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In Greek mythology the Horae or Horai or Hours were the goddesses of the seasons and the natural portions of time.
In Greek mythology, Peitho is the goddess who personifies persuasion. Her Roman equivalent is Suada or Suadela. She is typically presented as an important companion of Aphrodite. Her opposite is Bia, the personification of force. As a personification, she was sometimes imagined as a goddess and sometimes an abstract power with her name used both as a common and proper noun. There is evidence that Peitho was referred to as a goddess before she was referred to as an abstract concept, which is rare for a personification. Peitho represents both sexual and political persuasion. She is associated with the art of rhetoric.
In ancient Roman religion, Spes was the goddess of hope. Multiple temples to Spes are known, and inscriptions indicate that she received private devotion as well as state cult.
Saint Michael Choniates was a Byzantine Greek writer and cleric, born at Chonae. At an early age he studied at Constantinople and was the pupil of Eustathius of Thessalonica. Around 1175 he was appointed archbishop of Athens, a position which he retained until 1204. In 1204, he defended the Acropolis of Athens from attack by Leo Sgouros, holding out until the arrival of the Crusaders in 1205, to whom he surrendered the city. After the establishment of Latin control, he retired to the island of Ceos. Around 1217 he moved again to the monastery of Vodonitsa near Thermopylae, where he died.
Amphictyon or Amphiktyon, in Greek mythology, was a king of Thermopylae and later Athens. In one account, he was the ruler of Locris.
The hamingja was a type of female guardian spirit in Norse mythology. It was believed that she accompanied a person and decided their luck and happiness. Consequently, the name was also used to indicate happiness, and that is what it means in modern Icelandic. When a person died, the hamingja passed to a beloved family member and thus accompanied a family for several generations, continuing to influence their fortunes. It was even possible to lend one's own hamingja to a friend, as happened when Hjalti Skeggiason was about to leave on a perilous voyage and asked Olaf II of Norway to lend him his hamingja.
The Heracleia were ancient festivals honoring the divine hero Heracles.
Personification is the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person. In the arts, many things are commonly personified. These include numerous types of places, especially cities, countries, and continents, elements of the natural world such as the months or four seasons, four elements, four cardinal winds, five senses, and abstractions such as virtues, especially the four cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins, the nine Muses, or death.
Agrotera was an epithet of the Greek goddess Artemis, the most important goddess to Attic hunters.
Eirene, more commonly known in English as Peace, was one of the Horae, the personification of peace. She was depicted in art as a beautiful young woman carrying a cornucopia, sceptre, and a torch or rhyton. She is said sometimes to be the daughter of Zeus and Themis and sister of Dike and Eunomia. Her Roman equivalent was Pax.
In Greek mythology, Eucleia or Eukleia was the female personification of glory and good repute.
In Greek mythology, Gelos was the divine personification of laughter. According to Philostratus the Elder, he was believed to enter the retinue of Dionysus alongside Comus. Plutarch relates that Lycurgus of Sparta dedicated a small statue of Gelos to the god, and elsewhere, mentions that in Sparta there was a sanctuary of Gelos, as well as those of Thanatos, Phobos "and other [personifications of] experiences of this kind".
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He foretold to all his followers that after his death the temple would cease to be, and even the great and holy temples of Serapis would pass into formless darkness and be transformed, and that a fabulous and unseemly gloom would hold sway over the fairest things on earth. To all these prophecies time bore witness, and in the end his prediction gained the force of an oracle.
Speros Vryonis Jr. was an American historian of Greek descent and a specialist in Byzantine, Balkan, and Greek history.
In ancient Athens, Eleos or Elea was the personification of mercy, clemency, compassion and pity – the counterpart of the Roman goddess Clementia. Pausanias described her as "among all the gods the most useful to human life in all its vicissitudes."
Eustathius was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from July 1019 to December 1025.
Hellas or Ellada is the personification of the nation of Greece, dating back to Ancient Greece. There was a desire for unification in Greece, and Hellas is the only national personification known from that period. She is mentioned frequently in literature but only appears once in the arts of late classical Athens.
Damalis was a coastal town of ancient Bithynia located on the Bosphorus near Chrysopolis. Polybius calls the town Bus or Bous.
References
- ↑ Eustathius on Homer, p. 1279, 39 ff (commenting on Iliad , 22. 451); he erroneously cites Pausanias, who does have a catalogue of personifications honored in Athens (1. 17. 1), but makes no mention of Apheleia.