Athamas
The son of Aeolus; king of Orchomenus in Boeotia. By his first wife, Nephele, whom he married at Hera’s command, Athamas became the father of Phrixus and Helle, but he secretly loved Ino, the daughter of Cadmos and Harmonia, and took her as his second wife; she bore him two sons, Learchus and Melicertes. In her jealousy Ino plotted the deaths of Phrixus and Helle.
She roasted the corn seed so that the crops failed, and when Athamas sent to Delphi to find out how to appease the gods, Ino bribed the returning messengers to say that the god had ordered the sacrifice of Phrixus. Just as Athamas was about to carry out the sacrifice he thought had been ordered by the god, Hermes sent a winged ram that carried Phrixus and Helle away on its back. Helle fell off on the journey into the stretch of water that was thenceforth known as the Hellespont, but Phrixus reached the safety of Colchis, where he sacrificed the ram to Zeus and gave the fleece to Aeetes, who hung it in a grove sacred to Hermes, and there the fleece turned to gold. This Golden Fleece later became the object of the quest undertaken by Jason and the Argonauts.
Meanwhile, Zeus had sent the infant Dionysos, born from the ashes of Ino’s sister, Semele, to be brought up by Athamas and Ino. In her anger Hera drove the couple mad, and
Athamas shot Learchus thinking him to be a deer (or a lion cub), and Ino jumped with Melicertes into the Saronic Gulf. Both were transformed into sea deities, with Ino becoming Leucothea and Melicertes becoming Palaemon, though some accounts call Palaemon a hero rather than a deity.
Athamas was forced into exile and fled to Thessaly, where he took Themisto as his third wife. However, Euripides places this marriage at home. Also in Euripides’ account, Ino meanwhile had become a bacchant on Mount Parnassus, and it was from there that Athamas brought her home. Themisto planned to kill Ino’s children but was tricked by the nurse into killing her own. Athamas and Ino were then both sent mad, killing their own children as before.
In his old age Athamas was nearly sacrificed as a scapegoat by the people of Achaea in Thessaly, but Phrixus’s son, Cytissorus, rescued him (Heracles, according to Sophocles in his lost Athamas Crowned). After that Athamas returned to Orchomenus and was given sanctuary by King Andreus until his death.
Athamas Crowned
Greek
Lost work by Sophocles that tells the story of Athamas and how in old age he was saved by Heracles from being sacrificed as a scapegoat by the Achaeans in Thessaly. After that Athamas returned to Orchomenus and was given sanctuary by King Andreus until his death.
Athen~e, ~a
One of the 12 great Olympian deities and one of the most popular. Athene was the virgin goddess of war, industry, arts, and crafts. She is the embodiment of wisdom, protectress (and eponym) of Athens and other cities, and identified by the Romans with Minerva. Her name is pre-Hellenic, being referred to in the Mycenaean Linear B texts as Atana potina, probably a specialized form of the mother goddess. When the Achaeans entered pre-Hellenic Greece they brought a young warrior goddess who bore the titles Core or Kore (girl), Parthenos (virgin), and Pallas (maiden), the last seeming to be the most common. It is perhaps related to pallax (cf. modern Greek pal-likari, meaning "a young brave"), thus meaning "maiden" or "female brave." Another common yet unexplained title is Tritogeneia, perhaps being derived from her supposed birth on the shores of a lake named Triton.
Circa 1700 B.C. she was identified with a much older, pre-Hellenic "Palace Goddess" who was worshipped in Crete. This goddess was one aspect of the Great Goddess who was revered not for motherhood but for feminine intuition. Thus the complex Pallas Athene was not only the patroness of women’s arts, such as weaving, protectress of agriculture, and inventor of plough, rake, and ox-yoke but also a formidable warrior and a wise, able tactician. Yet she was an urban, civilized goddess, which accounted for her popularity among the people.
