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 of Tyndareus alone, but they were sons of Zeus in the Hesiodic "Catalogue" (fr. 24 M-W). The conventional account (attested first in Pindar, Nemean 10) combined these paternities so that only Pollux was fathered by Zeus, while Leda and her husband Tyndareus conceived Castor. This explains why they were granted an alternate immortality. It is a common belief that one would live among the gods, while the other was among the dead. The figure of Tyndareus may have entered their tradition to explain their archaic name "Tindaridai" in Spartan inscriptions, or "Tyndaridai" in literature, in turn occasioning incompatible accounts of