Temenus is presented as a son of Aristomachus and brother of Cresphontes and Aristodemus, one of the Heraclidae who led the final, fifth attack to recover the Peloponnese in the Return of the Heracleidae. Following oracular guidance and with the aid of the guide Oxylus, the Heraclids built a fleet at Naupactus, crossed at the western narrows (Antirrhium/Rhium), fought and defeated Tisamenus son of Orestes, and divided the Peloponnese; Temenus obtained Argos and became its king. Variant local tradition reported by Pausanias names a Temenus (said there to be a son of Pelasgus) as a rearer of Hera at Stymphalus who established three sanctuaries and epithets for the goddess.
Classical sources supplied in these notes do not give a physical or iconographic description of Temenus. He is represented through actions, genealogy, and civic-foundation deeds rather than bodily attributes.
Temenus' capacities are political and military: leadership in the Dorian/Heraclid expedition, consultation and operation under oracular instruction, recruitment of guides (Oxylus), distribution of conquered territory (receiving Argos), and dynastic progenitor status (father of Hyrnetho and ancestor-figure for later lines such as the Temenids/Argeads). He also appears in local-foundation roles in some traditions (founding sanctuaries and assigning epithets to Hera) and in familial/commemorative narratives (the erection of sanctuaries after the deaths of kin).
Weaknesses
- conditionvulnerability to familial betrayal
Wards
None recorded.
Oxylus
Oxylus (Greek: Ὄξυλος) is a name applied to multiple related figures in Greek tradition: a local woodland daimon associated with mountain beech-woods (son of a mountain-god and linked to Hamadryads), a genealogical offspring (son of Ares and Protogeneia in some accounts), and a mortal/foundational king of Elis recorded in regional heroic histories. The traditions treat these referents as distinct but related uses of the same name tied to landscape, kinship, and local founding narratives.
Heracleidae
The Heracleidae (Ancient Greek: Ἡρακλεῖδαι) are the collective descendants of the hero Heracles invoked in Greek myth and historiography as a kin-group whose pedigree justifies dynastic rule and territorial claims. In tradition they are mortal dynasts and legendary founders whose exile, repeated attempts to reclaim ancestral lands, consultation of the Delphic oracle, and eventual 'Return of the Heraclidae' explain the founding of Dorian and other ruling houses in the Peloponnese.
Deiphontes
Deiphontes (Ancient Greek: Δηϊφόντης) is a named mortal figure in Greek mytho-historical genealogies, presented as a Heraclid leader, husband of Hyrnetho, and founder/benefactor associated with a sanctuary at Epidaurus. Sources preserve competing traditions: some make him succeed Temenus at Argos with army support, while others report he settled at Epidaurus after Temenus' death and erected a sanctuary for his wife.
Hyrnetho
Hyrnetho is a mortal woman in Greek mytho-historical tradition, daughter of Temenus and wife of Deiphontes, whose violent death during a dynastic struggle was commemorated with a tomb and a heroum (hero-shrine) and sacred grove shown at Epidaurus and Argos.
*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]Temenus (Wikipedia). Wikipedia, entry 'Temenus'wiki
- [2]Temenus (mythology) (Wikipedia). Wikipedia, entry 'Temenus (mythology)'wiki
- [3]Pausanias, account of Stymphalus (Legendary Passages archive). Pausanias as quoted in the Legendary Passages archive (report of Temenus who reared Hera at Stymphalus)literary