The centers of her cult were Attica and Athens, her chief cult center, where she was worshipped as Polias (of the city), Poliouchos (protector of the city), Parthenos (virgin), and Promachos (defender). Her temple on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to "Athene Parthenos," the Parthenon. It was erected between 447 B.C. and 438 B.C. under Pericles’ administration, the work of the architect Iktinos, and housed the giant Chryselephantine statue of Athene sculpted by Phidias or his school. Other pre-Hellenic acropolises were sacred to Athene, and her worship flourished in Sparta, Corinth, Argos, and Thebes. At Athens the Panathenaic festival, during which the statue of Athene was decked in new robes, was celebrated every four years beginning in 566 B.C. She is also frequently identified with Nike, and it is possible that this might have been her surname.
In Homer she is regularly given the epithet glaukopis, often translated as "gray-eyed" but possibly meaning "owl-faced," alluding to her sacred bird, with which she is sometimes depicted. She is always portrayed in art wearing armor, including a shield, her aegis, with gorgoneion and edged with the Gorgon’s snaky locks. Sometimes the aegis is shown as a goatskin edged with the snake’s hair of the Gorgon in which she is draped, though she occasionally borrowed the goatskin aegis, usually accepted as being that of Zeus. Due to these associations she also sometimes has the epithet gorgopis, "gorgon-faced." The olive was sacred to her, and the snake was another attribute. Legends of her birth reveal how the heretofore patriarchal Hellenes made theirs a matriarchal society.
In mythology she was said to be the daughter of Zeus and his first wife, the Oceanid Metis, whom Zeus swallowed after an oracle foretold that the child she carried was a girl (Athene) but that if she had another child it would be a son who would overthrow him, as Zeus had his father. Later, while walking by Lake Triton he suffered an agonizing headache. Hermes, realizing the cause, persuaded Hephaistos (Prometheus, according to some) to split open Zeus’s skull. From the opening Athene sprang, full-grown and armed.
When Ge created the monstrous Typhon to exact her revenge on Olympus for the destruction of the giants, Athene—single-handedly destroying two of the most violent, Enceladus and Pallas—fled to Egypt, the other gods taking animal forms. She alone remained undaunted and persuaded Zeus to attack Typhon; Zeus eventually prevailed with his thunderbolts and buried Typhon under Mount Etna, which still breathes fire. During the war against the Titans Athene hurled the dragon Draco into the sky, where it became wrapped around the northern celestial pole and formed the constellation Draco.
She plays a leading part in Homer’s Odyssey, often in disguise, as the adviser of the cunning Odysseus, whose craftiness was due to her wisdom. She is also an important figure in Homer’s Iliad, where she is shown fighting on the side of the Greeks. In one notable scene she restrains Achilles from venting his anger on Agamemnon, tugging his hair.
Her association with Athens began with a contest between her and Poseidon for possession of the land during the reign of Cecrops, who awarded it to the goddess, for her gift of an olive tree was judged the better. Hephaistos attempted to rape Athene but failed, his semen spilling onto the Acropolis and producing the child Erichthonius. Yet she is associated with Hephaistos thanks to her patronage of craftsmen, and as such she is afforded the title Hephaistia. When Poseidon and Athene again contested earthly possession, this time over Troezen, Zeus judged that they should share it equally.
As the goddess of war she proved herself on one occasion to be superior to Ares, the god of war, another indicator of the dominant matriarchal nature of the Hellenes.
Athene was responsible for the creation of the hideous Gorgons—Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale, originally the beautiful daughters of Phorcys and Ceto. Living in Libya, Medusa lay with Poseidon in one of the temples of Athene, and the enraged goddess changed Medusa’s appearance to that of a winged monster with brazen claws and serpents for hair, so hideous that she turned to stone all who gazed at her.
Eager to help Perseus vanquish her enemy Medusa, Athene provided him with a polished shield that enabled him to see Medusa only as a reflection. She then petitioned the other gods for their help. Hermes provided him with a sickle and told him how to obtain winged sandals, a magic bag in which to carry Medusa’s head, and Hades’ helmet of invisibility. After Perseus killed Medusa Athene invented flute-playing from the sound of the wailing Stheno and Euryale. When Perseus gave her the head of the Gorgon she placed it as the central, petrifying image of her aegis, in this case meaning her shield.
She helped many major heroes in completing their tasks. She advised Bellerophon to catch the winged horse Pegasus, and gave him a golden bridle, which he flung over the horse’s head when he captured it; astride this flying steed he easily shot the Chimaera. She also helped Jason and the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece by personally building an oracular beam into the prow of their ship, the Argo Navis. The hero she helped most, however, seems to be Heracles.
