Thesprotus

Two distinct traditions are preserved under the name Thesprotus. In one strand Thesprotus appears as an Arcadian prince, one of the many sons of the impious King Lycaon; in that genealogy he functions as the eponymous hero of Thesprotia and as father of Ambrax (eponym of Ambracia). In the Lycaon cycle Thesprotus and his brothers commit sacrilege (the mixing of a child's entrails into a meal presented to Zeus) and are destroyed by the god's lightning, a traditional archaic myth used to explain divine retribution. In a separate strand a king named Thesprotus rules the country variously localized by sources (a tradition places him in the district of Lake Avernus, other summaries suggest a connection with Sicyon). In that narrative he figures in the Atreidae cycle: Thyestes seeks refuge and Pelopia (daughter of Thyestes) is present; Atreus later encounters Pelopia, mistakes her as Thesprotus's daughter, and obtains the king's consent to marry her. These accounts are presented in classical mythographic summaries and later reference works.

The surviving sources give no physical or iconographic description for either Thesprotus. He is represented in the texts as a named human actor—an Arcadian prince/son of Lycaon in one tradition and a local king in another—without attendant bodily attributes recorded in the cited materials.

No supernatural powers are attributed to Thesprotus in the cited sources. As a son of Lycaon he is depicted among impious nobles who participate in sacrilegious behavior and consequently suffer divine punishment (killed by Zeus's lightning). As the king in the Atreidae-related tradition he performs the mundane political/social role of a ruler who gives consent to marriage and receives refugees; his significance is genealogical and narrative rather than miraculous.