Beasts and Creatures

The Aetos Dios

was a giant, golden eagle which served as Zeus' personal messenger and animal companion. According to some, the eagle was once a mortal king named Periphas, whose virtuous rule was so celebrated that he was came to be honoured like a god. Zeus, in anger, would have smote him with a thunderbolt, but Apollon intervened and, transforming the king into an eagle, set him beside the throne of Zeus. In other accounts, Zeus adopted the eagle as his bird when it first appeared to him before the Titan War as a sign of good omen. The eagle was later sent by Zeus to carry the handsome youth Ganymedes up to heaven to become the cupbearer of the gods.

The bird received a place amongst the stars as the constellation Aquila. Its consort was Lyra, the heavenly vulture.

THE HIPPOI ATHANATOI

Numbered between 20 and 30, were the immortal horses of the gods. The majority of these divine steeds were offspring of the four Wind-Gods who themselves were said to draw the chariot of Zeus in the shape of horses.

Ares Fire Breathing Steeds

AITHON, PHLOGIOS, KONABOS & PHOBOS were the four fire-breathing, immortal horses which drew the chariot of the god Ares.

The Hippoi Monokerata

were the swift-footed unicorns of the East. They were magnificent snow-white equines with a single, brightly-coloured horn rising from the middle of their foreheads. The Greeks also referred to them as Onoi Monokerata (One Horned Asses).

The fabulous unicorn of Medieval bestiaries was derived from this creature of Greek legend.

The Taraxippus

was a presence, either a ghost or a site, that frightened the horses during races at the Panhellenic Games.

The Ceryneian Hind

was an enormous hind (deer), who lived in Keryneia, Greece. It was sacred to Artemis, the chaste goddess of the hunt, animals and unmarried women. It had golden antlers like a stag and hooves of bronze or brass, and it was said that it could outrun an arrow in flight. The capture of the hind was one of The Twelve Labors of Hercules.

Hippocamp

the mythical sea-horse, which, according to the description of Pausanias was a horse, but the part of its body down from the breast was that of a sea monster or fish. The horse appears even in the Homeric poems as the symbol of Poseidon, whose chariot was drawn over the surface of the sea by swift horses.

He was owned by the three-bodied giant, Geryon. Orthrus and his master, Eurytion, were charged with guarding Geryon's herd of red cattle in the "sunset" land of Erytheia ("red one"), one of the islands of the Hesperides in the far west of the Mediterranean. Heracles eventually slew Orthrus, Eurytion, and Geryon, before taking the red cattle to complete his tenth labor.

Orthrus was one among Echidna's fearsome brood listed in Hesiod's Theogony. According to some sources, it was he rather than Typhon that sired, with Echidna, further chthonic monstrous creatures: the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Lernaean Hydra, and even, Hesiod says, the Nemean lion, and Cerberus.

The Griffin

is a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. As the lion was traditionally considered the king of the beasts and the eagle was the king of the birds, the griffin was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature. The griffin was also thought of as king of the creatures. Griffins are known for guarding treasure and priceless possessions.

Hippalectryon

is a type of fantastic hybrid creature of Ancient Greek folklore, half-horse and half-rooster, with yellow/orange feathers. The front half is that of a horse, the rear half a rooster's wings, tail and legs and a beak and crop like a chicken.

Phoenix

is a mythical bird with a colorful plumage and tail of red and gold, which reflects the light of the sun. It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self. In some stories, the new phoenix embalms the ashes of its old self in an egg made of myrrh and deposits it in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis (literally "sun-city" in Greek). It is said that the bird's cry is that of a beautiful song. The Phoenix's ability to be reborn from its own ashes implies that it is immortal, though in some stories the new Phoenix is merely the offspring of the older one.

Stymphalian birds

were man-eating birds with beaks of bronze and sharp feathers they could launch at their victims, and were sacred to Ares, the god of war. Furthermore, their dung was highly toxic. They had migrated to Lake Stymphalia in Arcadia to escape a pack of wolves the Arabs set loose to kill them, and bred quickly and took over the countryside, destroying local crops, fruit trees and townspeople.

Erymanthian Boar

Erymanthian Boar is remembered in connection with The Twelve Labours, in which Heracles, the (reconciled) enemy of Hera, visited in turn "all the other sites of the Goddess throughout the world, to conquer every conceivable 'monster' of nature and rededicate the primordial world to its new master, his Olympian father," Zeus.

In the primitive highlands of Arcadia, the Erymanthian Boar was a giant fear-inspiring creature of the wilds that lived on Mount Erymanthos, a mountain that was apparently once sacred to the Mistress of the Animals, for in classical times it remained the haunt of Artemis. A boar was a dangerous animal: "When the goddess turned a wrathful countenance upon a country, as in the story of Meleager, she would send a raging boar, which laid waste the farmers' fields." In some accounts, Apollo sent the boar to kill Adonis, a favorite of Aphrodite, as revenge for the goddess blinding Apollo's son Erymanthus when he saw her bathing.

Calydonian Boar

a gigantic boar sent by Artemis to ravage Calydon and slain in the Calydonian Boar Hunt.