During his sixth labor, freeing the marshy lake of Stymphalia in Arcadia of the man-eating Stymphalian birds, Athene helped Heracles flush the birds into the air so that the hero could shoot them. Athene also helped Heracles during his twelfth labor when, with the additional help of Hermes, she guided the great hero down to Tartarus, where he obtained Hades’ permission to carry away Cerberus. Having then taken part in the Trojan War, Athene led Heracles to Phlegra, where he helped the gods in their fight against the giants (chronologically this event occurred before the great hero’s birth).
She advised Cadmos to sow the teeth of the dragon he had slain; immediately sprang up the Sparti, or "Sown Men," who were fully armed and fought with each other until only five survived. These five were the ancestors of Thebes, and with their help Cadmos built the Cadmea. At Cadmos’s wedding to Harmonia, which the gods attended, Athene gave the bride a magic robe that conferred divine dignity.
She was, however, less kind to other mortals. When Tiresias accidentally came across her while she was bathing, she instantly struck him blind, although by way of consolation she bestowed on him the power to foretell the future. During the campaign of the Seven Against Thebes, Tydeus, wounded by Melanippus, might have been saved by Athene with an elixir given to her by Zeus. However, Amphiaraus persuaded him to drink the brains of the dead Melanippus, which so disgusted Athene that she left him to die.
Athene was challenged to a weaving contest by the unfortunate Arachne, whose work— clearly better than that of Athene—was torn up by the angry goddess. Arachne hanged herself, and Athene turned her into a spider; she also transformed either Arachne’s hanging rope or her weaving into a cobweb.
Yet Athene was helpful to Orestes when, pursued by the Erinnyes, he reached Athens and embraced the image of Athene in her temple on the Acropolis. She then summoned the Areopagus, the court she established, as she preferred to settle quarrels peaceably, where Apollo defended him against the Erinnyes on the grounds that motherhood is less important than fatherhood. Here her casting vote acquitted him finally of any guilt for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra. The furious Erinnyes were then pacified by Athene, who persuaded them to accept a grotto in Athens where they would be offered sacrifices, libations, and first fruits. Thenceforth they were known by the euphemistic title of Eumenides, the "well-meaning."
When Athene attended the wedding of Peleus and Thetis with all the other gods (save Eris), she was one of three goddesses (with Hera and Aphrodite) who vied for ownership of the golden Apple of Discord that the vengeful Eris threw into the gathered congregation. Zeus decreed that to solve the problem Hermes should lead the three goddesses to Mount Ida for Paris to judge the dispute.
There the goddesses tried to bribe Paris. Athene offered him fame in war, Hera rule in Asia; Aphrodite offered him as his wife the most beautiful of all women, Helen, and so Paris awarded her ownership of the apple. This ultimately led to the Trojan War, in which Athene actively sided with the besieging Greeks.
The stratagem of the Wooden Horse was just one instance where the goddess was involved. The horse was built under her supervision by Epeius (after a plan devised by Odysseus, whose conscience Athene appears to have been) and bore an inscription dedicating it to the goddess. When the armor of Achilles was awarded to Odysseus (her favorite, it seems) she was offended by Ajax the Greater, and in revenge she sent him mad. When the city fell to the stratagem of the fake horse Cassandra fled to her sanctuary within the city; also, Menelaus failed to sacrifice to her, and so it took him eight years to reach home. She also requested that Zeus command the release of Odysseus by Calypso, who taught the hero how to make a raft on which he could sail home.
However, after Odysseus was 18 days at sea Poseidon wrecked the raft, and only with the help of Athene and Leucothea did Odysseus land on the island of Scheria. From there he finally made it home to Ithaca, where Athene disguised him as a beggar.
The name Pallas features in her mythology in a number of ways. First, it was one of her most common titles. She also killed a giant called Pallas, flaying him to use his skin as the Palladium, a shield. According to Apollo-dorus, however, who seems to be trying to tidy up this tradition, she also had a friend named Pallas (daughter of Triton), whom she killed in an accident. Athene then made a wooden statue of Pallas and wrapped it in her aegis. This Palladium was worshipped in the citadel at
Troy and was one of the most important prizes that the Greeks seized from the captured city. In Homer’s Iliad it was this Palladium that Helenus said must be removed from the city before it could be taken; it was duly stolen by Odysseus.
