Discover Europa, the Phoenician princess abducted by Zeus as a white bull, whose name became the continent of Europe and whose sons ruled Crete - Mythopouch. Previous Greek Next > Europa Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Εὐρώπη (Eurōpē) Pronunciation yoo-ROH-puh Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Bull-Rider, The Mother of Minos, The Phoenician Princess, The Namesake of Europe, The White Bull's Bride Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Greek Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Female Time Period c. 8th-7th century BCE (literary tradition); mythic Bronze Age Symbol Cow head Tags greek-mythology, europa, zeus, white-bull, crete, minos, europe, taurus Introduction - Overview Europa is the Phoenician princess whose abduction by Zeus, the king of the gods, in the form of a magnificent white bull gave her name to the continent of Europe and set in motion her brother Cadmus's founding of Thebes. She is the daughter of King Agenor of Tyre and Queen Telephassa, the sister of Cadmus who sowed the dragon's teeth to found Thebes, of Cilix who gave his name to Cilicia, and of Phoenix who gave his name to the Phoenicians. She is the mother of Minos, the king of Crete whose labyrinth held the Minotaur, a creature half man and half bull; of Rhadamanthus, who would become one of the three judges of the dead in the underworld; and of Sarpedon, the Lycian prince who would fall at Troy. She is the maiden who rode the bull across the Mediterranean Sea from the shores of Tyre to the island of Crete, where Zeus revealed his true form beneath a cypress on Mount Ida. And she is the namesake of an entire continent, the word "Europe" deriving from her name, a legacy that has outlasted every empire that rose and fell upon the land. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Europa Europa was born in Tyre, the Phoenician city on the coast of Lebanon, to King Agenor and Queen Telephassa. She had three brothers: Cadmus, who would found Thebes by sowing dragon's teeth; Cilix, whose name would be given to Cilicia; and Phoenix, whose name became that of the Phoenicians. Europa was renowned for her extraordinary beauty. She dreamed Asia and a nameless land fought over her, with the nameless land prevailing. The dream was an omen, though Europa did not understand it. One day, while Europa played with her maidens on the seashore near Tyre, a white bull appeared among them. The creature was beautiful, hide gleaming like snow, horns curved like the crescent moon, breath smelling of crocuses. It was gentle and tame, and the maidens dared to approach it. Europa, enchanted, wove flowers into its horns and climbed upon its broad back. The moment she was seated, the bull plunged into the sea and began to swim. It was Zeus, the king of the gods, who had transformed himself to escape his wife Hera, queen of Olympus, notoriously jealous of his affairs with mortal women. The bull swam across the Mediterranean with Europa on its back, while the Nereids, fifty sea-nymph daughters of the old sea-god Nereus, rose to marvel, and Poseidon calmed the waters. They landed on Crete, beneath a cypress on Mount Ida, the mountain where Zeus had been hidden as an infant to escape his father Cronus, the Titan who swallowed his own children. There Zeus shed his bull form and revealed himself. He lay with Europa beneath the cypress, and from their union three sons were born. The first was Minos, who would become king of Crete. The second was Rhadamanthus, a man of such justice that after his death he would be made a judge of the dead in the underworld, realm ruled by Hades. The third was Sarpedon, who would rule Lycia and fight at Troy. After bearing these sons, Europa married Asterion, king of Crete, who raised the boys as his own heirs. Minos became the most famous of her children. He prayed to Poseidon for a sign of divine favour, and Poseidon sent a white bull from the waves. Minos was supposed to sacrifice it, but he kept it, and in revenge Poseidon caused Minos's wife Pasiphae, daughter of the sun-god Helios, to fall in love with the bull. From that union came the Minotaur, a creature half man and half bull that fed on human flesh, which Minos imprisoned in the Labyrinth designed by Daedalus. Rhadamanthus was driven from Crete by Minos and became a judge of the dead in the underworld. Sarpedon went to Lycia and became a great warrior. When the Trojan War broke out, he led the Lycian forces to Troy and was slain by Patroclus, beloved companion of Achilles. Europa herself did not return to Phoenicia. She remained on Crete, honoured as wife of the king and mother of heroes. But her name lived on in ways she never imagined. The land to the north and west of the Greek world came to be called Europe in her honour, and the name eventually covered the continent. In the heavens, Zeus placed the image of the white bull among the stars as the constellation Taurus, so that the animal that carried her across the sea would be remembered. In art, Europa was depicted riding the bull across the waves, her garments flowing behind her, a scene that became one of the most enduring images of Greek mythology, painted by artists from vase-painters to the Renaissance masters. Summary Europa stands as the bridge between East and West, the Phoenician princess whose abduction by a god gave her name to a continent and whose sons shaped legends of Crete, justice, and war. From the seashore of Tyre to the cypress groves of Mount Ida, from the white bull that carried her across the sea to the constellation that remembers it, her story is one of beauty that launches empires and names that outlast. Every map that shows Europe, every star chart that marks the Bull, and every painting of a maiden riding a wave-borne beast carries the memory of the girl who crossed the Mediterranean on the back of a god and changed the world forever. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Europa 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 Cadmus Person Cadmus Zeus Deity Zeus Poseidon Deity Poseidon Minos Person Minos Pasiphae Person Pasiphae Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Moschus, Europa (c. 2nd century BCE) - Lines 1-165 (the complete narrative of Europa's abduction by Zeus as a bull) - Homer, Iliad (c. 750 BCE) - Book 2, Lines 876-877; Book 16, Lines 419-683 (Sarpedon at Troy, his lineage and death) - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (1st-2nd century CE) - Book 3, Chapter 1 (Europa and the bull, her sons and their fates) - Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) - Book 2, Lines 833-875 (the abduction of Europa, the bull, the sea journey) - Pausanias, Description of Greece (2nd century CE) - Book 3.13.3 (Europa at Amyclae); Book 7.20.1-7.20.2 (Europa at Sparta) - Herodotus, Histories (c. 440 BCE) - Book 1.1-1.2 (Europa as a Phoenician woman); Book 4.45 (Europe named after her) - West, M.L. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Its Nature, Structure, and Origins (1985) - Oxford University Press, pp. 120-128 (Europa in the Catalogue of Women) - Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion (1985) - Harvard University Press, Chapter 3 (Europa and the bull cult in Greek religion) - Gantz, Timothy. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 1, pp. 208-213 (Europa narrative survey) - Lopez-Ruiz, Carolina. When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East (2010) - Johns Hopkins University Press, Chapter 4 (Europa and Near Eastern parallels) - Dowden, Ken. The Uses of Greek Mythology (1992) - Routledge, Chapter 3 (Europa as colonisation myth) Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. 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Explore Hadrian, the Roman emperor associated with Greek culture, provincial journeys, major building projects and Antinous. Mythopouch. Previous Greek Next > Hadrian Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Publius Aelius Hadrianus; Greek: Ἁδριανός (Hadrianos) Pronunciation HAY-dree-un Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Publius Aelius Hadrianus; Hadrianus; Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus; Graeculus Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Greek Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Roman Imperial history; Greek cultural patronage; Egyptian cult of Antinous Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Historical Gender Male Time Period 76-138 CE; emperor 117-138 CE Symbol Globe Tags greek, hadrian, roman-empire, antonine-dynasty, hadrians-wall, antinous, roman-architecture, greek-culture, bar-kokhba Introduction - Overview Hadrian is the Roman emperor who traded conquest for consolidation and spent much of his twenty-one-year reign travelling through the empire he ruled. He is the cultivated Spanish-born aristocrat whose love of Greece reshaped his beard, dress, speech, public image and relationship with the Greek world. He is the commander who strengthened the army, raised fortifications from Britain to Africa and built Hadrian's Wall to mark the northern limit of Roman power. He is the builder who completed the Pantheon, raised the Temple of Venus and Roma, created his imperial villa at Tivoli and left his mausoleum on the bank of the Tiber. He is the emperor whose beloved Antinous drowned in the Nile and was mourned with a new god, a new city and temples across the eastern empire. He is the ruler whose attempt to refound Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina helped ignite the catastrophic Bar Kokhba revolt. And he is the dying poet who left behind one short Latin address to his wandering, charming, pale little soul before passing into imperial divinity. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Hadrian Hadrian was born on 24 January 76 CE into a family whose origins joined Italy, Spain and the highest reaches of Roman power. His gens Aelia traced itself to the town of Hadria in Picenum, and his ancestors had migrated to Italica in Hispania Baetica, a Roman colony not far from modern Seville. His father, Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer, was a senator and praetor; his mother, Domitia Paulina, came from Gades, the great port city now called Cadiz. When his father died while Hadrian was still a boy, guardianship passed to two powerful relatives: Acilius Attianus, who would later command the Praetorian Guard, and Trajan, the future emperor, whose family was connected to Hadrian's through marriage and kinship. His education prepared him for the life of a Roman aristocrat, but it also gave him a lifelong passion for Greece. He studied literature, rhetoric, mathematics and philosophy, hunted with obsessive enthusiasm and learned enough Greek to imitate Athenian style. Roman contemporaries nicknamed him Graeculus, Little Greek, not always as a compliment. He grew his beard in the Greek fashion, dressed in Greek clothing and surrounded himself with Greek scholars, poets and artists. Where Trajan had conquered, Hadrian wanted to display the power of culture. Where older emperors appeared in the polished armour of Roman imperium, Hadrian presented himself as a bearded philosopher, hunter, founder and traveller. His rise was rapid. He served as a military tribune in provinces along the Danube, survived the violent year 96 CE that replaced the emperor Domitian with Nerva, and gained the favour of Lucius Licinius Sura, one of Trajan's closest advisers. In 100 he married Vibia Sabina, Trajan's grand-niece, binding himself even more tightly to the imperial family. He served as quaestor, tribune, praetor and consul, fought in Trajan's Dacian wars and governed Lower Pannonia on the Danube. By the opening years of Trajan's Parthian campaign, Hadrian held one of the empire's most sensitive commands, the Syrian army. Trajan died at Selinus in Cilicia in August 117 CE. His widow Plotina announced that the emperor had adopted Hadrian immediately before his death, and the Syrian legions proclaimed the new ruler. Suspicion followed. Hadrian had not been publicly named heir for most of Trajan's reign, and his sudden elevation appeared to carry the mark of Plotina's intervention. Yet the army accepted him, the senate recognised the adoption and Hadrian moved swiftly to secure the empire. He abandoned the newest conquests in Mesopotamia, where Roman armies were overextended, arranged settlements with Parthia and turned his attention inward. The empire that had grown without pause under Trajan now had a ruler who believed its strength depended upon secure boundaries, not endless expansion. His accession was stained by political blood. Four senior senators, men powerful enough to threaten or resent the new regime, were put to death early in his reign: Aulus Cornelius Palma, Lucius Quietus, Publius Acilius Attianus and Gaius Avidius Nigrinus. Hadrian insisted that the orders were issued without his knowledge and later wrote with bitterness about the event, but the senate never entirely forgot it. His relationship with Rome's aristocratic governing class remained guarded for the rest of his life. He compensated through administration, law and patronage, creating a more disciplined government in which he supervised governors, punished corruption, travelled to provinces and listened to petitions. The senate could distrust him, but it could not deny his energy. Hadrian transformed the empire through a programme of boundaries and inspection. He rebuilt frontier roads, strengthened forts and placed troops in more defensible positions. In Germania he ordered a continuous wooden palisade backed by watchtowers. In North Africa he organised the border system of the Numidian frontier. He inspected camps, marched beside soldiers, ate the same coarse rations and rewarded discipline rather than flattery. The army had helped make him emperor, and he intended to keep it professional, disciplined and visibly under imperial command. Britain received the most famous expression of this frontier policy. Hadrian arrived in 122 CE after unrest in the north and ordered the construction of a barrier from the River Tyne to the Solway Firth. The work stretched about eighty Roman