Alastor

Alastor (/əˈlæstər, -tɔːr/; Greek: Ἀλάστωρ, English translation: "avenger") refers to a number of people and concepts in Greek mythology:^[1]

• Alastor was an epithet of the Greek god Zeus, according to Hesychius of Alexandria and the Etymologicum Magnum, which described him as the avenger of evil deeds, specifically familial bloodshed. As the personification of a curse, it was also a sidekick of the Erinyes.^[2] The name is also used, especially by the tragic writers, to designate any deity or demon who avenges wrongs committed by men.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} In Euripides' play Elecktra, Orestes questions an oracle who calls upon him to kill his mother, and wonders if the oracle was not from Apollo, but some malicious alastor.^[8] There was an altar to Zeus Alastor just outside the city walls of Thasos.^[9]
  • By the time of the 4th century BC, alastor in Greek had degraded to a generic type of insult, with the approximate meaning of "scoundrel".^[2]
• Alastor, a son of Neleus and Chloris. When Heracles took Pylos, he killed Alastor and his brothers, except for Nestor.^[10][11] According to Parthenius of Nicaea, he was to be married to Harpalyce, who, however, was taken from him by her father Clymenus.^[12]
• Alastor, a Lycian, who was a companion of Sarpedon, and was slain by Odysseus.^[13][14]
  • Alastorides is a patronymic form given by Homer to Tros, who was probably a son of the Lycian Alastor mentioned above.^[15]
• Another, unrelated Alastor is mentioned in the Iliad of Homer.^[16]
• Alastor, in Christian demonology, came to be considered a kind of possessing entity.^[17] He was likened to Nemesis. The name Alastor was also used as a generic term for a class of evil spirits.

See also

• Trullion: Alastor 2262

References

1. Schmitz, Leonhard (1867), "Alastor", in Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, p. 89
2. Rose, Herbert Jennings (1996), "Alastor", in Hornblower, Simon, Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. Pausanias, Description of Greece viii. 24. § 4
4. Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum 13, &c.
5. Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1479, 1508, The Persians 343
6. Sophocles, The Trachiniae 1092
7. Euripides, Phoenician Women 1550, &c.
8. Euripides, Elecktra 979
9. Cole, Susan Guettel (1994), "Civic Cult and Civic Identity", in Herman Hansen, Mogens, Sources for the Ancient Greek City-State: Symposium August, 24-27 1994, Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, p. 310, ISBN 978-87-7304-267-0
10. Bibliotheca i. 9. § 9
11. Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes, i. 156
12. Parthenius of Nicaea, c. 13
13. Homer, Iliad v. 677
14. Ovid, Metamorphoses xiii. 257
15. Homer, Iliad xx. 463
16. Homer, Iliad viii. 333, xiii. 422
17. Sorenson, Eric (2002), Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity, Mohr Siebeck, p. 78, ISBN 3-16-147851-7