Athene Nike
An aspect of Athene to whom there is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis.
Athene Parthenos
An aspect of Athene, whose temple on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to "Athene Parthenos," hence the Parthenon. It was erected between 447 B.C. and 438 B.C. under Pericles’ administration, the work of the architect Iktinos, and housed the giant Chryselephantine statue of Athene sculpted by Phidias or his school.
Athens
The capital of modern Greece and of the ancient Greek district of Attica, an area ruled by separate kings until about 900 B.C. Named after the goddess Athene, it is most famous for its Acropolis, which is topped by the temple of Athene Parthenos—the Parthenon, a name that refers to the priestesses of Athene, who lived in a chamber of the temple (built by fifth-century B.C. architect Iktinos). Its friezes display sculptural representations of various subjects, including the Panathenaic Procession that wound its way to the Acropolis. In 394 B.C. the Erechtheion was completed to replace the old temple of Athene built on the site where Poseidon and Athene contested for patronage of the city. The Athenian Acropolis has been inhabited from at least the fifth millenium B.C. but was abandoned by the people to become a sanctuary to the gods after 510 B.C. The whole complex is entered through a grand processional gate, the Propylaia.
The Eleusinian Festival in honor of Demeter and Persephone was probably fully established in Athens by Pesistratus at the end of the sixth century B.C., probably about the time when the cult of Dionysos was introduced. The festivals of the Panathenaea and the Dionysia were both introduced, also by Pesistratus, at about this time. There was an annual procession from Eleusis, about 12 miles distant, to Athens, and those who spoke Greek could be initiated into the final rite of the mysteries. The Thesmaphoria celebrating the foundation of laws was also held in Demeter’s honor, in Athens as well as in other parts of Greece.
The city itself has had a stormy history, with the Romans, Byzantines, Franks, and Turks all making additions and alterations. Originally it was connected to its main seaport of Piraeus by parallel walls, which enable the city to remain in contact with the port during sieges. The temple of Hephaistos (the Theseum) is virtually complete. The temple of Athene Nike (the Victorious) perches in the southwest corner of the Acropolis. The theater of Dionysos was rebuilt in stone during the fourth century b.c. below the wall. After c. 900 B.C. the monar-chial system in Athens and elsewhere was supplanted by an aristocracy; later an immature struggle for democracy led to tyranny before a democratic constitution was established in the sixth century B.C.
The leading role taken by Athens in the war against Persia consolidated its supremacy in fifth-century B.C. Greece, and in this period the arts and sciences flowered. During the next century Athens was weakened by her resistance to Spartan imperialism, but prosperity returned, and once again the arts and sciences flourished. However, in the third and second centuries B.C. the impact of Athens markedly diminished as the power of Rome grew. In 146 B.C. Athens became part of the Roman Empire and existed as a quiet university town.
In legend Athene was said to have formed the court known as the Areopagus in Athens, and it was there that the famous trial of Orestes was held.
Atlantiades
A title given to Hermes as it was said that his mother was Maia, a daughter of Atlas and an embodiment of the Great Goddess.
Atlantis
The legend of the lost island of Atlantis is known from Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, which he claimed to have derived from the writings of Sodon, who in turn got his information from the Egyptians. Many scholars remain skeptical as to whether Atlantis ever existed and believe that Plato invented the entire tale as an elaborate allegory. Not surprisingly, Atlantis is not mentioned in any other ancient source.
The lost island, or continent, was circular in shape, larger than Asia and Libya combined and the seat of an empire that dominated parts of Europe and Africa. The island was divided by concentric bands of water, with a palace of the king on the central island. Plato placed it beyond the Pillars of Hercules in the Atlantic Ocean, thus beyond the limits of the known world at the time. Although the Atlantic Ocean is probably named after it, the topography and structure of the ocean floor rule out the possibility that it ever existed there. Its powerful and virtuous inhabitants having become degenerate, they were conquered by the Athenians, and the island was swallowed up by the ocean in a day and a night.
