Temple of Aphaea Agamemnon against Priam. According to the standard myths, Zeus raped the nymph "Aigina", who bore the first king of the island, Aiakos. This king had the sons Telamon (father of the Homeric hero Ajax) and Peleus (father of the Homeric hero Achilles). The Greek idolize heroes who fallen at war, to die on the battleground was a great honor it depicted courage and strength. When a hero died it was though that they become immortal because they prove themselves to the Gods. The sculptures preserve extensive traces of a complex paint scheme, and are crucial for the study of painting
Greek hero cult heroines as similar in kind to heroes, but in androcentric Greek culture, typically of lesser stature. Whitley distinguishes four or five essential types of hero cult: Hero cults could be of the utmost political importance. When Cleisthenes divided the Athenians into new demes for voting, he consulted Delphi on what heroes he should name each division after. According to Herodotus, the Spartans attributed their conquest of Arcadia to their theft of the bones of Orestes from the Arcadian town of Tegea. Heroes in myth often had close but conflicted relationships with the gods. Thus Heracles's name means "the glory of