Alcathous of Elis Aetolia, and when his brother Callipolis hastened to carry the sad tidings to his father, he found him engaged in offering a sacrifice to Apollo, and thinking it unfit to offer sacrifices at such a moment, he snatched away the wood from the altar. Alcathous imagining this to be an act of deliberate sacrilege, killed his son on the spot with a piece of wood. The acropolis of Megara was called by a name derived from that of Alcathous. Alcathous was grandfather of the hero Ajax, via his daughter Periboea, who married Telamon, and of Iolaus, nephew and charioteer of
Greek hero cult Greek hero cult Hero cults were one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. In Homeric Greek, "hero" (, ) refers to a man who fought (on either side) during the Trojan War. By the historical period, however, the word came to mean specifically a "dead" man, venerated and propitiated at his tomb or at a designated shrine, because his fame during life or his unusual manner of death gave him power to support and protect the living. A hero was more than human but less than a god, and various kinds of supernatural figures came to be