"Megara (mythology) In Greek mythology, Megara (; Ancient Greek: Μεγάρα) was the oldest daughter of Creon, king of Thebes and possibly, Eurydice. She was the sister of Menoeceus (Megareus), Lycomedes, Haemon, and Pyrrha. In reward for Heracles' defending Thebes from the Minyans at Orchomenus single-handed, Creon offered his daughter Megara to Heracles, and he brought her home to the house of Amphitryon. She bore him a son and a daughter, whom Heracles killed when Hera struck him with temporary madness; in their hero-tombs in Thebes they were venerated as the ""Chalkoarai"". In some sources Heracles slew Megara too, in others,"
"enemy of Apollo, who slew it and remade its former home his own oracle, the most famous in Greece. There are various versions of Python's birth and death at the hands of Apollo. In the earliest, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, little detail is given about Apollo's combat with the serpent or its parentage. The version related by Hyginus holds that when Zeus lay with the goddess Leto, and she was to deliver Artemis and Apollo, Hera sent Python to pursue her throughout the lands, so that she could not be delivered wherever the sun shone. Thus when the infant"
"and Alcmene gave birth to a son named Hercules, who defeated two serpents (sent by a jealous Hera) at a young age and became a hero. After Hercules battles a sea serpent, the villagers thank him, and Iolaus climbs out of a restchair and joins him. Hercules and Iolaus head to Thebes to see Alcmene but Iolaus is a little upset because Hercules takes the credit. Meanwhile, Xena and reclaim the gold stolen by satyrs from a group of travelers in Corinth. Ares tells Xena to stop Hercules from going to Thebes because there is a trap set for him"
"already had a son, Eurystheus, who will be the heir. She visits the Harpies, to determine which child belongs to Amphitryon and which belongs to Zeus. One Harpy attempts to nurse one baby, who bites her breast. The Harpies declare him Son of Zeus, name him ""Hercules --glory to Hera"", and order Alcmene to kill him, departing afterward. Alcmene names the other son, Iphicles, and begs Amphitryon to kill Hercules. Her husband cannot bring himself to do it, so Alcmene sends two snakes into Hercules' crib. The baby picks them up and squeezes them to death. As a teenager, Hercules"
"a serpentine body from the waist down. One source states simply that she is a daughter of the goddess Hecate. Another, that Lamia was subsequently cursed by the goddess Hera to have stillborn children because of her association with Zeus; alternatively, Hera slew all of Lamia's children (except Scylla) in anger that Lamia slept with her husband, Zeus. The grief caused Lamia to turn into a monster that took revenge on mothers by stealing their children and devouring them. Lamia had a vicious sexual appetite that matched her cannibalistic appetite for children. She was notorious for being a vampiric spirit"
"In another version of the story, it was said that Poseidon sent the sea serpents to strangle and kill Laocoön and his two sons. According to Apollodorus, it was Apollo who sent the two sea serpents. Laocoön had insulted Apollo by sleeping with his wife in front of the ""divine image"". Virgil used the story in the ""Aeneid."" According to Virgil, Laocoön advised the Trojans to not receive the horse from the Greeks. They disregarded Laocoön's advice and were taken in by the deceitful testimony of Sinon. The enraged Laocoön threw his spear at the Horse in response. Minerva then"
"to strangle him and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus before any Trojan heeds his warning. According to Apollodorus the two serpents were sent by Apollo, whom Laocoon had insulted by sleeping with his wife in front of the ""divine image"". In the ""Odyssey"", Homer says that Helen of Troy also guesses the plot and tries to trick and uncover the Greek soldiers inside the horse by imitating the voices of their wives, and Anticlus attempts to answer, but Odysseus shuts his mouth with his hand. King Priam's daughter Cassandra, the soothsayer of Troy, insists that the horse will be the"
"Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus. Another tradition states that Apollo sent the serpents for an unrelated offense, and only unlucky timing caused the Trojans to misinterpret them as punishment for striking the Horse. Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great and a princess of the primitive land of Epirus, had the reputation of a snake-handler, and it was in serpent form that Zeus was said to have fathered Alexander upon her; tame snakes were still to be found at Macedonian Pella in the 2nd century AD (Lucian, ""Alexander the false prophet"") and at Ostia a bas-relief shows"
"snake for a tail and a serpentine mane), the serpent-tailed Chimaera, the serpent-like water beast Hydra, and the hundred-headed serpentine dragon Ladon. Both the Lernaean Hydra and Ladon were slain by Herakles. Python, an enemy of Apollo, was always represented in vase-paintings and by sculptors as a serpent. Apollo slew Python and made her former home, Delphi, his own oracle. The Pythia took her title from the name Python. Amphisbaena, a Greek word, from amphis, meaning ""both ways"", and bainein, meaning ""to go"", also called the ""Mother of Ants"", is a mythological, ant-eating serpent with a head at each end."
