page_title: Achelous
section_title: Iconography
hierarchical_section_title: Achelous / Iconography
caption_attribution_description: English: A group by the painter Pamphaeus from a stamnos in the British Museum (No. E437) representing Heracles wrestling with the river-monster Achelous, which belongs to the age of the Persian Wars.
context_page_description: In Greek mythology, Achelous was the god associated with the Achelous River, the largest river in Greece. According to Hesiod, he was the son of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. He was also said to be the father of the Sirens, several nymphs, and other offspring.
  Achelous was able to change his shape, and in the form of a bull, he wrestled Heracles for the right to marry Deianeira, but lost. He was also involved in the legend of the Archive hero Alcmaeon.
context_section_description: Achelous' wrestling bout with Heracles was the subject of several vase-paintings, from as early as the second quarter of the sixth century BC, and in most of these vases, Heracles can be seen grabbing Achelous by his single horn. Possibly the earliest version of the scene (c. 600–560 BC) appears on the figure frieze of a Middle Corinthian kylix cup  (Brussels A1374), which depicts Heracles wrestling with a horned centaur-like Achelous, with a human torso and a bull's or horse's body, watched by the figure of an old man (Oineus?) and a woman (Deiaeira?). The earliest Attic versions (c. 570 BC) depict Achelous as a bull with a man's face and beard.
  On one later example (c. 525–475 BC), an Attic red-figure stamnos from Cerveteri  attributed to Oltos (London E437), Achelous (identified by inscription) is shown with a bearded human upper torso, attached to a long serpentine body, with a fish's tail. This is similar to the depictions of the sea-god Triton which appear on many other Attic vases. Heracles (also identified by inscription) appears about to break off the river-god's single horn. On a somewhat later (c. 475–425 BC) red-figure Attic column krater (Louvre G365), Achelous's broken-off horn lies on the ground, while Heracles holds Achelous by his other horn, and threatens him with a club held overhead.  Figures depicting Oineus and Deiaeira (as presumably on the Corinthian cup) and also Athena and Hermes are sometimes included in the scene.  
  Pausanias reports seeing the scene represented on the throne of Amyclae, and also in the Megarian Treasury at Olympia, where he describes seeing "small cedar-wood figures inlaid with gold" which, besides Achelous, included Zeus, Deianeira, Heracles, and Ares aiding Achelous.
  The river-god is depicted on several Acarnanian coins as a bull with the head of an old man. The most common depiction of Achelous in Archaic and Classical times was this man-faced bull. Often a city would feature a man-faced bull on its coinage to represent a local variant of Achelous, such as Achelous Gelas of Gela, Sicily, or Achelous Sebethos of Neapolis, Campania.
caption: Heracles wrestling with Achelous. Illustration from a Stamnos attributed to Oltos, c. 525–475 BC, London, British Museum E437.[58]
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