Praxithea

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Praxithea ( Greek  Πραξιθέα , who drives in the victim ) is a heroine and naiad of Greek mythology . She is the wife of the Attic king Erechtheus .

mythology

In Euripides ' only fragmentary piece of Erechtheus , she is the daughter of the river god Kephissus and has three children. All later mentions of Praxithea in this context can be traced back to Euripides. When the Thracian Eumolpos was besieging Athens with a large army , King Erechtheus consulted the oracle of Delphi . The prophecy was that he would have to sacrifice a daughter for victory. What neither he nor his wife Praxithea knew: The three siblings had sworn that if one were to die, they would all die. When the chosen one was sacrificed, the other two committed suicide. Erechtheus won the battle and killed the general, but was struck down by Zeus himself with a lightning bolt - at the request of Poseidon , the father of Eumolpos. The three daughters were raised to heaven as the constellation of the Hyades .

In the library of Apollodorus she is the granddaughter of Kephissus, son of Kephissos daughter Diogeneia and Phrasius . Your children here are Pandora , Prokris , Kekrops , Protogeneia , Chthonia , Oreithyia and Krëusa . Other sources name Orneus , Thespios , Metion , Sikyon , Pandoros , Alkon , Eupalamos and Merope as further descendants .

The name Praxithea is found among those killed in a very similar story: A certain Leos had his three daughters ( Praxithea , Theope and Eubule ) sacrificed to save the Athenians.

Praxithea was included in their genealogies from the Attic genes of the Kephisieis and the Phrasidai , as both traced their ancestry back to the river god Kephissos.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ E.g. Lykurgos 98 ff .; John Stobaios 39:33 ; Pseudo-Plutarch parallela Graeca et Romana 20 ( English translation ).
  2. ↑ Otto Jessen: Praxithea 1 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 3.2, Leipzig 1909, Col. 2930 f. ( Digitized version ) ..
  3. ↑ Karl Kerényi : The mythology of the Greeks. Vol. II: The Heroes Stories . dtv, Munich, p. 174, ISBN 3-423-01346-X
  4. ↑ Libraries of Apollodorus 3, 15, 1 ( English translation ).
  5. ↑ pause. 2, 25, 5; 9, 26, 6; 2, 6, 5.
  6. ↑ Apollod. 3, 15, 1.
  7. ↑ Schol. Apollo. Rh. Arg. 1, 97
  8. ↑ Diod. Sic. 4, 76, 1.
  9. ↑ Plutarch. Thes. 19th
  10. ↑ Karl Kerényi: The mythology of the Greeks. Vol. II: The Heroes Stories . dtv, Munich, p. 173. ISBN 3-423-01346-X
  11. ^ Johannes Toepffer : Attische Genealogie . Berlin 1889, p. 292. 311.