In Greek mythology, Polyphontes was a Heraclid who seized the throne of Messenia by murdering its lawful king Cresphontes (also a Heraclid) together with two of Cresphontes' sons. Having usurped the kingdom, he forced Cresphontes' widow Merope to marry him against her will. Merope contrived to save her youngest son, Aepytus, by sending him secretly out of the country; when Aepytus came of age he returned and, with his mother's collaboration, killed Polyphontes and recovered his father's kingdom. The episode was dramatized in Euripides' lost tragedy Cresphontes and became a celebrated subject of later European theatre.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Merope (Messenia)" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Family and background
Polyphontes was a member of the Heraclidae, the descendants of Heracles who returned to the Peloponnese and divided it among themselves. After the conquest, Messene fell by lot to Cresphontes, son of Aristomachus and a great-great-grandson of Heracles, who became its king.
Cresphontes married Merope, daughter of King Cypselus of Arcadia. By her he had several sons, the youngest of whom was Aepytus. Polyphontes, himself one of the Heraclids, stood close enough to the royal line to claim the throne after Cresphontes' death — and, in the tradition, to take Cresphontes' widow as his own wife.
II.Usurpation of Messenia
Cresphontes and his two older children were murdered, and Polyphontes occupied the throne of Messenia in his place. Having seized the kingdom, he compelled Merope, the widow of the murdered king, to marry him against her will.
Merope managed to save her youngest son, Aepytus, who alone escaped the danger; she sent him secretly away to Aetolia (in another account he was reared in the house of his grandfather Cypselus in Arcadia). Polyphontes, fearing the surviving heir, set a price on the boy's head.
III.Death and the revenge of Aepytus
When Aepytus had grown to manhood he returned in disguise to Messenia. According to the tradition preserved through Hyginus, the young man presented himself to Polyphontes as the killer of Cresphontes' son, claiming the reward Polyphontes had put on his head.
While the youth slept, Merope — not recognizing him and believing him to be her son's murderer — almost struck him dead, until his identity was revealed in time. Realizing that her enemy had unwittingly given her the means of revenge, Merope feigned reconciliation with Polyphontes and collaborated with her son. During a religious ceremony Polyphontes was killed, and Aepytus reclaimed his father's kingdom, punishing the murderers and avenging the insult to his mother.
IV.In drama and literature
Euripides based his lost tragedy Cresphontes on this myth. The scene in which Merope nearly kills her own son was famous in antiquity: Plutarch quotes her words and notes the theatrical impact, and Aristotle cites the moment as an example of an act undertaken in ignorance.
The story enjoyed a long afterlife on the European stage. Scipione Maffei's tragedy Merope premiered in Verona in 1713 and was widely admired, discussed by Voltaire, Lessing, and Goethe; its success rested on the maternal-filial bond rather than romantic intrigue. Voltaire adapted it (staged 1743), followed by versions from Aaron Hill (1749) and Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter (1774), while George Jeffreys and Matthew Arnold produced independent English treatments.