ancient Athens Athens is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for perhaps 5,000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of ancient Greece in t ...

, Eleos (

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

m.) or Elea was the personification of compassion. Pausanias described her as "among all the gods the most useful to human life in all its vicissitudes."''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology''. Cited in

Mythology

Pausanias states that there was an altar in Athens dedicated to Eleos, at which children of

Heracles Heracles ( ; ), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a Divinity, divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of ZeusApollodorus1.9.16/ref> and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive descent through ...

sought refuge from

Eurystheus In Greek mythology, Eurystheus (; , ) was king of Tiryns, one of three Mycenaean Greece, Mycenaean strongholds in the Argolid, although other authors including Homer and Euripides cast him as ruler of Argos, Peloponnese, Argos. Family Eurysthe ...

' prosecution.

Adrastus In Greek mythology, Adrastus or Adrestus (Ancient Greek: Ἄδραστος or Ἄδρηστος), (perhaps meaning "the inescapable"), was a king of Argos, and leader of the Seven against Thebes. He was the son of the Argive king Talaus, but w ...

also came to this altar after the defeat of the

Seven against Thebes ''Seven Against Thebes'' (, ''Hepta epi Thēbas''; ) is the third play in an Oedipus-themed trilogy produced by Aeschylus in 467 BC. The trilogy is sometimes referred to as the ''Oedipodea''. It concerns the battle between an Argive army, led by ...

, praying that those who died in the battle be buried. Eleos was only recognized in Athens, where she was honored by the cutting of hair and the undressing of garments at the altar.

Statius Publius Papinius Statius (Greek language, Greek: Πόπλιος Παπίνιος Στάτιος; , ; ) was a Latin poetry, Latin poet of the 1st century CE. His surviving poetry includes an epic in twelve books, the ''Thebaid (Latin poem), Theb ...

in ''

Thebaid The Thebaid or Thebais (, ''Thēbaïs'') was a region in ancient Egypt, comprising the 13 southernmost nome (Egypt), nomes of Upper Egypt, from Abydos, Egypt, Abydos to Aswan. Pharaonic history The Thebaid acquired its name from its proximit ...

'' (1st century) describes the altar to Clementia in Athens (treating Eleos as feminine based on the grammatical gender in Latin): "There was in the midst of the city f Athensan altar belonging to no god of power; gentle Clementia (Clemency) leoshad there her seat, and the wretched made it sacred".

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Apollodorus Apollodorus ( Greek: Ἀπολλόδωρος ''Apollodoros'') was a popular name in ancient Greece. It is the masculine gender of a noun compounded from Apollo, the deity, and doron, "gift"; that is, "Gift of Apollo." It may refer to: :''Note: A ...

, ''The Library'' with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.Greek text available from the same website
* Bloch, René, "Eleos", in ''

Brill's New Pauly The Pauly encyclopedias or the Pauly-Wissowa family of encyclopedias, are a set of related encyclopedia An encyclopedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field o ...

: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Antiquity, Volume 4'', Cyr – Epy, edited by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, Brill, 2004. . *

Gaius Julius Hyginus Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Augustus, and reputed author of the '' Fabulae'' and the '' De astronomia'', although this is disputed. Life and works ...

, ''Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus'' translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies
Online version at the Topos Text Project.
* Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'' with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
* Pausanias, ''Graeciae Descriptio.'' ''3 vols''. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903.
Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library
*

, ''Thebaid'' translated by John Henry Mozley. Loeb Classical Library
Online version at the Topos Text Project.
{{Greek mythology (deities), state=collapsed Greek gods Justice goddesses Justice deities Personifications in Greek mythology Women in Greek mythology Children of Nyx

Mythology

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