The Cretan Bull

was either the bull that carried away Europa or the bull Pasiphaë fell in love with, giving birth to the Minotaur.

Chrysomallus

a flying, talking, golden-fleeced ram. the Golden Fleece is the fleece of the gold-haired winged ram. It figures in the tale of Jason and his band of Argonauts, who set out on a quest by order of King Pelias for the fleece in order to place Jason rightfully on the throne of Iolcus in Thessaly.

The Mares of Diomedes

also called the Mares of Thrace, were four man-eating horses in Greek mythology. Magnificent, wild, and uncontrollable, they belonged to the giant Diomedes (not to be confused with Diomedes, son of Tydeus), king of Thrace, a son of Ares and Cyrene who lived on the shores of the Black Sea. Bucephalus, Alexander the Great's horse was said to be descended from these mares.

After capturing the Cretan bull, Heracles was to steal the Mares. In one version of the story, Heracles brought a number of youths to help him. They took the mares and were chased by Diomedes and his men.

Heracles was not aware that the horses, called Podagros (the fast), Lampon (the shining), Xanthos (the blond) and Deinos (the terrible), were kept tethered to a bronze manger because they were wild; their madness being attributed to an unnatural diet of human flesh. Some versions say that they expelled fire when they breathed. They were man-eating and uncontrollable, and Heracles left his favoured companion, Abderus, in charge of them while he fought Diomedes, and found out that the boy was eaten. In revenge, Heracles fed Diomedes to his own horses, then founded Abdera next to the boy's tomb.

In another version, Heracles stayed awake so that he didn't have his throat cut by Diomedes in the night, and cut the chains binding the horses. Having scared the horses onto the high ground of a peninsula, Heracles quickly dug a trench through the peninsula, filling it with water, thus making it an island. When Diomedes arrived, Heracles killed him with an axe (the one used to dig the trench), and fed the body to the horses to calm them.

Both versions have eating make the horses calmer, and Heracles took the opportunity to bind their mouths shut, and easily took them back to King Eurystheus, who dedicated the horses to Hera. In some versions, they were allowed to roam freely around Argos, having become permanently calm, but in others, Eurystheus ordered the horses taken to Olympus to be sacrificed to Zeus, but Zeus refused them, and sent wolves, lions, and bears to kill them. Roger Lancelyn Green states in his Tales of the Greek Heroes that their descendants were used in the Trojan War. After the incident, Eurystheus sent Heracles to bring back Hippolyta's Girdle.

Laelaps

was a Greek mythological dog who never failed to catch what he was hunting. In one version of Laelaps' origin, he was a gift from Zeus to Europa. The hound was passed down to King Minos. Minos had been cursed by his wife; he ejaculated scorpions and spiders that would devour the genitals of those with whom he slept. Because of this, he called Procris of Athens to his aid. When she cured him he gave her Laelaps and a javelin that never missed its target, and in some versions of the story Talos, a bronze giant. Procris's husband, Cephalus, decided to use the hound to hunt the Teumessian fox, a fox that could never be caught. This was a paradox: a dog who always caught his prey and a fox that could never be caught. The chase went on until Zeus, perplexed by their contradictory fates, turned both to stone and cast them into the stars.

The Teumessian fox

or Cadmean vixen, was a gigantic fox that was destined never to be caught. The fox, beautiful yet deadly, was one of the children of Echidna. It was said that it had been sent by the gods (perhaps Dionysus) to prey upon the children of Thebes as a punishment for some national crime. Creon, the then Regent of Thebes, set Amphitryon the impossible task of destroying this beast. He discovered an apparently perfect solution to the problem by fetching the magical dog Laelaps, who was destined to catch everything it chased. Zeus, faced with an inevitable contradiction in fate due to their mutually excluding abilities, turned the two beasts into stone. The pair were cast into the stars, and will remain there forever more. One day in the future they may return.

Karkinos

a giant crab which fought Hercules alongside the Hydra. Cancer the giant crab, plays a minor role in the Twelve Labors of Hercules. While Hercules was busy fighting the multi-headed monster, Lernaean Hydra, the goddess Hera, who hated her step-son Hercules, sent the Crab to distract him. Cancer tried to kill Hercules, but Hercules kicked Cancer so hard that the crab was sent into the sky.

Amphisbaena

also called the Mother of Ants, is a mythological, ant-eating serpent with a head at each end. According to Greek mythology, the amphisbaena was spawned from the blood that dripped from the Gorgon Medusa's head as Perseus flew over the Libyan Desert with it in his hand. Cato's army then encountered it along with other serpents on the march. Amphisbaenae fed off of the corpses left behind.

The Manticores

were mythical animals with a human head and face, a lion's body, and a scorpion's tail. According to legend, this fast, powerful, and fierce beast attacked and devoured people, known as the man-eaters.

The Ophiotaurus

a creature that was part bull and part serpent and all monster. The creature's entrails were said to grant the power to defeat the gods to whoever burned them. The hybrid was slain by an ally of the Titans during the Titanomachy, but the entrails were retrieved by an eagle sent by Zeus before they could be burned.