The circumstantial evidence of Plato’s description has induced many commentators to seek a factual basis. For centuries people were convinced that the New World, discovered by Columbus, was Atlantis. In 1882 Ignatius Donelly published a book arguing that Atlantis had existed and was identical with the Garden of Eden, the origin of all mythology, the alphabet, and more, with its destruction being equivalent to the biblical story of the world flood. However, in Greek mythology this is associated with Deucalion (the Greek Noah whose story seems to derive from the much earlier Sumerian tale of Ziusudra, the son of Prometheus and Clymene) and has no connection whatsoever with Atlantis.
Other interpretations range from the wild reports of lost cities glimpsed on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean (Charles Berlitz) to the dominant theory that the story recalls, in a much amplified form, the destruction of Thera (Santorini) in c. 1450 B.C. by a huge volcanic eruption, far in excess of that of Krakatoa, which caused the abandonment of the Minoan town there and the inundation of the northern coast of Crete. Some even say that the ensuing earthquakes and tidal waves brought about the collapse of the entire Minoan Empire.
A more recent theory relies heavily on the reported topography of Atlantis and identifies the lost island with a marshy region on the lower Guadalquivir River in Spain.
However, Atlantis also has an occult significance, mainly as a result of the writings of W. Scott-Elliot, whose book, The Story of Atlantis, alleged that by clairvoyance he had been able to contact the spirits of the Atlanteans, who stated they had been destroyed because of their addiction to black magic. Through such mediumistic contact the name of one of the high priests of Atlantis has been given as Helio-Arconaphus. In addition, some occultists maintain that both Merlin and Igraine originally came from Atlantis.
Atlas
1. A second-generation Titan, the son of Iapetus and Clymene; brother of Prometheus and Epimetheus and father of the Pleiades, Hyades, and Hesperides by Aethra, a daughter of Oceanos. His name means "much enduring," and his task—a punishment, according to Hesiod, for leading the Titans who revolted against the gods—was to hold the sky upon his shoulders. Atlas was situated in North Africa and identified with Mount Atlas. This task is also found in Hittite mythology, where Upelluri is the giant yoked with the labor. According to Homer he was a marine being who supported the pillars that divided Heaven and Earth. This view is enhanced by the legend that he gave shelter to Amphitrite, who had fled to him to escape the advances and proposals of Poseidon.
Atlas also guarded the Gardens of the Hesperides. When Heracles was sent to fetch the Golden Apples of the Hesperides he asked Atlas to fetch them for him while he held up the sky for awhile. Relieved of his burden, Atlas attempted to trick Heracles into permanently taking over his labor by offering to deliver the apples to Eurystheus himself. Heracles agreed but asked Atlas to momentarily take back the sky while he adjusted his position, but as soon as the sky was back on Atlas’s shoulders, Heracles snatched the apples and ran off as fast as he could.
According to Ovid, Atlas, growing weary of his task, asked Perseus to turn him into stone using the head of Medusa.
Astronomical: The name Atlas has been given to a crater located in the upper western quadrant of the surface of the moon next to that known as Hercules.
2. According to Ovid, the mountain into which Perseus turned Atlas using the severed head of Medusa; also the mountain in North Africa with which Atlas is now identified. It was also the home of the three Graeae, sisters of the Gorgons, and the location of the Gardens of the Hesperides in which Hera had planted the tree that grew the Golden Apples. This garden was guarded by Atlas, the Hesperides, and the dragon Ladon, the apples becoming known as the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, which were the object of Heracles’ eleventh labor.
Atreus
The king of Argos; son of Pelops and Hippodameia, brother of Thyestes, and half-brother to Chrysippus. Chrysippus was abducted and introduced into pederasty by Laius, the king of Thebes. Fearing that Pelops preferred Chrysippus over her own sons, Hippodameia tried to persuade Atreus and Thyestes to kill Chrysippus. When they demurred she herself stabbed Chrysippus with the sword of Laius while the two men lay in bed together, thus setting in motion the ancestral curse on the house of Pelops that lasted for three generations. The two brothers, in a mixture of guilt and confusion, fled and became the joint kings of Midea. Atreus married Aerope and had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, though in Hesiod they are his grandsons, the sons of Pleisthenes, Atreus’s son by his first wife, who were reared by Atreus.
