Heroes & Mortal Legends
From Gilgamesh and Heracles to Sun Wukong, Beowulf, and King Arthur. Explore the heroic archetypes who braved the underworld, challenged tyrannical beasts, and bridged mortality with the divine.
Dangun
Legendary founder of Gojoseon, son of the heavenly prince Hwanung and the bear-woman Ungnyeo; tradition dates his kingdom to 2333 BCE, and he ended his days as a mountain god.
Jumong
Born from an egg after sunlight pursued his mother Yuhwa, daughter of the river god; a master archer who fled Buyeo over a bridge of fish and turtles and founded Goguryeo in 37 BCE.
Maui
The trickster demigod known across Polynesia: he fished up land from the sea floor, snared the sun to slow it, stole fire, and died trying to win immortality for humankind.
Gilgamesh
King of Uruk, two-thirds divine. With his friend Enkidu he slew Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven; after Enkidu's death he sought immortality in vain. His epic is among the oldest surviving works of literature.
Hou Yi
When ten suns rose together and scorched the crops, the archer Yi shot down nine and slew the monsters ravaging the land; the elixir he won from the Queen Mother was taken by his wife Chang'e.
Manco Cápac
Legendary first Inca king. In one tale he and Mama Ocllo rose from Lake Titicaca at the Sun's command, seeking where a golden rod would sink; in another he was among eight siblings who left the cave at Pacaritambo.
Medb
Ruler of Connacht. A reckoning of wealth left her one prize bull short, so she raised an army for the Brown Bull of Cooley and met Cu Chulainn at the fords.
Rama
Hero of the Ramayana: exiled fourteen years to honour his father's word, he led an army of monkeys and bears across the sea to Lanka, slew Ravana, rescued Sita, and returned to be crowned.
Achilles
Greatest warrior of the Greek forces at Troy, whose wrath and grief drive the plot of Homer's Iliad. Son of the mortal king Peleus and the sea-goddess Thetis.
Aeneas
Trojan prince, son of the goddess Venus, who escaped the fall of Troy and, in Virgil's Aeneid, journeyed to Italy to found the line that would lead to Rome.
Agamemnon
King of Mycenae and commander-in-chief of the Greek forces at Troy. His quarrel with Achilles opens the Iliad, and his murder upon returning home became the basis of Aeschylus's tragedy.
Ajax
Second-mightiest Greek warrior at Troy after Achilles. Lost the contest for Achilles's armor to Odysseus and, in Sophocles's telling, took his own life in shame.
Aqhat
The long-awaited son of the righteous Danel, given a divine bow by the craftsman god, who refuses to give it to the goddess Anat even for immortality and is killed for it.
Arjuna
Third of the five Pandava brothers and the Mahabharata's greatest archer, whose crisis of conscience on the battlefield of Kurukshetra prompts the god Krishna's teaching, the Bhagavad Gita.
Atalanta
Swift-footed huntress raised in the wild, celebrated for outrunning every suitor and for drawing first blood on the Calydonian Boar.
Bellerophon
Tamer of the winged horse Pegasus and slayer of the fire-breathing Chimera, whose later attempt to fly to Olympus ended in his fall and disgrace.
Chiyou
Chief of the Nine Li tribes, bronze-headed and iron-browed with eighty-one brothers. He raised a great fog against Huangdi at Zhuolu, and even in defeat was worshipped as the god of war.
Cu Chulainn
Foremost hero of the Ulster Cycle and son of the god Lugh. He killed the smith Culann's hound as a boy and took its place, held Ulster's border alone at seventeen, and died bound upright to a standing stone.
Dobrynya Nikitich
Second of the great bogatyrs of the Kievan Rus' byliny after Ilya Muromets, celebrated for slaying the dragon Zmey Gorynych and rescuing Prince Vladimir's niece from its lair.
Etana
Legendary early king of Kish, recorded in the Sumerian King List as "the shepherd who ascended to heaven," and hero of the Myth of Etana, who flew on the back of an eagle in search of a plant that would let his wife bear him an heir.
