Menippe

A daughter of Orion and sister of Metioche. After Orion was killed by Artemis, Menippe and Metioche were brought up by their mother, and Athena taught them the art of weaving, and Aphrodite gave them beauty.

Once the whole of Aonia was visited by a plague, and the oracle of Apollo Gortynius, when consulted, ordered the inhabitants to propitiate the two Erinyes by the sacrifice of two maidens, who were to offer themselves to death of their own accord. Menippe and Metioche offered themselves; they thrice invoked the infernal gods, and killed themselves with their shuttles. Persephone and Hades metamorphosed them into comets. The Aonians erected to them a sanctuary near Orchomenos, where a propitiatory sacrifice was offered to them every year by youths and maidens. The Aeolians called these maidens the Coronides.

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References

Sources

  • Antoninus Liberalis, 25.
  • Ovid. Metamorphoses xiii, 685.
  • Scholiast on Homer's Iliad xviii, 486.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.