The one daughter of Perseus, named "Gorgon-killer" for her father's deed. Wed first to Perieres and then to Oebalus, she became the matriarch bridging the Perseid line with the royal houses of Messene and Sparta.1
Among the children Perseus fathered in Mycenae — Alcaeus, Sthenelus, Heleus, Mestor, and Electryon — was a single daughter, Gorgophone, whom Perieres married.2
Perieres took possession of Messene and married Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, and by her had Aphareus and Leucippus, together with Tyndareus and Icarius — a brood that would seed the royal lines of Messenia and Sparta.3
Pausanias parts the lineage between her two marriages: by Perieres she bore Aphareus and Leucippus, who inherited the Messenian kingdom; the Spartan kings, with Tyndareus among them, he traces to her later husband Oebalus.4
When Perieres, the son of Aeolus whom she had married as a virgin, died, Gorgophone took a second husband, Oebalus — the first woman, it was said, ever to marry again after a husband's death, for before her widows lived on alone. Her grave lay at Argos beside the monument of the Gorgon, and from the deed that gave her father glory she drew her telling name.5
The lineage is disputed: many held that the Perieres she wed was not the son of Aeolus at all but the son of Cynortas, son of Amyclas, and on the authority of Stesichorus it was this Spartan Perieres who married Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, and begot Tyndareus, Icarius, Aphareus, and Leucippus.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
