In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, Pasiphaë was a queen of Crete, and was often referred to as goddess of witchcraft and sorcery. The daughter of Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse, Pasiphaë is notable as the mother of the Minotaur. She conceived the Minotaur after mating with the Cretan Bull while hidden within a hollow cow that the Athenian inventor Daedalus built for her, after Poseidon cursed her to fall in love with the bull, due to her husband, Minos, failing to sacrifice the bull to Poseidon as he had promised.
In Greek and Roman mythology, a harpy is a half-human and half-bird personification of storm winds. They feature in Homeric poems.
In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Phobetor, so called by men, or Icelos ('Like'), so called by the gods, is one of the thousand sons of Somnus (Sleep). He appeared in dreams "in the form of beast or bird or the long serpent".
In Greek mythology, Caeneus was a Lapith hero of Thessaly.
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 over him 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 Roman mythology, Somnus ("sleep") is the personification of sleep. His Greek counterpart is Hypnos. Somnus resided in the underworld. According to Virgil, Somnus was the brother of Death (Mors), and according to Ovid, Somnus had a 'thousand' sons, the Somnia, who appear in dreams 'mimicking many forms'. Ovid named three of the sons of Somnus: Morpheus, who appears in human guise, Icelos / Phobetor, who appears as beasts, and Phantasos, who appears as inanimate objects.
In Roman mythology, Caieta was the wet-nurse of Aeneas. The Roman poet Vergil locates her grave on the bay at Gaeta, to which she also gives her name. The poet Ovid, working a generation later, provides an epitaph:
Morpheus is a god associated with sleep and dreams. In Ovid's Metamorphoses he is the son of Somnus and appears in dreams in human form. From the Middle Ages, the name began to stand more generally for the god of dreams, or of sleep.
In Greek mythology, Phorbas, or Phorbaceus, may refer to:
Elaine Fantham was a British-Canadian classicist whose expertise lay particularly in Latin literature, especially comedy, epic poetry and rhetoric, and in the social history of Roman women. Much of her work was concerned with the intersection of literature and Greek and Roman history. She spoke fluent Italian, German and French and presented lectures and conference papers around the world—including in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Argentina, and Australia.
Limos, Roman Fames, is the deity and personification of starvation, hunger and famine in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Unlike the other gods of the pantheon, Limos is of indeterminate sex, and was portrayed as either male or female depending on region and cult. They were opposed by Demeter, goddess of grain and the harvest with whom Ovid wrote Limos could never meet, and Plutus, the god of wealth and the bounty of rich harvests.
Thyestes is a first century AD fabula crepidata of approximately 1112 lines of verse by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, which tells the story of Thyestes, who unwittingly ate his own children who were slaughtered and served at a banquet by his brother Atreus. As with most of Seneca's plays, Thyestes is based upon an older Greek version with the same name by Euripides.
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 kin of Phaethon, who lamented his death and was subsequently turned into a swan and then a constellation.
In Greek mythology, Acoetes was the fisherman known for helping the god Bacchus.
In Greek mythology, Leucothoe may refer to the following figures:
In Greek mythology, Lelante is a minor figure, a queen of the Molossians, who was transformed into a bird by the will of Zeus, the god of justice, in order to escape a fiery death.
In Greek mythology, Philaeus is a minor figure, a prince of the Molossians, who was transformed into a bird by the will of Zeus, the god of justice, in order to escape a fiery death.
In Greek mythology, Megaletor is a minor figure, a prince of the Molossians, who was transformed into a bird by the will of Zeus, the god of justice, in order to escape a fiery death.
In Greek mythology, Alcyone is a minor figure who was transformed into the bird bearing her name after she was murdered by her own father Sciron. Her tale is a variation on the more known myth of the kingfisher, starring Alcyone and Ceyx.
