Achelous

Also Known As: Greek Akheloios or Akheloos; the god of the river Achelous in western Greece, son of Oceanus and Tethys
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He is the living river itself, able to take the shape of a bull, a serpent or a bull-faced man, and he wore the horn that became the horn of plenty.
Role in Mythos: Achelous is the eldest and greatest of the Greek river-gods, whom Homer names beside Oceanus and whom the oracle at Dodona was said to honour at the end of its answers.
Relation to Humans: He courted the princess Deianeira, fought Heracles for her and lost, and he later purified the matricide Alcmaeon and gave him a daughter in marriage. Greeks far from his river swore by him, sacrificed to him and set up shrines to him beside springs, because his name had come to stand for fresh water itself.

The suitor came to the palace at Pleuron three times, and he never came in the same body twice. Once he was a bull. Once he was a serpent sliding on bright coils across the floor. Once he stood on a man’s legs with an ox’s face, and water ran out of his shaggy beard the way it runs out of a spring in a hillside. The girl he wanted was Deianeira, daughter of King Oeneus of Calydon, and in Sophocles’ play the Women of Trachis she remembers praying to die rather than share that bed.

He was Achelous, the god of the great river of western Greece, which comes down out of the Pindus mountains and runs through Aetolia and Acarnania to the Ionian Sea. Hesiod lists him among the rivers that Tethys bore to Oceanus and calls him silver-swirling. In the Iliad Achilles, boasting of Zeus, says that not even powerful Achelous can match the son of Cronus, nor deep Oceanus himself, and it tells you something that Achelous is the river chosen to set against the ocean. Later Greeks read the line as making him the prince of all rivers.

His reach went far beyond his own banks. The historian Ephorus, as Macrobius quotes him, reported that the oracle of Zeus at Dodona usually closed its answers with an order to sacrifice to Achelous, and that people called on him in their prayers, sacrifices and oaths. His name came to mean fresh water in general, so that Virgil could describe Bacchus mixing grapes with draughts of Achelous. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates stretches out under a plane tree by the Ilissus outside Athens, with the chaste-tree in flower, the stream cold enough to shock the feet and the cicadas shrilling overhead, and he judges from the figures and offerings left there that the spot belongs to Achelous and the Nymphs.

The best account of the wrestling match comes from the loser. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses the hero Theseus, on his way home to Athens, finds the road cut by the river in spate. Achelous warns him that the flood rolls boulders and carries off whole stables with the cattle inside, and invites him in to wait. His house is built of pumice and rough tufa, the floor soft with damp moss, the ceiling set with conch and murex shells. Barefoot river-nymphs lay the tables. After dinner the god, propped on one elbow with reeds tangled in his hair, starts telling stories.

He points out five islands off the river mouth, the Echinades. They were nymphs once, he says, who sacrificed ten bullocks to the country gods and forgot to invite him, so he rose to full flood and rolled them out to sea with the ground under their feet. One more island, farther off, was a girl called Perimele whom he loved. Her father Hippodamas threw her from a cliff, Achelous held her up in the water and prayed to Poseidon, and she hardened into land in his arms.

Then Theseus asks why his brow is maimed, and the god groans. He and Heracles were the last two suitors left for Deianeira. Achelous argued his case well: he was a local, the master of the waters that wound through the king’s own country, and he made a point of doubting whether Zeus was truly Heracles’ father. Heracles answered that his hand was better than his tongue. Achelous threw off his green cloak, they flung sand over each other, and locked together brow to brow like two bulls fighting over a heifer while the herd looks on. Heracles broke the hold on the fourth attempt, climbed onto his back and forced him to his knees in the sand. Achelous became a snake and slid free; Heracles laughed, reminded him that he had killed the Hydra, and got a grip on his throat. Achelous became a bull; Heracles hauled his head down, drove the horns into the ground and tore one of them off.

He lost.

Sophocles tells the fight from the other side. His Deianeira sat on a hillside waiting to learn whose wife she would be, too frightened, she says, to follow how the fight went, and his chorus hears the clatter of fists, the clang of the bow, the knock of bull’s horns and deep roaring from both fighters, with Aphrodite alone as umpire. The victory brought her no peace. The rest of the play is the story of how that marriage ended.

