Laodameia (wife of Protesilaos)
Laodameia ( Greek Λαοδάμεια ) is in Greek mythology the daughter of the Argonaut Akastos and wife of Protesilaos .
Protesilaus was the first Greek to set foot on Trojan soil and the first victim of the Trojan War . Homer already knew a wife of Protesilaos who mourned the premature death of her husband, but she still remained without a name for him, in the Cypre her name is Polydora, the daughter of Melagros. It is called Laodameia for the first time in Euripides . Lore about her suicide, which was seen as an example of loyalty to her husband, can only be found in Latin authors such as Ovid . Laodameia, just married very young, asks the gods to let her husband return to the upper world for a short time, which Hermes grants her . When the three-hour deadline for Protesilaos has expired and he has to return to the underworld, Laodameia takes her own life and accompanies her lover to Hades . Hyginus Mythographus tells a modified version: After Protesilaos returned to the underworld, she modeled an image of him in order to venerate it. When her father burns the image to ease her torment, she falls into the flames and dies in it.
The myth was repeatedly a motif on Roman sarcophagi .
literature
- Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll : Laodameia 2) . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, Sp. 1826-1829 ( digitized version ).
Web links
- Laodameia in the Greek Myth Index (English)