Romulus

Undoing. Advised not to fight Achilles, he did so anyway and was killed.

Archer, Paris killed Achilles with an arrow that hit the Greek warrior’s one weak spot—his heel.

Menelaus: son of Atreus and Aerope and brother of Agamemnon. He was married to Helen of Sparta, who was considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Menelaus fought her abductor, Paris, in a duel and the latter was only saved by the intervention of Aphrodite.

Patroclus: son of Menoetius and the comrade of Achilles. When Achilles refused to fight, Patroclus dressed in his friend’s armor and took to the battlefield in his place. Many Trojans died at Patroclus’s hands, but he was finally killed by Hector.

Neoptolemus: son of Achilles who was considered to be a ruthless fighter. He was among the Greek soldiers who hid in the wooden horse. He killed Priam, king of Troy.

Odysseus: king of Ithaca whose great cunning was a key factor in the Greeks’ success. The 10-year journey home that he endured after the war was the subject of the Odyssey by Homer (c. ninth-eighth century BCE).

Philoctetes: son of Poeas and holder of Heracles’ great bow, the arrows of which never missed their target. He killed Paris and returned safely after the war to either Greece or Italy.

Other mortals

Paris: son of Priam and Hecuba. His abduction of Helen, queen of Sparta, was the catalyst for the Trojan War. A great

Arachne: daughter of Idmon of Colophon. She was renowned for her talent for weaving, but was turned into a

Spider after beating the goddess Athena in a contest to see who could weave the best tapestry.

In her grief Niobe was turned into a rock on Mount Sipylus, where water ran down her face like tears.

Cassandra: seer daughter of King Priam and Hecuba who was cursed so that no one would believe her prophesies. After the end of the Trojan War she was taken as a concubine by Agamemnon. She was killed by his wife Clytemnestra on the couple’s return to Mycenae.

Clytemnestra: daughter of Tyndareos and Leda; sister of Castor, Helen, and Pollux; and wife of Agamemnon. She was angered by Agamemnon’s sacrifice of their daughter Iphigeneia, and jealous of the relationship between Agamemnon and Cassandra. She murdered the lovers when they returned from the Trojan War.

Heracles: the greatest Greek hero. He was the son of Zeus and Alcmene. Heracles was most famous for the 12 labors he was set by Eurystheus as purification for killing his wife, Megara, and their two children. He aided the gods in their successful battle against the Giants, and for his deeds and heroics was immortalized among the gods and had a constellation named for him by Zeus.

Lole: beautiful daughter of Eurytus, king of Oechalia. She was offered in marriage by her father to the winner of an archery contest. It was won by Heracles, but Eurytus did not keep his word. lole was later taken as a concubine by Heracles. On his death she married Hyllus.

Iphigeneia: daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and the sister of Electra, Orestes, and Chrysothemis. She was sacrificed by Agamemnon in order to summon a wind that would take the Greek fleet to Troy.

Leda: daughter of the Aetolian king Thestius, and wife of Tyndareos. She was seduced by Zeus in the shape of a swan. Leda subsequently gave birth to two sets of twins— Castor and Pollux, and Helen and Clytemnestra.

Narcissus: beautiful son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope. Known for his vanity, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection while gazing into a pool of water.

Niobe: daughter of Tantalus, and wife of Amphion, king of Thebes, by whom she had many children. Niobe’s boasts about her fertility angered the goddess Leto, who sent her son Apollo and daughter Artemis to kill Niobe’s children.

Oedipus: son of Laius, king ofThebes, and Jocasta. He unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. By Jocasta he had four children: Antigone, Eteocles, Ismene, and Polyneices.

Orestes: son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and the brother of Electra, Iphigeneia, and Chrysothemis. Orestes killed his mother and her lover, Aegisthus, after they murdered Agamemnon. Orestes was then pursued by the Furies, who wanted to punish him. However, he was saved by the intervention of Apollo.

Orpheus: the most gifted singer and musician in the Greek world, he outsang the sirens while traveling with the Argonauts. Orpheus visited the underworld in a failed attempt to retrieve his dead wife, Eurydice. He then wandered the land mourning her until he was torn to pieces by Thracian women.

Peleus: son of Aeacus, king of Aegina, and Endeis, and brother of Telamon. He was a great warrior and was rewarded with a rare opportunity to marry a goddess, Thetis, by whom he fathered Achilles.