The broken horn is where the god’s story turns into something the rest of the world kept. In Ovid his own Naiads fill it with flowers and fruit, and a nymph carries it in at the end of the evening loaded with the whole autumn harvest for dessert. Hyginus says Heracles gave the horn to the Hesperides or to the nymphs, who filled it and called it Cornucopia. Apollodorus has a different bargain: Achelous bought his horn back by handing over the horn of Amalthea, a bull’s horn that could pour out as much food or drink as anyone wished. By morning, in Ovid, the god has sunk his rustic face below the water and hides the missing horn under a wreath of willow and reeds.

Achelous had a large family. The Sirens were his daughters, by the Muse Melpomene according to Apollodorus, by Terpsichore according to Apollonius of Rhodes, or by a mortal woman called Sterope. The spring Castalia at Delphi was counted among his daughters, and so was Peirene at Corinth. So was Callirhoe, whom he gave as a wife to Alcmaeon after purifying him of his mother’s murder, letting the exile settle on the new land his silt had built at the river mouth. Ovid scoffed at the whole idea that river water could wash off blood. A late Latin commentator, Servius, gave the river its own origin story: grieving for the lost Sirens, the god called on his mother Earth, who took him into her lap, and the river welled up out of the ground where she received him.

Greek artists gave him a body when the poets could not agree on one. Early vases and coins show a bull with a bearded man’s head, a type that, as Ruth Gais noted in the American Journal of Archaeology (1978), probably descends from older Near Eastern man-headed bulls. A marble mask from Marathon of about 490 to 470 BC gives him a bearded face with bull’s ears and horns; a coin of Metapontum shows a naked, bearded older man with horns and an inscription that seems to mark games held in his honour; a bronze figure from Euboea of about 460 BC, found with a dedication to Achelous and the Nymphs, drops the animal entirely and simply holds the cornucopia. Gais knew of no image in which he appears as a youth. At Olympia the Megarians dedicated little cedar-and-gold figures of the fight, with Ares standing behind Achelous and Athena behind Heracles.

The ancient rationalists thought the whole story was about hydraulics. Strabo explained that the river roared like a bull, that its bends were called horns and its windings made it a serpent, and that its shifting silt kept moving the border between Acarnanians and Aetolians until Heracles tamed it with embankments and channels and dried out good farmland. Diodorus agreed, and said the poets had turned an engineering job into a wrestling match. On that reading the horn of plenty is simply a drained floodplain full of orchards.

Everything Achelous could do came from being water. He could flood a valley, carve land into islands, build new ground at his mouth, feed a field, and wash a killer clean enough to marry. His shapes were his real weapon, and they were fewer than a sea-god’s: in Ovid he admits his choice is limited to himself, the snake and the bull. Against a wrestler who would not let go, three shapes were not enough. He could lose a horn, and once it was gone he could not grow it back; the best he could do was buy it back or hide the gap under reeds.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Achelous in Greek mythology?

Achelous is the god of the Achelous River in western Greece, the son of Oceanus and Tethys in Hesiod’s Theogony. He was treated as the greatest of the river-gods, and his name was used across Greece to mean fresh water in general. Homer names him beside Oceanus as a power that still cannot match Zeus.

Why did Achelous fight Heracles?

Achelous and Heracles both wanted to marry Deianeira, daughter of King Oeneus of Calydon, and they wrestled for her. Achelous changed into a serpent and then a bull during the fight, but Heracles overpowered him and tore off one of his horns. Heracles won the bride.

How is Achelous connected to the cornucopia?

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the horn Heracles tore from Achelous was filled with fruit and flowers by the Naiads and became the horn of plenty. Hyginus says Heracles gave it to the Hesperides or the nymphs, who filled it and named it Cornucopia. Apollodorus tells it differently: Achelous got his own horn back by trading Heracles the horn of Amalthea, which could pour out food or drink on demand.

What forms could Achelous take?

Sophocles describes Achelous courting Deianeira as a bull, as a coiled serpent, and as a man’s body with an ox’s face and a beard streaming with spring water. In Ovid he says his shapes are limited to his own form, a snake and a bull. Greek art most often shows him as a bull with a bearded man’s head.

Who were the children of Achelous?

The Sirens were the daughters of Achelous, with their mother named as the Muse Melpomene, the Muse Terpsichore, or a woman called Sterope. The springs Castalia at Delphi and Peirene at Corinth were also counted as his daughters. His daughter Callirhoe married Alcmaeon after Achelous purified him of killing his mother.