Fionn mac Cumhaill
Hero of the Fenian Cycle and captain of the roving Fianna. As a boy he tasted the Salmon of Knowledge, and ever after gained wisdom by biting his thumb. Legend says he only sleeps, awaiting Ireland's need.
Hanuman
The mighty monkey son of the wind god: he leapt the ocean to find Sita, burned Lanka with his tail, and carried a mountain of herbs to save Lakshmana. Devotion to Rama made him India's best-loved champion.
Hector
Crown prince of Troy and the city's greatest defender in the Iliad. Killed by Achilles in the poem's climactic single combat.
Helen
Daughter of Zeus and the most beautiful woman in the ancient world, whose abduction (or elopement) by the Trojan prince Paris was the mythic cause of the Trojan War.
Heracles
Son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, the strongest of Greek heroes, who performed twelve labors in atonement and was received into Olympus as a god after death.
Hiawatha
An Onondaga man who, grieving the loss of his daughters, strung the first shell strings of condolence and became the Peacemaker's partner and spokesman in founding the Great Law of Peace. Not the character of Longfellow's poem, which borrowed only his name.
Hoichi the Earless
Hoichi, a blind biwa player at Amidaji temple in Shimonoseki, is led nightly by Heike ghosts to sing their fall. The priest inks sutras over his whole body but misses his ears, and the ghost tears them off.
Hua Mulan
Legendary Chinese woman warrior who disguised herself as a man to take her aged father's place in military conscription, serving undetected for years. Heroine of the short narrative poem the Ballad of Mulan.
Hunahpu and Xbalanque
Twin heroes of the Popol Vuh: they shot down the false sun Seven Macaw, descended to Xibalba, and beat the death lords at their own game before rising as sun and moon.
Ilya Muromets
Mightiest of the bogatyrs, the heroic warriors of the Russian byliny (oral epic songs), healed of lifelong paralysis by wandering pilgrims and sent to serve Prince Vladimir of Kiev. Best known for defeating the monstrous Nightingale-Robber.
Jason
Leader of the Argonauts, sent on the quest for the Golden Fleece by his usurping uncle Pelias. Aided at every turn by the sorceress Medea, whom he later marries and betrays.
Jikonhsaseh
The woman who, in Haudenosaunee tradition, was the first to accept the Peacemaker's message; in recognition the Peacemaker gave the women of the nations the responsibility of choosing and removing chiefs, and she is remembered as the Mother of Nations.
Kaatsʼ
A Tlingit hunter of the Kaagwaantaan clan at Sitka who married a bear woman and lived with her and their cubs, until, back among people, a moment's tenderness toward his human family cost him his life.
Kirta
A legendary king, called a son of El, who loses his whole family, wins a new bride on El's instructions, forgets his vow to the goddess Athirat, falls mortally ill, and is healed, only to face a challenge from his own son.
Kiviuq
The great wanderer of Inuit epic, told from Alaska to Greenland, who travels by kayak and on foot through encounters with dangerous and marvellous beings; many tellers say he is still travelling.
Kuafu
A giant who raced the sun to its setting place. He drank the Yellow River and the Wei dry, died of thirst before reaching the Great Marsh, and his cast-off staff became a peach grove.
Kupe
Legendary Polynesian navigator credited in Maori oral tradition with discovering Aotearoa (New Zealand) while pursuing a giant octopus across the Pacific from the ancestral homeland of Hawaiki.
Moremi Ajasoro
Legendary queen of Ile-Ife in Yoruba oral tradition, celebrated for allowing herself to be captured by raiders to learn the secret of their terrifying disguise, then leading her people to victory. Still honored annually at Ile-Ife's Edi Festival.
Naatsilanéi
The Tlingit carver who made the first killer whales from yellow cedar, after other woods failed, and sent them into the sea with the instruction never to harm human beings.
Nanabozho
Trickster and culture hero of the Ojibwe and other Anishinaabe peoples: son of the West Wind, often a great hare, who remade the land on a turtle's back after the flood and named all things.
