Praxidice

I.e. the goddess who carries out the objects of justice, or watches that justice is done to men. When Menelaus arrived in Laconia, on his return from Troy, he set up a statue of Praxidice near Gytheium, not far from the spot where Paris, in carrying off Helen, had founded a sanctuary of Aphrodite Migonitis.1

Near Haliartus, in Boeotia, we meet with the worship of Praxidicae (Ππραξιδίκαι), in the plural,2 who were called daughters of Ogyges, and their names are Alalcomenia, Thelxinoea, and Aulis.3 Their images consisted merely of heads, and their sacrifices only of the heads of animals.

With the Orphic poets Praxidice seems to be a surname of Persephone.4

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References

Notes

  1. Pausanias. Description of Greece iii, 22.2.
  2. ibid. ix, 33.2.
  3. ibid. ix, 33.4; Suidas, s.v.; Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Τρεμίλη.
  4. Orphic. Argonautica, 31; Hymns, 28.5; comp. Müller. Orchomenos und die Minyer, p. 122 (2nd ed.).

Source

  • 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.