Merope was a queen of Messenia in Greek mythology, the daughter of King Cypselus of Arcadia and wife of Cresphontes, the Heraclid king of Messenia. After her husband and two of her sons were murdered by the usurper Polyphontes, she was forced to marry the murderer but secretly saved her youngest son, Aepytus, by sending him away to be reared. When Aepytus grew to manhood, he returned and killed Polyphontes with his mother's collaboration, avenging the family and recovering the kingdom. The story was dramatized by Euripides in his lost tragedy Cresphontes and became a favourite subject of later European playwrights.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Merope (Messenia)" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Family and mythology
Merope was the daughter of King Cypselus of Arcadia and the wife of Cresphontes, the Heraclid king of Messenia. By him she was the mother of Aepytus, her youngest son.
After her husband Cresphontes and two of her older sons were murdered by Polyphontes, who seized the throne, Merope was forced into marriage with the murderer. She secretly preserved her youngest son Aepytus by having him sent away to be reared in safety.
When Aepytus grew to adulthood, he returned and killed Polyphontes with the collaboration of Merope, avenging his father and brothers and reclaiming his ancestral kingdom.
II.Euripides' Cresphontes
Euripides based his lost tragedy Cresphontes on this myth. According to Hyginus' description, Merope's son (also named Cresphontes in this version) presented himself to Polyphontes as his own killer, claiming a bounty. While the young man slept, "Merope, believing the sleeping man to be her son's murderer, came into the room with an axe, unwittingly intending to slay her own son."
Plutarch quoted Merope's words from this scene in his essay On Meat-Eating (Moralia 998e), noting the theatrical impact: the audience was moved to terror lest she wound the youth before an old messenger could stop her. Aristotle cited the situation as an example of an involuntary action arising from ignorance. Hyginus concludes that Merope then conspired with Polyphontes, and when the king performed a religious ceremony, her son—pretending to have struck down a sacrificial victim—killed him and recovered his kingdom.
III.Maffei's Merope
Scipione Maffei premiered his tragedy Merope in Verona on June 12, 1713. It achieved widespread popularity, being translated, performed, and discussed across Europe, drawing the attention of figures such as Voltaire, Lessing, and eventually Goethe.
Maffei engaged audiences through the bond between mother and son rather than through romantic intrigue. By agreement with Maffei, Voltaire adapted the play, staged in 1743 as Mérope. Aaron Hill produced an English adaptation in 1749, and Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter created a German version in 1774. George Jeffreys and Matthew Arnold offered independent English treatments in 1731 and 1858 respectively; Arnold incorporated fifty surviving lines from the original Greek work into his dramatic poem.