Minor Gods

The Minor Gods section covers deities, nymphs and personifications who were worshipped or told of but never joined the twelve Olympians. They range from river-gods and nymphs to the personified forces of life and death, and most are known only from a few lines of the poets.

Fate and the Fates

Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos are the three Moirai, or Fates. Hesiod calls them daughters of Night in one passage (Theogony 217–222) and of Zeus and Themis in another (904–906), and says they give mortals both good and evil at birth. Plato pictures them as daughters of Necessity seated at the spindle of the universe, Lachesis singing of the past, Clotho of the present and Atropos of what is to come (Republic 10.617c); the familiar division into spinner, measurer and cutter of the thread of life grows out of their names and this image.

Sea, rivers and nymphs

Thetis, the sea-nymph who bore Achilles, is the best known of the fifty Nereids. Calypso, Psyche, Echo, Daphne and Syrinx have pages of their own. River-gods such as Achelous, Alpheus, Peneus and Scamander, and groups such as the Hesperides, the Graeae and the Hyades, fill out the section.

Personifications

Many minor gods are abstractions: Eirene (Peace) and Dike (Justice), two of the Horae born to Zeus and Themis; Elpis (Hope), who alone stayed under the rim of Pandora’s jar (Works and Days 96–99); Limos (Famine) and Ate (Ruin), children of Strife in Hesiod (Theogony 226–230); Pheme (Rumour or Talk), whom Hesiod calls a goddess, light to raise and hard to be rid of (Works and Days 760–764); Ploutos (Wealth), the son of Demeter and Iasion (Theogony 969–971); and Hygeia (Health), whom legend called a daughter of Asclepius (Pausanias 1.23.4). Others, such as Adonis, the beloved of Aphrodite, Priapus and Hermaphroditus, are lesser gods with stories of their own.

See Also: The Fates, Thetis, Calypso, Psyche, Echo, Hesperides, Achelous, Eirene