Infant son of Celeus and Metaneira at Eleusis whom Demeter nursed in the fire to make immortal — until his mother's cry broke the charm and cost him the godlike age the goddess had begun to bestow; Apollodorus names him Demophon but in the same passage calls the watcher Praxithea, not Metaneira.1
Apollodorus says Demeter received the babe to nurse and, wishing to make him immortal, set him on the fire by night and stripped off his mortal flesh; as Demophon — for that was the child's name — grew marvelously by day, Praxithea watched, and discovering him buried in the fire she cried out, wherefore the babe was consumed by the fire and the goddess revealed herself.2⚖
Pausanias, following Pamphos, tells the episode through Metaneira: the daughters of Celeus brought Demeter home from the Flowery Well, and Metaneira thereupon entrusted to her the rearing of her son — the queen whose cry, in the fuller Eleusinian tradition preserved beside Apollodorus, broke the immortal rite.3⚖
He must not be merged with Demophon son of Theseus and Phaedra, the Athenian prince who fled Menestheus and later fought at Troy — a homonym kept distinct in every handbook that names the Eleusinian infant.4
⁂
the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story