Demophon- Greek HeroHero"King of Athens"
Also known as: Demophoon, Δημοφῶν, and Dēmophōn
Titles & Epithets
Description
Son of Theseus who sailed home from Troy and stopped in Thrace, where the princess Phyllis fell in love with him. He promised to return but never did. Phyllis cursed him and killed herself. After her death, she became an almond tree.
Mythology & Lore
Troy
Demophon was a son of Theseus and Phaedra. He and his brother Acamas sailed with the Greek army to Troy and entered the city inside the Wooden Horse. During the sack, they found their grandmother Aethra, Theseus's mother, who had been carried to Troy years earlier as Helen's handmaid. They brought her home.
Phyllis and the Almond Tree
On his way home from Troy, Demophon stopped in Thrace, where the princess Phyllis fell in love with him. Apollodorus records that they married and her father gave him a share of the kingdom. When Demophon said he must return to Athens, Phyllis gave him a casket sacred to the Mother of the Gods and told him not to open it unless he had given up all hope of returning.
He settled in Cyprus and did not return. Phyllis cursed him and killed herself. In Ovid's Heroides, her letter to Demophon compares herself to Ariadne, abandoned by his father on Naxos.
After her death, Phyllis became an almond tree. When Demophon finally came back and embraced the bare trunk, it burst into leaf.