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Cerberus
In Greek mythology, Cerberus ( or ; grc-gre, Κέρβερος ''Kérberos'' ), often referred to as the hound of Hades, is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. He was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, and was usually described as having three heads, a serpent for a tail, and snakes protruding from his body. Cerberus is primarily known for his capture by Heracles, the last of Heracles' twelve labours. Etymology The etymology of Cerberus' name is uncertain. Ogden refers to attempts to establish an Indo-European etymology as "not yet successful". It has been claimed to be related to the Sanskrit word सर्वरा ''sarvarā'', used as an epithet of one of the dogs of Yama, from a Proto-Indo-European word *''k̑érberos'', meaning "spotted". Lincoln (1991), among others, critiques this etymology. This etymology was also rejected by Manfred Mayrhofer, who proposed an Austro-Asiatic origin for the wo ...
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Herakles Kerberos Eurystheus Louvre E701
Heracles ( ; grc-gre, Ἡρακλῆς, , glory/fame of Hera), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive descent through Amphitryon, Heracles receives the epithet Alcides, as "of the line of Alcaeus", father of Amphitryon. Amphitryon's own, mortal son was Iphicles. He was a great-grandson and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus, and similarly a half-brother of Dionysus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some ...
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Garmr
In Norse mythology, Garmr or Garm (Old Norse: ; "rag") is a wolf or dog associated with both Hel and Ragnarök, and described as a blood-stained guardian of Hel's gate. Name The Old Norse name ''Garmr'' has been interpreted as meaning "rag." The etymology of the name remains uncertain. Bruce Lincoln brings together Garmr and the Greek mythological dog Cerberus, relating both names to a Proto-Indo-European root ''*ger-'' "to growl" (perhaps with the suffixes ''-*m/*b'' and ''-*r''). However, Daniel Ogden notes that this analysis actually requires ''Cerberus'' and ''Garmr'' to be derived from two ''different'' Indo-European roots (*''ger-'' and *''gher-'' respectively), and in this opinion does not establish a relationship between the two names. Attestations ''Poetic Edda'' The ''Poetic Edda'' poem ''Grímnismál'' mentions Garmr: The best of trees , must Yggdrasil be, Skíðblaðnir best of boats; Of all the gods , is Óðinn the greatest, And Sleipnir the best of steeds; ...
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Posthomerica
The ''Posthomerica'' ( grc-gre, τὰ μεθ᾿ Ὅμηρον, translit. ''tà meth᾿ Hómēron''; lit. "Things After Homer") is an epic poem in Greek hexameter verse by Quintus of Smyrna. Probably written in the 3rd century AD, it tells the story of the Trojan War, between the death of Hector and the fall of Ilium. The first four books, covering the same ground as the ''Coming of Memnon'' of Arctinus of Miletus, describe the doughty deeds and deaths of Penthesileia the Amazon, of Memnon, son of the Morning, and of Achilles; and the funeral games in honour of Achilles. Books five through twelve, covering the same ground as the ''Little Iliad'' of Lesches, span from the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles, the death of Ajax by suicide after his loss, the exploits of Neoptolemus, Eurypylus and Deiphobus, the deaths of Paris and Oenone, to the building of the wooden horse. The remaining books, covering the same ground as Arctinus' ''Destruction of Troy'', ...
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Quintus Smyrnaeus
Quintus Smyrnaeus (also Quintus of Smyrna; el, Κόϊντος Σμυρναῖος, ''Kointos Smyrnaios'') was a Greek epic poet whose ''Posthomerica'', following "after Homer", continues the narration of the Trojan War. The dates of Quintus Smyrnaeus' life and poetry are disputed: by tradition, he is thought to have lived in the latter part of the 4th century AD, but early dates have also been proposed. His epic in fourteen books, known as the ''Posthomerica'', covers the period between the end of Homer's ''Iliad'' and the end of the Trojan War. Its primary importance is as the earliest surviving work to cover this period, the archaic works in the Epic Cycle, which he knew and drew upon, having been lost. His materials are borrowed from the cyclic poems from which Virgil (with whose works he was probably acquainted) also drew, in particular the '' Aethiopis'' (''Coming of Memnon'') and the ''Iliupersis'' (''Destruction of Troy'') of Arctinus of Miletus, the now-lost ''Heleneis' ...
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Fabulae
Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Grammaticis'', 20. It is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the Iberian Peninsula or of Alexandria. Suetonius remarks that Hyginus fell into great poverty in his old age and was supported by the historian Clodius Licinus. Hyginus was a voluminous author: his works included topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries on Helvius Cinna and the poems of Virgil, and disquisitions on agriculture and bee-keeping. All these are lost. Under the name of Hyginus there are extant what are probably two sets of school notes abbreviating his treatises on mythology; one is a collection of ''Fabulae'' ("stories"), the other a "Poetical Astronomy". ''Fabulae'' The ''Fabulae'' consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely, t ...