"by transforming himself into a cuckoo. Their child is hideous and misshapen, and Hera throws the child out into the sky. At the revelation of his parentage, Hephaestus breaks the brooch, and half is washed to sea. His desire for vengeance are tempered by the realization of Zeus' immense power. The narrative then shifts from Hephaestus and the goddesses to recount concurrent events amongst the Olympians, including the arrival at Olympus of Apollo, Artemis, Athene and Hermes. Pregnant again, Hera overlooks Zeus' infidelities, resolving to remain calm to avoid another monstrous child. Hera gives birth to her second son, Ares,"
"the goddess Leto, and she became pregnant with Artemis and Apollo, Hera was jealous and sent Python to pursue Leto throughout the lands, to prevent her from giving birth to the twin gods. Thus when Apollo was grown he wanted to avenge his mother's plight and pursued Python, making his way straight for Mount Parnassus where the serpent dwelled, and chased it to the oracle of Gaia at Delphi; there he dared to penetrate the sacred precinct and kill it with his arrows beside the rock cleft where the priestess sat on her tripod. Robert Graves, who habitually read into"
"called Cerna and, according to Henry T. Riley, these islands may correspond to Cape Verde. According to Pseudo-Hyginus the ""Gorgo Aix"" (Γοργώ Aιξ), daughter of Helios, was killed by Zeus during the Titanomachy. From her skin, a goat-like hide rimmed with serpents, he made his famous aegis, and placed her fearsome visage upon it. This he gave to Athena. Then Aix became the goat Capra (Greek: ""Aix""), on the left shoulder of the constellation Auriga. A primeval Gorgon was sometimes said to be the father of Medusa and her sister Gorgons by the sea Goddess Ceto. This figure may have"
"Herse of Athens Herse (Ancient Greek:Ἕρση means ""dew"") was a figure in Greek mythology, daughter of Cecrops, sister to Aglauros and Pandrosos. Cephalus is the son of Hermes and Herse who suffers a tragic ending to his happy marriage with Procris. According to the ""Bibliotheca"", when Hephaestus unsuccessfully attempted to rape Athena, she wiped his semen off her leg with wool and threw it on the ground, impregnating Gaia. Athena wished to make the resulting infant Erichthonius immortal and to raise it, so she gave it to three sisters, Herse, Aglauros and Pandrosos, in a willow basket and warned them"
"Typhon Typhon (; , ""Tuphōn"" ), also Typhoeus (; , ""Tuphōeus""), Typhaon (, ""Tuphaōn"") or Typhos (, ""Tuphōs""), was a monstrous serpentine giant and the most deadly creature in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus. However one source has Typhon as the son of Hera alone, while another makes Typhon the offspring of Cronus. Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters. Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos. The two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus finally won with the aid of his thunderbolts."
"Typhon is thus the chthonic figuration of volcanic forces. Serpent elements figure among his offspring; among his children by Echidna are: Cerberus (a monstrous three-headed dog with a snake for a tail and a serpentine mane); the serpent-tailed Chimaera; the serpent-like chthonic water beast Lernaean Hydra; and the hundred-headed serpentine dragon Ladon. Both the Lernaean Hydra and Ladon were slain by Heracles. Python was the earth-dragon of Delphi, she always was represented in the vase-paintings and by sculptors as a serpent. Pytho was the chthonic enemy of Apollo, who slew her and remade her former home his own oracle, the"
"afterwards, when she was already with child, was seen bathing and so discovered. Upon this, the goddess was enraged and changed her into a beast. Thus she became a bear and gave birth to a son called Arcas. Either Artemis ""slew Kallisto with a shot of her silver bow,"" perhaps urged by the wrath of Juno (Hera) or later Arcas, the eponym of Arcadia, nearly killed his bear-mother, when she had wandered into the forbidden precinct of Zeus. In every case, Zeus placed them both in the sky as the constellations Ursa Major, called ""Arktos"" (αρκτος), the ""Bear"", by Greeks,"
"holds the rope looped around the bull's neck. The brother on the left stands in profile, grasping the rope that circles the bull's body with his right hand and grasping Dirce's right arm with his left. The final mythological scene in the southern triclinium is the Infant Herakles strangling the snakes, located on the north wall. This scene depicts Herakles as a child strangling the snakes sent by Hera to kill him. Herakles is the son of Alkmena and Zeus, Hera's husband. Hera become jealous of this relationship and sets out to kill the product of her husband's affair. She"
