Philonome (daughter of Tragasus)

Philonome was the daughter of Tragasus via an unnamed mother. In some authors she is also called Polyboea or Scamandria. == Mythology ==

Philonome was the second wife of king Cycnus of Colonae, a city in the Troad region of northwestern Asia Minor. Through her marriage she became stepmother to Cycnus' two children by his previous marriage, Tenes and Hemithea. and brought the flute-player Eumolpus or Molpus as her false witness. Cycnus believed her tale at first, so he locked up Tenes and Hemithea into a chest he set adrift into the sea, until the chest washed up on the island of Tenedos near Troad. The falsehood did not last however and Cycnus eventually learnt the truth, so he stoned Eumolpus to death and buried Philonome alive into the ground. == Symbolism ==

The myth of Philonome and Tenes is one of several examples of the popular 'Potiphar's wife' motif commonly found in Greek mythology and other folklore in which a woman, usually an already married one, tries and fails to seduce a man and then attempts to accuse him of rape. The most known case of that in Greek myth is Hippolytus and Phaedra, the son and wife of the Athenian hero Theseus, though other notable examples include Eunostus and Ochne, or Antheus and Cleoboea. A lot of time those false accusations come from a place of hurt pride, though also commonly fear of being reported to their husbands. Several authors mention Philonome's tale starting with a fragment from a mostly lost fifth-century BC tragedy Tennes, dubiously attributed to Euripides, which informs us that Cycnus killed his wife after he discovered her treachery, and Lycophron in the fourth century BC. The detail of the flute-player that supports the queen's sladers is an old but not consistent element, whose tale was used to explain the exclusion of flute-players from the shrine of Tenes at Tenedos. == See also ==