Antiphera
Slave woman in Greek mythology
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In Greek mythology, Antiphera (Ancient Greek: Ἀντιφέρα, romanized: Antiphéra) is a slave woman from Aetolia in the service of Athamas and Ino, a king and queen in Boeotia. Antiphera caught the eye of Athamas, and thus incurred the wrath of his wife Ino. The story is mostly known through Plutarch, a Greek philosopher of the Roman imperial era.
Mythology
Antiphera was an Aetolian woman who served as a slave for the royal couple of Boeotia, King Athamas and Queen Ino.[1] Ino and Athamas had children together, but he soon initiated sexual relations with the slave woman which he tried to keep secret.[2] Nevertheless his wife Ino found out, and in her jealousy-induced rage, she took her anger out on Melicertes, one her sons by Athamas, by killing him.[3][4]
Culture
This story was used in classical antiquity to explain why slave women were forbidden from entering the shrine of Mater Matuta (the Roman equivalent of the goddess Ino/Leucothea), and the women who brought a single female slave with them would beat and slap them on the head;[1][5] meanwhile in Chaeronea, Plutarch's hometown, the guardian of the temple would take a whip and shout "Let no slave enter, nor any Aetolian, man or woman!" while outside Leucothea's temple.[6]
Scholar Joseph Fontenrose compared this story to the myths of Aëdon and Procne, both royal women of the wider Attica-Boeotia region who killed their sons Itylus/Itys in order to take revenge against their unfaithful husbands Zethus/Polytechnus and Tereus respectively.[7]
