Cassiphone'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
Cassiphone is alluded to in obscure lines in Hellenistic poet
Lycophron's Alexandra, with an explanation provided in the commentary of Byzantine scholar
John Tzetzes, who is the only one to mention her name; she is most likely a late classical or Hellenistic invention, whose only purpose is to expand on the myth of Telegonus.[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]
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 goes that when her full-brother
Telegonus left in search of his father he accidentally ended up killing him, having not recognised him. Telegonus then married Odysseus's widow
Penelope, while Circe married
Telemachus, Odysseus's son by Penelope.[7] According to Lycophron and Tzetzes, Circe then brought Odysseus back to life who proceeded to wed Cassiphone to Telemachus, her half-brother.[8][9] Telemachus then killed Circe after a quarrell with her,[f] prompting Cassiphone to kill Telemachus as she avenged her mother.[1][10]
^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.[8]
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.