Hellen
Ἕλλην
(Ἕλλην).
1. A son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, or, according to others, a son of Zeus and Dorippe (Apollod. 1.7.2; Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. 1.118; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1644), or of Prometheus and Clymene, and a brother of Deucalion. (Schol. ad Pind. Ol. 9.68.) By the nymph Orseis, that is, the mountain nymph, he became the father of Aeolus, Dorus, and Xuthus, to whom some add Amphictyon. Hellen, according to tradition, was king of Phthia in Thessaly, i. e. the country between the rivers Peneius and Asopus, and this kingdom he left to Aeolus. Hellen is the mythical ancestor of all the Hellenes or Greeks, in contradistinction from the more ancient Pelasgians. The name of Hellenes was at first confined to a tribe inhabiting a part of Thessaly, but subsequently it was extended to the whole Greek nation. (Hom. Il. 2.684; Hdt. 1.56; Thuc. 1.3; Paus. 3.20.6; Strab. viii. p.383.)
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.