Apheidas (Ancient Greek: Ἀφείδας) was, in Greek mythology, a son of Arcas, the eponymous king of Arcadia. After his father's death he became king of Tegea. He is best known as the father of Aleus and as one of the heirs among whom the land of Arcadia was divided.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Apheidas (son of Arcas)" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Family
Apheidas was a son of Arcas, the eponymous ruler of Arcadia. The sources disagree about his mother, naming variously Erato (a dryad), Leaneira (also given as Laodameia), Meganeira the daughter of Crocon, or the nymph Chrysopeleia.
Through his father he was the brother of Elatus, Azan and Tripylus. His own children were Aleus and Stheneboea.
II.Mythology
After the death of his father Arcas, Apheidas became king of Tegea in Arcadia. His share of his father's realm gave rise to the poetic name for the city, sometimes called the allotment of Apheidas.
His son Aleus succeeded him and went on to found one of the principal royal lines of Arcadia, while his daughter Stheneboea figures in the later genealogies of the region.
III.Attestations
The figure of Apheidas and his place in the Arcadian royal genealogy are recorded across several ancient sources, including Apollonius of Rhodes (Argonautica 1.162, with the scholia), Pseudo-Apollodorus (Bibliotheca 3.9.1), Pausanias (Description of Greece 8.4.2–4), and Tzetzes in his commentary on Lycophron's Alexandra 480.
These authors preserve the variant traditions about his mother and his siblings, so that his immediate family is reported differently from one source to the next.