Aleus is presented as son of Apheidas and grandson of Arcas in the genealogical accounts; he succeeds his father as king of Tegea and, after the death of Aepytus, is said to become king of all Arcadia with Tegea as his capital. He is credited as the eponymous founder of the city Alea and as the builder/founder of the sanctuary and cult epithet Athena Alea. His immediate family includes sons (commonly named Lycurgus, Amphidamas, Cepheus) and daughters (notably Auge; some sources also name Alcidice) and his descendants and kin are woven into heroic cycles.
Surviving summaries and sources do not provide a physical description of Aleus himself. Literary and travel accounts note pictorial programs at the temple of Athena Alea (for example scenes featuring Ancaeus on the gable described in Pausanias), but the cited materials do not record any explicit iconographic or bodily depiction of Aleus.
Aleus is not attributed supernatural powers in the cited materials; his role is political, familial, and cultic. He acts as king and founder, establishing or credited with establishing the sanctuary/epithet Athena Alea at Tegea, arranging priestly status for his daughter, making dynastic decisions intended to secure succession, and enforcing measures in response to a Delphic oracle warning concerning his family. His agency is that of a mortal ruler whose actions drive narrative consequences within the heroic-age myths.
Weaknesses
- conditionmortal vulnerability / subject to fate and oracle
- otherfamily curse / fulfillment of Delphic prophecy (oracle that a grandson would kill his sons)
Wards
None recorded.
Heracles
Heracles is the greatest hero of Greek myth whose career bridges mortal hero-cult and full divinization. Celebrated for his Twelve Labours, martial prowess, and travels between the mortal world, the underworld, and Olympus, he functioned as a civic patron, ancestor of royal lines (the Heracleidae), and object of cult that treated him both as chthonic hero and as god.
Argonauts
A band of human heroes in Greek myth who sailed aboard the ship Argo under Jason to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece. Their identity is defined by membership in the celebrated voyage and by shared heroic lineages; membership lists and details vary by source.
Abderus
Abderus (Ancient Greek: Ἄβδηρος, romanized Ábdēros) is a mortal heroic figure in Greek myth closely associated with Heracles, remembered as the youth left in charge of the Mares of Diomedes who was killed by them. He functions as an eponymous local/divine-hero ancestor for the city of Abdera and received funerary commemoration and athletic agones at his tomb.
Acamas
Acamas (Ancient Greek: Ἀκάμας) is a personal name recurrent in ancient Greek narrative traditions applied to multiple human characters (warriors, princes, suitors), once to a Cyclops, and once as a hound's name. Rather than a single supernatural entity, bearers of the name appear episodically across the Trojan War, Theseid, and Theban cycles as mortal actors whose deeds intersect with gods and fate.
Acarnan
Acarnan (Ancient Greek: Ἀκαρνάν) is an anthroponym attested in Greek mythic and epic tradition as the name of at least two distinct mortal figures: a son of Alcmaeon and Callirrhoe, and a human suitor of Penelope from Dulichium. The lexical form also appears adjectivally/ethnically (Acarnanian), linking the word to the region Acarnania; etymologically the name is reported as derived from a Greek fish-name (akarnan).
Acastus
Acastus is a mortal heroic figure of ancient Greek tradition: son of Pelias who became king of Iolcus, an Argonaut who sailed with Jason, and an actor in the post-Argonautic cycle involving Medea, Peleus, and the aftermath of Pelias’s death. He is attested as performing civic and ritual actions (burying Pelias, instituting funeral games, purifying Peleus) and as a participant in vendetta episodes that end in violent reprisals.
Acmon
Acmon (Ancient Greek: Ἄκμων, 'anvil') is a polyvalent personal name in Greek myth borne by several distinct minor figures — a Dactyl (artisan), a Phrygian eponymous king, a mischievous woodland creature, companions in epic cycles (one companion of Diomedes transformed into a bird; an Aenead), and in some brief traditions an alleged father of Uranus. The name therefore functions across artisanal, topographical, trickster, and metamorphosis motifs rather than denoting a single unified supernatural species.
Acrisius
Acrisius (Ancient Greek: Ἀκρίσιος, Akrisios) is a mythic-historical king of Argos in Greek tradition whose narrative is defined by an oracular prophecy foretelling his death by his daughter's son. He is portrayed as a mortal ruler entangled with dynastic rivalry, oracular authority, and the eventual accidental fulfillment of fate.
Aeacidae
The Aeacidae are a dynastic lineage in Greek myth and historiography descended from the hero Aeacus, son of Zeus and the nymph Aegina. The name functions as a patronymic designation for those 'of Aeacus' and is used to claim genealogical legitimacy and political prestige in regions such as Aegina and Molossian Epirus.
Aegipan
Aegipan (Αἰγίπαν / Αἰγίπανος) is an ancient Greek mythological figure associated with goat attributes and with the sea‑goat imagery of the constellation Capricornus. He appears in classical myth as a semi‑divine helper (notably in the Typhon episode) and, in later natural‑history and medieval bestiary reception, the name is applied to satyr‑like or ape‑like wild men in distant lands.
Aegisthus
Aegisthus (Greek Αἴγισθος, Aigisthos) is a mortal member of the House of Atreus in Greek myth who, born of incestuous circumstances and raised by shepherds and a goat, participates in dynastic murder and usurpation — notably the slaying of Atreus in some accounts and the conspiracy (with Clytemnestra) that results in Agamemnon's death — and is later killed by Orestes, an episode that figures in narratives about inherited guilt, vengeance, and the transition from private retribution to public justice.
Aepytus
Aepytus (Ancient Greek: Αἴπυτος, Aíputos/Aípytos, lit. 'steep, high, lofty') is a personal name in Greek myth borne by several legendary kings tied to Arcadian and Heraclid genealogies. The figures named Aepytus function as ancestral/dynastic nodes in literary genealogies and later literary receptions rather than as supernatural beings.
Aeson
Aeson (Ancient Greek: Αἴσων) is a legendary mortal king of Iolcus in Thessaly in Greek myth, best known as the father of the hero Jason. His fate—imprisonment by his half-brother Pelias and either suicide or a miraculous restoration performed by Medea—provides the dynastic and moral background for the Argonautic cycle.
Aethalides
Aethalides is a personal name borne by two distinct figures in ancient Greek myth: one listed among the Argonauts as a son of Hermes and Eupolemeia, and another named among the Tyrrhenian sailors who attempted to deceive Dionysus and was transformed into a dolphin. The sources treat Aethalides as named human mythic personages appearing in separate narrative contexts rather than as a class of supernatural being.
Community Record
- [1]Aleus — Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 'Aleus'wiki
- [2]Wikidata entry Q1536527. Wikidata: Aleus (Q1536527)other
- [3]The Museum of the Goddess Athena — Tegea. Pausanias and temple program summaries as cited on 'Museum of the Goddess Athena' site (Tegea: Athena Alea)other
- [4]Aleus in Greek Mythology - Greek Legends and Myths. GreekLegendsAndMyths.com, 'Aleus in Greek Mythology'folk
- [5]Telephos (summary). Telephos summary page (accounts of Auge and Telephus variants)other
- [6]Cepheus (son of Aleus) — Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 'Cepheus (son of Aleus)'wiki
- [7]Sophocles, Aleadae: a Reconstruction (article). Scholarly reconstruction discussing the Aleadae traditions and variantsacademic