Demophon from Eleusis
Demophon ( Greek Δημοφῶν , also Δημοφόων ) is the son of the Eleusian king Keleos and his wife Metaneira in Greek mythology .
myth
The king took in the goddess Demeter when she was wandering around the world looking in vain for her daughter Persephone . The goddess then took care of the newborn Demophon. She anointed the boy with ambrosia , which made him thrive and looked more like a god than a man, but when she held him in the fire one night to make him so immortal, she was surprised by Metaneira, who uttered a great shout, because she said a crazy old nurse was going to burn her son. As a result, the goddess was very angry and tore the boy out of the fire, causing him to die. Then she showed herself in her true form and demanded that a temple be built for her in Eleusis, which was done.
In the library of Apollodorus Demophon is consumed by fire, which also serves as the reason that Triptolemos instead of Demophon brings the grain to the people. Then Triptolemos appear at a later date at all instead of Demophon, for example in the Fasti of Ovid where Triptolemos the sickly son of poor farmers Keleos.
cult
After the great Homeric hymn to the goddess of fertility (v. 265 ff.) There was a festival set up by Demeter every year at the beginning of spring with fighting games among the boys of Eleusis in honor of Demophon. Kevin Clinton does not believe that these were the mysteries of Eleusis , rather he takes the Balletys ( Βαλλετύς ) as the cult festival of Demophon, since this corresponds to the statement of Hesychios and Balletys and Eleusinia were separate festivals at the time of Athenaeus .
swell
- Homeric Hymn 2, To Demeter , vv. 233-255.
- Libraries of Apollodorus 1.31 (1.5.1).
- Ovid, Fasti 4,539-560.
literature
- Kevin Clinton: Myth and Cult. The Iconography of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Martin P. Nilsson Lectures on Greek Religion, Delivered November 19-21, 1990 at the Swedish Institute at Athens. Swedish Institute in Athens, Athens 1992, pp. 30-34, 87, 97 f., 100 ff.
- Kevin Clinton: Demophon 1). In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 3, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01473-8 , column 462.
- Fritz Graf: Eleusis and the orphic poetry of Athens in the pre-Hellenic period (= attempts at religious history and preliminary work , edited by Walter Burkert and Carsten Colpe, vol. 33). De Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1974, pp. 157, 159 f., 167 f.
- Nicholas James Richardson: The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1974, pp. 231-236.
- Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll : Demophon 1) . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1, Leipzig 1, Col. 988 f. ( [1 digitized copy] ).
- Odette Touchefeu-Meynier: Demophon 1) . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume VIII, Zurich / Munich 1997, pp. 553-554.