Pelops: son of Tantalus, king of Lydia. He was killed as a child then cooked and served by his father to the gods, who brought him back to life. Pelops eventually became ruler of most of southern Greece. He married Hippodameia, with whom he had many children.

Penelope: daughter of Icarius and the nymph Periboea; wife of Odysseus and mother of Telemachus. For 10 years Penelope waited patiently for Odysseus to return from the Trojan War.

Perseus: son of Zeus and Danae. He killed the Gorgon, Medusa; rescued Andromeda from a sea monster; and founded the city of Mycenae. He and Andromeda married and had a son, Perses.

Psyche: lover of Cupid. With Zeus’s permission they were married and Psyche became immortal.

Semele: daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and by Zeus the mother of Dionysus. Semele demanded that Zeus appear to her in all his splendor, which he did, burning her

To death. Zeus snatched her unborn baby and sewed it into his thigh, from which Dionysus was born.

Daphne rejected his advances and was transformed into a laurel tree by her father, the river-god Peneius.

Sisyphus: wily son of Aeolus, king ofThessaly, and Enarete. He founded Ephyra, which was later called Corinth. He cheated death twice, and when he finally died of old age he was condemned in the underworld to perpetually roll a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again.

Tantalus: father of Pelops, Broteas, and Niobe. He was punished by the gods for serving them the flesh of his son, Pelops. His sentence was to stand in water that disappeared when he was thirsty, and within arm’s reach of plentiful fruit that moved away from each of his hungry lunges.

Theseus: son of either Poseidon or Aegeus, king ofAthens, and Aethra. By the Amazon Antiope, he fathered Hippolytus; later he married Phaedra. Theseus accomplished many heroic deeds, including slaying the Minotaur, a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Theseus was eventually killed by Lycomedes, king of Scyros.

Tyndareos: king of Sparta, husband of Leda, and the father of Castor, Clytemnestra, Pollux, and Helen. On the advice of Odysseus, Tyndareos proposed an oath be taken by Helen’s many suitors that bound them to protect her choice of husband. The oath led to the Trojan War.

Nymphs

Callisto: mountain nymph who was raped by Zeus. Hera turned her into a bear when she discovered her husband’s infidelity. Callisto’s son, Arcas, was ignorant of her identity and nearly hunted her down. However, Zeus took pity on Callisto and transformed her into a constellation called Ursa Major (great bear).

Echo: mountain nymph and a servant of Hera. She agreed to Zeus’s plea for her to distract Hera, but was discovered and punished. She lost her ability to speak her thoughts and was only able to repeat what others had already said. Unable to articulate her love for the beautiful Narcissus, she pined away until only her voice remained.

Eurydice: wife of the singer and musician Orpheus.

She died twice, first from a snake bite and later when her husband narrowly failed in his attempt to rescue her from the underworld.

Harmonia: mother by the war god Ares of a race of warrior women called the Amazons.

Hesperides: four Naiads named Aegle, Arethusa, Erytheia, and Hesperia who lived in a garden at the edge of the world. There they guarded the golden apple tree that Gaia had given to Hera.

Liriope: lover of the river god Cephissus and mother of the beautiful but conceited Narcissus.

Melite: water nymph who had a liaison with Heracles and gave birth to Hyllus. Hyllus avenged Heracles’ death on his father’s old enemy Eurystheus.

Perse: Oceanid who was mother of four famous mythological characters: Calypso, who fell in love with Odysseus and kept him on her island for seven years;

Aeetes, a fierce king who set a dragon to guard the Golden Fleece; Circe, who detained Odysseus for a year on her island; and Pasiphae, mother of the monstrous Minotaur.

Pleione: Oceanid who was mother of the seven Pleiades. They were immortalized in the night sky as a cluster of seven stars.

Calypso: daughter of the Oceanid Perse. Her powers of seduction were enough to keep Odysseus on her island and away from his home for seven years.

Pomona: Dryad who, despite her efforts to remain chaste, was seduced by Vertumnus, the Roman god of the changing seasons.

Daphne: mountain nymph who was pursued by the god Apollo after he had been struck by one of Eros’s arrows.

Rhode: Oceanid for whom the Greek island of Rhodes was named.