Achelous was often reduced to a bearded mask, an inspiration for the medieval Green Man. Floor mosaic, Zeugma Turkey.

In Greek mythology, Achelous (English /ækə'loʊəs/ Greek: Ἀχελῷος) was the patron deity of the Acheloos River, which is the largest river of Greece, and thus the chief of all river deities, every river having its own river spirit. His name translates as "he who washes away care". Some legends say that Achelous was the son of Poseidon, others say that he was the son of Earth and Helios. However, ancient Greeks generally believed with Hesiod^[1] that Tethys and Oceanus were the parents of all river gods, but Homer^[2] placed Achelous above all, the origin of all the world's fresh water. Image File history File links Acheloos3. ... Image File history File links Acheloos3. ... The Green Man is a symbol of uncertain origin and meaning, commonly employed as a decorative architectural device in the British Isles and many parts of continental Europe. ... Zeugma – also Seleucia, Seleuceia, Seleukheia, Seleukeia, Seleukeia Euphrates, and Selevkaya Euphrates – is an ancient city of Commagene; currently located in the Gaziantep Province of Turkey It is a historical settlement which is considered among the four most important settlement areas under the reign of the kingdom of Commagene. ... The Acheloos (Greek: Αχελώος), also Achelous, is a river in western Greece. ... The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican) Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and their own cult and ritual practices. ... The Acheloos (Greek: Αχελώος), also Achelous, is a river in western Greece. ... Neptune reigns in the city of Bristol. ... Adjectives: Terrestrial, Terran, Telluric, Tellurian, Earthly Atmosphere Surface pressure: 101. ... Helios in his chariot In Greek mythology the sun was personified as Helios or Helius (Greek Ἥλιος / ἥλιος). Homer often calls him Titan and Hyperion. ... Tethys can refer to: Tethys the titaness of Greek mythology Tethys the natural satellite of Saturn The Tethys Ocean existed between the continents of Gondwana and Laurasia before the opening of the Atlantic Ocean on Earth. ... In the Greek and Roman world-view, Oceanus (Greek , Okeanos), was the world-ocean, which they believed to be an enormous river encircling the world. ...

Achelous was a suitor for Deianeira, daughter of Oeneus king of Calydon, but was defeated by Heracles, who wed her himself. Sophocles pictures a mortal woman's terror at being courted by a chthonic river god: Like many mortal women in Greek mythology, Deianira (also Deianeira) occupied a perilous threshold position between the daylit world of Olympian gods and heroes and the dark chthonic primordial world of primitive earth magic. ... In Greek mythology, Oeneus, or Oineus was a Calydonian king, son of Porthaon, husband of Althaea and father of Deianira, Meleager and Melanippe. ... Calydon (Greek Καλυδών) was an ancient Greek city in Aetolia, situated on the west bank of the river Evenus. ... Hercules, a Roman bronze (Louvre Museum) For other uses, see Heracles (disambiguation). ... Sophocles, as depicted in the Nordisk familjebok. ...

'My suitor was the river Achelóüs,

who took three forms to ask me of my father:

a rambling bull once, then a writhing snake

of gleaming colors, then again a man

with ox-like face: and from his beard's dark shadows

stream upon stream of water tumbled down.

Such was my suitor.' (Sophocles, Trachiniae)

The sacred bull the serpent and the Minotaur are all creatures associated with the Earth Goddess Gaia. Achelous was most often depicted as a gray-haired old man or a vigorous bearded man in his prime, with a horned head and a serpent-like body. Other times, the god appeared as half man-half bull, and other times as a snake. When he battled Heracles over the river nymph Deianeira, Achelous turned himself into a bull. Heracles tore off one of his horns and forced the god to surrender. Achelous had to trade the goat horn of Amalthea to get it back. Heracles gave it to the Naiads, who transformed it into the cornucopia. Achelous relates the bitter episoode afterwards to Theseus in Ovid's Metamorphoses X, 1-88.^[3] Bull heads excavated from Çatalhöyük in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. ... Serpent is a word of Latin origin (serpens, serpentis) which is ultimately derived from the Sanskrit term serp, that is normally substituted for snake in a specifically mythic or religious context, in order to distinguish such creatures from the field of biology. ... Bull mask at the Greek pavilion at Expo 88 In Greek mythology, the Minotaur (Greek: Μινόταυρος, Minótauros) was a creature that was part man and part bull. ... Gaia (pronounced // or //) (land or earth, from the Greek ; variant spelling Gaea—see also Ge from ) is a Greek goddess personifying the Earth. ... Infancy of Zeus by Jacob Jordaens, c. ... Naiad by John William Waterhouse, 1893 In Greek mythology, the Naiads (from the Greek νάειν, to flow, and νἃμα, running water) were a type of nymph who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks, as river gods embodied rivers, and some very... For other uses, see Cornucopia (disambiguation). ... Theseus (Greek ) was a legendary king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, with whom Aethra lay in one night. ... Engraved frontispiece of George Sandyss 1632 London edition of Publius Ovidius Naso (Sulmona, March 20, 43 BC â€“ Tomis, now Constanta AD 17) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. ... // Cover of George Sandyss 1632 edition of Ovids Metamorphosis Englished The Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid is a poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world in terms according to Greek and Roman points of view. ...

