Cyrene (mythology) Cyrene (mythology) In Greek mythology, Cyrene () or Kyrene (, "Sovereign Queen"), was a Thessalian princess, and later, the queen and ruler of the North African city of Cyrene. According to the myth, the city was founded and named after her by Apollo. As recorded in Pindar's ninth Pythian ode, Cyrene was the daughter of Hypseus, king of the Lapiths, although some myths state that her father was actually the river-god Peneus and she was a nymph rather than a mortal. According to Apollonius Rhodius, she also had a sister called Larissa. By the god Apollo she bore Aristaeus and
Greek mythology existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, it is inherently political, as Gilbert Cuthbertson has argued. The earlier inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula were an agricultural people who, using Animism, assigned a spirit to every aspect of nature. Eventually, these vague spirits assumed human forms and entered the local mythology as gods. When tribes from the north of the