Cassiphone (/kəˈsɪfəniː/; Ancient Greek: Κασσιφόνη, romanized: Kassiphónē, lit. 'fratricide'[1]) is a minor figure in Greek mythology, the daughter of the sorceress-goddess Circe and the Trojan War hero Odysseus. She is mentioned in passing in the works of the Hellenistic poet Lycophron and the 12th-century Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes.[2]
Etymology
editCassiphone's name is a compound word that translates to "brother killer",[1] from the words κάσις (kásis) meaning both "brother" and "sister",[3] and φόνος (phónos) meaning "murder, manslaughter".[4]
Mythology
editCassiphone is alluded to in obscure lines in Hellenistic poet Lycophron's Alexandra, with an explanation provided in the commentary of twelfth-century Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes, who is the only one to mention her by name; she is most likely a late classical or Hellenistic invention, whose only purpose is to expand on the myth of Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and Circe.[1] Lycophron writes:[5]
When he[a] is dead, Perge, hill of the Tyrrhenians, shall receive his ashes in the land of Gortyn; when, as he breathes out his life, he shall bewail the fate of his son[b] and his wife,[c] whom her husband shall slay and himself next pass to Hades, his throat cut by the hands of his sister,[d] the own cousin of Glaucon and Apsyrtus.[e]
— Lycophron, Alexandra 805–811
According to Tzetzes, Cassiphone is the daughter Odysseus had by Circe with whom he spent one year together during his travels to get back home to Ithaca following the end of the Trojan War. The story of the Telegony, the lost sequel to the Odyssey, goes that her full-brother Telegonus left in search of the father he never knew, arrived in Ithaca and there he accidentally ended up killing Odysseus, as he did not recognise him.[7][8] Telegonus then married Odysseus's widow Penelope, while Circe married Telemachus, Odysseus's son by Penelope.[9][10]
According to Lycophron and Tzetzes, Circe then used her powers to bring Odysseus back to life, and he proceeded to wed Cassiphone to Telemachus, who was her half-brother.[11][12] After some time Telemachus killed Circe following a quarrell with her, angered with her for ordering him around,[f] prompting Cassiphone to kill Telemachus in order to avenge her slain mother.[1] Odysseus then died again, this time of grief after witnessing those acts.[13]
See also
edit
Footnotes
edit- ^ Odysseus.
- ^ Telemachus.
- ^ Circe.
- ^ Cassiphone.
- ^ Glaucus and Absyrtus are first cousins to Cassiphone as the sons of Pasiphaë and Aeëtes respectively, Circe's full-siblings. All three are the children of the sun-god Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse.[6]
- ^ A 'remarkable feat' as Bell notes, given that Circe is an immortal goddess in all other texts.[11]
References
edit- ^ a b c d Visser, Edzard (2006). "Cassiphone". In Cancik, Hubert; Schneider, Helmuth (eds.). Brill's New Pauly. Translated by Christine F. Salazar. Basle: Brill Reference Online. doi:10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e610200. Retrieved November 19, 2023.
- ^ Patsi-Garin 1969, s.v. Cassiphone.
- ^ Liddell & Scott 1940, s.v. κάσις.
- ^ Liddell & Scott 1940, s.v. φόνος.
- ^ Lycophron, 805–811
- ^ Apollonius of Rhodes, 4.591; Apollodorus, 1.9.1; Cicero, De Natura Deorum 48.4; Hyginus, Fabulae Preface
- ^ Apollodorus E.7.36
- ^ Homerica, The Telegony summary
- ^ Roscher 1894, p. 996.
- ^ Apollodorus E.7.37
- ^ a b Bell 1991, s.v. Cassiphone.
- ^ Smith 1873, s.v. Cassiphone.
- ^ Tzetzes ad Lycophron, 808 (Gk text)
Bibliography
edit- Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
- Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica translated by Edward P. Coleridge, B.A. London, George Bell and Sons publishers. 1889. Text available at Internet Archive.
- Bell, Robert E. (1991). Women of Classical Mythology: A Biographical Dictionary. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 0-87436-581-3.
- Evelyn-White, Hugh G., Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, with an English Translation, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.
- Hyginus, Gaius Julius, The Myths of Hyginus. Edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960.
- Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (1940). A Greek-English Lexicon, revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Online version at Perseus.tufts project.
- Lycophron, Alexandra, in Callimachus, Lycophron, Aratus. Hymns and Epigrams. Lycophron: Alexandra. Aratus: Phaenomena. Translated by A. W. Mair, G. R. Mair. Loeb Classical Library 129. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Nature of the Gods from the Treatises of M.T. Cicero translated by Charles Duke Yonge (1812-1891), Bohn edition of 1878. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
- Patsi-Garin, Emmy (1969). Επίτομο λεξικό Ελληνικής Μυθολογίας [Epitomic Dictionary of Greek Mythology] (in Greek). Athens: Χάρη Πάτση publications.
- Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich (1894). Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie [Detailed dictionary of Greek and Roman mythology] (in German). Vol. 2. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner.
- Scholia to Lycophron's Alexandra, marginal notes by Isaak and Ioannis Tzetzes and others from the Greek edition of Eduard Scheer (Weidmann 1881). Online version at the Topos Text Project.. Greek text available on Archive.org
- Smith, William (1873). A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London, UK: John Murray, printed by Spottiswoode and Co. Online text available at perseus.tufts.