Dolos was Trickery, the daimon of fraudulent dealings, often paired with his sister Apate (Deceit) in the catalogue of dark personifications. He had a small place in the Aesopic fable tradition, where he appears as the apprentice of Prometheus, sent to make a duplicate of the Titan's clay model of Truth and instead producing a deficient counterfeit (because he had not enough clay) — and so the world thereafter contains both Truth and her near-twin, Lies. The story is plainly Hellenistic, but it preserves a real Greek anxiety about the distinction between sincere and counterfeit appearances.
Before thisApate
Next on the wallMomus
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Dolos as the apprentice of Prometheus is in Aesop, Fable 530 (Perry index); the figure is otherwise minor, appearing chiefly in mythographic catalogues of the children of Night or of Eris.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
- Sibling ofApate
often paired with his sister Apate (Deceit) in the catalogue of dark personifications
Companion ofPrometheushe appears as the apprentice of Prometheus, sent to make a duplicate of the Titan's clay model of Truth
Child ofNyxappearing chiefly in mythographic catalogues of the children of Night or of Eris
Child ofErisappearing chiefly in mythographic catalogues of the children of Night or of Eris
When the sources speak
Dated witnesses for The Primordial Powers. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline
- c. 1600–1100 BCE
- Mycenaean palace tablets in Linear B record offerings and divine names, but little continuous myth.
- c. 1100–800 BCE
- Post-palatial oral traditions and changing cult landscapes precede the surviving alphabetic epics.
- late 8th–7th centuries BCE
- The Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days give influential but non-exclusive divine orders.
- 7th–6th centuries BCE
- Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, colonization, and local sanctuary traditions multiply regional narratives.
- 6th–5th centuries BCE
- Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystery materials develop alternative cosmogonies and afterlife doctrines.
- 5th century BCE
- Athenian tragedy and comedy recast heroic houses and divine justice for civic audiences.
- 4th century BCE
- Philosophers, antiquarians, and local historians interpret or criticize inherited myth.
- 323–31 BCE
- Hellenistic poets and scholars systematize variants across an enlarged Greek world.