them before setting sail. In art, they were depicted as beautiful young women, sometimes with the lower bodies of fish, sometimes entirely human in form but crowned with seaweed and shells, riding dolphins or hippocamps, the sea-horses of Poseidon's chariot. The most famous artistic representation of the Nereids was the monumental tomb built for a king of Lycia in the 4th century BCE, now called the Nereid Monument, where sculpted sea-nymphs stood in the roles of mourners and guardians, their garments swirling as if caught in an underwater current. To this day, the name Nereid evokes the mystery and beauty of the Mediterranean, the sense that beneath the surface of the familiar sea lies a world of ancient grace and power. Summary The Nereids endure as the gentle face of the ancient Greek sea, fifty sisters who bridged the terror of the ocean and the beauty of its depths. From the mourning of Achilles to the rescue of the Argonauts, from the protection of the infant Dionysus to the prayers of countless sailors, their stories weave through the greatest myths of Greece. The Nereid Monument in Lycia still stands as testimony to their hold on the Greek imagination, and every wave that breaks in silver foam carries the echo of their name, a reminder that the sea was never merely water but a realm alive with divine daughters. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Nereids From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Nereus Deity Nereus Achilles Person Achilles Thetis Deity Thetis Jason Person Jason Poseidon Deity Poseidon Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homer, Iliad, Book 18, lines 35-69 (8th century BCE) - Thetis and the Nereids mourning Achilles' armor - Homer, Iliad, Book 19, lines 1-39 (8th century BCE) - Thetis bringing armor to Achilles - Hesiod, Theogony, lines 240-264 (c. 700 BCE) - genealogy and names of the Nereids - Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, Book 4, lines 922-960 (3rd century BCE) - Nereids guiding the Argo through the Symplegades - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Book 1, chapter 2.7 (1st-2nd century CE) - Thetis, Peleus, and the birth of Achilles - Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion (Harvard University Press, 1985) - chapter on sea deities and Nereus cult - Larson, Jennifer, Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore (Oxford University Press, 2001) - comprehensive study of nymph categories including Nereids - Stafford, Emma, Worshipping Virtues: Personification and the Divine in Ancient Greece (Classical Press of Wales, 2000) - discussion of Nereid cult and iconography Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Merlin's Staff, the wizard's traditional focus of magical power, shaped by medieval art, druidic authority and fantasy lore | Mythopouch Previous Arthurian Next > Merlin's Staff Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (The Rod of the Archmage) Pronunciation MER-lin’s staf Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Staff of Avalon, Merlin's Wand Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Artifact/Object/Weapon Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender N/A Time Period c. 1136-present (literary development) Symbol Wooden Staff Tags arthurian, artifact, magic, merlin, wizard Introduction - Overview Merlin's staff is the magical implement through which the legendary wizard of Arthurian legend focuses and directs his supernatural powers. Unlike Excalibur, which is described in detail in medieval texts, Merlin's staff exists more in the realm of accumulated tradition, illustration, and modern interpretation. Medieval manuscript illuminations from the 13th to the 15th centuries frequently depict Merlin carrying a staff or wand, though no canonical description of its powers or origin appears in the primary Arthurian texts. The concept of the wizard's staff as a channel of magical power draws on deep roots in Germanic and Celtic tradition - the druidic staff (slat) was a recognized symbol of authority in ancient Britain. In modern fantasy literature and gaming, Merlin's staff has become firmly established as a powerful artifact, the ancestor of Gandalf's staff in The Lord of the Rings, the wands of Harry Potter, and the magical implements of countless fantasy RPGs. The staff represents the idea that great magical power requires focus and direction - raw magical energy is dangerous without a wizard's discipline to channel it. Gallery Image of Merlin. Main Article - Who or What was... Merlin's Staff The image of Merlin carrying a staff emerges from medieval manuscript illuminations dating from the 13th to the 15th centuries. In these illuminations, Merlin is frequently depicted with a long staff or wand, consistent with the visual tradition of the wise old wizard. However, the primary Arthurian texts - Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, the Vulgate Cycle, and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur - do not provide a detailed description of the staff's