Demophon (King of Athens)
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Demophon was a king of Athens
King of Athens
Before the Athenian democracy, the tyrants, and the Archons, the city-state of Athens was ruled by kings. Most of these are probably mythical or only semi-historical...

, according to Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...

, son of Theseus
Theseus
For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...

 and Phaedra
Phaedra (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Phaedra is the daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë, wife of Theseus and the mother of Demophon of Athens and Acamas. Phaedra's name derives from the Greek word φαιδρός , which meant "bright"....

, brother of Acamas. Some say that Demophon's mother was Iope, daughter of Iphicles
Iphicles
In Greek mythology, Iphicles is the name of three different people:*The half-brother of Heracles, being the son of Alcmene and her human husband Amphitryon, whereas Heracles was her son by Zeus. Iphicles was the father of Heracles' charioteer Iolaus by Automedusa, daughter of Alcathous...

. He fought in the Trojan War
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...

 and was among those who entered the city in the Trojan Horse
Trojan Horse
The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the stratagem that allowed the Greeks finally to enter the city of Troy and end the conflict. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside...

. The brothers freed their grandmother Aethra
Aethra
In Greek mythology, Aethra or Aithra was a name applied to four different individuals:-Mother of Theseus:...

, who had been captured by the Dioscuri and served Helen as a handmaid for a while, and brought her home.

Demophon married Phyllis
Phyllis
Phyllis is a character in Greek mythology, daughter of a Thracian king . She married Demophon, King of Athens and son of Theseus, while he stopped in Thrace on his journey home from the Trojan War....

, daughter of Sithon
Sithon (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Sithon was a king of the Odomanti or Hadomanti in Thrace, son of either Poseidon and Ossa or of Ares and Anchiroe, daughter of the river god Neilus...

, King of Thrace
Thrace
Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...

, while he stopped in Thrace on his journey home from the Trojan war. On the next day after the wedding, however, he had to leave, promising to return and take Phyllis with him as soon as possible. She gave him a casket and told not to open it unless he should lose every hope to return to Thrace. Demophon eventually settled in Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

 and forgot about Phyllis. She would come to the sea shore every day, expecting to see the sails of his ship, but in vain. After the appointed date was past, she either died of grief or hanged herself. One day Demophon opened the casket out of curiosity; what he saw there was so horrifying that he jumped onto his horse and rode like wild till he fell off the horse on his own sword and died. Others, however, say that he did return, but Phyllis was already dead by the time; when he embraced the lifeless almond tree into which she was said to have transformed after death, it started to blossom.

Not all sources, however, accepted the tradition of Demophon's death in Cyprus. In Euripides
Euripides
Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

' play Heracleidae
Heracleidae (play)
Herakles' Children is an Athenian tragedy by Euripides that was first performed c. 430 BC. It follows the children of Herakles as they seek protection from Eurystheus...

, Demophon was the king of Athens, having succeeded to his father's power. He granted the children of Heracles
Heracleidae
In Greek mythology, the Heracleidae or Heraclids were the numerous descendants of Heracles , especially applied in a narrower sense to the descendants of Hyllus, the eldest of his four sons by Deianira Other Heracleidae included Macaria, Lamos, Manto, Bianor, Tlepolemus, and Telephus...

, who were fleeing from Eurystheus
Eurystheus
In Greek mythology, Eurystheus was king of Tiryns, one of three Mycenaean strongholds in the Argolid, although other authors including Homer and Euripides cast him as ruler of Argos: Sthenelus was his father and the "victorious horsewoman" Nicippe his mother, and he was a grandson of the hero...

, refuge in Athens. As Eurystheus prepared to attack, an oracle
Oracle
In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination....

 told Demophon that he would win if and only if a noble virgin was sacrificed to Persephone
Persephone
In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....

. Macaria
Macaria
Macaria or Makaria is the name of two figures from ancient Greek religion and mythology. Although they are not said to be the same and are given different fathers, they are discussed together in a single entry in both the 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia the Suda and by Zenobius.-Daughter of...

 volunteered for the sacrifice and a spring was named the Macarian spring in her honor. When Diomedes
Diomedes
Diomedes or Diomed is a hero in Greek mythology, known for his participation in the Trojan War.He was born to Tydeus and Deipyle and later became King of Argos, succeeding his maternal grandfather, Adrastus. In Homer's Iliad Diomedes is regarded alongside Ajax as one of the best warriors of all...

, having landed on the coast of Attica
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...

 after a storm and failing to recognize the land, started to ravage it, Demophon marched out against the invaders, and was successful enough to take the Palladium
Palladium
Palladium is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired...

 from Diomedes. However, he accidentally killed a fellow Athenian in the battle, and was tried in court for that. Demophon had a son Oxyntes
Oxyntes
Oxyntes was a mythical king of Athens, son of Demophon . He had two sons, Apheidas and Thymoetes, who succeeded him, one another, in the throne. Thymoetes was the last descendant of Theseus on the Athenian throne....

.

Lucian
Lucian
Lucian of Samosata was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.His ethnicity is disputed and is attributed as Assyrian according to Frye and Parpola, and Syrian according to Joseph....

 relates the story concerning Phyllis not of Demophon, but of his brother Acamas, probably because the character of his work was supposed to be ignorant and to have confounded the two brothers. Tzetzes repeats the mistake. Acamas is better known for having been loved by Laodice
Laodice (mythology)
Laodice was the daughter of Priam of Troy and Hecuba. She is described as the most beautiful of Priam's daughters. Laodice refers to Helen as her junior even though Helen is probably 34 years old and yet she is more beautiful than her sister Cassandra, who might be eighteen at the same time and who...

, daughter of Priam
Priam
Priam was the king of Troy during the Trojan War and youngest son of Laomedon. Modern scholars derive his name from the Luwian compound Priimuua, which means "exceptionally courageous".- Marriage and issue :...

.

See also

  • Phyllis
    Phyllis
    Phyllis is a character in Greek mythology, daughter of a Thracian king . She married Demophon, King of Athens and son of Theseus, while he stopped in Thrace on his journey home from the Trojan War....

  • Demophon of Eleusis
    Demophon of Eleusis
    In Greek mythology, Demophon sometimes written in English as Demophoon, was a son of King Celeus and Queen Metanira. While Demeter was searching for her daughter Persephone, having taken the form of an old woman called Doso, she received a hospitable welcome from Celeus, the King of Eleusis in...

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