Demophon of Elaeus

Demophon ruled the Greek colony of Elaeus in the Thracian Chersonnese (now known as the Gallipoli peninsula) when a destructive plague hit the city, claiming the lives of many people. Troubled, he sought the advice of the oracle of Apollo, and the god informed him that each year they had to sacrifice a nobleborn maiden to their ancestral gods in order to stop it. Demophon did as told and selected the unfortunate girls by lot, but he always made sure to exclude his own daughters. This went on until a nobleman named Mastusius took offence and declared he would not have his daughter entered in the drawing unless Demophon's daughters were as well. Demophon was enraged, so he sacrificed Mastusius' daughter without drawing lots at all. Mastusius was greatly angered, but he concealed his resentment out of patriotism for some time, claiming his daughter might have ended up being chosen anyway. Demophon himself forgot the incident as Mastusius adopted an amicable endeavor around him, so when Mastusius invited him and his daughters for a solemn sacrifice, he agreed. Demophon told his daughters to go first ahead of him, as he still had some duties to attend to before he could go. Mastusius seized the girls when they arrived and killed them all, and then had their blood mixed with wine in a bowl. When Demophon arrived, he asked for his daughters, and the bowl was offered to him to drink. When he learnt what had happened, he ordered both Mastusius and the bowl to be thrown into the sea; the cape was called Mastusian after the nobleman, and the harbour the Bowl after the wine vessel. The bowl also found a place among the stars too, as the constellation Crater (The Wine-cup). == Culture ==

This myth is only preserved in the first-century work De astronomia by Roman author Gaius Julius Hyginus, who attributes it to Phylarchus, a Greek historian of the third century BC, and characterised as an example of Phylarchus' taste for sensational tales. The story might also tie to Phylarchus' claim that it was common to sacrifice people when setting out against an enemy, and his tendency to conflate mythological and historical facts like the sphagia, ritual sacrifices of animals that did take place. Demophon's story was used in antiquity to teach a moral lesson about the persistence of hatred. This myth is one of the several where virginity causes the death of young girls due to them being led to a willing or, more often, unwilling sacrificial role; for young Greek girls, those stories were used to reinforce their sense that their value was defined by their virginity. == See also ==