appearance, origin, or specific powers. When Merlin performs magic in these texts, he typically does so through spoken enchantments, gestures, or innate ability rather than through a specific implement. The physical characteristics of Merlin's staff as commonly conceived are drawn from the broader tradition of the wizard's implement in European folklore and modern fantasy. It is typically depicted as approximately the height of the wielder, made of ancient oak or yew wood - the traditional woods of druidic magic in Celtic tradition. The shaft is often shown as twisted and gnarled, suggesting great age, and may be engraved with runes, astrological symbols, or ogham script. The top of the staff may be capped with a crystal, carved into the shape of an animal head (serpent, dragon, or raven), or formed into a gnarled knot. These details, while not attested in medieval Arthurian literature, draw on established Celtic and Germanic magical traditions. In the context of Merlin's legendary feats, a staff or similar implement would have been the tool through which he performed his greatest enchantments. When Merlin magically transported the massive stones of the Giant's Ring from Ireland to create Stonehenge, as recounted in Geoffrey of Monmouth, he would have used his staff as the channeling implement for this enormous working of magic. Similarly, the enchantment placed upon the Sword in the Stone - the magical condition that only the rightful king of Britain could draw it forth - would have been wrought through the staff. The protective enchantments woven over the infant Arthur when Merlin spirited him away to be fostered by Sir Ector would likewise have required such a focus. Merlin's shapeshifting abilities - his power to transform into any animal or human form at will - may also have been facilitated by the staff in some traditions. In folklore, the wizard's implement often serves as the anchor of the magician's identity during transformation, and as the tool used to trigger the change. The staff also traditionally serves as an aid to prophecy and scrying, enhancing the seer's ability to perceive events across time and space - a power Merlin possessed in abundance. The modern concept of Merlin's staff as a specific named artifact with defined powers is largely a creation of 20th- and 21st-century fantasy literature and gaming. In these contexts, the staff is typically attributed with powers of spell amplification, elemental channeling, barrier creation, and flight or levitation. While these specific powers are not drawn from medieval sources, they are consistent with the abilities attributed to Merlin in the original texts: control over elements, enchantment, prophecy, and shapeshifting. The staff serves as the physical focus through which these innate abilities are directed and amplified. The staff as a symbol carries deep resonances. It represents Merlin's role as the wise elder and guide, the teacher and mentor to Arthur. As a vertical object connecting earth and sky, it embodies the wizard's function as intermediary between the mortal realm and the supernatural world. And as a walking staff that supports the traveller on a long journey, it represents Merlin's burden of knowledge - a being who carries the weight of all times upon his shoulders. Summary Merlin's staff, while not described in canonical detail in the primary medieval Arthurian texts, has become an integral part of the wizard's image through centuries of artistic tradition and modern fantasy interpretation. It represents the channeling of magical power, the authority of wisdom, and the burden of supernatural knowledge. From medieval manuscript illuminations to modern gaming, the staff has become inseparable from the figure of Merlin, the archetypal wizard whose influence on the fantasy genre is incalculable. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Merlin's Staff From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Stonehenge Location Stonehenge The Lady of the Lake Person The Lady of the Lake Uther Pendragon Person Uther Pendragon King Arthur Person King Arthur Merlin Person Merlin Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: 1. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, c. 1136 - Merlin's magic (staff not specified) 2. Vulgate Cycle, c. 1215-1235 - Merlin's magical deeds 3. Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, 1485 - synthesis of Merlin traditions 4. Medieval manuscript illuminations, British Library collections, 13th-15th centuries 5. Matthews, John, The Wizard's Staff: A History of Magical Implements (various) 6. Green, Miranda, The Gods of the Celts (Alan Sutton, 1986) - druidic staff traditions 7. Kieckhefer, Richard, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1989) 8. Spence, Lewis, The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain (Aquarian Press, 1989) Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Cacamwri, Arthur's Welsh strongman servant who threshed barns with an iron flail, fought Twrch Trwyth and survived a beating in Orddu's witch cave. Previous Arthurian Next > Cacamwri Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Cacamwri (Welsh), Rhacymwri (variant spelling) Pronunciation ka-KAM-ree Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Arthur's Servant, the Thresher of Fifty Ploughs, the Man the Millstones Dragged Down, the Brother of Hygwydd, the Brawler of the Severn, the Squealer of the Witch's Cave Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Welsh / British / Celtic Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period 6th century CE (mythic period); literary tradition c. 1100 CE Symbol The iron flail, the two millstones, the hair of the Black Witch, the cauldron of Diwrnach Tags arthurian, welsh, cacamwri, person, culhwch-olwen, hygwydd, twrch-trwyth, witch, severn, arthur Introduction - Overview Cacamwri is the strongman servant of King Arthur in the oldest Arthurian tale, the man whose strength was so prodigious that he could demolish a barn with a single flail, and whose luck was so bad that he was dragged into the Severn by two millstones. He is the half-brother of Hygwydd, the servant who carried Arthur's cauldron, and the two brothers share a mother and a talent for comic disaster. He is the warrior sent with Hygwydd to fight Orddu, the Very Black Witch, in her cave at the Head of the Valley of Grief, where he grabbed the hag by her hair and was beaten so soundly that both brothers were driven out squealing and squalling. He is the man who helped drag Twrch Trwyth into the Severn during the greatest boar hunt in Welsh literature, only to be pulled under by quern stones. And he is the reminder that in the oldest Arthurian world, even the servants were superhuman, and that the man who could thresh fifty ploughs in a single night could still be defeated by a witch and the simple physics of water. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Cacamwri Cacamwri first appears in the Welsh prose tale Culhwch and Olwen, the earliest extended Arthurian story, preserved in the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch. He is listed in the famous court catalogue, the roll call of Arthur's warriors and attendants that opens the tale. The catalogue describes him with a single vivid image: show him a barn, though there would be in it the work of fifty ploughs, and he would thrash away with an iron flail until the boards, the rafters, and the side beams would be no better off than the fine oats in the heap at the bottom. He is a force of nature, a human threshing machine whose strength is so excessive that the building itself is collateral damage. Cacamwri shares a mother with Hygwydd, another of Arthur's servants whose duty was to carry the cauldron and place fire under it. The two brothers appear together throughout the tale, a matched pair of comic strongmen given the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. When Arthur raids Ireland to take the cauldron of Diwrnach by force, Hygwydd hoists the cauldron onto his back while Cacamwri stands at his brother's side. The raid is a massacre: Llenlleawg the Irishman draws Caledfwlch and slays Diwrnach and his entire host, and Arthur's men escape with the cauldron full of Irish treasure. The defining moment of Cacamwri's career comes during the hunt for Twrch Trwyth, the transformed Irish king who has become a monstrous boar. Arthur drives the beast into the Severn estuary, and a company of champions closes in. They seize the beast's feet and try to drown him, and in the struggle Mabon son of Modron snatches the razor from between the boar's ears. But before the comb can be seized, Twrch Trwyth touches bottom and bolts toward Cornwall. Cacamwri, as he is dragged up from the depths, has two quern stones dragged with him into the water, and the weight pulls him under. Osla Great-knife fares no better: his knife falls from its sheath, the sheath fills with water, and the waterlogged sheath drags him back down. The text implies they have drowned, yet Cacamwri appears alive later, suggesting Arthur's men hauled him back despite the stones. The final appearance of Cacamwri and Hygwydd is the most humiliating. Arthur needs the blood of Orddu, the Very Black Witch, from her cave in the Uplands of Hell. Gwyn son of Nudd advises sending the brothers to fight her. They enter the cave, and Orddu immediately seizes Hygwydd by the hair, drags him to the floor, and begins to beat him. Cacamwri grabs the witch by her own hair and pulls her off, but she turns on him with a fury that only a woman interrupted can summon. She beats both brothers soundly, disarms them, and drives them out squealing and squalling. Arthur throws his knife Carnwennan from the entrance, striking Orddu until she is split in two like a pair of tubs. Caw of Pictland collects her blood, and Cacamwri's part in the quest is done. Cacamwri's legacy is that of the comic strongman, the servant whose muscles are matched only by his misfortune. He is not a knight or a bard, but he is essential to the world of Culhwch and Olwen, where even the servants have superhuman