Erinyes   ee RIHN ih eez

The Mist-Walking

Originally called Erinys… later called, Erinyes. Referred to as, ‘the mist-walking… ’ and, with fear and respect, ‘the kindly one’. She would harass and injure her prey but not kill them. Homer refers to her in the singular (Odyssey, book 15, line 234) but, much later (circa 450 BCE), Euripides used the number ‘three’ and eventually ‘they’ assumed the names: Tisiphone, Megaera and Alekto (Alecto). Their brass wings made escape impossible, their ripping claws made their torment relentless and horrible.

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Aedon

by Dr Anthony E. Smart

 
Wife of Zethus and mother of a daughter Itylus, whom she slew by mistake, whereupon Zeus transformed her into the nightingale who nightly laments her murdered child -OR- a queen of ancient Thebes who plotted to kill a son of her rival Niobe but killed her own son by mistake. Her grief led her to try suicide but she was transformed into the first nightingale by the gods, a bird that still haunts the night with its mournful cry.
Odyssey XIX, 518.

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Cyclopes

by Anna Baldwin

 
The Cyclopes were giant beings with a single, round eye in the middle of their foreheads. According to Hesiod, they were strong, stubborn, and “abrupt of emotion.” Their every action ebbed with violence and power. There are actually two generations of Cyclopes in Greek myth. The first generation consisted of three brothers, Brontes (“thunderer”), Steropes (“flasher”), and Arges (“brightener”), who came from the union of Gaia (earth) and Uranus (sky). The second generation descended from Poseidon, and the most famous of these was Polyphemus from Homer’s Odyssey.

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