Atreus had promised to sacrifice his first lamb to Artemis, but when a lamb was born with a Golden Fleece, he hid the precious fleece away in a chest. Aerope, who Thyestes had seduced, stole it and gave it to her lover. When the Mycenaeans were told by an oracle following the death of King Eurystheus to choose one of the kings of Midea as their ruler, Thyestes suggested they pick whomever could produce a Golden Fleece. Naturally Thyestes won the throne, but Atreus, knowing he had been tricked, suggested a second test. He proposed that the kingdom should go to whichever king could cause the sun to run backwards. Atreus won, possibly by arrangement with Zeus, and became king of Mycenae; he banished Thyestes, who first tricked Atreus into killing his son, Pleisthenes, though some accounts say this was in self-defense, Pleisthenes being sent to kill Atreus by Thyestes.
Atreus then invited his brother to a banquet, pretending a proposed reconciliation by promising half the kingdom. At that banquet Atreus served Thyestes with a stew made from the flesh of Thyestes’ children, just as his grandfather, Tantalus, had served Pelops to the gods. After the meal Thyestes was shown the heads and hands of his dead children. Angered by the horrible murder the gods sent a famine against Mycenae. An oracle told Atreus to bring Thyestes back to Mycenae, and Atreus, visiting Sicyon in search of his brother, met and married his third wife, Pelopia, daughter of Thyestes, thinking her to be the daughter of King Thesprotus. When Pelopia gave birth to a son, Aegisthus—actu-ally the son of her father, Thyestes—his mother exposed the child at birth, but Atreus, thinking the child to be his own, took him in and raised him.
His sons Agamemnon and Menelaus were sent to Delphi to discover the whereabouts of Thyestes and by chance met him there and brought him back to Mycenae, where he was imprisoned. Aegisthus, just seven years old, went to kill him, but Thyestes recognized the sword as his own. Pelopia then revealed her true identity before taking her own life. Aegisthus refused to kill Thyestes and instead bloodied the sword and told Atreus that Thyestes was dead. When Atreus went to offer sacrifice in thanks, Aegisthus killed him.
Atropos
The eldest of the three Fates and the most decisive. She was the one who insisted that the destiny her sisters had shaped out for a man must be carried through, and she was considered to cut the thread of human life with her shears.
Attica
A wedge-shaped district of ancient Greece; Athens, named after the goddess Athene, was its capital. Bounded on two sides by the Aegean Sea, to the west by Megaris, and to the north by Boeotia, it is now a department of central Greece, and Athens has become the national capital.
According to legend, King Cecrops divided the region into 12 colonies that were united by Theseus under the administrative control of Athens c. 700 B.C. It was also the region invaded in one legend by the Dioscuri (Castor and Polydeuces), who were searching for their sister, Helen, who had been abducted by Theseus. Her hiding place with Theseus’s mother, Aethra, was revealed to the Dioscuri by Academus.
Part of the region was the island of Salamis off the southwest coast near the port of Piraeus of which Telamon was a legendary king.
At~tis, ~ys Greco-Roman A early Phrygian god whose periodic death and resurrection symbolized the end of winter and the return of spring. A youthful shepherd, semidivine, and a beloved attendant of the mother goddess Cybele (some versions make Attis her son), who made him promise chastity and drove him mad when he broke this vow. As a result she caused him to castrate himself under a fir tree so that no other might have him; or, according to Pausanias, he was killed by a boar like Adonis. Yet another version puts his self-mutilation down to the harassment of an overtly affectionate monster. During the spring festival his death was mourned for two days in the spring, when his spirit passed into a pine tree and violets sprang up from his blood, his recovery then celebrated.
His cult became especially popular under the Roman Empire after it was introduced in 205 B.C. In this cult his priests, the Galli, castrated themselves and sought him in the woods during an annual ritual.
Auge
The daughter of Aleus, king of Tegea. She was seduced by Heracles and became the mother of Telephus, king of Mysia, by him.
