Lycurgus of Thrace
Thracian king who rejected Dionysus, drove his followers from the land, and was destroyed by the god's vengeance.
The Legend of Lycurgus of Thrace
He drove Dionysus into the sea — and the god made him murder his own son with an axe. Lycurgus attacked the young Dionysus and his nurses with an ox-goad, scattering the Maenads and forcing the god to flee into the sea where Thetis sheltered him. Zeus blinded Lycurgus. In other versions, Dionysus drove him mad: Lycurgus hacked down his vineyard thinking he was attacking the god, but instead killed his own son Dryas, mistaking the boy for a vine. The land of Thrace went barren. An oracle said it would recover only when Lycurgus died, so his own people tore him apart with horses on Mount Pangaeus. Homer mentions him in the Iliad as a warning.
Parents
Dryas
Children
Dryas
Symbols
Explore Further
Laius
🗡 heroNone recorded
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Tenes
🗡 heroPurity, Betrayal, Apollo
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🗡 heroHero who slew Medusa
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🗡 herohubris
King of Thebes who denied Dionysus's divinity and was torn apart by his own mother and aunts in a Bacchic frenzy.
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🗡 heroTamer of Pegasus, slayer of the Chimera
The hero who tamed the winged horse Pegasus and used him to slay the monstrous Chimera. His story is a cautionary tale about hubris.
Bellerophon and Pegasus
🗡 herohubris, fall
The hero who tamed Pegasus and slew the Chimera but was destroyed by his own hubris when he tried to fly to Olympus.
Idomeneus
🗡 heroKing of Crete at Troy
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🗡 heroSon of Theseus destroyed by Aphrodite
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Tantalus
🗡 heroKing punished with eternal hunger and thirst
A king who offended the gods by serving them his own son as a meal. His punishment in Tartarus — standing in water that recedes when he tries to drink, beneath fruit that pulls away when he reaches for it — gave us the word "tantalize."
Alcmaeon
🗡 herovengeance
Son of Amphiaraus who killed his own mother Eriphyle on his father's orders and was driven mad by the Erinyes.
Oedipus
🗡 heroKing who fulfilled the prophecy of killing his father and marrying his mother
The tragic king of Thebes who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, fulfilling a prophecy he had spent his life trying to avoid.
Cepheus
🗡 herotragedy
Ethiopian king who chained his own daughter Andromeda to a rock to appease Poseidon's sea monster.