Category: Mythology

From the Three Graces to the Three Fates to the Three Furies,

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Cepheus

CepheusIn Greek mythology, the name of three different people:

  1. The son of the King Belus (1) of Ethiopia. He is the husband of Cassiopeia and father of Andromeda. His wife boasted that she, or her daughter, were more beautiful than the Nereidsand in revenge Poseidon sent a sea monster to plague his lands. He consulted the oracle of Ammon and was told that the problem would end if he exposed his daughter as prey for the monster. His people forced him to comply with the oracle, and he chained Andromeda to a rock by the sea. She was rescued by Perseus who killed the monster and married the girl.
    After his death Cepheus was placed among the stars.
  2. A son of Aleus and Naeara (or Cleobule). He succeeded his father as the ruler of Tegea in Arcadia. Cepheus was the father of twenty sons and two daughters, but nearly all of his sons perished in an expedition they undertook with Heracles. He was one of the Argonauts and is the reputed founder of Caphyae (Bibliotheke I, 9.16; II, 7.3; III, 9.1; ArgonauticaI, 161; Fabulae 14; Guide to Greece VIII, 8.3, 23.3).
  3. One of the participants in the Calydonian Hunt.

by Micha F. Lindemans

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Owain

Owain

by Brian Edward Rise

In history he is known as the son of Urien and a prince of Rheged. Eugenius is the Roman equivalent of his name. He, like his father, fought the Northern Angles towards the end of the sixth century. In a churchyard in Penrith is the so-called Giant’s Grave that was regarded for a long time as his and an elegy on his death was composed by the Welsh bard Taliesin.

He later became a hero of Welsh legend. He was pulled into Arthurian saga anachronistically, because he was unknown at the time Culwych and Olwen, which never mentions him, was written. This might be the result of brief allusion to him found in Geoffrey of Monmouth. A Welsh triad names his mother as Modron, originally a Celtic goddess. He is a character in The Dream of Rhonabwy and Owain (or The Lady of the Fountain).

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Gwydion

Gwydion

by Karen Davis

Gwydion, one of the nephews of Math ap Mathonwy, and brother of Arianrhod. He contrived Gilfaethwy’s rape of the maiden Goewin, Math’s foot holder. He did this by starting a war with Pryderi of Dyfed, stealing his pigs, and thus taking Math away on campaign. But he and Gilfaethwy doubled back and Gwydion forced the other women to leave Goewin with Gilfaethwy, who raped her.

When she confessed this to Math, he levied as punishment on his nephews that they spent three years as animals, Gwydion as a stag, a wild sow, and a wolf, breeding each year with his brother Gilfaethwy who was hind, boar, and she-wolf. They produced three offspring, whom Math made human and raised at his court.

Afterward, they were restored to the court. Gwydion raised Arianrhod’s virgin-born son Llew Llaw Gyffes, winning for him his name and arms by tricking his mother, and created a woman out of flowers to marry him. After that woman, Blodeuwedd, betrayed Llew to his death, Gwydion restored him to life and turned her into an owl.