Augean Stables
The stable buildings in which Augeias (Augeas), king of Elis, kept a herd of 3,000 cattle. They had never been cleaned when Heracles was set the task, as his fifth labor, to clean them in a day. This he did by diverting the Rivers Alpheus and Peneius through the building.
Aug~e(i)as, ~ias
The king of Elis who, accompanying Jason as one of the Argonauts, took part in the quest for the Golden Fleece. However, his main claim to fame is the appalling filth in which he kept his herd of 3,000 cattle in their stables. Thus Heracles was set the enormous task of cleaning them in a single day as the fifth of his 12 Great Labors. He accomplished the task by diverting the Rivers Alpheus and Peneius through the buildings; although Heracles had cleaned thus the stables, Augeias refused to pay the agreed price—one-tenth of the herd. Heracles then made war on him and the Molionidae, defeated them, and made Phyleus, Augeias’s son, king, though one tradition says that Augeias was spared.
Augustus
Great Emperor of the Roman Empire (63 B.C.-14 a.d.). The dead Anchises revealed to his son, Aeneas, the future glory of the city he was to found and its ultimate splendor under Augustus. On the Palatine Hill, Venus presented Aeneas with armor made by Vulcan, which included a shield that depicted the future history of Rome, including Augustus’s great victory at the Battle of Actium.
The son of Gaius Octavius, senator and praetor, and Atia, Julis Caesar’s niece. He became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus through adoption by Caesar in his will (44 B.C.), later receiving the name Augustus (sacred, venerable) in recognition of his services and position (27 B.C.). By way of the naval victory of Actium he became the sole ruler of the Roman world.
Emperor Augustus appears in the New Testament of the Holy Bible in what must be one of the best-known passages: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed" (see Luke 2:1).
Aulis
Ancient Greek town on the Boeotian coast, the Euripus, where the Greek fleet assembled prior to setting sail for Troy at the beginning of the Trojan War. Their first departure ended in the fleet making a false landing in Mysia, the land of Telephus. Having regrouped at Aulis, the fleet was delayed by unfavorable winds, as Agamemnon had vexed Artemis by the killing of a hart. Calchas foretold that only the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, Agamemnon’s daughter, would appease the goddess, and Agamemnon reluctantly gave permission. Some say that just as the knife was about to fall Iphigeneia was snatched from the altar by Artemis and carried off to Tauris, where she became her priestess. Finally the fleet set sail for Troy.
Aulus Vibenna Romano-Etruscan The brother of Cales Vibenna possibly identified with Olus and whose head was uncovered when the foundations for the Capitoline temple were being dug. This Olus, and by association, Aulus Vibenna, was said to have been a local king.
Auriga
Astronomical: "The Charioteer." Recognized since early times and displaying many fine objects, this constellation is usually identified with Erichthonius, the legendary fourth king of Athens whose lameness inspired him to invent the chariot. Alternatively, it is sometimes thought of as Poseidon rising from the sea in his chariot, though Auriga is often shown as a herdsman holding a goat, with two kids nearby.
The constellation lies in the northern celestial hemisphere between approximate right ascensions 7h30m and 4h45m, declination +28° to +56°. Its 1st magnitude alpha star (A Aur) is named Capella, the She-Goat star, said to honor Amalthea, the goat that suckled Zeus.
Aurora
The Roman goddess of the dawn, equivalent to the Greek Eos.
Auster
The Roman name for the southwest sirocco wind, equivalent to the Greek Notus.
Autolycus
The son of Hermes and the mortal Chione who received from his father the gift of being able to make anything he touched become invisible. He was an accomplished thief (Hermes was the god of thieves) and trickster, and using the gift from his father he committed numerous crimes against Sisyphus, stealing a large part of his herds. Sisyphus then marked the hooves of the remaining cattle and thereby caught the thief. He also excelled in swearing and was the father of Polymele, the mother of Jason.
He married Amphitheia by whom he became the father of Anticleia, who married Laertes; thus Autolycus became the grandfather of Odysseus, who he named and who inherited his grandfather’s cunning ways. While visiting Autolycus Odysseus received a wound in his thigh from being gored by a boar. It is also said that Autolycus taught Heracles how to wrestle.
