Agrius and Oreius are characters in Greek mythology who are mentioned by Antoninus Liberalis. Mythology Their story begins with a woman named Polyphonte, a granddaughter of Ares, who went to the mountains and became a chaste follower of Artemis, totally neglecting all kinds of activities presided over by Aphrodite like love and marriage. Aphrodite angrily made the woman fall in love with a bear and mate with it resulting in Artemis' hatred. Artemis turned all the forest animals against Polyphonte so that she had to run back to her father's home, where she gave birth to two half-bear, half-man twins. The gigantic bear twins Agrius and Oreius were cannibals and disrespectful towards gods and humans. Zeus ordered Hermes to punish the two in whatever way the latter pleased. Hermes at first decided to dismember them, but Ares did not want this to happen to his grandsons. Instead, Hermes and Ares turned the twins into carnivorous birds where Agrius was turned into a vulture and Orius was turned into an eagle owl. Popular culture * Agrius and Oreius appear in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians book The Sea of Monsters. They are shown to be in the services of Luke Castellan. In Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, their position as Luke's henchmen in the book was replaced by a Manticore.
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