Aegialeus

Ancient chronographers and mythographers record Aegialeus in multiple, sometimes conflicting traditions. In Sicyonian king-lists (as cited by Castor and preserved in later chronographies such as Eusebius' Chronicle) he is presented as the first king of Sicyon whose name gave rise to the older toponym Aegialeia (the Peloponnese was said to be called Aegialea after him) and whose reign is given a multi-decade length (e.g., 52 years). In the Argive tradition, attested in genealogical accounts of the Theban cycle and the Epigoni, Aegialeus appears as the elder son of Adrastus and is recorded as the only Argive hero who fell in that war. Later compilers and local historians (Pausanias, Apollodorus in related cycles; Castor and Eusebius in chronography) integrate these versions into king-lists and heroic genealogies, using Aegialeus as an etiological figure tying personal name to landscape and civic origin.

Ancient sources supply no sustained physical or iconographic description of Aegialeus. He is known through genealogies, king-lists and narrative notices (chronographers such as Castor and Eusebius; mythographers and local historians reflected in Apollodorus and Pausanias), which record his social role (king, eponym, son of Adrastus) and his fate (death among the Epigoni) rather than bodily features or costume.

Sources present Aegialeus as a mortal king and heroic-age prince; his distinguishing attributes are social and narrative: founder and eponym in Sicyon, and elder son of Adrastus who fought and fell in the Theban wars as one of the Epigoni. No supernatural powers, magic, or otherworldly capacities are attested in the provided materials — he functions as a legendary mortal whose life and death organize local histories and place-names.