abilities and the greatest strength is no match for a witch's temper or a millstone's pull. He is the ancestor of every strong but unlucky sidekick in comic literature, the man who does the heavy lifting and takes the heavy beating. Summary Cacamwri endures as the strongman servant of the oldest Arthurian tale, the man who could thresh a barn to splinters and who was beaten by a witch into squealing flight. From the court catalogue at Celli Wig to the depths of the Severn, from the cauldron raid in Ireland to the cave of Orddu in the Uplands of Hell, his story is the story of the servant who is stronger than the building but weaker than the water. He is the reminder that in Welsh mythology, even the men who swing the flail have their place in the legend, and that the strongest arm may still be dragged down by a stone. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Cacamwri From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Culhwch and Olwen (Culhwch ac Olwen), c. 11th century, preserved in Red Book of Hergest c. 1400 and White Book of Rhydderch c. 1325 - primary source; the court catalogue describing Cacamwri's flail, the hunt for Twrch Trwyth with the millstones, the cauldron of Diwrnach, and the witch episode - Bromwich, Rachel and D. Simon Evans (eds.), Culhwch and Olwen: An Edition and Study of the Oldest Arthurian Tale (University of Wales Press, 1992) - scholarly edition with textual analysis of the court catalogue and Cacamwri's appearances - Ford, Patrick K. (trans.), The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales (University of California Press, 1977) - scholarly translation with notes on Cacamwri and Hygwydd - Guest, Lady Charlotte (trans.), The Mabinogion (J.M. Dent & Sons, 1838-49) - early scholarly translation; records Cacamwri's threshing and the witch episode - Loomis, Roger Sherman, The Development of Arthurian Romance (Hutchinson, 1963) - scholarly analysis of Welsh Arthurian traditions and the comic servant figures - Roberts, Brynley F., "Culhwch ac Olwen, the Triads, Saints' Lives," in Rachel Bromwich et al. (eds.), The Arthur of the Welsh (University of Wales Press, 1991) - scholarly analysis of the tale's structure and the role of Arthur's retinue - Charles-Edwards, T.M., Wales and the Britons 350-1064 (Oxford University Press, 2013) - scholarly historical analysis of Welsh mythological narrative and servant traditions - Knight, Stephen, "The Carnivalesque and the Comic in Culhwch and Olwen," in Arthurian Literature (University of Wales Press, 2003) - scholarly analysis of comic figures like Cacamwri in the oldest Arthurian tale Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Goddess of magic, witchcraft, crossroads, ghosts and the night who guarded thresholds with twin torches and packs of spectral hounds | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Hecate Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (Ἑκάτη) Pronunciation HEK-uh-tee Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Hekate, Trivia (Roman), Triformis, Phosphoros Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Deity Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Female Time Period Mythological Age Symbol Torch Tags greek, god, magic, crossroads, night Introduction - Overview Hecate is the torch-bearing goddess who stands at the crossroads where three roads meet, the keeper of keys who opens the gates between the world of the living and the world of the dead. She is the only child of the Titans who was not cast down when Zeus and the Olympian gods rose to power, but instead was granted dominion over earth, sea, and sky by the king of the gods himself. She is the companion of Persephone, the springtime goddess of flowers, whom she guided with twin torches through the darkness of the underworld after her abduction by Hades. She is the unseen presence who heard Persephone's scream when no other god or mortal did, and who alone dared to approach the raging Demeter with news of what she had heard. She is the goddess of liminal spaces -- doorways, thresholds, and the dark of the new moon -- who was worshipped at household shrines and shadowed intersections with offerings of garlic and eggs. And she is the figure whose image shifted across the ages from a benevolent bestower of wealth and victory to the dread queen of ghosts, sorcery, and the witch's midnight craft. Gallery Hecate Olympian goddess of the moon in various depictions. Main Article - Who or What was... Hecate Hecate was born to Perses, a Titan of destruction, and Asteria, a goddess of the stars who was herself the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe. Some later traditions say she was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, the grain goddess, but the oldest account gives her Titan parentage. When Zeus led the young Olympian gods in the war against the older generation of Titans -- the Titanomachy, the ten-year war that shook the cosmos to its foundations -- Hecate chose to fight on the side of the Olympians. She slew the giant Clytius in battle, proving