Apteros
Ἄπτερος
(Ἄπτερος), "the wingless," a surname under which Nice (the goddess of victory) had a sanctuary at Athens. This goddess was usually represented with wings, and their absence in this instance was intended to signify that Victory would or could never fly away from Athens. The same idea was expressed at Sparta by a statue of Ares with his feet chained. (Paus. 1.22.4, 3.15.5.)
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.