"sisters Euryale and Stheno. She eventually met the gaze of Poseidon. Athena took notice of this, and cursed Medusa, transforming her hair into snakes and giving her a deadly gaze that turns any who look into her eyes to stone. The hero Perseus was given the task of slaying Medusa and taking her head. After using her decapitated head for his own use, Perseus threw it into the sea as he believed it too dangerous to keep. At some point before Medusa's death, she mated with the cyclops Polyphemus and gave birth to the serpentine giant Cyclon. The god of"
"Bellerophon Bellerophon (; Ancient Greek: Βελλεροφῶν) or Bellerophontes () is a hero of Greek mythology. He was ""the greatest hero and slayer of monsters, alongside Cadmus and Perseus, before the days of Heracles"", and his greatest feat was killing the Chimera, a monster that Homer depicted with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail: ""her breath came out in terrible blasts of burning flame."" Bellerophon was born at Corinth and was the son of the mortal Eurynome by either her husband Glaucus, or Poseidon. One possible etymology that has been suggested is: Βελλεροφόντης from βέλεμνον, βελόνη, βέλος"
"stormed the island, and Achilles fought Tenes, in this myth a son of Apollo, and killed him, not knowing Tenes's lineage and hence unaware of the danger of Apollo's revenge. Achilles would also later kill Tenes's father, Cycnus, at Troy. In Sophocles's ""Philoctetes"", written in 409 BC, a serpent bit Philoctetes in the foot at Tenedos. According to Hyginus, the goddess Hera, upset with Philoctetes for helping Hercules, had sent the snake to punish him. His wound refused to heal, and the Greeks abandoned him, before going back to him for help later during the attack on Troy. Athenaeus quoted"
"Aega (mythology) In Greek mythology, Aega (Greek: ) or Pine or Cynosura or Melissa was, according to Hyginus, a daughter of Olenus, who was a descendant of Hephaestus. Aega and her sister Helice nursed the infant Zeus in Crete, and the former was afterwards changed by the god into the constellation called Capella. According to other traditions mentioned by Hyginus, Aega was a daughter of Melisseus, king of Crete, and was chosen to suckle the infant Zeus; but as she was found unable to do it, the service was performed by the goat Amalthea. Hyginus also reports a tradition that"
"Delphyne In Greek mythology, Delphyne () is the name given, by some accounts, to the monstrous serpent killed by Apollo at Delphi. Although, in Hellenistic and later accounts, the Delphic monster slain by Apollo is usually said to be the male serpent Python, in the earliest known account of this story, the ""Homeric Hymn to Apollo"" (6th century BC), the god kills a nameless she-serpent (""drakaina""), subsequently called Delphyne. The ""Homeric Hymn"" describes the serpentess as ""the bloated, great she-dragon, a fierce monster wont to do great mischief to men upon earth, to men themselves and to their thin-shanked sheep;"
"Delphyne. Delphyne In Greek mythology, Delphyne () is the name given, by some accounts, to the monstrous serpent killed by Apollo at Delphi. Although, in Hellenistic and later accounts, the Delphic monster slain by Apollo is usually said to be the male serpent Python, in the earliest known account of this story, the ""Homeric Hymn to Apollo"" (6th century BC), the god kills a nameless she-serpent (""drakaina""), subsequently called Delphyne. The ""Homeric Hymn"" describes the serpentess as ""the bloated, great she-dragon, a fierce monster wont to do great mischief to men upon earth, to men themselves and to their thin-shanked"
"Opheltes In Greek mythology, the name Opheltes (Ancient Greek: Ὀφέλτην) refers to several distinct characters. Of them the best known is Opheltes, the infant son of King Lycurgus of Nemea, whose death by a serpent was correctly interpreted by Amphiaraus to be of bad omen for the Seven against Thebes. Opheltes (also known as Archemoros) was the infant son of the Nemean king Lycurgus and Queen Eurydice. When their son was born, Lycurgus consulted the oracle at Delphi in order to find out how he might insure the health and happiness of his child, and was instructed that the child"
"were said to have been the continuation of the tradition begun with the worship of the Egyptian cobra goddess, Wadjet. We learn from Herodotus of a great serpent which defended the citadel of Athens. The Minoan Snake Goddess brandished a serpent in either hand, perhaps evoking her role as source of wisdom, rather than her role as Mistress of the Animals (""Potnia Theron""), with a leopard under each arm. It is not by accident that later the infant Herakles, a liminal hero on the threshold between the old ways and the new Olympian world, also brandished the two serpents that"
