Achelous. In Greek mythology, Achelous was originally the god of all water and the rivers of the world were viewed by many as his sinews. Later, in Hellenistic times, he was mostly relegated to the Achelous River, which is the largest river of Greece, and thus the chief of all river deities, every river having its own river spirit. Achelous was also an important deity in Etruscan mythology, intimately related to water as in the Greek tradition but also carrying significant chthonic associations. Man-faced bull iconography was first adapted to represent Achelous by the Etruscans in the 8th century BC, and the Greeks later adopted this same tradition. Homer placed Achelous above all, the origin of all the world's fresh water and perhaps all water. By Roman times, Homer's reference was interpreted as making Achelous prince of rivers. According to Alcaeus he was the son of Gaia and Oceanus, whereas Hesiod in his canonical Theogony presented Tethys and Oceanus as the parents of all three thousand river gods. In the Renaissance, the improvisatory mythographer Natalis Comes made for his parents Gaia and Helios. Some derived the legends about Achelous from Egypt, and describe him as a second Nilus. Herodotus compared the two rivers in their power to amass new land: There are other rivers as well which, though not as large as the Nile, have had substantial results. In particular, there is the Achelous, which flows through Acarnania into the sea and has already turned half the Echinades islands into mainland. Achelous was considered to be an important divinity throughout Greece from the earliest times, and was invoked in prayers, sacrifices, on taking oaths, etc.; the oracular Zeus at Dodona usually added to each oracle he gave, the command to offer sacrifices to Achelous. The widespread worship of Achelous points to a more generic meaning of the god himself, perhaps accounting for an interpretation of Achelous as the representative of sweet water in general, and consequently, as the source of all nourishment. A recent study has tried to show that both the form and substance of Achelous, as a god of water primarily depicted as a man-faced bull, have roots in Old Europe in the Bronze Age. After the disappearance of many Old European cultures, the traditions traveled to the Near East at the beginning of 4th millennium BC, and finally migrated to Greece, Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia with itinerant sea-folk during the Late Bronze Age through the Orientalizing period. Although no single cult of Achelous persisted throughout all of these generations, the iconography and general mythos easily spread from one culture to another, and all examples of man-faced bulls are found around the area of the Mediterraneanan, suggesting some intercultural continuity. The leading exponents into the Greek and Etruscan worlds were seer-healers and mercenaries during the Iron Age, and Achelous as a man-faced bull becomes an emblem employed by mercenaries in the Greek world for centuries. These earlier figures probably adapted the mythological and iconographic traditions of Asalluhi, the princely bison of Near Eastern traditions that rises to the surface of the earth in springs and marshes, ultimately flowing as rivers. Achelous was a suitor for Deianeira, daughter of Oeneus king of Calydon, but was defeated by Heracles, who wed her himself. The contest of Achelous with Heracles was represented on the throne of Amyclae, and in the treasury of the Megarans at Olympia there was a statue of him made by Dontas of cedarwood and gold. Achelous was sometimes depicted as a gray-haired old man or a vigorous bearded man in his prime, with a horned head and a serpent-like body. On several coins of Acarnania the god is represented as a bull with the head of an old man. The most common depiction of Achelous in Archaic and Classical times was this man-faced bull. Often a city would feature a man-faced bull on its coinage to represent a local variant of Achelous, such as Achelous Gelas of Gela, Sicily, or Achelous Sebethos of Neapolis, Campania.