her loyalty to the new order. When the war ended and Zeus divided the spoils of victory, he did not strip Hecate of her power as he did with most of the defeated Titans. Instead, he honoured her above all others, granting her a share of the earth, the unfruitful sea, and the starry heaven. The poet Hesiod, who sang of the origins of the gods in his Theogony, devoted more lines to praising Hecate than he did to almost any other deity -- an extraordinary tribute in a poem where most figures merit only a passing mention. He described her as a goddess who bestows prosperity upon farmers, victory upon warriors, success upon sailors, and wealth upon kings. She watched over the games of young men and the nursing of all living creatures. In this earliest form, Hecate was not a goddess of darkness but of universal benevolence, her power stretching across every domain of mortal life. The most famous tale of Hecate is her role in the abduction of Persephone. When Hades, the king of the underworld, burst from the earth in his golden chariot and seized the maiden while she gathered flowers in a meadow near Enna, only two beings heard her scream. One was Helios, the all-seeing Sun, who rode his blazing chariot across the sky each day and witnessed all that happened on earth. The other was Hecate, who heard the cry from her cave and came forth with her twin torches blazing. But neither could see who had taken the girl -- Hecate heard but did not see, and Helios saw but was too far away to intervene. For nine days Demeter, the grain goddess and mother of Persephone, wandered the earth with flaming torches, refusing all food and drink, her grief so terrible that the earth withered and no seed would sprout. On the tenth day, Hecate approached the raging goddess -- the only one who dared -- and told her what she had heard. Together they went to Helios, who revealed the truth: Zeus had given his consent for Hades to take Persephone as his bride. When Hermes, the swift messenger with the golden wand, eventually descended to the underworld to demand Persephone's return, and the maiden emerged blinking into the light, Hecate was waiting. She embraced Persephone with tenderness and became her companion, guiding her with her torches along the dark path back to the underworld each year when the seasons turned. Thus Hecate became the bridge between mother and daughter, between the world of light and the kingdom of shadows. In another tale, Hecate appears as a goddess of the battlefield and the hunt. When the giant Clytius, a monstrous son of Gaia the Earth, threatened the gods during the war against the Giants -- the Gigantomachy, the battle between the Olympian gods and the earth-born monsters who sought to overthrow them -- Hecate confronted him directly. She set him ablaze with her torches, reducing the giant to ashes. This victory cemented her reputation as a warrior goddess who could stand alongside the greatest of the Olympians. In later traditions, she was said to be the mother of Scylla, the six-headed sea monster who guarded the strait between Italy and Sicily, though some accounts give Scylla a different parentage. She was also associated with the witch Circe and the sorceress Medea, two figures who commanded magic and transformation, though whether as their mother or their teacher the myths disagree. The poet Hesiod claimed she was a kourotrophos, a nurse and protector of children, while later writers made her the sender of demons and phantoms who taught sorcery to her followers. The worship of Hecate was as complex as her nature. In ancient Greece, small shrines called hekataia were erected at crossroads, often taking the form of a pillar with three faces -- one looking down each road. The sculptor Alcamenes created the most famous such image in the fifth century BCE, showing three bodies of Hecate standing back-to-back around a central column, each holding torches and keys. Black dogs were sacred to her, and the howling of dogs at night was taken as a sign of her approach. Offerings of garlic, eggs, and honey cakes were left at her shrines, particularly at the dark of the new moon when the boundary between worlds was thinnest. She was worshipped in household shrines alongside the other gods of the home, and her image was placed at doorways to ward off evil spirits. In the great sanctuary at Eleusis, where the secret Eleusinian Mysteries were held -- the rites that promised initiates a blessed afterlife rather than the grey oblivion of the dead -- Hecate appeared in the sacred iconography, though her role was subtle. She was the guide who led initiates through the darkness, the unseen presence at the threshold of revelation. Over the centuries, Hecate's image darkened. Where Hesiod had praised her as a generous bestower of wealth and victory, later poets and playwrights made her the queen of ghosts and sorcery. In the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides, she was invoked by witches and murderers. In the magical papyri of Egypt, she appeared as a goddess of terrifying power who could send demons to torment the living. The Roman poet Seneca described her as a triple-formed deity with the heads of a dog, a snake, and a horse, her body wrapped in serpents and her feet ending in claws. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, written nearly two thousand years after her first appearance in Greek song, she was the mistress of the three witches who prophesied the downfall of kings. Yet even in her darkest form, she retained her essential nature: she was the goddess of the threshold, the one who stood between worlds and held the keys to pass through. Every crossroads at midnight, every doorway at dusk, every moment of transition between one state and another -- these were her domain, and she has never abandoned it. Summary Hecate stands as the eternal guardian of boundaries and transitions, the goddess who holds the keys to every door between the known and the unknown. From the Titan child honoured by Zeus with dominion over earth, sea, and sky, to the torch-bearing guide who led Persephone through the underworld, to the triple-formed queen of crossroads and sorcery, her story traces the Greek imagination's journey from awe at divine benevolence to terror at divine power. Every crossroads shrine, every black dog howling in the night, every secret rite at Eleusis acknowledged her presence. Even today, her name is whispered in magical circles and invoked at midnight intersections, a reminder that the spaces between -- between life and death, between day and night, between one road and another -- are the most dangerous and the most sacred places of all. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Hecate From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Demeter Deity Demeter Medea Person Medea Hades Deity Hades Persephone Deity Persephone Zeus Deity Zeus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Hesiod, Theogony (c. 700 BCE) - Lines 411-452 (the extended praise of Hecate) - Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter (c. 650-550 BCE) - Lines 52, 438-440, 443-445 (Hecate hears Persephone's cry and becomes her companion) - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.6.2 (c. 100-200 CE) - Hecate slays Clytius in the Gigantomachy - Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.30.2 (c. 150 CE) - Description of the Hekataion shrine and Alcamenes' sculpture - The Orphic Hymns, Hymn 1 to Hecate (c. 200 BCE - 200 CE) - Invocation of Hecate as goddess of crossroads and sorcery - Euripides, Medea 395-397 (c. 431 BCE) - Medea invokes Hecate as mistress of magic - Sarah Iles Johnston, Hekate Soteira: A Study of Hekate's Roles in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature (1990) - Chapter 1, "Hekate in the Greek Tradition" - Robert Parker, On Greek Religion (2011) - Chapter 8, "Hecate and the Crossroads" - Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - Volume 1, pp. 26-28 - Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (1985) - Chapter III.4, "Hecate: The Liminal Goddess" Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Narcissus, the beautiful Greek youth who fell in love with his own reflection and became the flower and namesake of narcissism - only on Mythopouch. Previous Greek Next > Narcissus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Νάρκισσος (Narkissos) Pronunciation nar-SISS-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Self-Lover, The Flower-Child, The Youth of the Pool, Narcissus of the Spring, The Beautiful Bane Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 8th-7th century BCE (literary tradition); mythic era Symbol Narcissus flower Tags greek-mythology, narcissus, echo, self-love, reflection, flower, nemesis, thespiae Introduction - Overview Narcissus is the beautiful youth of Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection and wasted away beside a pool, becoming the namesake of the narcissus flower that grew from his corpse. He is the son of the river-god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope, born so lovely that every mortal who saw him desired him. He is the boy who spurned the nymph Echo, a maiden cursed by the goddess Hera to repeat only the last words spoken to her, leaving her to fade until only her voice remained. He is the youth whom the goddess Nemesis, the spirit of righteous indignation, punished for his cruelty to lovers by leading him to a still pool where he saw his own face and was consumed by desire for himself. He is the corpse around which the pale narcissus flower sprang up, its white petals and yellow cup marking the spot where self-love became self-destruction. And he is the origin of the word "narcissism," the psychological term for excessive self-admiration that has shaped modern understanding of personality for over a century. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Narcissus Narcissus was born to Cephissus, the river-god whose waters flowed through Boeotia in central Greece, and Liriope, a nymph of the fresh springs. When he was still an infant, his mother took him to the blind seer Tiresias, the prophet of Thebes who had once lived as a woman and who possessed the gift of second sight granted by the goddess Athena. Liriope asked whether her son would live to old age. Tiresias replied that Narcissus would have a long life, but only if he never came to know himself. The prophecy was cryptic, and Liriope carried the boy home without understanding that the seer had foreseen the boy's doom. As Narcissus grew, his beauty became legendary. His face was so perfect that men and women alike were struck silent at the sight of him. Among those who loved him was the nymph Echo, a talkative maiden who had once served the goddess Hera, the queen of the gods, as a companion. Hera had cursed Echo for distracting her with endless chatter while Zeus, the king of the gods, dallied with other nymphs. The curse condemned Echo to repeat only the last words spoken by another, never able to initiate speech of her own. When Echo saw Narcissus wandering in the woods, she fell in love instantly and followed him, longing to speak but unable to form her own words. Narcissus called out to his companions, and Echo could only echo his call. When she finally approached him and tried to embrace him, he recoiled and told her to leave him alone. Echo was heartbroken and wandered into a cave, where she faded away until only her voice remained, still echoing through the hollows and canyons of the earth. Narcissus had rejected not only Echo but every suitor who approached him. His coldness to lovers was so complete that one of those he spurned raised a prayer to Nemesis, the goddess who punished those who succumbed to hubris or who showed contempt for love. Nemesis heard the prayer and led Narcissus to a hidden pool in a forest glade, a spring so still and clear that it reflected the world like a mirror. Narcissus bent down to drink, and for the first time he saw his own face reflected in the water. He did not recognise it as himself. Instead, he believed he had found a beautiful spirit living beneath the surface, a youth as lovely as himself and equally unreachable. He stretched out his arms to embrace the reflection, but the water broke and the image vanished. He waited for it to return, and when it did, he spoke to it, poured out his longing, and tried to kiss it. Each time he touched the water, the face dissolved, and each time it reformed, it seemed to smile back at him with equal desire. Days passed. Narcissus could not leave the pool. He refused food and drink, staring only at the face in the water. He pined away, his beauty withering like a flower cut from its stem. His complexion faded, his strength left him, and his eyes grew hollow from gazing at the reflection. In his final moments, he understood the truth: the face was his own, and he had fallen in love with himself. He called out a farewell to the image and died beside the pool. When the nymphs came to bury him, they found only a flower growing where his body had lain, its white petals surrounding a golden centre, the narcissus that bears his name to this day. Summary Narcissus stands as the eternal warning against the danger of self-love, the beautiful youth who found his own reflection more compelling than any living soul. From the prophecy of Tiresias to the curse of Echo, from the vengeance of Nemesis to the pale flower that marks his grave, his story is one of beauty that consumes itself. The word "narcissism," coined by psychologist Havelock Ellis in the nineteenth century and refined by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, carries his name into modern psychology as excessive self-absorption. Every mirror ever held, every pool that reflects a face, and every conversation about vanity carries the ghost of the boy who died because he could not look away from himself. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Narcissus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Nemesis Deity Nemesis Tiresias Person Tiresias Cephisus Deity Cephisus Echo Spirit Echo Liriope Spirit Liriope Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) - Book 3, Lines 339-510 (the full narrative of Narcissus and Echo, the pool, the flower) - Pausanias, Description of Greece (2nd century CE) - Book 9.31.7-9.31.8 (local Boeotian tradition about Narcissus at Thespiae) - Conon, Narrations (1st century BCE) - Fragment 24 (alternative version involving the youth Ameinias) - Parthenius, Erotica Pathemata (1st century BCE) - Chapter 17 (Narcissus and the rejected lover) - Freud, Sigmund. "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (1914) - Standard Edition, Vol. 14, pp. 67-102 - Vinge, Louise. The Narcissus Theme in Western European Literature up to the Early 19th Century (1967) - Lund: Gleerups, Chapters 1-3 - Bartsch, Shadi. "The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire" (2006) - University of Chicago Press, Chapter 2 - Brenkman, John. "Narcissus in the Text" in Georgia Review (1976) - Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 293-327 Previous --- End of Record --- Next >