Sources present Porthaon as a king of Calydon situated in the heroic-age genealogical landscape. Traditions vary: he is described as son of Agenor in some accounts and alternatively as son of Ares by Epicaste in others. He is married in certain versions to Euryte (daughter of Hippodamas) or Laothoe in other lists, and is father to multiple children—most prominently Oeneus—who carry forward the Calydonian and Pleuronian dynastic lines. Compilers and mythographers (as represented in Apollodorus-derived summaries, Pausanias-derived genealogies, and later lists such as Hyginus’ catalogue of Argonauts) preserve him chiefly as a node linking successive generations rather than as the focus of independent cult or legend.
The surviving genealogical and catalogue sources provide no description of Porthaon’s physical appearance. References to him are limited to his status as king, husband, and father; there is no iconographic or bodily detail recorded in the cited material.
Porthaon’s recorded activity is political and genealogical rather than supernatural: he is described as a ruling figure of Calydon and as progenitor of a royal house whose members appear in later myths (notably Oeneus, ancestors of Meleager, and connections to Pleuron). The sources do not attribute magical powers, miraculous deeds, or mythic exploits to him; his significance lies in dynastic succession and family relationships. Variant sources also attribute differing parentage and lists of offspring, reflecting fluid genealogical traditions.
Weaknesses
- conditionnone recorded
Wards
- othernone recorded
Oeneus
Oeneus is a mytho-historical king of Calydon in Greek tradition, remembered as a dynastic patriarch who hosted gods and heroes, received the vine from Dionysus, presided over harvest sacrifices, and whose familial and ritual actions precipitated major episodes such as the Calydonian boar hunt and subsequent dynastic struggles.
Thestius
Thestius (Ancient Greek: Θέστιος) is a mythic, mortal king of Pleuron in Aetolia appearing in Greek genealogical and local‑hero traditions. He functions primarily as a dynastic ancestor and regional ruler whose family and political actions connect several better‑known heroic cycles, and some variants link him etiologically to a river‑name and a tragic domestic death.
*Péh₂usōn (reconstructed)
Péh₂usōn is a hypothetical Proto‑Indo‑European pastoral guardian reconstructed by comparative scholars from parallels in Greek and Vedic traditions. Proposed as a Graeco‑Aryan ancestor‑figure, the reconstruction describes a protector of flocks, roads, and travellers rather than an attested historical cultic personality.
Aba (disambiguation / name-form)
Aba is a polyvalent name-form attested across many unrelated contexts (place names, personal names, animal names, and brief mythological listings). The provided sources do not support a single, coherent supernatural entity called "Aba" and offer no descriptive or ritual material for such a being.
Abarbarea
Abarbarea is a name attested in classical Greek and Roman sources for freshwater nymphs (naiads). The name appears for at least two individual mythic figures — a naiad wife of Bucolion and a naiad counted among ancestors of the Tyrians — and Hesychius records plural forms that may indicate the name was also used as a class-name (Abarbareai / Abarbalaiai).
Abas
Abas (Ancient Greek: Ἄβας, gen.: Ἄβαντος) is not a single mythic being but a recurring personal name borne by multiple mortals and minor mythic figures in Greek epic and genealogical traditions — kings, founders, seers, warriors, attendants, a centaur, and a youth transformed by a goddess. The name is glossed in the sources as 'guileless' or 'good-hearted' and appears across Argive, Theban, Trojan, Euboean, and other local cycles.
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.
Abomination of Desolation
An apocalyptic prophetic phrase originating in the Book of Daniel designating a profaning thing or act that renders the Jerusalem Temple cult desolate; later reused in the Synoptic Gospels as an eschatological sign prompting urgent flight. The term denotes ritual/cultic impurity (Hebrew shiqquts) and is variously interpreted as pagan offerings or altar, a foreign cult statue, or (in some New Testament readings) an acting agent.
Absyrtus
Absyrtus (Ancient Greek: Ἄψυρτος) is a Colchian prince in the Greek Argonautic cycle, son of King Aeëtes and brother or half-brother of Medea. He appears in variant traditions either as a companion taken by Medea during her flight with Jason and murdered/dismembered to delay pursuit, or as a pursuer sent by Aeëtes who is overtaken and slain by Jason; his death functions as a key narrative device in the escape from Colchis.
Acacallis
Acacallis (Ancient Greek: Ἀκακαλλίς; also Acalle) is a mythological princess of Crete in Greek tradition, daughter of King Minos and Pasiphae. She functions primarily as a dynastic and etiological figure: in varying accounts she is mother, by gods such as Hermes (Mercury) or Apollo, of eponymous or founder-figures like Cydon (founder of Cydonia), Miletus, or Lydon/ Lydus.
Acacus
Acacus (Ancient Greek: Ἄκακος) is, in Arcadian Greek tradition, a mortal eponymous founder-king of Acacesium and is remembered as the foster-father who reared the infant Hermes (Mercury) in that local tradition. He is presented in genealogies as a son of Lycaon and functions as a local ancestral/onomastic figure rather than a supernatural spirit.
Academus
Academus (Greek: Akádemos / Hekádemos) is an Attic hero-eponym tied to a sacred grove (Akademeia) on the Cephissus near Athens. In myth he revealed where Helen was hidden to the Dioskouroi, an act said to have saved the city, and the place bearing his name became a long-lived sacred precinct, later the site of Plato's Academy.
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.
Acantha
Acantha (Ancient Greek: Ἀκάνθα, 'thorn') is a late or secondary mythological figure known from modern retellings as a nymph transformed into the acanthus plant. The tale that she scratched Apollo and was changed into a spiny-leaved plant is not attested in surviving classical corpora and appears to be a modern compilation or invention rather than a firmly documented ancient myth.
Community Record
- [1]Porthaon — Wikipedia. Wikipedia: Porthaon (summary drawing on Apollodorus, Pausanias, Antoninus Liberalis)wiki
- [2]Wikidata: Porthaon. Wikidata entry for Porthaonother
- [3]The Fables of Hyginus — Argonauts list (Archive record). Hyginus, Fables (Argonauts list) — Laocoön referred to as 'son of Porthaon, brother of Oeneus, a Calydonian' (summarized in archive record)literary
- [4]King Oeneus in Greek Mythology - Greek Legends and Myths. Genealogical summaries relating Porthaon, Oeneus, and the Calydonian linefolk
- [5]Calydon - Greek Mythology Link. Regional genealogical context linking Porthaon to Calydon and Pleuronfolk