Anticleia
Ἀντίκλεια
(Ἀντίκλεια), a daughter of Autolycus, wife of Laertes, and mother of Odysseus. (Hom. Od. 11.85.) According to Homer she died of grief at the long absence of her son, who met her and spoke with her in Hades. (Od. 15.356, &c., 11.202, &c.) According to other traditions, she put an end to her own life after she had heard a report of the death of her son. (Hyg. Fab. 243.) Hyginus (Hyg. Fab. 201) also states, that previous to her marrying Laertes, she lived on intimate terms with Sisyphus; whence Euripides (lphig. Aul. 524) calls Odysseus a son of Sisyphus. (Comp. Sophocl. Phil. 417; Ov. Met. 13.32; Serv. ad Aen. 6.529.) It is uncertain whether this Anticleia is the same as the one whose son Periphetes was killed by Theseus. Of this Periphetes she was the mother by Hephaestus or by Poseidon. (Apollod. 3.16.1; Paus. 2.1.4; Hyg. Fab. 38.) Another mythical personage of this name, who married Machaon, the son of Asclepius, is mentioned by Paus. 4.30.2.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.