Enorchus (Ancient Greek: Ἐνόρχης) or Enorches (Enorchês) is a figure from Greek mythology for whom the only surviving sources are scholia on the Alexandra of Lycophron.

According to the scholia, Enorchus was a son of Thyestes by his sister Daeta (or Daesa) and was born out of an egg. He built a temple to Dionysus, which is given as the explanation for the fact that Enorches is also an epithet of Dionysus.^[1] According to the scholia it is his epithet at Lesbos,^[1] though Hesychius states – without giving a reason or mentioning the son of Thyestes – that the place was Samos.^[2][3]

Enorchus is possibly represented on an oil jar (lekythos) from around 430–425 BCE. The image depicts an altar on which rests an egg, within which is an infant – naked except for a necklace of amulets – who reaches towards a woman standing to the right as she stares at the altar.^[4]

The identification is, however, heavily contested, with Helen of Troy being offered as a more probable identification (the woman thus being Leda).^[5] In favour of the identification as Enorchus, Lesley Beaumont points out that the hairstyle of the infant matches the common representation of that of infant boys on red-figure iconography, and Gratia Berger-Doer argues that the amulet necklace around his neck identifies him as a so-called 'temple boy'.^[6][4]

Nina Zimmermann-Elseify, however, argues that the fact that this type of figure on oenochoae is usually a male infant can be explained by the painter not having access to a pattern for painting female infants.^[5] Lilly Kahil and Noëlle Icard further note that it is more likely to be Helen based on the far greater popularity of the myths surrounding Helen's birth from an egg.^[7]

• List of Greek deities

• Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae : Atherion – Eros. Vol. 3. Artemis & Winkler Verlag. 1986.
• Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae : Eros (in Etruria) - Herakles. Vol. 4. Artemis & Winkler Verlag. 1988.
• Beaumont, Lesley (1995). "Mythological Childhood: A Male Preserve? An Interpretation of Classical Athenian Iconography in Its Socio-Historical Context". The Annual of the British School at Athens. 90: 339–361. doi:10.1017/S0068245400016245. ISSN 0068-2454. JSTOR 30104530.
• Hesychius (1867). Schmidt, Mauritz (ed.). Lexicon. Sumptibus Hermanni Dufftii.
• Hornblower, Simon (2015). Lykophron: Alexandra. Greek Text, Translation, Commentary, & Introduction (First ed.). Oxford University Press.
• Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1940. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Scheer, Eduard, ed. (1881). Lycophronis Alexandra, Vol 2: Scholia Continens. Weidmann.
• Zimmermann-Elseify, Nina, ed. (2013). Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum : Attisch rotfigurige Lekythen (PDF). Vol. 13. München: C. H. Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-64873-1.