Achelous was sometimes the father of the Sirens by Terpsichore, or in a later version, they are from the blood he shed where Heracles broke off his horn.^[4] Odysseus and the Sirens. ... Terpsichore, Muse of Music and Dance, oil on canvas by Jean-Marc Nattier 1739 In Greek mythology, Terpsichore (delight of dancing) was one of the nine Muses, ruling over dance and the dramatic chorus. ...

The mouth of the Achelous river was the spot where Alcmaeon finally found peace from the Erinyes. Achelous offered him Callirhoe, his daughter, in marriage if Alcmaeon would retrieve the clothing and jewelry his mother, Eriphyle, had been wearing when she sent her husband, Amphiaraus to his death. Alcmaeon had to retrieve the clothes from King Phegeus, who sent his sons to kill Alcmaeon. In Greek mythology, Alcmaeon, or Alkmáon, was the son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle. ... This article is about the characters from Greek myth. ... In Greek mythology, three women were named Callirhoe or Callirrhoe: A daughter of Oceanus and mother of Echidna, one of the Oceanids. ... In Greek mythology, Eriphyle, daughter of Talaus, was the mother of Alcmaeon and the wife of Amphiaraus. ... In Greek mythology, Amphiaraus, or Amphiaraos (doubly-cursed) was the son of Oicles and husband of Eriphyle. ... A Greek King, Phegeus offered succor and his daughter, Alphesiboea, to Alcmaeon, who was fleeing from the Erinyes. ...

Ovid in his Metamorphoses, VIII, 547ff provided a descriptive interlude when Theseus is the guest of Achelous, waiting for the river's raging flood to subside: "He entered the dark building, made of spongy pumice, and rough tufa. The floor was moist with soft moss, and the ceiling banded with freshwater mussel and oyster shells." In sixteenth-century Italy, an aspect of the revival of Antiquity was the desire to recreate Classical spaces as extensions of the revived villa. Ovid's description of the cave of Achelous provided some specific inspiration to patrons in France as well as Italy for the [[Mannerism|Mannerist] garden grotto, with its cool dampness, tufa vaulting and shellwork walls. The banquet served by Ovid's Achelous offered a prototype for Italian midday feasts in the fountain-cooled shade of garden grottoes. Engraved frontispiece of George Sandyss 1632 London edition of Publius Ovidius Naso (Sulmona, March 20, 43 BC â€“ Tomis, now Constanta AD 17) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. ... // Cover of George Sandyss 1632 edition of Ovids Metamorphosis Englished The Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid is a poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world in terms according to Greek and Roman points of view. ... Theseus (Greek ) was a legendary king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, with whom Aethra lay in one night. ... The idea and function of a villa has evolved considerably since its invention towards the end of the Roman Republic. ... A Grotto (Italian grotta), when it is not an artificial garden feature, is a cave, small or quite large, usually near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide. ...

At the mouth of the Achelous River lie the Echinades Islands. According to Ovid's pretty myth-making in the same Metamorphoses episode, the Echinades Islands were once five nymphs. Unfortunately for them, they forgot to honor Achelous in their festivities, and the god was so angry about this slight that he turned them into the islands. In Homeric Greece the islands of Taphos lay in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Acarnania in northwestern Greece, home of sea-going and piratical inhabitants, the Taphians. ...

Achelous also figures in Metamorphoses X, 87.

In another mythic context, the Achelous was said to be formed by the tears of Niobe, who fled to Mount Sipylon after the deaths of her husband and children. Apollo and Artemis slaying the children of Niobe by Niobid Painter (c. ...

In Hellenistic and Roman contexts, the river god was often reduced to a mask and used decoratively as an emblem of water, "his uncut hair wreathed with reeds"^[5] His bearded face appears in a mosaic floor at Zeugma Turkey (illustration, above right). The feature survived in Romanesque carved details and flowered duruing the Middle Ages as one of the Classical prototypes of the Green Man. Zeugma – also Seleucia, Seleuceia, Seleukheia, Seleukeia, Seleukeia Euphrates, and Selevkaya Euphrates – is an ancient city of Commagene; currently located in the Gaziantep Province of Turkey It is a historical settlement which is considered among the four most important settlement areas under the reign of the kingdom of Commagene. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... The Green Man is a symbol of uncertain origin and meaning, commonly employed as a decorative architectural device in the British Isles and many parts of continental Europe. ...

Notes

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Theogony Wikisource has original text related to this article: Theogony (in Greek) Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the gods of ancient Greek religion. ... It has been suggested that Deception of Zeus be merged into this article or section. ...

References

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Achelous

• Andrews, Tamra. A Dictionary of Nature Myths, 1998. ISBN # 0-19-513677-2
• Kerenyi, Karl, 1959. The Heroes of the Greeks (New York and London: Thames and Hudson)
• Kerenyi, Karl, 1951. The Gods of the Greeks (New York and London: Thames and Hudson)
• March, Jenny. Cassell’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology, 2001. ISBN # 0-304-35788-X