Castor and Pollux Castor and Pollux Castor and Pollux (or in Greek, Polydeuces) were twin half-brothers in Greek and Roman mythology, known together as the Dioscuri. Their mother was Leda, but they had different fathers; Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, while Pollux was the divine son of Zeus, who seduced Leda in the guise of a swan. Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. In Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini (literally "twins")
Castor and Pollux or heroes concerned. The domestic setting of the "theoxenia" was a characteristic distinction accorded to the Dioskouroi. The image of the twins attending a goddess are widespread and link the Dioskouroi with the male societies of initiates under the aegis of the Anatolian Great Goddess and the great gods of Samothrace. The Dioscuri are the inventors of war dances, which characterize the Kuretes. The heavenly twins also appear in the Indo-European tradition as the effulgent Vedic brother-horsemen the Ashvins, the Lithuanian Ašvieniai, the Germanic Alcis., and the Venetic Alkomnoi of Este. From the fifth century BC onwards, the brothers were