Heracleidae in the context of "Cleodaeus"

The Argead dynasty (Greek: Ἀργεάδαι, romanized: Argeádai), also known as the Temenid dynasty (Greek: Τημενίδαι, Tēmenídai) was an ancient Macedonian royal house of Dorian Greek provenance. They were the founders and the ruling dynasty of the kingdom of Macedon from about 700 to 310 BC.

Their tradition, as described in ancient Greek historiography, traced their origins to Argos, of Peloponnese in Southern Greece, hence the name Argeads or Argives. Initially, the Argeadae were the rulers of the tribe of the same name, (Argead Macedonians) who prevailed in early Emathia. By the time of Philip II they had expanded their reign further, to include under the rule of Macedonia all Upper Macedonian states. The family's most celebrated members were Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, under whose leadership the kingdom of Macedonia gradually gained predominance throughout Greece, established the Hellenic League, defeated the Achaemenid Empire and expanded as far as Egypt and India. The mythical founder of the Argead dynasty is King Caranus. The Argeads claimed descent from Heracles through his great-great-grandson Temenus, also king of Argos.

Heracles (/ˈhɛrəkliːz/ Ancient Greek: Ἡρακλῆς, lit. 'glory/fame of Hera'), born Alcaeus (Ἀλκαῖος, Alkaios) or Alcides (Ἀλκείδης, Alkeidēs), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon. He was a descendant of Perseus, another son of Zeus.

He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans known as Heracleidae (Ἡρακλεῖδαι), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well.

Hippotes (Ancient Greek: Ἱππότης) may refer to a number of people from Greek mythology:

• Hippotes, son of Mimas and father of Aeolus, the keeper of the Winds in the Odyssey. He was a mortal king.
• Hippotes, a Corinthian prince as the son of King Creon, who accused Medea of the murder she had committed on his sister and his father. His persona was assumed by Medeus, son of Jason or Aegeus and Medea, when he came to the court of King Perses of Colchis.
• Hippotes, a son of Phylas by Leipephilene, daughter of Iolaus, and great-grandnephew and great-grandson of Heracles. When the Heracleidae, on their invading the Peloponnesus, were encamped near Naupactus, Hippotes killed the seer Carnus, in consequence of which the army of the Heracleidae began to suffer very severely, and Hippotes by the command of an oracle was banished for a period of ten years. He was likely the same Hippotes who was the father of Aletes. He seems to be the same as the Hippotes who was regarded as the founder of Cnidus in Caria.

In Greek mythology, Atreus (Ancient Greek: Ἀτρεύς, [a.trěu̯s] lit. 'fearless') was a king of Mycenae in the Peloponnese, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. His descendants became known collectively as the Atreidae (Ancient Greek: Ἀτρείδαι Atreidai).

Atreus and his brother Thyestes were exiled by their father for murdering their half-brother Chrysippus in their desire for the throne of Olympia. They took refuge in Mycenae, where they ascended to the throne in the absence of King Eurystheus, who was fighting the Heracleidae. Eurystheus had meant for their stewardship to be temporary, but it became permanent after his death in battle, which ended the rule of the Perseid dynasty in Mycenae.

Leonidas I (/liəˈnaɪdəs, -dæs/; Ancient Greek: Λεωνίδας, Leōnídas; born c. 540 BC; died 11 August 480 BC) was king of the Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. He was the son of king Anaxandridas II and the 17th king of the Agiad dynasty, a Spartan royal house which claimed descent from Heracles. Leonidas I ascended to the throne in c. 489 BC, succeeding his half-brother king Cleomenes I. He ruled jointly along with king Leotychidas II until his death in 480 BC, when he was succeeded by his son, Pleistarchus.

At the Second Greco-Persian War, Leonidas led the allied Greek forces in a last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), attempting to defend the pass from the invading Persian army, and was killed early during the third and last day of the battle. Leonidas entered myth as a hero and the leader of the 300 Spartans who died in battle at Thermopylae. While the Greeks lost this battle, they were able to expel the Persian invaders in the following year.

The Dorian invasion (or Dorian migration) is an ancient Greek myth and discredited archaeological hypothesis describing the movement of the Dorian people into the Peloponnese region of Greece. According to the myth, the Dorians migrated from central Greece shortly after the Trojan War and populated most of the southern Peloponnese, particularly the regions of Laconia, Messenia and the Argolid. The myth became combined with that of the Return of the Heracleidae, such that the descendants of the hero Heracles were imagined to have led the Dorians and founded the ruling lines of several Dorian cities, including Sparta. The myth probably emerged during the Early Iron Age as part of a process of ethnogenesis between cities claiming Dorian ancestry. In the fifth century BCE, it gained greater prominence through its use to promote unity among Sparta's Peloponnesian allies, and to differentiate Sparta from its rival Athens, believed to be of Ionian heritage.

In 1824, the German antiquarian Karl Otfried Müller published The Dorians, in which he argued that the Dorians were a northern, Indo-European people who invaded Greece and subjugated the Peloponnese. Müller's views gained general scholarly acceptance throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The Dorians were credited with introducing new forms of material culture and destroying the Mycenaean palaces, though this created conflicts between the interpretative narrative, the mythological tradition, and the archaeological evidence. The Dorians also became associated with the Sea Peoples, believed to have destroyed several Near Eastern sites at the end of the Bronze Age. During the first half of the twentieth century, scholars attempted to find archaeological and linguistic evidence of the Dorian invasion and to trace its route, though these efforts proved largely unsuccessful.

The Agiad dynasty (Ancient Greek: Ἀγιάδαι, Agiádai) was one of the two royal families of the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. They ruled jointly along with the Eurypontid dynasty, possibly from the 8th century BC onwards, being the senior of the two houses. The hypothetical founder of the dynasty was Agis I, possibly the first king of Sparta at the end of the 10th century BC, who subsequently gave his name to the dynasty. The two lines, who maintained an enduring rivalry, were, according to tradition, respectively descended from the twins Eurysthenes and Procles, both descendants of Heracles. The most famous member of the Agiad dynasty was Leonidas I, known for his heroic death at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. The last Agiad king was Agesipolis III, deposed by the Eurypontid Lycurgus in 215 BC.

In Greek mythology, Aristomachus (Ancient Greek: Ἀριστόμαχος, Ἀristómakhos) may refer to several figures including:

• Aristomachus, one of the sons of Talaus. He is the father of Hippomedon.
• Aristomachus, one of the Heracleidae, son of Cleodaeus, a great-grandson of Heracles. He led an attempt to capture Mycenae during the reign of Tisamenus, but, having misinterpreted the oracle, failed and fell in the battle. He is the father of Temenus, Cresphontes and Aristodemus.
• Aristomachus, one of the suitors of Hippodamia before Pelops, was killed by Oenomaus.