Ancyor is presented in the surviving summary tradition as one of the many sons of King Lycaon of Arcadia. In the standard account preserved in mythographic compilations and summarized in modern references, Lycaon and his sons were notorious for impiety; to test them Zeus visited in the guise of a peasant. According to these summaries, Ancyor and his brothers mixed the entrails of a child into the god's meal (an act of sacrilege and implied cannibalism), whereupon Zeus revealed his divinity or reacted with divine wrath and destroyed Lycaon, his sons (including Ancyor), and in some variants the household by a thunderbolt. Primary classical authors such as Apollodorus and Pausanias are cited in the modern summaries for the broader Lycaon narrative, while Ancyor appears as an itemized name in genealogical lists collected by modern compendia and databases.
No physical description of Ancyor is provided in the available source material; he is treated as a named member of Lycaon's brood rather than an individuated figure with distinct iconographic attributes. The surviving references list him among genealogical rosters of Arcadian princes and give no details of dress, stature, or distinguishing marks. Modern summaries and name-lists likewise do not attribute any iconographic tradition or literary portrait to Ancyor.
The sources do not ascribe any supernatural abilities or ongoing agency to Ancyor; he is presented as mortal. His reported behavior is participation in the collective impiety of Lycaon's sons—specifically the act of serving human entrails to a guest who was Zeus in disguise—which results in immediate divine retribution. The Lycaon cycle in broader tradition contains motifs of transformation and divine punishment (e.g., Lycaon's own transformation in certain versions), but no sources provided here attribute powers to Ancyor himself.
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]Ancyor — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors, 'Ancyor,' Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.wiki
- [2]ToposText: People — Ancyor (Lycaon son list). ToposText entry for Ancyor (son of Lycaon), catalogue of mythic personages.other
- [3]Person: Ancyor (UVic Myth Index). University of Victoria Myth Index, entry 'Ancyor'.other
- [4]Wikidata: Q12872985 — Ancyor. Wikidata entry Q12872985 for Ancyor, son of Lycaon.other
- [5]Lycaon 2 — Greek Mythology Link (name-lists and summaries). Compilation and name-list for Lycaon's offspring; summarizes variants of the Lycaon myth.other