Opuntian Locris

In Greek mythology, Patroclus (generally pronounced /pəˈtroʊkləs/; Ancient Greek: Πάτροκλος, romanized: Pátroklos, lit. 'glory of the father') was a Greek hero of the Trojan War and close companion to the hero Achilles. Patroclus is an important character in Homer's Iliad.

Born in Opus, Patroclus was the son of the Argonaut Menoetius. When he was a child, he was exiled from his hometown and was adopted by Peleus, king of Phthia. There, he was raised alongside Peleus's son, Achilles. When the tide of the Trojan War turned against the Achaeans, Patroclus, disguised as Achilles and defying his orders to retreat in time, led the Myrmidons in battle against the Trojans and was eventually killed by the Trojan prince, Hector. Enraged by Patroclus's death, Achilles ended his refusal to fight, resulting in significant Greek victories.

Doric or Dorian (Ancient Greek: Δωρισμός, romanized: Dōrismós), also known as West Greek, was a group of Ancient Greek dialects; its varieties are divided into the Doric proper and Northwest Doric subgroups. Doric was spoken in a vast area, including northern Greece (Acarnania, Aetolia, Epirus, western and eastern Locris, Phocis, Doris, and possibly Lower Macedonia and Upper Macedonia), most of the Peloponnese (Achaea, Elis, Messenia, Laconia, Argolid, Aegina, Corinthia, and Megara), the Southern Aegean (Kythira, Milos, Thera, Crete, Karpathos, and Rhodes), as well as the colonies of some of those regions in Cyrene, Magna Graecia, the Black Sea, the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea. It was also spoken in the Greek sanctuaries of Dodona, Delphi, and Olympia, as well as at the four Panhellenic festivals; the Isthmian, Nemean, Pythian, and Olympic Games.

By Hellenistic times, under the Achaean League, an Achaean Doric koine appeared, exhibiting many peculiarities common to all Doric dialects, which delayed the spread of the Attic-based Koine Greek to the Peloponnese until the 2nd century BC. The only living descendant of Doric is the Tsakonian language which is still spoken in Greece today; though critically endangered, with only a few hundred – mostly elderly – fluent speakers left.

Menoetius or Menoetes (/məˈniːʃiəs/; Ancient Greek: Μενοίτιος, Μενοίτης Menoitios), meaning doomed might, is a name that refers to three distinct persons from Greek mythology:

• Menoetius, a second generation Titan, son of Iapetus and Clymene or Asia, and a brother of Atlas, Prometheus and Epimetheus. Menoetius was killed by Zeus with a flash of lightning in the Titanomachy, and banished to Tartarus. His name means "doomed might", deriving from the Ancient Greek words menos ("might, power") and oitos ("doom, pain"). Hesiod described Menoetius as hubristic, meaning exceedingly prideful and impetuous to the very end. From what his name suggests, along with Hesiod's own account, Menoetius was perhaps the Titan god of violent anger and rash action.
• Menoetes, guard of the cattle of Hades. During Heracles twelfth labor, which required him to steal the hound Cerberus from the Underworld, he slays one of Hades' cattle. A certain Menoetes, son of Keuthonymos, challenges Heracles to a wrestling match, during which Heracles hugs him and breaks his ribs before Persephone intervenes.
• Menoetius from Opus was one of the Argonauts, and son of Actor and Aegina. He was the father of Patroclus and Myrto by either Damocrateia, Sthenele, Philomela Polymele, or Periopis. Among the settlers of Locris, Menoetius was chiefly honored by King Opus II, son of Zeus and Protogeneia.

Ozolian Locris (Ancient Greek: Ὀζολία Λοκρίς) or Hesperian Locris (Ancient Greek: Λοκρίς Ἑσπερία, lit. 'Western Locris') was a region in ancient Greece, inhabited by the Ozolian Locrians (Ancient Greek: Ὀζολοὶ Λοκροί; Latin: Locri Ozoli) a tribe of the Locrians, upon the Corinthian Gulf, bounded on the north by Doris, on the east by Phocis, and on the west by Aetolia.

The Locrians (Greek: Λοκροί, Lokroi) were an ancient Greek tribe that inhabited the region of Locris in Central Greece, around Parnassus. They spoke the Locrian dialect, a Doric-Northwest dialect, and were closely related to their neighbouring tribes, the Phocians and the Dorians. They were divided into two geographically distinct tribes, the western Ozolians and the eastern Opuntians; their primary towns were Amphissa and Opus respectively, and their most important colony was the city of Epizephyrian Locris in Magna Graecia, which still bears the name "Locri" to this day. Among others, Ajax the Lesser and Patroclus were the most famous Locrian heroes, both distinguished in the Trojan War. Zaleucus from Epizephyrian Locris devised the first written Greek law code, the Locrian code.

In Greek mythology, Damocrateia (Ancient Greek: Δαμοκράτεια) was the daughter of Aegina and Zeus, and thus, sister of Aeacus, King of Aegina. She became the mother of Patroclus by her half-brother Menoetius, son of King Actor of Opus. Otherwise, the hero was called the son of Philomela or Polymele, Sthenele or Periopis.

In Greek mythology, Opus (Ancient Greek: Ὀπόεις) may refer to the following characters:

• Opus I, king of the Epeians and son of Zeus by Protogeneia, daughter of Deucalion. Opus was the father of Cambyse or Protogeneia who was carried off by Zeus to Mt. Maenalus in Arcadia where she bore a son, the below Opus who was then adopted by Locrus as his own child, for the latter was barren.
• Opus II, son of Locrus or Zeus by Cabya or Cambyse and thus a grandson of Opus I. From him, a portion of the Locris derived their name Opuntii. Locrus gave Opus a city and a people to govern and strangers came to him from Argos, Thebes, Arcadia and Pisa. But among the settlers, he chiefly honored the son of Actor and Aegina, Menoetius who became the father of Patroclus. In some accounts, after a quarrel between Opus and his father Locrus, the former took a great number of the citizens with him and went to seek an oracle about transplanting a new colony. The oracle told him to build a city where he should chance to be bitten by a wooden dog, and as he was crossing to the other sea, Opus trod upon a cynosbatus (a sweet brier). Greatly troubled by the wound, he spent several days there, during which he explored the country and found the cities Physcus and Oeantheia and the other cities which the so-called Ozolian Locrians inhabited. Opus was the father of Cynus, father of Hodoedocus, father of Oileus, father of Ajax the Lesser.