Gorgophone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Greek mythology, Gorgophone was a daughter of Perseus and Andromeda.

Her name means "Gorgon Slayer", a tribute to her father who killed Medusa, the mortal Gorgon. Gorgophone is a central figure in the history of Sparta, having been married to two kings, Oebalus of Sparta (actually Lakonia, Sparta's region) and Perieres of Messenia, the region to the west of Lakonia which Sparta, in the late 8th or early 7th century B.C. enslaved. She was of Lelege descent, the Leleges being a people of Asia Minor who settled in Lakonia. One of the sons of Oibalos and Gorgophone was Tundareus, father of Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, Castor, and Pollux, and another was Ikarios, father of Odysseus's wife, Penelope. Thus Perseus's descendants played a central role in the Homeric epics and the pre-history of Greece, however we choose to understand the figure of Perseus himself. The most famous historical Spartan woman derived her name from Gorgophone, that is, Gorgo, the daughter of the great Spartan king Cleomenes. Gorgo was born about 507 B.C. After her father's rather awful death she married his brother, Leonidas, who became king and was the hero of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Like her namesake Gorgophone, Gorgo remarried another Spartan king, and spawned yet another. Gorgo herself was renowned in Spartan legend, and it is curious that she bore the name that was so closely identified with the legendary Perseus and his daughter, who, if they really lived, pre-dated Gorgo by over seven centuries. Chief sources for Gorgophone are Pausanias, books 2 and 4, and Apollodorus, Books 1 and 3. Plutarch's works contain a good deal on Gorgo, and she appears in a couple of Herodotus's anecdotes that emphasize her close ties with her father and his trust in her acuity of judgement.

Her first husband was Perieres, with whom she had two sons: Leucippus and Aphareus. Her second was Oebalus, with whom she was the mother of Hippocoon, Tyndareus and Icarius.