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Hyginus
Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Grammaticis'', 20. It is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the Iberian Peninsula or of Alexandria. Suetonius remarks that Hyginus fell into great poverty in his old age and was supported by the historian Clodius Licinus. Hyginus was a voluminous author: his works included topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries on Helvius Cinna and the poems of Virgil, and disquisitions on agriculture and bee-keeping. All these are lost. Under the name of Hyginus there are extant what are probably two sets of school notes abbreviating his treatises on mythology; one is a collection of ''Fabulae'' ("stories"), the other a "Poetical Astronomy". ''Fabulae'' The ''Fabulae'' consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely, to ...
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Acusilaus
Acusilaus, Acusilas, or Akousilaos ( grc-gre, Ἀκουσίλαος) of Argos, son of Cabas or Scabras, was a Greek logographer and mythographer who lived in the latter half of the 6th century BC but whose work survives only in fragments and summaries of individual points. He is one of the authors (= ''FGrHist'' 2) whose fragments were collected in Felix Jacoby's ''Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker''. Acusilaus was called the son of Cabras or Scabras, and it is not known whether he was of Peloponnesian or Boeotian Argos. Possibly there were two of the name. He is reckoned by some among the Seven Sages of Greece. According to the '' Suda'', Acusilaus wrote genealogies (c. 500 BC). Three books of his genealogies are quoted, which were for the most part only a translation of Hesiod into prose. Acusilaus claimed to have taken some of his information from bronze tablets discovered in his garden which were inscribed with information, a source looked upon with suspicion by ...
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Theogony
The ''Theogony'' (, , , i.e. "the genealogy or birth of the gods") is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 1022 lines. Descriptions Hesiod's ''Theogony'' is a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first known Greek mythical cosmogony. The initial state of the universe is chaos, a dark indefinite void considered a divine primordial condition from which everything else appeared. Theogonies are a part of Greek mythology which embodies the desire to articulate reality as a whole; this universalizing impulse was fundamental for the first later projects of speculative theorizing. Further, in the "Kings and Singers" passage (80–103) Hesiod appropriates to himself the authority u ...
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Hesiod
Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. Life The dating of Hesiod's life is a contested issue in scholarly circles (''see § Dating below''). Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However, Hesiod's extant work comprises several didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three explicit references in ''Works and Days'' ...
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Third Vatican Mythographer
The so-called Vatican Mythographers ( la, Mythographi Vaticani) are the anonymous authors of three Latin mythographical texts found together in a single medieval manuscript, Vatican Reg. lat. 1401. The name is that used by Angelo Mai when he published the first edition of the works in 1831. The text of the First Vatican Mythographer is found only in the Vatican manuscript; the second and third texts are found separately in other manuscripts, leading scholars to refer to a Second Vatican Mythographer and a Third Vatican Mythographer. Content Taken together, the works of the Vatican Mythographers provided a source-book of Greek and Roman myths and their iconography throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The texts, which were being copied in manuscripts as late as the 15th century, were parsed allegorically to provide Christianized Christianization ( or Christianisation) is to make Christian; to imbue with Christian principles; to become Christian. It can apply to ...
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Second Vatican Mythographer
The so-called Vatican Mythographers ( la, Mythographi Vaticani) are the anonymous authors of three Latin mythographical texts found together in a single medieval manuscript, Vatican Reg. lat. 1401. The name is that used by Angelo Mai when he published the first edition of the works in 1831. The text of the First Vatican Mythographer is found only in the Vatican manuscript; the second and third texts are found separately in other manuscripts, leading scholars to refer to a Second Vatican Mythographer and a Third Vatican Mythographer. Content Taken together, the works of the Vatican Mythographers provided a source-book of Greek and Roman myths and their iconography throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The texts, which were being copied in manuscripts as late as the 15th century, were parsed allegorically to provide Christianized moral and theological implications, "until in time the pagan divinities blossomed into full-fledged vices and virtues". Their '' testimonia ...
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First Vatican Mythographer
The so-called Vatican Mythographers ( la, Mythographi Vaticani) are the anonymous authors of three Latin mythographical texts found together in a single medieval manuscript, Vatican Reg. lat. 1401. The name is that used by Angelo Mai when he published the first edition of the works in 1831. The text of the First Vatican Mythographer is found only in the Vatican manuscript; the second and third texts are found separately in other manuscripts, leading scholars to refer to a Second Vatican Mythographer and a Third Vatican Mythographer. Content Taken together, the works of the Vatican Mythographers provided a source-book of Greek and Roman myths and their iconography throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The texts, which were being copied in manuscripts as late as the 15th century, were parsed allegorically to provide Christianized moral and theological implications, "until in time the pagan divinities blossomed into full-fledged vices and virtues". Their '' testimonia'' ...
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