Aeacus Acheron to be tormented by the hounds of Cocytus, the Echidna, the Tartesian eel, and Tithrasian Gorgons. Alexander the Great traced his ancestry through his mother to Aeacus. Aeacus Aeacus (; also spelled Eacus; Ancient Greek: Αἰακός) was a mythological king of the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf. Aeacus was the son of Zeus by Aegina, a daughter of the river-god Asopus or by Europa in some accounts. Compare Plato, "Gorgias", 524a. He was the father of Peleus, Telamon and Phocus and was the grandfather of the Trojan war warriors Achilles and Telemonian Ajax. Aeacus was born on
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