Tyro
Beautiful princess who fell in love with the river god Enipeus, only to be seduced by Poseidon disguised as the river.
The Legend of Tyro
Poseidon impersonated a river to sleep with her — then wrapped them both in a wave so no one could see. Tyro loved the river god Enipeus and walked his banks daily. Poseidon took Enipeus's form and lay with her at the river mouth, raising a great arching wave to conceal them. She bore twin sons, Pelias and Neleus, and exposed them. Pelias became the king who sent Jason for the Golden Fleece; Neleus founded Pylos and fathered Nestor. Tyro later married her uncle Cretheus and bore Aeson, Jason's father. Homer has Odysseus meet her shade in the Underworld, where she tells her story. She connects nearly every major heroic lineage in Greek myth through her children.
Parents
Salmoneus
Symbols
Explore Further
Anaxibia
🗡 heroMarriage, royalty
Mycenaean princess who married Strophius of Phocis and raised the young Orestes in secret
Anchises
🗡 heroLove, royalty, Troy
Trojan prince beloved by Aphrodite and father of Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome
Oreithyia
🗡 heroabduction
Athenian princess abducted by the North Wind Boreas, mother of the winged Argonauts Zetes and Calais.
Semele
🗡 heroMortal mother of Dionysus
Semele was a Theban princess who became the mortal mother of Dionysus — destroyed when she insisted on seeing Zeus in his true divine form.
Psyche
🗡 heroMortal whose love conquered a god
Psyche was a princess so beautiful that Aphrodite was jealous — she married Eros in darkness and lost him when she looked, then won him back through impossible labours.
Acis
🗡 heroLove, rivers
Sicilian shepherd youth beloved by the sea-nymph Galatea and crushed by the jealous Cyclops Polyphemus
Ino
🗡 heromadness
Theban princess who raised the infant Dionysus, was driven mad by Hera, and leaped into the sea to become the goddess Leucothea.
Nausicaa
🗡 heroPhaeacian princess who found Odysseus
Nausicaa was the young princess of Scheria who found the shipwrecked Odysseus on the beach and guided him to her father's palace — launching his final journey home.
Alcmene
🗡 heroMother of Heracles
Alcmene was the mortal woman whom Zeus seduced by disguising himself as her husband — she bore Heracles, the greatest hero of Greek mythology.
Peleus
🗡 heroheroism
King of Phthia, Argonaut, and father of Achilles who wrestled the shape-shifting sea goddess Thetis to win her as his bride.
Europa
🗡 heroPrincess who gave her name to a continent
Europa was the Phoenician princess whom Zeus, in the form of a white bull, carried across the sea to Crete — her name was given to the continent of Europe.
Arsinoe
🗡 heroNursing, protection
Nurse or foster-mother of Orestes who saved the prince from Clytemnestra's murderous designs