In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite. His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas a second cousin to Priam's children. He is a minor character in Greek mythology and is mentioned in Homer's Iliad. Aeneas receives full treatment in Roman mythology, most extensively in Virgil's Aeneid, where he is cast as an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. He became the first true hero of Rome. Snorri Sturluson identifies him with the Norse god Víðarr of the Æsir.
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars generally regard these works as spurious, with the possible exception of a few short pieces.
Publius Ovidius Naso, known in English as Ovid, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
In Greek mythology, Adonis was the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. He was famous and considered to be the ideal of male beauty in classical antiquity.
In Greek mythology, Anius was a king of Delos and priest of Apollo.
In Greek mythology, the satyr Marsyas is a central figure in two stories involving music: in one, he picked up the double oboe (aulos) that had been abandoned by Athena and played it; in the other, he challenged Apollo to a contest of music and lost his hide and life. Literary sources from antiquity often emphasize the hubris of Marsyas and the justice of his punishment.
In Greek mythology, Cyparissus or Kyparissos was a boy beloved by Apollo or in some versions by other deities. In the best-known version of the story, the favorite companion of Cyparissus was a tamed stag, which he accidentally killed with his hunting javelin as it lay sleeping in the woods. The boy's grief was such that it transformed him into a cypress tree, a classical symbol of mourning. The myth is thus aetiological in explaining the relation of the tree to its cultural significance. The subject is mainly known from Hellenized Latin literature and frescoes from Pompeii. No Greek hero cult devoted to Cyparissus has been identified.
Picus was a figure in Roman mythology, the first king of Latium. He was the son of Saturn, also known as Stercutus. He was the founder of the first Latin tribe and settlement, Laurentum, located a few miles to the Southeast of the site of the later city of Rome. He was known for his skill at augury and horsemanship.
In Greek mythology, Itys is a minor mythological character, the son of Tereus, a king of Thrace, by his Athenian wife Procne. Itys was murdered by his own mother and served to be consumed during dinner by his father, as part of a revenge plan against Tereus for assaulting and raping Philomela, Procne's sister. His immediate family were all transformed into birds afterwards, and in some versions Itys too joins them in the avian kingdom. Itys' story survives in several accounts, the most extensive and famous among them being Ovid's Metamorphoses. His myth had been known since at least the sixth century BC.
In Greek mythology, Thaumas or Thaumant was a sea god, son of Pontus and Gaia, and the full brother of Nereus, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia.
In Greek mythology, Hippomenes, also known as Melanion, was a son of the Arcadian Amphidamas or of King Megareus of Onchestus and the husband of Atalanta. He was known to have been one of the disciples of Chiron, and to have surpassed other disciples in his eagerness to undertake hard challenges. Inscriptions mention him as one of the Calydonian hunters.
In Greek mythology, the name Halaesus or Halesus may refer to:
In Roman Mythology, Fames is the personification of hunger, who can arouse an insatiable appetite. She was often said to be one of the several evils who inhabit the entrance to the Underworld. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, she lives in Scythia, a desolate place where she scrabbles unceasingly for the scant vegetation there, and at Ceres' command, she punishes Erysichthon with a never-ending hunger. Servius calls Fames the greatest of the Furies. She is the equivalent of the Greek Limos.
Caietae Portus was an ancient Roman harbour of Latium adiectum, Italy, in the territory of Formiae.
Venulus was an ambassador sent by Turnus of Ardea to the Greek hero Diomedes to request assistance in a war against Aeneas. He appears as a character in Vergil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses ; in both epics, he seems to serve as a proxy or counterpart of the goddess Venus, whose name is incorporated in his own. There is no evidence for his existence beyond the Aeneid and Metamorphoses.
In Latin, invidia is the sense of envy, a "looking upon" associated with the evil eye, from invidere, "to look against, to look in a hostile manner." Invidia ("Envy") is one of the Seven Deadly Sins in Christian belief.
In Greek and Roman mythology, Aura is a minor wind goddess, whose name means "breeze". The plural form, Aurae is sometimes found to describe a group of breeze nymphs. According to the late antiquity writer Nonnus, Aura is the daughter of the Titan Lelantos and the mother, by Dionysus, of Iacchus, a minor deity connected with the Eleusinian mysteries, while Quintus Smyrnaeus makes the Aurae daughters of Boreas, the god of the north wind. Aurae was the title of a play by the Athenian comic poet Metagenes, who was contemporary with Aristophanes, Phrynichus, and Plato.
The pignora imperii were objects that were supposed to guarantee the continued imperium of Ancient Rome. One late source lists seven. The sacred tokens most commonly regarded as such were:
In Greek mythology, Hesperia or Hesperie, may refer to the following characters and places:
In Greek mythology, Cycnus or Cygnus was a king of Liguria, a beloved and lover of Phaethon, who lamented his death and was subsequently turned into a swan and then a constellation.
