The Probert Encyclopaedia of Greek & Roman Mythology

HEROES

Heroes was a name applied by the Greeks to mythical personages who formed an intermediate link between men and gods. They were demigods, whose mortal nature only was destroyed by death, while the immortal ascended to the gods. The heroic age of Greece is considered to have terminated with the return of the Heraclidae into the Peloponnesus in 1100 BC. There were six great heroic races, descended respectively from Prometheus and Deucalion, Inachus, Agenor, Danaus, Pelops or Tantalus, and Cecrops. Individual families, as, for instance, the AEacidioe, Atridoe, Heraclidoe, belong to one or another of these races. Great sacrifices were not offered to the heroes, as they were to the Olympian deities; but groves were consecrated to them, and libations poured out on their sepulchres.
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