miles and combined a stone or turf wall, ditch, military road, forts, milecastles and turrets. Inscriptions from the Wall name legions and record Hadrian's authority. The fragmentary Jarrow dedication once summarised his purpose: a divine necessity had imposed upon him the task of preserving the empire within its limits. The wall did not seal Britain from the north. It controlled movement, marked sovereignty, concentrated soldiers and turned a contested frontier into a managed line. In time it became Hadrian's most enduring monument. Rome itself became another statement of his rule. He completed the Pantheon, the great domed temple whose inscription attributes the work to Agrippa while the structure belongs to Hadrian's age. He began the enormous Temple of Venus and Roma beside the Colosseum, placing the goddesses of love and empire within twin cellae. He rebuilt the Basilica of Neptune, completed the Temple of Divine Trajan, constructed the Pons Aelius and laid out the approach to his mausoleum across the Tiber. The Mausoleum of Hadrian, now the Castel Sant'Angelo, joined the imperial tombs of Augustus with a new circular mountain of stone and earth. At Tivoli, east of Rome, he created the Villa Hadriana, an imperial retreat that was less a country house than a landscape of memories. Its gardens, pools, theatres, libraries, dining halls and monumental courts gathered impressions of Egypt, Greece and the empire. A Canopus canal evoked the sanctuary near Alexandria. The so-called Maritime Theatre placed a villa within a moated island. Exedrae, cryptoporticoes, porticoes and groves made the complex a private cosmos where architecture could replace travel. Hadrian moved between Rome and Tivoli, escaping the senate and conducting affairs from a villa that embodied the breadth of the world he ruled. His journeys made the empire a single field of action. After securing the east, he travelled through Gaul and Germania, inspected the Danube and reached Britain. He visited Spain, travelled to North Africa, crossed to the eastern provinces and returned repeatedly to Athens. In Greece he was no distant Roman overseer but a philhellene who wanted to join the classical city. He accepted civic honours, attended festivals, made benefactions and pursued initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries at Eleusis. He restored Delphi, supported Athenian institutions and gathered Greek intellectuals around the court. His beard and draped Greek clothing ceased to be affectation and became imperial policy: Rome would rule the Greek world by honouring, rebuilding and reshaping Greek culture. Hadrian's private life produced both intimacy and political danger. His marriage to Sabina remained childless and distant. His most famous beloved was Antinous, a youth from Bithynia in Asia Minor who accompanied the emperor on his travels. In 130 CE Antinous drowned in the Nile, whether by accident, suicide, sacrifice or darker calculation was never settled. Hadrian's grief broke through imperial restraint. He founded Antinoopolis on the Nile, established games, founded temples and spread images of the dead youth across the empire. Priests proclaimed Antinous a god. His statues joined the images of Hermes, Dionysus and Egyptian Osiris, while cities and private worshippers honoured him as a beautiful figure whose life ended beside the river. For some Romans, the scale of the grief became another sign of Hadrian's excess. For others, Antinous became one of antiquity's most compelling divine lovers. Hadrian's Hellenism did not protect the empire from conflict in Judaea. After the suppression of a Jewish revolt near the end of Trajan's reign, Hadrian planned to refound Jerusalem as a Roman colony named Aelia Capitolina, in honour of his own gens Aelia and the Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. Coins and inscriptions imagined the new city with a temple to Jupiter. His government also prohibited circumcision as an injury to the body, a ban that struck directly at Jewish religious practice. In 132 CE rebellion broke out under Simon bar Kosiba, remembered by his followers as Bar Kokhba, Son of the Star. The rebels recaptured strongholds, minted coins bearing symbols of Jerusalem and independence and inflicted devastating losses on Roman forces. Hadrian sent his best commanders, Julius Severus and Publius Acilius Quietus, and the war became a campaign of siege, starvation and extermination. Entire communities were destroyed. The fortress of Bethar fell in 135 or 136. Bar Kosiba was killed, and the remaining rebels were hunted through caves and desert strongholds. Dio claims that the war consumed many Roman soldiers and devastated Judaea. Jerusalem's transformation continued, but the cost left a wound in Jewish memory and in Roman military history. Hadrian's legal and administrative reforms outlasted the rebellions. He entrusted the jurist Salvius Julianus with organising the praetor's edict into a stable legal code, reducing the ability of individual magistrates to alter Roman law by annual additions. He tightened the system of imperial rescripts, protected slaves from extreme abuse and responded to governors who exceeded their authority. In Rome and the provinces he extended the alimenta, an aid programme that supported poor children with money drawn from state funds and private endowments. The emperor who abandoned conquest did not retreat from governance. He sought to make law, charity and administration as durable as the Wall. Age and illness pressed upon him. He suffered from dropsy or another wasting condition, endured sleepless nights and grew desperate as doctors failed to provide relief. Twice he attempted to end his suffering, and twice attendants saved him. Succession became his final obsession. He first adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus as Lucius Aelius Caesar, but the chosen heir died in 138 after a brief and unimpressive period of preparation. Hadrian then selected Antoninus Pius, an experienced and respected senator, on the condition that Antoninus adopt two young heirs: Marcus Annius Verus, the future Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Ceionius Commodus, son of the dead Caesar. The arrangement created a chain of succession that historians later celebrated as the Antonine Age. Hadrian died at Baiae on the Bay of Naples on 10 July 138 CE. The ancient biography preserves a short poem that tradition gave him at the end: Little soul, wandering, charming and pale guest and companion of the body, into what regions will you now depart, bare, stark and unable to play as you did before? Senators hostile to the dead emperor delayed his consecration until Antoninus forced them to honour the man who had chosen him. Hadrian's ashes were carried to Rome and placed in the mausoleum that still dominates the bend of the Tiber. He had ruled for twenty-one years, longer than any emperor since Tiberius. The empire he left behind was no longer a restless machine of expansion. Its frontiers were defined, its armies disciplined, its cities beautified and its laws organised. He had punished senators, survived military revolt, provoked Jewish catastrophe, mourned Antinous, founded cities and rebuilt Delphi. He had made Greek culture part of the language of Roman rule and made travel itself an instrument of government. The bearded emperor who called himself a friend of culture had turned the world into a court and the court into a journey. Hadrian's monuments still preserve the contradictions. The Wall that bears his name crosses farms, crags and suburbs in northern England. The Pantheon's dome still opens to the sky above Rome. The Mausoleum has become a papal fortress and a bridge still carries his name. Tivoli's ruins hold the memory of a mind that wanted to own every province as architecture. Antinous smiles from museums with the smooth cheeks of an eternal youth. Coins from Bar Kokhba's revolt declare freedom over the ruins of a war that destroyed the land for which it was fought. Hadrian endures because he left both harmony and ruin behind him, bound together in stone. Summary Hadrian endures as the Roman emperor who secured rather than enlarged the empire, ruling through travel, law, architecture and an intense devotion to Greek culture. From Hadrian's Wall and the Pantheon to the Villa Hadriana, the deification of Antinous and the devastation of the Bar Kokhba revolt, his reign joins beauty and violence. His succession of Antoninus Pius opened the Antonine Age. Hadrian remains the bearded traveller who wanted Rome to govern within limits and instead left an empire whose monuments extend far beyond any frontier. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Hadrian 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 Antinoopolis Location Antinoopolis Antinous of Bithynia Deity Antinous of Bithynia Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.1-23 (early 3rd century CE) - accession, policy, Jewish revolt and the final years of Hadrian - Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian 1-27 (late 4th century CE) - birth, education, travels, building programme, Antinous, illness, death and the poem Animula vagula blandula - Roman Inscriptions of Britain I, RIB 1051 (Jarrow dedication, 122 CE) - Hadrian's authority and the need to preserve the empire within its limits - Historia Augusta, Life of Antoninus Pius 4.1-4.4 (late 4th century CE) - Hadrian's adoption of Antoninus Pius and the Antonine succession - Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.9.1-3 (early 4th century CE) - Hadrian's rescript to Minucius Fundanus concerning the legal treatment of Christians - Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.3.2 and 1.18.6 (c. 150 CE) - Hadrian's honours in Athens and his buildings in Rome - Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians 30.6 (c. 177 CE) - Hadrian's restraint of mob violence against Christians in imperial rescripts - Historia Augusta, Life of Aelius 1-7 (late 4th century CE) - the failed adoption of Lucius Aelius Caesar and the arrangement that followed - Birley, Anthony R., Hadrian: The Restless Emperor (Routledge, 1997) - political biography, travels, administration and imperial image - Boatwright, Mary Taliaferro, Hadrian and the City of Rome (Princeton University Press, 1987) - the Pantheon, Temple of Venus and Roma, Mausoleum and Hadrianic architecture - Boatwright, Mary Taliaferro, Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire (Princeton University Press, 2000) - imperial benefaction, provincial government and the Greek world - MacDonald, William L. and John A. Pinto, Hadrian's Villa and Its Legacy (Yale University Press, 1995) - architecture, landscape and imperial imagination at Tivoli - Opper, Thorsten, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict (British Museum Press, 2008) - imperial policy, portraits, Antinous, frontier rule and material culture - Syme, Ronald, "Journeys of Hadrian", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 73 (1988), pp. 159-170 - chronology and political meaning of Hadrian's travels Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Eurydice, the nymph whose death sent Orpheus to the Underworld and whose rescue was lost by a single backward glance - Mythopouch. Previous Greek Next > Eurydice Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Εὐρυδίκη (Eurydikē) Pronunciation yoo-RID-ih-see Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Lost Wife, The Woman Orpheus Could Not Save, The Bride of the Underworld, The One Glance That Cost Everything, The Nymph of the Meadow Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Greek Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Female Time Period c. 1st century BCE (Virgil); earlier traditions Symbol The snake Tags greek, eurydice, orpheus, underworld, love, tragedy, thrace, snake Introduction - Overview Eurydice is the nymph whose death by a snake bite sent her husband Orpheus into the Underworld, and whose rescue was undone by a single backward glance. She is the wife of the greatest musician in Greek mythology, the Thracian poet whose songs could move stones and tame beasts and whose voice charmed even the gods of the dead. She is the bride who died on her wedding day, or shortly after, while walking through a meadow in the Vale of Tempe, a valley in Thessaly famous for its beauty. She is the woman who followed her husband up the dark path from Hades, the kingdom of the dead, silent and hopeful, only to vanish the moment he turned to look at her. She is the ghost who spoke one last time before dissolving into the shadows, telling Orpheus that his love had failed at the final step. And she is the eternal symbol of love lost at the threshold, the name that poets and composers have invoked for two thousand years as the archetype of the beloved who cannot be reclaimed. Every opera about a musician descending into darkness, every story of a love that dies at the last moment, carries her shadow. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Eurydice Eurydice was born a nymph, one of the spirits who inhabited the rivers and meadows of Thrace, the wild region of northern Greece that bordered the Hellespont, the narrow strait that separates Europe from Asia. She was beautiful, gentle, and young, and she caught the eye of Orpheus, the son of Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, and Oeagrus, a Thracian king. Orpheus was the greatest musician who ever lived. His voice could charm the trees into moving their roots, his lyre could tame wild animals, and his songs were so powerful that even the rocks of the mountains would roll toward him to hear better. He fell in love with Eurydice, and she with him, and they were married in a ceremony that the nymphs and gods themselves attended. The tragedy struck soon after. While Eurydice was walking through a meadow in the Vale of Tempe, a valley in Thessaly where the river Peneus ran between Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, and Mount Ossa, she stepped upon a snake hidden in the grass. The serpent struck her ankle, and the venom killed her instantly. Some said she was fleeing from Aristaeus, a rustic god who desired her; others said she was simply gathering flowers with her nymph companions. Either way, she died young and beautiful, and her body was laid in a tomb while Orpheus wept with a grief that no music could soothe. Orpheus could not accept her death. He took his lyre and descended into the Underworld, the realm of shadows and silence where the dead dwelt forever, ruled by Hades, the god of the dead, and Persephone, the maiden who had become queen of the darkness after her abduction by Hades. Orpheus played his lyre at the gates of the Underworld, and his music was so beautiful that Cerberus, the three-headed hound who guarded the entrance, lay down and slept. The Furies, the spirits of vengeance who tormented the wicked, wept tears of sorrow. Even Hades and Persephone were moved. The king of the dead listened to the song of Orpheus and agreed to release Eurydice on one condition: Orpheus must lead her up the path to the world of the living, but he must not look back at her until they had both reached the surface. If he turned before she was fully in the light, she would be lost forever. Orpheus agreed. He led Eurydice up the dark path, through the caverns of the Underworld, past the river Styx, the boundary between the living and the dead, and toward the faint light of the upper world. Eurydice followed in silence, her footsteps soft behind him, her hand perhaps touching his, though no account tells if they touched. She was still a shadow, not yet flesh, and she needed only the final steps into daylight to be restored. But Orpheus, consumed by doubt and love, could not bear the silence. He needed to see her, to know that she was truly there. At the very threshold of the upper world, just before the light, he turned his head. Eurydice vanished. She dissolved into the darkness like mist in the sun, her form fading before his eyes. She spoke one last time, or perhaps Orpheus heard her voice in the silence, telling him that his love had failed at the final step. She was drawn back into the depths, and the gates of the Underworld closed behind her. Orpheus was left alone at the entrance, his lyre silent, his heart broken beyond repair. He tried to descend again, but the gods would not permit it. The dead do not return twice. Orpheus wandered the earth in despair, shunning the company of women and singing only songs of grief. Eventually he was torn apart by the Maenads, the frenzied women who worshipped Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, or by Thracian women enraged by his rejection of them. His head and lyre floated down the river Hebrus, the great river of Thrace, still singing, and were carried to the island of Lesbos. Eurydice remained in the Underworld, and in some tellings she was reunited with Orpheus after his death, the two shades walking together in the Elysian Fields, the blessed meadow where the virtuous dead found peace. Summary Eurydice stands as the eternal beloved who cannot be reclaimed, the nymph whose life ended with a snake bite and whose second chance ended with a glance. From the meadows of Thrace to the dark path of the Underworld, from the lyre that moved the gods of death to the silence that swallowed her at the threshold, her story is the most famous love tragedy in Western mythology. Every opera, every poem, and every story of a love that dies just as it is about to be saved carries the memory of Eurydice, the woman who was almost free. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Eurydice 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 Maenads Group Maenads Orpheus Person Orpheus Aristaeus Deity Aristaeus Hades Deity Hades Persephone Deity Persephone Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Virgil, Georgics (c. 29 BCE) - Book 4, lines 453-527 - Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) - Book 10, lines 1-85 - Plato, Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) - lines 179d-179e - Euripides, Alcestis (c. 438 BCE) - lines 357-362 - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (c. 100 BCE) - Book 1, chapter 3, section 2 - Hyginus, Fabulae (c. 2nd century CE) - section 164 - Segal, Charles, Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet (1989) - Johns Hopkins University Press - Warden, John, Orpheus: The Metamorphoses of a Myth (1982) - University of Toronto Press - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 721-724 Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Blancheflor of Beaurepaire, Perceval's first love whose starving castle tested his courage, mercy and newly learned chivalry during Clamadeu's siege. Previous Arthurian Next > Blancheflor (Lady) of Beaurepaire Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Lady Blancheflor of Beaurepaire, Blanchefleur (French), Blancheflour (Middle English), Blanziflor (Italian), Condwiramurs (Wolfram von Eschenbach) Pronunciation LAY-dee BLANSH-flor of boh-ruh-PAIR Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The White Flower, the Lady of Beaurepaire, the Niece of Gornemant, Perceval's First Love, the Maiden of the Three Drops of Blood, Lufamour, the Lady of the Siege Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Arthurian Regional Information Additional (if applicable) British / Celtic / French Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Female Time Period 5th-6th centuries CE (mythic period); literary tradition c. 1180-1230 CE Symbol The white flower, the knife at her breast, the three drops of blood on snow, the five loaves and the reheated wine Tags arthurian, blancheflor, person, perceval, beaurepaire, gornemant, clamadeu, grail-quest, chretien-de-troyes Introduction - Overview Lady Blancheflor of Beaurepaire is the first love of Perceval, the knight who would one day achieve the Holy Grail, and she is the lady whose siege tested everything the young knight had learned. She is the niece of Gornemant de Gohort, the lord who knighted Perceval and taught him the meaning of chivalry, and she is the mistress of a castle that had been besieged for a winter and a summer by the time Perceval arrived. She is the woman who greeted a starving stranger with venison, five loaves, and reheated wine, and who came to his bedchamber at night weeping, with a knife hidden in her casket ready to kill herself rather than submit to her besieger. She is the lady whose complexion, white and red like the purest flower, would one day send Perceval into a trance when he saw three drops of blood on snow and thought of her face. And she is the woman Perceval left behind to find his mother, the love he could have had and the lordship he refused, because the call of blood was louder than the call of the heart. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Blancheflor (Lady) of Beaurepaire Blancheflor first appears in Chretien de Troyes's Perceval, or The Story of the Grail, written in the 1180s, the romance that created the Grail quest as the medieval world would know it. Perceval, newly knighted by his uncle Gornemant de Gohort, rides out into the world and comes to a castle by the sea called Beaurepaire. He finds the town impoverished, the people starving, and the garrison reduced to shadows. Yet Blancheflor greets him with grace, her eyes glinting blue-grey and smiling, her hair like spun gold, her cheeks the colour of scarlet on silver. She offers him all she has: a freshly shot roebuck, five loaves sent by a prior uncle, and wine so sour it must be reheated to be drinkable. The knights around them whisper that God made each for the other, so fair did they look together. That night, unable to sleep for fear of the morrow, Blancheflor comes to Perceval's chamber. She kneels by his bed and weeps until her tears wet his face and wake him. When he asks what troubles her, she tells him the story of the siege. Clamadeu of the Isles desires her and has sent his seneschal Engygeron to take her castle by force. Of the three hundred and ten knights who once defended Beaurepaire, one hundred and sixty have been killed, forty-eight captured, and only fifty remain. The castle has been besieged for a full year, the supplies are exhausted, and tomorrow the garrison must surrender. But Blancheflor has a knife of finest steel hidden in her casket, and she swears she will drive it into her own heart before she lets Clamadeu possess her living body. She has told him everything, she says, and now she will let him go back to sleep. Perceval does not go back to sleep. He draws her into the bed beside him, comforts her through the night, and in the morning rides out to face Engygeron. The seneschal falls before the young knight's spear and begs for mercy; Perceval spares him and sends him to Arthur's court as a prisoner. Clamadeu, learning of his seneschal's defeat, attacks with twenty knights and then with his whole army, but Perceval defeats them all. At last Clamadeu himself faces Perceval and is forced to beg for mercy. He too is sent to Arthur's court, and all his prisoners are released. A ship laden with wheat and provisions arrives by chance, and Beaurepaire is saved. Blancheflor offers Perceval everything: her hand in marriage, the lordship of Beaurepaire, a kingdom to rule. But Perceval, anxious about his mother whom he had abandoned to become a knight, declines. He promises to return, mounts his horse, and rides away. Chretien never completed the romance, and in the original poem Perceval never does return to Blancheflor. But the continuations written by other hands in the decades that followed gave the lovers their ending. In the fourth continuation, composed by Gerbert de Montreuil around 1230, Perceval returns to Beaurepaire, defeats another attacker named Caridés of Escavalon, and at last marries Blancheflor. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, written around 1200-1210, her name is changed to Condwiramurs, derived from the Old French conduire amours, meaning to guide love, and she becomes not merely Perceval's sweetheart but his wife and the queen of the Grail kingdom. In the Middle English Sir Perceval of Galles, she is called Lufamour, Love's Reward, and the story is told with a rougher humour but the same essential shape: the lady of the besieged castle, the young knight who saves her, and the love that follows. Summary Lady Blancheflor of Beaurepaire endures as the first love of the Grail knight, the lady who offered a starving stranger her last loaf and who kept a knife ready for her own heart. From the siege of Beaurepaire to the three drops of blood on snow, from the bedchamber where she wept to the marriage she finally won in the continuations, her story is the story of a woman who would rather die than surrender and who found, in a boy from the Welsh forests, a knight worth waiting for. She is the reminder that the Grail quest began not with a vision but with a lady's tears. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Blancheflor (Lady) of Beaurepaire 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 Clamadeu Person Clamadeu Engygeron Person Engygeron Gornemant Person Gornemant Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Chretien de Troyes, Perceval, or The Story of the Grail, c. 1180s - primary source; the siege of Beaurepaire, Blancheflor's night visit, Perceval's victories over Engygeron and Clamadeu, and the three drops of blood - Gerbert de Montreuil, Fourth Continuation of Perceval, c. 1230 - primary source; Perceval's return to Beaurepaire, his defeat of Caridés, and his marriage to Blancheflor - Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, c. 1200-1210 - primary source; the transformation of Blancheflor into Condwiramurs, queen of the Grail kingdom - Sir Perceval of Galles, early 14th century - primary source; the Middle English version naming her Lufamour - Kibler, William W. (trans.), Chretien de Troyes: Arthurian Romances (Penguin Classics, 1991) - scholarly translation with notes on the Blancheflor episode and its courtly love conventions - Lacy, Norris J. and Joan Tasker Grimbert (eds.), A Companion to Chretien de Troyes (D.S. Brewer, 2005) - scholarly essays on the Perceval romance and its female characters - Pickens, Rupert T., Perceval and Gawain in Dark Mirrors: Reflection and Reflexivity in Chretien de Troyes's Conte del Graal (McFarland, 2014) - scholarly analysis of Blancheflor's role in Perceval's development - Walters, Lori, "The Image of Blanchefleur in MS Montpellier, BI, Sect Med. H 249," in Les Manuscrits de Chretien de Troyes (Rodopi, 1993) - scholarly examination of Blancheflor's visual and textual representation across manuscripts Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Eldad advises punishment for Hengist and mercy for Octa in Geoffrey's legendary Britain. Meet the bishop of Gloucester. | Mythopouch Previous Arthurian Next > Eldad Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Eldadus (Latin form); Eldad of Gloucester Pronunciation EL-dad Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Eldadus, Eldad of Gloucester Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Arthurian Regional Information Additional (if applicable) British / Geoffrey of Monmouth's legendary history / Gloucester and the reign of Aurelius Ambrosius Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period Legendary 5th-century Britain; Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century chronicle Symbol Crozier Tags eldad, arthurian, person, bishop, gloucester, eldol, ambrosius, hengist, geoffrey-of-monmouth Introduction - Overview Eldad is the bishop of Gloucester in Geoffrey of Monmouth's legendary history, a churchman whose counsel helps determine what happens to the defeated enemies of Aurelius Ambrosius. His brother is Eldol of Gloucester, the warrior who captures Hengist and later carries out his execution. Eldad urges that punishment by invoking the biblical example of Samuel and Agag, yet he also argues that the surrendering Octa should receive mercy. These contrasting interventions place him at the centre of Geoffrey's account of conquest, settlement and the rebuilding of Britain. He is also associated with the burial of the British nobles killed through Hengist's treachery and with the king's later visit to their graves near Salisbury. The episodes belong to a medieval narrative about Britain's past, not a securely documented biography of a fifth-century bishop. Eldad's importance lies in his particular acts of counsel and commemoration, rather than an invented career spanning every reign before Arthur. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Eldad Geoffrey identifies Eldad as bishop of Gloucester and brother of Eldol, giving the two men different roles in the same legendary conflict. Eldol fights and captures Hengist; Eldad speaks in the council that considers the prisoner's fate. The king is Aurelius Ambrosius, whose victory brings the captive before the council. Geoffrey praises the bishop's wisdom and religious devotion, but supplies little about his early life. His family background, education and appointment remain outside this account, which concentrates on his relationship with the king and on the interventions that follow the war. After the British victory, Aurelius rests his army at the city of Conan and asks his leading men what should be done with Hengist. Eldad demands attention and compares the captive with Agag, the king executed by the prophet Samuel in the biblical account. He urges Hengist's death, and Eldol leads the prisoner outside the city and beheads him. Aurelius then orders burial under a mound according to pagan custom. These actions are Geoffrey's narrative, not evidence of a historical council whose proceedings survive, and the chronicler gives no reason to imagine Eldad privately wishing the body left unburied. At York the bishop gives different advice. Octa, Hengist's son, approaches Aurelius with a chain and dust upon his head as signs of submission. Eldad invokes the biblical Gibeonites when arguing that those who ask for mercy should receive it. He proposes a covenant allowing the defeated people to settle in uninhabited parts of Britain under the king's authority. Aurelius accepts. Eosa and others subsequently follow Octa's example, and Geoffrey places their allotted territory near Scotland. Octa's surrender and Eosa's later approach are related events, not necessarily one identical procession before the king. Eldad also connects the living kingdom with those killed in Hengist's earlier massacre. Geoffrey's account of that disaster credits him with arranging Christian burial for the slain nobles near the monastery of Ambrius. Later, after describing Aurelius's restoration of York, London and Winchester, the chronicle says that the king visits the burial place on Eldad's advice. The visit leads to the wish for a lasting memorial. The rebuilding itself is attributed to Aurelius and his arrangements; Eldad's documented narrative role should not be enlarged into personal supervision of every church and city. The bishop's place in the story therefore rests on three closely connected concerns: punishment, the terms of surrender and remembrance of the dead. The severity of his first speech and the clemency of his second reveal how Geoffrey gives religious language a role in royal decisions. They do not establish a single modern lesson or justify the violence outside its literary setting. Nor do these passages demonstrate that Eldad advised Uther during the affair of Igraine or prepared Arthur's Round Table. He remains a legendary churchman whose few recorded interventions carry more weight than an unsupported extended biography. Summary Eldad is the legendary bishop of Gloucester and brother of Eldol in Geoffrey of Monmouth's history. He calls for Hengist's execution, then counsels mercy and a settlement for the surrendering Octa, later joined by Eosa. His association with the burial of murdered British nobles also leads Aurelius Ambrosius towards their memorial near Salisbury. The contrast between these episodes gives the bishop his distinctive role. His story should remain separate from invented details of his upbringing, personal supervision of royal rebuilding or service throughout the reigns leading to Arthur. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Eldad 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 Hengist Person Hengist Eldol of Gloucester Person Eldol of Gloucester Eosa Person Eosa Ambrosius Person Ambrosius Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, translated by Sebastian Evans: Book VI, the massacre and burial; Book VIII, chapters VII-IX, Hengist, Octa, Eosa and the visit to Ambrius. - https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/gem/gem07.htm - https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/gem/gem09.htm - Wace, Roman de Brut; Layamon, Brut. - J. S. P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain (1950). - Christopher W. Bruce, The Arthurian Name Dictionary (1999). Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Aethiopia in Greek legend, where gods feast and the stories of Memnon, Andromeda and Perseus meet at the edges of the known world. Mythopouch. Previous Greek Next > Aethiopia Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Αἰθιοπία (Aithiopia) Pronunciation ee-thee-OH-pee-uh Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Aithiopia, Ethiopia (ancient Greek usage) Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Greek Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Homeric / African / Near Eastern geographical traditions Category Location Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender N/A Time Period Attested in the Homeric epics; developed in later Greek and Roman mythological and geographical traditions Symbol Golden Cup Tags greek, aethiopia, mythic-geography, memnon, andromeda, cepheus, cassiopeia, oceanus, homer Introduction - Overview Aethiopia is the distant land of Greek legend where the gods themselves go to feast and where heroic kings rule beyond the familiar Greek world. It is the realm of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, whose daughter's life was threatened after the queen boasted of her beauty. Andromeda was exposed to a sea monster until Perseus came to her rescue. It is the kingdom associated with Memnon, the son of the dawn who brought Aethiopian warriors to the defence of Troy and fell in combat against Achilles. It is the place whose people Homer calls blameless, honoured by visits from Zeus and Poseidon at the edges of the poet's imagined world. And it is a name that also belonged to ancient geographical writing, where it could describe peoples and lands south of Egypt and elsewhere beyond familiar boundaries. This entry concerns that legendary landscape and its changing ancient meanings, not a single kingdom with the borders of the modern nation of Ethiopia. Its stories preserve the meeting of real geography, distant peoples and Greek imagination. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Aethiopia The name Aethiopia belongs to the Greek family of words connected with Aithiops, conventionally understood as burnt-faced, an ancient description of skin colour. Its range changed between authors and periods, so it should not be read as the name of one uniform people or one precisely bounded country. In the Odyssey, Homer places the Aethiopians at the distant limits of human habitation, divided between the regions of sunset and sunrise. Poseidon visits them to receive sacrifices. In the Iliad, Thetis tells Achilles that Zeus and the other gods have gone to feast with the blameless Aethiopians beside Oceanus and will return on the twelfth day. The description gives these distant people an honoured place in the poem, but it does not turn poetic geography into a modern map. In Greek mythology, Aethiopia was also the kingdom of Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Apollodorus says that Cassiopeia claimed to surpass the Nereids, the sea nymphs, in beauty. Poseidon responded to their anger by sending a flood and a sea monster against the land. An oracle declared that the disaster would end if the royal daughter Andromeda were offered to the monster, and she was fastened to a rock beside the sea. Perseus, returning from his encounter with Medusa, saw her and promised to rescue her in return for marriage. He killed the creature and freed her. The rescue is not told identically by every author: Ovid describes an armed struggle against the monster, rather than having Perseus simply turn it to stone with Medusa's head. Some ancient traditions placed the rescue at Joppa, showing how the tale could become attached to more than one landscape. Memnon is another great hero associated with Aethiopia. He was the son of Eos, the goddess of dawn, and Tithonus, a prince of the Trojan royal house. The tradition also named Emathion as his brother. Memnon came to support Troy with Aethiopian warriors after the loss of Hector, and his arrival placed a new champion against the Greeks. He killed Antilochus, the son of Nestor, before facing Achilles himself. Memnon fell in that encounter, and his mother's grief became an important part of his story. In the mythographic account preserved by Apollodorus, Eos obtained immortality for her son from Zeus. Other poets developed the mourning and its transformations in different ways. The story makes Aethiopia part of the Trojan cycle through kinship, military aid and the grief of a divine mother, rather than through a securely mapped historical empire. Ancient geographical writers used the name more concretely, but still not with one unchanging meaning. Herodotus describes Aethiopians south of Egypt and reports remarkable customs, including the selection of a king for his stature and strength. These are claims made within his account, not neutral measurements of an entire population. Pausanias likewise distinguishes Aethiopian peoples in several African regions. Their descriptions show why the name cannot simply be equated with the boundaries of modern Ethiopia. The geography of the Nile, travellers' reports and inherited stories all shaped what a Greek reader might understand by Aethiopia. The name also became attached to monuments far from the setting of Memnon's Trojan battles. Pausanias describes a seated colossus at Egyptian Thebes that produced a sound at dawn. Many visitors called it Memnon, connecting the morning sound with the son of Eos. He also reports that local people identified the figure differently, as Phamenoph, while another interpretation named Sesostris. This is evidence for competing ancient explanations of a monument, not proof that it depicted the Greek hero. Across these stories, Aethiopia remains a changing landscape in which divine hospitality, royal families, heroic warfare and real places meet. Summary Aethiopia endures as a distant realm of Greek legend, associated with the gods' banquets, Andromeda's rescue and the hero Memnon. Its name moved between poetry and geographical writing, carrying different meanings in different authors. From Homer's honoured feasters to the royal household of Cepheus, from the Trojan battlefield to the sounding colossus linked with the dawn, its stories reach beyond any single border. Aethiopia reminds us that ancient accounts of distant lands can preserve admiration, imagination and fragments of geographical knowledge together, and that their legendary kingdoms should not be mistaken for modern nations. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Aethiopia 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 Cassiopeia Person Cassiopeia Cepheus Person Cepheus Andromeda Person Andromeda Perseus Person Perseus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Homer, Iliad 1.423-425 and Odyssey 1.22-26: divine visits and the distant Aethiopians - https://www.theoi.com/Text/HomerIliad1.html - Homer, Odyssey 1.22-26: eastern and western Aethiopians - https://www.theoi.com/Text/HomerOdyssey1.html - Apollodorus, Library 2.4.3: Cassiopeia's boast, Andromeda and Perseus - https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus2.html - Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.663-752: Perseus kills the sea monster with his weapon - https://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses4.html - Apollodorus, Library 3.12.4 and Epitome 5.3: Memnon's parentage and Trojan-war role - https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus3.html - Apollodorus, Epitome 5.3: Memnon, Antilochus, Achilles and immortality - https://www.theoi.com/Text/ApollodorusE.html - Herodotus, Histories 3.20-25: the reported customs of the Aethiopians - https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Herodotus/3a%2A.html - Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.33.4-6 and 1.42.3: geographical diversity and the sounding colossus - https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias1C.html - Pausanias, Description of Greece 4.35.9, excerpt: localising Andromeda's rescue at Joppa - https://www.theoi.com/Heros/Perseus2.html Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Mentuhotep II, the Theban pharaoh who reunified Egypt, founded the Middle Kingdom and built his revolutionary royal mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri. Previous Egyptian Next > Mentuhotep II Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s mnṯw-ḥtp (Egyptian) Pronunciation men-too-HOH-tep thuh SEK-und Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Nebhepetre, Sematawy, Montuhotep, the Reunifier, the Founder of the Middle Kingdom, He Who Unifies the Two Lands Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Egyptian Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Ancient Egypt Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Historical Gender Male Time Period c. 2055 - 2004 BCE (11th Dynasty) Symbol The white crown of Upper Egypt, the heb-sed cloak, the seated statue from Bab el-Hosan Tags egyptian, mentuhotep-ii, 11th-dynasty, middle-kingdom, reunification, deir-el-bahri, herakleopolis, osiris, egyptian-mythology Introduction - Overview Mentuhotep II is the Reunifier, the pharaoh who ended the First Intermediate Period, the century of chaos that had shattered Egypt into warring kingdoms after the collapse of the Old Kingdom, and founded the Middle Kingdom, the era that Egyptians would remember as their classical age. He is the king who changed his own name in his thirty-ninth regnal year, abandoning Nebhepetre for Sematawy, "He Who Unifies the Two Lands," a title that proclaimed what his armies had finally achieved. He is the conqueror who marched north from Thebes to crush the Herakleopolitan dynasty, the rival kings who had ruled Lower Egypt from their capital near the Faiyum, and who desecrated the sacred necropolis of Abydos in an act of sacrilege that gave Mentuhotep the moral justification for total war. He is the builder of the mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, the terraced complex called Akh-sut Nebhepetre - "Transfigured are the places of Nebhepetre" - that combined tomb, temple, and royal cult in a design so revolutionary that Hatshepsut would copy it five hundred years later. He is the king who was depicted with pitch-black skin in his temple reliefs, not because of his ethnicity but because black was the colour of Osiris, the green-skinned god of resurrection, and of the fertile silt that the Nile flood deposited on Egypt's fields. He is the pharaoh who buried six young women, priestesses of Hathor, in shrines within his own temple, their ages ranging from five to twenty-two, a mystery that has puzzled Egyptologists for a century. And he is the founder of a dynasty that would rule for four hundred years, the man who proved that Egypt could fall apart and be put back together again. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Mentuhotep II Mentuhotep II was born into the Eleventh Dynasty, a line of Theban princes who had gradually expanded their power from the city of Amun up the Nile valley during the chaos of the First Intermediate Period. His father was Intef III, the Theban king who had pushed the northern frontier as far as the Tenth Nome, near the city of Asyut, where the forces of Thebes met the armies of Herakleopolis in a militarised border that divided Egypt in two. His mother was Queen Iah, a woman whose name meant "Moon" and who may have been a priestess of Hathor, the cow goddess of motherhood, music, and joy. The Theban kings claimed descent from a family of local princes, and Mentuhotep II took care to emphasise this lineage in inscriptions at Wadi Shatt el-Rigal and at the temple of Montu in Tod, where he depicted himself alongside the Intef family. Whether this genealogy was genuine or politically convenient, it served to legitimise his rule as the heir of a Theban tradition rather than a usurper from the south. When Mentuhotep II ascended the throne around 2055 BCE, Egypt had been divided for more than a century. The Old Kingdom, the age of pyramid builders that had lasted from the Third to the Sixth Dynasty, had collapsed under the weight of climate change, administrative decay, and the rise of powerful provincial governors called nomarchs who had stripped the pharaoh of his authority. The Ninth and Tenth Dynasties, based at Herakleopolis in Lower Egypt, controlled the Delta and the northern Nile valley, while the Eleventh Dynasty at Thebes ruled the south. The two kingdoms existed in a state of armed peace, raiding each other's borders and competing for control of the trade routes and the fertile lands between them. For the first fourteen years of his reign, Mentuhotep II consolidated his hold on Upper Egypt, defeating loyalists to Herakleopolis and absorbing nomadic groups into his territory. Then, around his fourteenth regnal year, the Herakleopolitan kings committed an act that changed the course of the war: they desecrated the royal necropolis of Abydos, the sacred burial ground of the First Dynasty kings who had unified Egypt three thousand years earlier, and the cult centre of Osiris, the murdered god whose resurrection was the foundation of Egyptian belief in eternal life. The desecration was an act of sacrilege so profound that it gave Mentuhotep II both the moral justification and the popular support he needed to launch a war of total conquest. He dispatched his armies north, and after years of campaigning, his forces captured Herakleopolis and destroyed the rival dynasty. By his thirty-ninth regnal year, Egypt was unified once more, and Mentuhotep II changed his Horus name to Sematawy, "He Who Unifies the Two Lands," a title that no pharaoh had borne since the First Dynasty. The reunification was not merely military. Mentuhotep II reformed the Egyptian government to prevent the decentralisation that had caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom. He stripped the nomarchs of much of their power, replacing provincial governors with loyal appointees from Thebes who answered directly to the crown. He created new governmental posts, sent officials from the capital to tour the provinces regularly, and recentralised the administration, the army, and the priesthoods under royal control. He promoted the cult of Amun, the local god of Thebes, to national prominence, a decision that would have profound consequences two hundred years later when the Theban priesthood of Amun became the wealthiest and most powerful religious institution in Egypt. He also restored trade, sending expeditions to Punt on the Red Sea coast for incense and myrrh, and to Byblos on the Phoenician coast for cedar timber. The most enduring monument of Mentuhotep II's reign is his mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, a site on the west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes, nestled in a natural amphitheatre of cliffs that the Egyptians called geser, "the sacred." The temple, named Akh-sut Nebhepetre, was unlike anything that had come before it. It combined elements of the Old Kingdom pyramid complex - a valley temple on the water's edge, a causeway, and a mortuary temple - with the saff tomb tradition of his Theban predecessors, whose rock-cut tombs were fronted by rows of pillars. The result was a terraced complex that rose in stages from the valley floor to the cliff face, with a central core that may have been a symbolic pyramid or a mastaba-like structure, surrounded by colonnades, courtyards, and gardens planted with sycamore and tamarisk trees. A one-hundred-and-fifty-foot causeway led from the valley temple up to the main courtyard, lined with Osirian statues of the king. The temple was revolutionary not only in architecture but in theology. It was the earliest mortuary temple in which the king was explicitly identified with Osiris, the god of resurrection. The walls were decorated with scenes of Mentuhotep II smiting enemies, hunting in the marshes, and making offerings to the gods, but the dominant theme was Osirian: the king as the dead god who would rise again. Some reliefs show him with pitch-black skin, wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt and a divine beard, his legs swollen in a manner that some scholars have interpreted as elephantiasis but that may simply be an artistic convention emphasising his connection to the black, fertile silt of the Nile and to Osiris himself. The temple also housed the first known cult of Hathor at Deir el-Bahri, establishing the site's sacred association with the goddess that would endure for a thousand years. One of the most intriguing features of the temple is the Bab el-Hosan, the "Gate of the Horseman," an underground passage discovered in 1900 when Howard Carter, the archaeologist who would later find the tomb of Tutankhamun, was riding through the temple courtyard and his horse stumbled on uneven ground, revealing a hidden entrance. Carter entered the passage, which extended one hundred and fifty metres into the rock, and found a chamber containing a seated statue of the king wrapped in linen and a wooden coffin that bore no name. The statue, now one of the treasures of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, shows Mentuhotep II seated and wearing a heb-sed cloak, the garment of the jubilee festival that renewed the king's divine power. The chamber may have been intended as the king's original burial place before the plan was changed, making it an early form of Osirian cenotaph, a symbolic tomb for a god who would not stay dead. At the back of the temple, behind the central terrace, six shrines were erected for young women who were buried within the complex. All six were identified as "unique royal favourites and priestesses of Hathor," and their ages at death ranged from approximately five to twenty-two years. Their names were Ashayet, Kawit, Henhenet, Kemsit, Sadeh, and one whose name is lost. Each had a limestone shrine decorated with carved reliefs and painted in bold colours, and behind each shrine lay a tomb with a stone sarcophagus. The sarcophagus of Ashayet, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, retains much of its original colour and shows the lady seated and holding a lotus flower to her nose while a scribe reads a liturgy to her. Why these six young women were given the honour of burial in the king's temple remains a mystery. Some scholars suggest they were symbolic companions for the king in the afterlife, human substitutes for the paddle dolls that were traditionally placed in tombs to entertain the deceased. Others believe they may have been members of the royal family or the king's wives, though only Queen Tem, the mother of his successor Mentuhotep III, is known to have held the title of Great Royal Wife. Mentuhotep II reigned for fifty-one years according to the Turin King List, one of the longest reigns in Egyptian history, and died around 2004 BCE. He was succeeded by his son Mentuhotep III, who continued the dynasty for a brief period before the Twelfth Dynasty, founded by Amenemhat I, moved the capital to Itjtawy near the Faiyum and began the classical phase of the Middle Kingdom. But it was Mentuhotep II's reunification that made the Middle Kingdom possible, and his temple at Deir el-Bahri that provided the architectural model for Hatshepsut's terraced masterpiece five centuries later. The Egyptians remembered him as one of their three great national heroes, alongside Menes, the founder of the First Dynasty, and Ahmose I, the founder of the New Kingdom. Summary Mentuhotep II endures as the phoenix of Egyptian history, the king who proved that a civilisation could collapse into chaos and rise again stronger than before. From the desecration of Abydos to the capture of Herakleopolis, from the black-skinned Osiris of Deir el-Bahri to the six young priestesses buried in his temple, his fifty-one-year reign marks the hinge between the age of pyramids and the classical Middle Kingdom. A detail worth remembering: Howard Carter discovered the Bab el-Hosan not by scholarly deduction but because his horse tripped, a stumble that revealed a king's hidden chamber and foreshadowed the greatest archaeological discovery of the twentieth century. In the human imagination, Mentuhotep II remains the eternal reunifier, the proof that even when a kingdom is shattered into pieces, a single will can forge it whole again. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Mentuhotep II 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 Deir el-Bahri Location Deir el-Bahri Herakleopolis Location Herakleopolis Intef III Person Intef III 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 Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Tombos Stela and related campaign inscriptions (11th Dynasty, c. 2041 BCE) - records of the war against Herakleopolis and the reunification - Inscriptions from the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II, Deir el-Bahri (11th Dynasty, c. 2055-2004 BCE) - the Osirian theology and the king's black skin - Bab el-Hosan statue, Egyptian Museum JE 36195 (11th Dynasty, c. 2055-2004 BCE) - seated statue of Mentuhotep II discovered by Howard Carter in 1900 - Sarcophagus of Ashayet, Egyptian Museum (11th Dynasty, c. 2055-2004 BCE) - decorated sarcophagus from the temple's royal female burials - Turin King List (19th Dynasty, c. 1200 BCE) - records a 51-year reign for Mentuhotep II - Wadi Shatt el-Rigal graffiti (11th Dynasty, c. 2055-2004 BCE) - Mentuhotep II's claim of descent from the Intef family - Manetho, Aegyptiaca (c. 3rd century BCE) - Mentuhotep II remembered as a great national hero alongside Menes and Ahmose - Dieter Arnold, The Temple of Mentuhotep at Deir el-Bahari (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979) - the definitive architectural study of the mortuary temple - Herbert E. Winlock, Excavations at Deir el Bahri: 1911-1931 (Macmillan, 1942) - the original excavation report - Dorothea Arnold, "The Destruction of the Tombs of the Thinite Nomarchs," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 77 (1991) - the desecration of Abydos and its political consequences - Nicolas Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt (Blackwell, 1988) - Mentuhotep II's reunification and the founding of the Middle Kingdom - Ian Shaw, ed., The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford UP, 2000) - the First Intermediate Period and Mentuhotep II's reforms Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Danae, the Greek princess imprisoned in bronze, visited by Zeus as golden rain, cast into the sea and destined to become mother of the hero Perseus. Previous Greek Next > Danae Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Δανάη (Danaē) Pronunciation DAN-uh-ee Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Golden Bride, The Prisoner of Bronze, The Mother of Perseus, The Castaway Queen, The Rain-Bearer, The Accidental Oracle Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Greek Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Female Time Period c. 8th century BCE (literary attestation) Symbol Shower of Gold & Chest Tags greek, danae, person, perseus, acrisius, argos, zeus, golden-rain, seriphos, medusa Introduction - Overview Danae is the golden bride of Zeus, the Argive princess locked in a tower of bronze who was impregnated by a shower of gold and gave birth to the greatest monster-slayer Greece ever produced. She is the daughter of Acrisius, the king of Argos who feared his grandson more than any enemy, and the mother of Perseus, the hero who beheaded the Gorgon Medusa and rescued the princess Andromeda from a sea monster. She is the prisoner who survived a bronze cell, a wooden coffin cast into the sea, and the unwanted advances of a king, and who lived to see her son turn his enemies to stone. She is the woman whose beauty was so great that Zeus himself could not resist her, and whose story proved that no tower, no ocean, and no tyrant could stop a child of the gods from fulfilling his destiny. And she is the only mother in Greek mythology who outlived every danger thrown at her, from her father's paranoia to a king's lust, and who watched her son grow from a castaway infant into the founder of a dynasty. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Danae Danae was born in Argos, the ancient city in the northeastern Peloponnese, the only child of King Acrisius and his queen Eurydice. Her father was a descendant of Danaus, the legendary king who had fled from Egypt with his fifty daughters, the Danaids, and established his line in Argos. Acrisius ruled wisely but without a male heir, and when Danae grew to womanhood, he became obsessed with the question of who would succeed him. He travelled to Delphi, the most famous oracle in the Greek world, where a priestess called the Pythia sat above a chasm and spoke prophecies inspired by the god Apollo. The oracle gave him a terrible answer: Acrisius would have no sons, and the son of Danae would one day kill him. The king's response was to imprison his daughter. He commissioned a tower or chamber of bronze, or in some accounts of brass, with a single high window that let in light but nothing else. Danae was shut inside with her nurse, and Acrisius posted guards at every entrance. No man was permitted to see her, and no suitor was allowed to approach. The king believed that bronze could keep out both mortal men and the gods themselves, but he was wrong. Zeus, the king of the gods whose thunderbolt shook Mount Olympus, desired Danae and found a way to reach her. He transformed himself into a shower of golden rain that fell through the high window of the bronze chamber, pooling around Danae's feet and impregnating her with a child who carried divine blood in his veins. When Danae's nurse discovered her pregnant, she concealed the truth from the king for as long as she could, but eventually Acrisius learned that his daughter was with child. Acrisius did not believe that a god was the father. He accused Danae of secret congress with some man who had bribed the guards, and when she insisted that Zeus had come to her as golden rain, he called her a liar. But he did not dare to kill her outright, for the killing of a kinswoman was among the most terrible crimes in Greek religion, and the Furies, the avenging spirits who punished murder within the family, would have hounded him to madness and death. Instead, he devised a punishment that would shift the guilt to the sea. He had a wooden chest built, large enough to hold a woman and an infant, and he placed Danae and her newborn son Perseus inside it. Then he cast the chest into the sea off the coast of Argos, trusting that the waves would drown mother and child and that the gods, not he, would bear the blame. The chest did not sink. For days it drifted on the open sea, tossed by storms and baked by sun, until it washed ashore on the island of Seriphos in the Aegean Sea. A fisherman named Dictys, whose name means net, found the chest caught in his nets and opened it to discover Danae alive and clutching her infant son. Dictys took them to the house he shared with his brother Polydectes, the king of Seriphos, and there Danae raised Perseus in safety. But safety did not last. Polydectes desired Danae for himself and plotted to remove Perseus from the island by sending the young man on a suicidal quest to fetch the head of the Gorgon Medusa, the monster whose face turned all who looked upon it to stone. Perseus succeeded, returning with the severed head in a bag, and when Polydectes pressed his suit upon Danae with threats, Perseus drew forth the Gorgon's head and turned the king and his entire court to stone. Danae's story did not end on Seriphos. Years later, when Perseus was a grown man and a famous hero, he travelled to Larissa in Thessaly to compete in the funeral games held for the father of the local king. Acrisius, Danae's father, was also present at the games, having fled Argos in fear of the oracle that foretold his death. During the discus throw, a gust of wind caught Perseus's disc and carried it into the crowd, where it struck Acrisius on the head and killed him instantly. The prophecy was fulfilled, but not by malice. Danae had outlived the father who tried to kill her, the king who tried to possess her, and the monster who threatened her son, and she returned to Argos with Perseus to found the dynasty that would one day produce Heracles himself. Summary Danae endures as the most resilient mother in Greek mythology, the Argive princess who survived a bronze prison, a wooden coffin on the open sea, and a king's lust to raise the hero who would slay the Gorgon and fulfil an oracle. From the golden rain that fell through her tower window to the discus that killed her father at Larissa, her story is one of imprisonment and escape, divine desire and mortal endurance. A detail worth remembering: Danae never sought her own legend; she simply refused to die, and in that refusal she gave Greece its greatest monster-slayer and proved that even a locked tower cannot keep out the gods. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Danae 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 Argos Location Argos Acrisius Person Acrisius Perseus Person Perseus 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 Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.2.1-2.4.1 (1st-2nd century CE) - Danae's imprisonment, impregnation by Zeus, and casting into the sea - Pindar, Pythian Ode 12 (c. 490 BCE) - Perseus's birth and the slaying of Medusa in connection with Danae's story - Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 4, lines 607-611 (c. 8 CE) - Perseus turns Polydectes to stone to protect Danae - Hyginus, Fabulae 63 (c. 2nd century CE) - Acrisius's imprisonment of Danae and the prophecy of Perseus - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 2.16.2, 2.25.6 (c. 150 CE) - local Argive traditions of Danae and Perseus - Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) - comprehensive analysis of Danae in early Greek art and literature - Jennifer Larson, Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore (Oxford University Press, 2001) - Danae as nymph-figure and her cultic associations - Deborah Lyons, Gender and Immortality: Heroines in Ancient Greek Myth and Cult (Princeton University Press, 1997) - scholarly study of Danae's role as heroine and mother in Greek tradition Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Phineus, son of Belus, the rejected suitor of Andromeda whom Perseus turned to stone at the wedding feast. | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Phineus (son of Belus) Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Φινεύς (Phineus); Phineus of Aethiopia Pronunciation FIN-ee-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Phineus of Aethiopia, Brother of Cepheus, Andromeda's Betrothed, the Suitor Turned to Stone Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Greek Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek mythology / Perseus and Andromeda cycle / Aethiopian royal tradition Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period Heroic Age; fullest surviving literary treatment in Ovid's Metamorphoses, early 1st century CE Symbol Stone Crown Tags phineus, son-of-belus, andromeda, perseus, medusa, cepheus, petrification, aethiopia, greek-mythology Introduction - Overview Phineus, son of Belus, is the rejected betrothed of Andromeda whose attempt to reclaim her from Perseus ends in petrification. He belongs to the royal house of Belus and, in the later genealogical tradition, is the brother of King Cepheus of Aethiopia. He is the uncle and earlier suitor of Andromeda, but he fails to rescue her when Poseidon's sea monster threatens the kingdom. Perseus succeeds where Phineus does not, kills the monster and receives Andromeda's hand. Phineus then enters the wedding feast with armed followers and turns the celebration into a battle. As the fight closes around Perseus, the hero raises Medusa's severed head and turns Phineus's supporters to stone. Phineus averts his eyes and begs for mercy, but Perseus forces the Gorgon's gaze upon him as well. This is the Phineus of the Perseus cycle, not the blind seer rescued from the Harpies. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Phineus (son of Belus) Phineus belongs to the complicated family of Belus, a king connected with Egypt and Libya in Greek genealogy. Pseudo-Apollodorus says that Belus and Anchinoe had Danaus and Aegyptus and adds that Euripidean tradition also made Cepheus and Phineus their sons. That makes Phineus the brother of Cepheus, the king whose daughter Andromeda becomes the centre of the Perseus story. Other ancient genealogies arrange the family differently, so the Belus relationship belongs to one important branch rather than a single universal family tree. Before Perseus arrives, Phineus is betrothed to Andromeda. The crisis begins when Cassiopeia, Andromeda's mother, boasts that she or her daughter surpasses the Nereids in beauty. Poseidon answers the insult with a flood and a sea monster. An oracle declares that the disaster will end only if Andromeda is exposed to the creature. Cepheus has his daughter chained to a rock beside the sea. Phineus does not save her. Perseus, returning from the killing of Medusa, sees Andromeda and offers to rescue her in exchange for marriage. He defeats the sea monster, frees the princess and receives the promise of her hand. In the logic of the story, action replaces prior claim. The man who risks his life for Andromeda wins the marriage that Phineus expected by arrangement. The conflict erupts at the wedding feast. Ovid gives the fullest surviving version. Phineus enters the palace carrying a spear and accompanied by a large armed following, announcing that he has come to avenge the theft of his bride. Cepheus rebukes his brother and reminds him that Perseus did not take Andromeda from him. The sea monster and the oracle had already taken her beyond Phineus's protection, and Perseus alone acted when the kingdom needed a rescuer. Words become violence. Phineus throws his spear, and the banquet hall turns into a battlefield. Men fight with swords, spears, furniture and pieces of the building itself. When Perseus is surrounded, he warns his allies to look away and raises the severed head of Medusa, the Gorgon whose gaze turns living beings to stone. One attacker after another freezes in the pose of battle until the hall is crowded with statues. Phineus escapes the first sight of the Gorgon because he turns away. Finding his followers transformed, he loses the confidence with which he entered the feast. He admits his fault, yields his claim to Andromeda and begs only for life. Perseus refuses the plea. Instead of killing him with a weapon, he moves Medusa's head into Phineus's line of sight. The prince hardens into stone with the fear and guilt of his final moment preserved on his face. Pseudo-Apollodorus compresses the entire episode into a short notice in which Phineus conspires against Perseus and is turned to stone with his companions. Hyginus preserves a variant suitor named Agenor. The details therefore move between sources, but the central structure survives: an earlier claimant refuses to act during Andromeda's danger, challenges the man who rescued her and is defeated by the supernatural weapon that Perseus brought home from his earlier quest. Summary Phineus, son of Belus, endures as the rejected suitor whose legal claim to Andromeda collapses beside Perseus's heroic rescue. He is remembered as Cepheus's brother in the later genealogy, as the man who failed to face the sea monster, and as the leader who brought armed followers into the wedding feast. Medusa's head turns his warriors to stone before Phineus himself is petrified while begging for mercy. His brief story gives the Perseus cycle a final human antagonist after its monsters are defeated: a prince destroyed not by a beast, but by entitlement, delay and violence. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Phineus (son of 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 Cassiopeia Person Cassiopeia Medusa Creature/Monster/Animal Medusa Cepheus Person Cepheus Andromeda Person Andromeda Perseus Person Perseus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.1.4 - Belus and Anchinoe, with the Euripidean tradition making Cepheus and Phineus additional sons. https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus2.html - Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.4.3 - Phineus as Cepheus's brother and Andromeda's earlier betrothed, turned to stone by Perseus. https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus2.html - Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.1-235 - fullest surviving account of the wedding battle and petrification of Phineus. https://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses5.html - Hyginus, Fabulae 64 and Astronomica 2.9 - Andromeda tradition and variant rejected suitor. - Euripides, Andromeda, surviving fragments and testimonia - classical tragic background to the story. - Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), Perseus section - source history and genealogical variants. - Robin Hard, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology (Routledge, 2004), Perseus and Andromeda - modern synthesis of the traditions. Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Agave, daughter of Cadmus and mother of Pentheus, driven mad by Dionysus to tear her own son apart and carry his severed head in triumph back to Thebes. Previous Greek Next > Agave Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ἀγαύη (Agauê) Pronunciation AG-uh-vee Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Agauê, Daughter of Cadmus, Mother of Pentheus, The Maenad Queen, The Lion-Slayer Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Greek Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Female Time Period Heroic Age; first attested in Hesiod (8th century BCE) Symbol Thyrsus with Head Tags greek, thebes, pentheus, dionysus, maenad, sparagmos, cithaeron, cadmus, euripides Introduction - Overview Agave is the daughter of Cadmus, the dragon-slaying founder of Thebes, and Harmonia, the goddess of concord, a princess whose blood carries both divine harmony and the curse of the serpent her father killed. She is the wife of Echion, one of the Spartoi, the earth-born warriors who sprang from the dragon's teeth sown in Theban soil. She is the mother of Pentheus, the young king who denied the divinity of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, and paid for that denial with his life. She is the Maenad who led the frenzied women of Thebes onto Mount Cithaeron, who tore her own son limb from limb with her bare hands while the god's madness made her see a mountain lion where her child stood, and who impaled his severed head upon her thyrsus and carried it through the city gates in triumph. And she is the woman who woke from divine ecstasy to find herself holding the face of the son she had destroyed, a recognition so devastating that ancient critics cited it as the supreme example of tragic reversal in all Greek drama. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Agave Agave was born into the most cursed royal house in Greece. Her father Cadmus had come from Phoenicia to found Thebes, slaying a great serpent that guarded a sacred spring and sowing its teeth in the earth. From those teeth sprang the Spartoi, armed men who fought one another until only five remained. One of those survivors was Echion, whom Cadmus gave to Agave as a husband. Her mother Harmonia was a goddess, the daughter of Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Ares, god of war, though some say she was the daughter of Zeus and Electra. The marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia was celebrated by all the gods on Olympus, but the serpent's curse shadowed their descendants. Agave's sisters were Semele, who was incinerated when she asked to see Zeus in his true form, Ino, who became a sea goddess after murdering her stepchildren, and Autonoe, whose son Actaeon was torn apart by his own hunting dogs when he glimpsed the goddess Artemis bathing. Agave herself married Echion and bore a son named Pentheus, a name that means "suffering," who grew up to rule Thebes after his grandfather Cadmus abdicated. The trouble began with Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Semele, Agave's own sister. When Semele died in lightning, her sisters spread the rumour that she had lied about her divine lover and had been justly punished for her boast. They denied that Dionysus was a god at all. Years later, when Dionysus returned to Thebes as a grown man, he came in disguise as a mortal priest from Lydia, leading a band of foreign women in ecstatic worship. Pentheus, now king, refused to acknowledge the new cult. He mocked the god, imprisoned his followers, and vowed to stamp out the madness that had seized the women of his city. Dionysus did not strike him down with thunder. He struck him with something far more terrible: the god drove every woman in Thebes into a frenzy, including Agave, Autonoe, and Ino, and sent them racing up Mount Cithaeron to dance and revel in the wilderness. Agave became one of the three leaders of the Maenads, the god-crazed women who roamed the mountain. They nursed wolf cubs and fawns at their breasts, struck rocks with their wands until wine and milk and honey flowed from the stone, and tore apart living bulls and calves with their bare hands, eating the raw flesh in a ritual called omophagia. The messenger who brought word to Pentheus described these scenes with a mixture of wonder and horror. But the worst was yet to come. Dionysus, still disguised, persuaded Pentheus to spy on the women. He dressed the king in women's clothing, arranged his curls beneath a wig, and led him to a tall pine on the mountainside. There Pentheus climbed the tree to watch the rites from above, believing he could observe without being seen. Dionysus reached up, uprooted the tree with a single gesture, and laid Pentheus gently on the ground before the Maenads. What followed was the sparagmos, the ritual dismemberment. The women fell upon the figure before them, but the god's madness had replaced their eyes. They saw not a man in a dress but a mountain lion, a beast to be hunted and torn apart. Agave led the attack. She seized her son's right arm, planted her foot against his ribs, and tore the limb from his body with a strength no mortal woman could possess. Her sisters Autonoe and Ino joined her, and the Maenads scattered the pieces across the mountainside. Agave herself tore off Pentheus's head and impaled it upon her thyrsus, the ivy-wreathed wand of Dionysus, raising it like a hunter's trophy. She called out to the other women, boasting of the great lion she had slain, and led the procession down from Cithaeron toward the city gates. When Agave entered Thebes, her father Cadmus was waiting. He had already gathered the fragments of Pentheus's body from the mountain, and now he watched his daughter approach with the head of her son held high. In one of the most agonising scenes in all Greek tragedy, Cadmus spoke to her gently, asking her to look at the sky, to look at what she held, to name the beast she had killed. He guided her through the fog of divine possession, question by question, until the madness lifted and Agave saw the face on her thyrsus for what it was. The recognition, the anagnorisis, shattered her. The woman who had entered the city in triumph collapsed in the dust, clutching the head of the child she had borne and nursed and destroyed. The final lines of Euripides' play, partially lost to damage in the manuscript, describe her exile from Thebes, her life unclean, her name forever joined to the worst act a mother can commit. In a later tradition recorded by the Roman mythographer Hyginus, Agave's story did not end with exile. She travelled to Illyria, the wild land across the Adriatic, and married a king named Lycotherses. But her nature had not changed. She murdered her second husband in his bed and delivered his kingdom to her father Cadmus, who had also been exiled from Thebes and transformed into a serpent along with Harmonia. Whether this grim epilogue belongs to the older myth or is a later invention, it fits the pattern of the house of Cadmus: every generation born from the dragon's teeth seems destined to kill what it loves. Summary Agave stands as the most terrible mother in Greek myth, the princess who became a priestess of destruction and woke to find her god-given trophy was her own child's face. From the dragon-sown house of Cadmus to the pine tree on Mount Cithaeron, from the wine that flowed from struck stone to the head upon the thyrsus, her story is the story of divine vengeance so complete that it destroys the very vessel it uses. Every tale of madness that masks the face of the beloved, every recognition scene that turns triumph into horror, carries something of Agave in it. She reminds us that the gods do not always punish with lightning; sometimes they simply lend a mother the strength to tear her son apart and the blindness to believe she has killed a lion. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Agave 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 Cithaeron Location Cithaeron Cadmus Person Cadmus Pentheus Person Pentheus Dionysus Deity Dionysus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Euripides, Bacchae, lines 677-774, 1043-1152, 1168-1360 (405 BCE, produced posthumously) - the Maenad rites, the sparagmos, and the recognition scene - Hesiod, Theogony 975-978 (c. 700 BCE) - genealogy of Agave as daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.5.2 (1st-2nd century CE) - compressed narrative of Pentheus' death and Agave's role - Hyginus, Fabulae 184, 239, 240 (2nd century CE) - the sparagmos, mothers who killed their sons, and the Illyrian episode - Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733 (c. 2-8 CE) - Latin retelling of the Pentheus and Dionysus episode - Nonnus, Dionysiaca 44-46 (c. 450-470 CE) - late epic treatment of the Pentheus myth - Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.2.7 (c. 150 CE) - the pine tree on Mount Cithaeron shown to visitors - Dodds, E.R., Euripides: Bacchae (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1960) - standard scholarly commentary on the play and Agave's dramatic role - Seaford, Richard, Euripides: Bacchae (Aris & Phillips, 1996) - commentary on the sparagmos and recognition scenes - Henrichs, Albert, "Dionysus" in Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed., 1996) - Maenadism and the ritual context of the myth Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Supreme musician whose music charmed all living things and even stones. Journeyed to the Underworld for Eurydice, lost her by looking back | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Orpheus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (Ὀρφεύς) Pronunciation OR-fee-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Thracian Bard, Father of Songs, Prophet Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Greek Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period Mythological Age Symbol Lyre Tags greek, hero, music, love, underworld Introduction - Overview Orpheus is the musician whose song was so beautiful that trees bent to listen, rivers changed their courses, and the very stones wept, the greatest bard in all of Greek mythology and the only mortal whose art was stronger than death itself. He is the Thracian poet who descended into the underworld, the realm of Hades, the god of the dead who ruled from the darkness beneath the earth, to reclaim his beloved wife Eurydice from the grip of death, armed with nothing but his lyre and his voice. He is the husband who won her freedom with music that moved the Furies, the dread goddesses of vengeance who tormented the wicked with whips and serpents, to tears, only to lose her forever when he turned to look back before they reached the light. He is the founder of a mystery religion, the Orphic cult, whose followers believed that the soul was divine and imprisoned in the body, and that purification through ritual and abstinence could free it from the cycle of rebirth. He is the poet whose hymns and theogonies were attributed to him for centuries, shaping Greek religious thought as deeply as Homer shaped its epic imagination. And he is the torn body whose head, thrown into the river Hebrus by the Maenads, the frenzied female followers of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstatic revelry, still sang as it drifted to the sea. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Orpheus Orpheus was born in Thrace, a wild and mountainous land north of Greece that the Greeks considered both barbaric and strangely sacred, to the muse Calliope, the eldest and most majestic of the nine Muses, the daughters of Zeus and Memory who inspired poets and musicians, and to Oeagrus, a Thracian king. Some said his true father was Apollo, the god of music and prophecy, whose golden lyre set the rhythm of the cosmos. From his earliest years, Orpheus possessed a gift that no other mortal shared. When he played his lyre, the beasts of the forest gathered around him and lay down in peace, the trees swayed as if dancing, and even the rocks on the mountainside seemed to lean toward the sound. His voice was said to be sweeter than any bird's, and his songs could calm the stormiest sea or stir the most hardened heart. He became the master of the seven-stringed lyre, an instrument whose music was believed to hold the power of harmony itself, and his fame spread across the Greek world and beyond. Orpheus joined 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. When the Argonauts passed the island of the Sirens, the sea-nymphs whose song lured sailors to shipwreck and death on their rocky shores, it was Orpheus who saved them. He played his lyre and sang so loudly and so beautifully that the Sirens' deadly music was drowned out, and the crew rowed past in safety while the Sirens, defeated by a greater song, threw themselves into the sea in despair. On the return journey, Orpheus also helped the Argonauts survive the clashing rocks of the Symplegades, two massive boulders at the mouth of the Black Sea that destroyed any ship that tried to pass between them, by timing his music to the rhythm of the oars and guiding the rowers through the gap. The other heroes wielded swords and spears, but Orpheus wielded sound, and his weapon was no less decisive. The defining tragedy of Orpheus's life was his love for Eurydice, a beautiful nymph of the woods, one of the Dryads, the spirits of trees and forests who were bound to particular oaks and pines and died if their trees were cut down. On their wedding day, Eurydice was dancing in a meadow with her nymph companions when she stepped upon a snake hidden in the grass. The serpent bit her heel, and she died in Orpheus's arms before the marriage was consummated. Maddened with grief, Orpheus resolved to do what no mortal had ever dared. He descended into the underworld, the dark realm ruled by Hades and his queen Persephone, the goddess of spring who had been abducted by the god of the dead and who spent half the year above ground and half below. Orpheus passed the three-headed guard dog Cerberus, who stood at the gates and devoured any who tried to enter or escape without permission, by playing music so gentle that the beast lay down and slept. He crossed the rivers of the dead, the Styx and the Acheron, whose waters carried the souls of the departed, and he came before the throne of Hades and Persephone. There, in the darkness where no living light had ever shone, Orpheus played his lyre and sang of his love for Eurydice. His song was so beautiful that the shades of the dead gathered to listen, forgetting their torments. The Furies, the