Alectryon

In accounts preserved in later Greek authors, Alectryon is a young soldier or adolescent attendant in the retinue of Ares assigned to keep watch outside the god's bedroom during Ares' secret affair with Aphrodite. When Alectryon fell asleep (or otherwise failed in his duty) Helios (the sun) discovered the lovers and alerted Hephaestus, exposing the affair. Enraged, Ares punished Alectryon by changing him into a rooster; the bird's habit of crowing at dawn is presented as the transformed youth's perpetual role, eternally warning of the Sun's arrival.

As human Alectryon is described in sources as a young soldier or an adolescent boy beloved of Ares who served as a door-keeper or attendant, accompanying the god in company and at private moments. After punishment he is simply described as transformed into a rooster; the sources do not elaborate morphological detail beyond the change into the bird and the rooster's characteristic crowing.

The narrative does not ascribe supernatural powers in the manner of an active agency beyond the transformation. In mythic terms Alectryon's change into a rooster provides an explanatory behavior: the bird crows at dawn to warn of Helios' rising. Earlier human duties (guarding the doorway, attending Ares) are the motivations for the transformation rather than ongoing magical faculties documented in the sources.