"foretelling the infants future. She predicted that Mount Olympus would have been under his sole absolute control, with death and destruction in his wake. As Zeus himself had vanquished his father, and like his father before him, Zeus feared he would share their fate and ordered the witch to kill the infant in spite of Hera's protests. Seeing Hera's desperation, the witch took pity on the infant, and rather than kill him as ordered, she decided to spare his life and only abandoned him on the African plains with a slim chance to survive. Instead of being savaged by the"
"to the goat which was believed to have suckled the infant Zeus in Crete. Aega (mythology) In Greek mythology, Aega (Greek: ) or Pine or Cynosura or Melissa was, according to Hyginus, a daughter of Olenus, who was a descendant of Hephaestus. Aega and her sister Helice nursed the infant Zeus in Crete, and the former was afterwards changed by the god into the constellation called Capella. According to other traditions mentioned by Hyginus, Aega was a daughter of Melisseus, king of Crete, and was chosen to suckle the infant Zeus; but as she was found unable to do it,"
"including Ovid's ""Metamorphoses"", Narcissus was the son of Cephissus and Liriope. According to the ""Homeric Hymn to Selene"", the goddess bore Zeus a daughter, Pandia (""all-brightness""), ""exceeding lovely amongst the deathless gods"". The 7th century BC Greek poet Alcman makes Ersa (""dew"") the daughter of Selene and Zeus. Selene and Zeus were also supposed by some to be the parents of Nemea, the eponymous nymph of Nemea, where Heracles slew the Nemean Lion, and where the Nemean Games were held. Some accounts also make Selene and Zeus the parents of Dionysus, but this may be the result of confusing Semele,"
"the chthonic serpent Python, Pythia in older myths, but according to some later accounts his wife, Pythia, who lived beside the Castalian Spring. Some sources say it is because Python had attempted to rape Leto while she was pregnant with Apollo and Artemis. This spring flowed toward the temple but disappeared beneath, creating a cleft which emitted chemical vapors that purportedly caused the oracle at Delphi to reveal her prophecies. Apollo killed Python but had to be punished for it, since she was a child of Gaia. The shrine dedicated to Apollo was originally dedicated to Gaia and shared with"
"the serpent was sacred to Ares, who would punish Thebes unless a sacrifice was made. As only Creon and his son were pure-blooded descendants of the men who sprouted from the ground, Menoeceus was the only choice. Creon is told he can only save the city by sacrificing his son, and instructs Menoeceus to flee to the oracle at Dodona; Menoeceus agrees but secretly goes to the serpent's lair to sacrifice himself and appease Ares. Jocasta then receives a messenger, who tells her about the progress of the war and that her sons are both alive, but have agreed to"
"Zeus, who was killed by Ares. The Harpies, in Hesiod the daughters of Thaumas and the Oceanid Electra, in one source, are said to be the daughters of Typhon, and so perhaps were also considered to be the daughters of Echidna. Likewise, the sea serpents which attacked the Trojan priest Laocoön during the Trojan War, which are called by Quintus Smyrnaeus ""fearful monsters of the deadly brood of Typhon"", may also have been considered Echidna's offspring. Echidna is sometimes identified with the Viper who was the mother by Heracles, of Scythes, an eponymous king of the Scythians, along with his"
"In the myth of the birth of Heracles, it is Hera herself who sits at the door, delaying the birth of Heracles until her protégé, Eurystheus, had been born first. The Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo makes the monster Typhaon the offspring of archaic Hera in her Minoan form, produced out of herself, like a monstrous version of Hephaestus, and whelped in a cave in Cilicia. She gave the creature to Python to raise. In the Temple of Hera, Olympia, Hera's seated cult figure was older than the warrior figure of Zeus that accompanied it. Homer expressed her relationship with"
"generally slain only by gods or demigods. Zeus slew Delphyne and Campe, Apollo slew Python, and Argus Panoptes slew Echidna. Echidna was the mother of a huge brood of monsters, including other dragon-like creatures. According to Hesiod, Echidna gave birth to Cerberus, Orthrus, the Chimera, the Nemean lion, the Sphinx and the Hydra. (Other ancient authors, such as Hyginus, attribute even more monsters as children of Echidna such as the Caucasian eagle, the Crommyonian Sow, the Colchian dragon, the Harpies and Scylla.) Drakaina (mythology) In Greek mythology, a drakaina () is a female serpent or dragon, sometimes with humanlike features."