Peitho

"Persuasion." The personification of Persuasion (Suada or Suadela among the Romans), was worshiped as a divinity at Sicyon, where she was honored with a temple in the agora.1

Peitho also occurs as a surname of other divinities, such as Aphrodite, whose worship was said to have been introduced at Athens by Theseus, when he united the country communities into towns,2 and of Artemis.3

At Athens the statues of Peitho and Aphrodite Pandemos stood closely together, and at Megara, too, the statue of Peitho stood in the temple of Aphrodite,4 so that the two divinities must be conceived as closely connected, or the one, perhaps, merely as an attribute of the other.

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References

Notes

  1. Herodotus. Histories viii, 11; Pausanias. Description of Greece ii, 7.7.
  2. Pausanias. Description of Greece i, 22.3.
  3. ibid. ii, 21.1.
  4. ibid. i, 43.6.

Source

  • 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.