Hecale
Ἑκάλη
(Ἑκάλη), a poor old woman, who hospitably received into her house Theseus, when he had gone out for the purpose of killing the Marathonian bull. As she had vowed to offer up to Zeus a sacrifice for the safe return of the hero, and died before his return, Theseus himself ordained that the inhabitants of the Attic tetrapolis should offer a sacrifice to her and Zeus Hecalus, or Hecaleius. (Plut. Thes. 14; Callim. Fraym. 40, Bentley; Ov. Remed. Am. 747.)
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.