Odysseus
King of Ithaca famed for cunning rather than brute strength. Deviser of the Trojan Horse and protagonist of Homer's Odyssey, his ten-year voyage home after the Trojan War.
Oedipus
King of Thebes who unknowingly fulfilled a prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Central figure of Sophocles's Theban plays.
Oisin
Poet and son of Fionn. He rode with golden-haired Niamh to the Land of Youth, but on returning one touch of Irish soil brought three centuries down upon him.
Orpheus
Legendary musician whose playing could charm animals, trees, and stones. His descent into the underworld to reclaim his wife Eurydice is one of the most retold myths in Western literature.
Patroclus
Closest companion of Achilles in the Iliad. His death at Hector's hands, while wearing Achilles's armor, drives Achilles back into the war.
Penelope
Wife of Odysseus, who held off more than a hundred suitors for twenty years while he was away at Troy and on his long voyage home, becoming an ancient byword for marital fidelity and cunning.
Rostam
The giant hero of Sistan in the Shahnameh, son of Zal and Rudaba. He passed the Seven Trials and slew the White Div, unknowingly killed his own son Sohrab, and died in a brother's trap.
Scathach
The warrior teacher of a perilous fortress in Alba. Cu Chulainn crossed the bridge to her domain and learned from her the deadly spear-cast of the gae bolga.
Scheherazade
The frame heroine of the Thousand and One Nights. King Shahriyar weds and kills a bride each dawn; the vizier's daughter volunteers, tells stories that break off at daybreak, and after 1001 nights the sword never falls.
Sigurd
Foremost hero of Norse legend: he killed the dragon Fafnir with the reforged sword Gram, tasted its blood and understood birds, won a cursed hoard, and died by treachery.
Sinbad the Sailor
The Baghdad merchant who sailed seven times and was wrecked seven times: he camped on a whale's back, flew tied to a roc's leg, carried the Old Man of the Sea, and came home rich in diamonds and stories.
Tadodaho
The feared Onondaga leader, described with snakes in his hair and a twisted body, who resisted the Great Peace until the Peacemaker and Hiawatha straightened his mind; he became the Confederacy's Firekeeper, and his title is still held today.
The Peacemaker
The messenger of the Great Law of Peace, who in Haudenosaunee tradition crossed the lake in a white stone canoe, joined with Hiawatha, and brought the five warring nations together under one law. Many Haudenosaunee people avoid speaking his personal name outside ceremony, so this site uses his title.
The Yellow Emperor
Xuanyuan, first of the Five Sovereigns, who defeated Yandi at Banquan and Chiyou at Zhuolu. The calendar, writing, and music were credited to his reign; he rose to heaven on a dragon.
Theseus
Athenian founder-hero who killed the Minotaur in the Cretan labyrinth. Traditionally given two fathers, the mortal king Aegeus and the god Poseidon.
Tiki
The first man of East Polynesian tradition, made by the gods in Maori accounts; in the Marquesas he shaped the first woman from sand. The name also covers carved human figures such as the Maori hei-tiki pendant.
Wang Hai
A figure gripping a bird in both hands and eating its head. He tamed oxen and was murdered for his herds while lodging in Youyi — the 'High Ancestor Hai' lavishly sacrificed to in oracle-bone inscriptions.
Yamato Takeru
Son of Emperor Keiko who won his name killing the Kumaso chief disguised as a girl, escaped a grass fire with Kusanagi, and died after facing the god of Mount Ibuki bare-handed, becoming a white bird.
Yandi, the Flame Emperor
The Flame Emperor Shennong, who fashioned the plow, taught agriculture, and tasted a hundred herbs, meeting seventy poisons in a single day. After Banquan his people merged with Huangdi's.
Yu the Great
He tamed the great flood by dredging instead of damming, passing his own gate three times in thirteen years without entering, mapped the Nine Provinces, cast the Nine Tripods, and fathered the Xia dynasty.
Ananse
The spider trickster who wins the world’s stories from the sky and repeatedly falls into his own designs.