Eleos

The personification of pity or mercy, had an altar in the agora at Athens. "The Athenians," says Pausanias,1 "are the only ones among the Hellenes that worship this divine being, and among all the gods this is the most useful to human life in all its vicissitudes."

Those who implored the assistance of the Athenians, such as Adrastus and the Heraclidae, approached as suppliants the altar of Eleos.

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References

Notes

  1. Description of Greece i, 17.1

Sources

  • Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library ii, 8.1, iii, 7.1.
  • Scholiast on Sophocles' Oedipus Colonus, 258.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.