dread goddesses who whipped and pursued the wicked with burning torches and serpents in their hair, wept for the first time in memory. Even Hades, the stern and unmoving king of the dead, felt his heart soften, and Persephone, who knew what it was to be torn from love, begged her husband to grant the bard's request. Hades agreed to release Eurydice on one condition: Orpheus must lead her out of the underworld without looking back at her until they had reached the light of the upper world. Orpheus walked ahead, his heart pounding, his lyre silent, listening for her footsteps behind him. He climbed through the dark passages, passed the sleeping Cerberus, and saw the first glimmer of daylight ahead. But doubt seized him. Was she truly following? Had Hades deceived him? In the moment before they reached the surface, he turned to look. Eurydice was there, pale and beautiful, reaching for him. But the moment his eyes met hers, she was torn back into the darkness, her hand outstretched, her voice calling his name, and the gates of the underworld closed forever. Orpheus had lost her twice. Orpheus emerged from the underworld alone and broken. He wandered the hills of Thrace, playing songs of mourning so desolate that even the gods turned away in sorrow. He shunned the company of women, and some say he turned his love to young men, teaching them the mysteries of his music and his religion. This rejection of women enraged the Maenads, the frenzied female followers of Dionysus, who roamed the mountains in ecstatic worship, tearing animals apart with their bare hands and drinking wine in wild abandon. They fell upon Orpheus in a Dionysian frenzy, throwing stones and branches at him, but his music was so powerful that the missiles refused to strike him and fell harmlessly at his feet. Finally, in their madness, the Maenads drowned out his song with their own screams and tore his body limb from limb, scattering his pieces across the Thracian mountains. His head, still singing, was thrown into the river Hebrus and carried down to the sea, where it washed ashore on the island of Lesbos and was buried by the locals, who thereafter became the most gifted poets in Greece. His lyre was placed in the sky as a constellation by Zeus, the king of the gods, or by the Muses themselves, so that his music would echo among the stars forever. Summary Orpheus endures as the supreme symbol of art's power over death and its ultimate limits, the bard who moved the gods of the underworld with song but could not conquer his own doubt. From the voyage of the Argonauts to the descent into Hades, from the mystery cults that bore his name to the constellation that carries his lyre, his story weaves through Greek culture as a meditation on love, loss, and the redemptive power of music. Every artist who has ever tried to bring back what is gone, every lover who has ever looked back too soon, walks the path of Orpheus, the Thracian whose song outlasted his life. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Orpheus 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 Calliope Deity Calliope Hades Deity Hades Maenads Group Maenads Eurydice Person Eurydice 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 Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List References Validation References: - Plato, Symposium, 179d (c. 385-370 BCE) - Orpheus's descent and the judgment of his cowardice - Euripides, Alcestis, lines 357-362 (438 BCE) - Orpheus in the underworld - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Book 1, chapter 3.2 (1st-2nd century CE) - Orpheus's parentage and Argonaut voyage - Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 10, lines 1-85; Book 11, lines 1-66 (8 CE) - Orpheus and Eurydice, death of Orpheus - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 9, chapter 30.4 (2nd century CE) - Orphic cult and tomb traditions - Guthrie, W.K.C., Orpheus and Greek Religion (Methuen, 1935) - foundational study of Orphic religion and literature - Linforth, Ivan M., The Arts of Orpheus (University of California Press, 1941) - analysis of Orphic texts and traditions - Segal, Charles, Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) - literary and cultural study of the Orpheus figure Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Aned, the wild hound who ran beside Aethlem through Arthur's hunt for Twrch Trwyth before vanishing with the boar into the western sea beyond Cornwall. Previous Arthurian Next > Aned Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Aned (Welsh) Pronunciation AN-ed Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Breath-Swift Hound, Companion of Aethlem, the Hound of Life, the Vanished Hunter of Twrch Trwyth, the Other Wind-Runner Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Region Arthurian Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Welsh / British / Celtic Category Creature/Monster/Animal Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender N/A Time Period 6th century CE (mythic period); literary tradition c. 1100 CE Symbol The hound running beside its fellow, the paired breath of the chase, the vanished shadow in the mist Tags arthurian, welsh, aned, creature, hound, culhwch-olwen, twrch-trwyth, mabinogion Introduction - Overview Aned is the breath-swift hound of Arthurian legend, the companion whose name may carry the echo of the Welsh word for breath or life itself, and who ran as one half of a matched pair across the greatest boar hunt in Welsh story. It is the dog that Ysbaddaden the Giant demanded alongside Aethlem, its fellow hound, to track Twrch Trwyth, the Irish king turned into a venom-bristled boar by divine wrath. It is the beast that crossed from Ireland to Wales to Cornwall without faltering, keeping pace with Aethlem through gorse and mountain and river mist, two hounds moving as a single breath. It is the hunter that vanished into the western sea when the chase finally ended, swallowed by the same waves that took the boar and its fellow hound, never to be seen by mortal eyes again. And it is the reminder that in the oldest Arthurian world, even the unnamed shadows of legend had their moment of glory, and that the companion who runs beside the hero is sometimes as vital as the hero himself. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Aned Aned appears only once in all of surviving Welsh literature, in the prose tale Culhwch and Olwen, the earliest extended Arthurian story and the longest of the native Welsh tales. The story survives in the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch, fourteenth-century manuscripts preserving a far older tale. In this story, Culhwch, a prince cursed by his stepmother to love only Olwen, must win the hand of the giant Ysbaddaden's daughter. Ysbaddaden, knowing that his own death follows his daughter's wedding, sets Culhwch a list of impossible tasks, the greatest of which is the hunt for Twrch Trwyth, a monstrous boar that was once an Irish king named Taredd, transformed by God's punishment into a creature with venom-dripping bristles and a comb, scissors, and razor lodged between its ears. Among the many wonders Ysbaddaden demands for this hunt are two hounds named Aned and Aethlem. The text gives them no separate histories, no individual owners, no tales of how they came to Arthur's court. They appear as a pair, inseparable in name and function, described as being as swift as a gust of wind and always triumphant when hunting. In a tale where every object and animal has a pedigree and a legend of its own, the fact that Aned and Aethlem appear without backstory suggests that their fame was once so great it needed no explanation. They were simply known, the matched pair whose speed was proverbial across Britain. The hunt itself is the most elaborate chase in medieval Welsh literature. Arthur and his host sail to Ireland and find Twrch Trwyth guarded by seven piglet-warriors, themselves transformed men. The chase sweeps across Britain like a storm. Arthur's warriors drive the boar from Ireland to Porth Clais in Dyfed, through the Preseli Mountains down to the Severn estuary where Cornish and Devon men join the fray. At every stand the boar turns and slaughters knights and hounds by the dozen, yet Aned and Aethlem keep running, two shadows that never fall behind, their breath mingling in the cold air of the chase. The climax comes at the mouth of the Severn. The warriors wrest the razor and scissors from Twrch Trwyth as he wades in the river, but the beast touches bottom and bolts away before they can seize the comb. The pursuit continues to Cornwall, where the boar causes more death than in all previous battles combined. Finally Arthur's men drive Twrch Trwyth into the sea. The comb is retrieved, but the boar escapes into the waves. The tale ends with a line that haunts every reader: it was never known from that day onward to what place the boar went, and Aned and Aethlem with him. The two hounds, still running, vanished into the western ocean alongside the quarry they had pursued across three kingdoms. Aned's legacy is inseparable from that of its fellow hound, yet the name itself hints at something deeper. The Welsh word aned can mean breath or life, and the hound's name may carry this resonance, the breath that drives the chase and the life-force that refuses to stop. Unlike Arthur's own hound Cafall, whose paw-print in stone at Buelt is recorded in the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, Aned leaves no physical trace upon the British landscape. Its monument is the partnership itself, the fact that in the oldest Arthurian tale two hounds were needed where one would not suffice, and that their paired names have survived a thousand years of silence. The companion who is never named alone is sometimes the one who makes the story possible. Summary Aned endures as the breath-swift companion of the oldest Arthurian hunt, the hound whose name may mean life itself and whose story is told only in the shadow of its fellow. From the giant's impossible list to the final vanishing beyond Cornwall, it is the reminder that legends are not only made by heroes who stand alone, but by the pairs who run together, the breath that keeps pace with the wind, and the companion who is never named without its match. It is the hound that proves some stories need two voices to be told at all. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Aned 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 Aethlem Creature/Monster/Animal Aethlem Tro the Boar, Twrch Trwyth Creature/Monster/Animal Tro the Boar, Twrch Trwyth Ysbaddaden Giant Ysbaddaden Culhwch Person Culhwch Arthur (King) Person Arthur (King) Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search Looking for Mythology Insights? The House Was a Battlefield: Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities Ancient Egyptian Protective Deities did not live only in temples. Bes, Beset and Taweret stood at the head of the bed, on the birth wand and at the doorway, ugly and hybrid on purpose so that worse things stayed outside. This Mythopouch insight looks at the household trio and the same habit of hiring fright as a guard in other cultures, from Pazuzu to the gargoyle. They Can Lie: the Nine Muses The nine Muses are not only pretty sisters who hand out songs. This Mythopouch insight goes past the tidy list of arts to the harder claim in Hesiod: their mother is Memory, they can speak false things that look true, and the number nine was not always fixed. Learn what the mountain actually gives, and what it can still take back. The Potion Did Not Invent the Love: Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde did not begin as a Round Table romance. This Mythopouch insight goes past the dragon, the cup and the black sail to ask what the legend is really testing: kinship, accident, and the choice that remains when the potion is no longer an excuse. Click below to view our mythology blog article insights, where we delve into the current Mythopouch Tier regions, and what we think you should know! Sources & Retellings Explore the original mythological Source texts (most from over 75 years ago, some as translated, possibly with mature content ) and Mythopouch's source Retellings (a modern retelling also suitable for 15+ ) connected to this mythological entity. We are growing this resource and will link these in the future; for now, check the References below, then find the Sources or Retellings on those pages! Source Texts List Source Retellings List 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 hunt for Twrch Trwyth and the requirement for Aned and Aethlem - Nennius, Historia Brittonum, c. 829 CE, De Mirabilibus Britanniae section - primary source; earliest reference to Arthur hunting the boar Troynt with his dog Cabal - 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 hunt and the anoetheu tasks - Ford, Patrick K. (trans.), The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales (University of California Press, 1977) - scholarly translation with notes on the Twrch Trwyth episode - Garlick, Susan F., "The Role of Animals in the Mabinogion" (University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 1911) - scholarly analysis noting Aned and Aethlem as "as swift as a gust of wind" and "always triumphant when hunting" - 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 Arthurian context - Guest, Lady Charlotte (trans.), The Mabinogion (J.M. Dent & Sons, 1838-49) - early scholarly translation; records the pair as "Aned and Aethlem" - Loomis, Roger Sherman, The Development of Arthurian Romance (Hutchinson, 1963) - scholarly analysis of Welsh Arthurian traditions and their influence on later romance Cultural Context Notice Mythology developed across different cultures, periods and traditions, and there is rarely one universally accepted version of a story. Mythopouch approaches these traditions with respect while remaining faithful to the complexity of the surviving material. Retellings and educational content may interpret or adapt historical sources, but are not presented as definitive accounts of any culture, religion or belief system. Previous --- End of Record --- Next >