According to Pausanias, when Lebadus came from Athens the inhabitants of the settlement on the adjacent height went down into the low ground and the city was named Lebadeia after him; Pausanias adds that the locals did not know his father but knew his wife's name, Laonice. In later mythographic summaries and genealogical lists Lebadus is sometimes grouped with Eleuther (Eleutherios) and in variant traditions is presented as connected to Lycaon-family material — for example a summary tradition reports that Eleuther and Lebadus were the only sons of Lycaon who did not share in an abomination and fled to Boeotia. These genealogical placements are variant and not attested by Pausanias, who records only the local foundation-eponym tradition.
Extant sources provide no physical description of Lebadus. He appears in the literary record solely as a named ancestral/founder figure mentioned in foundation and genealogical contexts rather than in descriptive narratives, so no details of appearance are preserved in the cited materials.
The sources attribute no supernatural powers to Lebadus. Descriptively, he is said to have come from Athens and to have effected or been associated with a local migration from a height into the plain that resulted in the settlement being named after him; in some later variants he (with Eleuther) is said to have fled an abominable act connected to Lycaon-family legends. Beyond these civic and narrative roles, no feats or magical capacities are recorded in the provided sources.
Eleuther
Eleuther (Ancient Greek: Ἐλευθήρ) is a personal name borne by several distinct figures in Greek myth — including a Curete, an Arcadian son of Lycaon, a possible variant of the divine epithet Eleutherios (linked to Dionysus), and a son of Apollo credited with musical distinction and with founding a local Dionysian cult. The attestations present Eleuther as eponym, cult-founder, performer, and minor mythic personage rather than as a single ontological class of being.
Mideia (Midea)
Mideia (Ancient Greek Μιδεία / Μιδέα) is a name appearing in ancient Greek tradition applied to several mytho-geographic and genealogical figures: notably a nymph described as mother of Aspledon by Poseidon and multiple eponymous or mortal women whose names are attached to towns or genealogies. The name also denotes ancient place-names in Boeotia and Argolis preserved in Homeric and later geographical accounts.
Community Record
- [1]Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.39.2 (Boetia: Lebadeia). Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.39.2; trans. and text accessed via Theoi Classical Texts Libraryliterary
- [2]Pausanias — Description of Greece, Book 9 (UVic mirror). Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 9 (UVic mirror of classical text)literary
- [3]Wikidata entry: Q106616114 (Lebadus). Wikidata: Lebadus described as 'mythical founder of ancient Lebadeia in Greece'wiki
- [4]Lycaon 2 — Greek Mythology Link (summary of variant genealogies). Maicar.com summary of Lycaon traditions citing variant placements of Eleuther and Lebadus in genealogical listsother
- [5]The Roman and Greek Questions: The Greek Questions (summary traditions). Roman and Greek Questions — Greek Questions (contains later mythographic summaries referencing Eleuther and Lebadus as a variant tradition)literary
- [6]Mideia (Boeotia) — background place-name. Wikipedia entry on Mideia (Boeotia) providing context for the older place-name transformed by the Lebadus traditionwiki