Daughter of Iobates of Lycia and wife of Proetus — Homer names her Anteia (Antia), Apollodorus and Hyginus Stheneboea — who lusted for Bellerophon at Tiryns, failed to seduce him, and sent him to her father bearing a sealed death-token; not to be confused with the Arcadian Stheneboea whom Apollodorus elsewhere makes a daughter of Apheidas or Aleus.1
When Proetus was driven from Argos he fled to Lycia and married the daughter of King Iobates; Apollodorus names her Stheneboea. After he returned and fortified Tiryns, the purified exile Bellerophon came to his court — and the queen lusted madly for the upright guest, yet could in no wise prevail upon wise-hearted Bellerophon, for that his heart was upright.2
So she made a tale of lies, telling Proetus to slay Bellerophon or die himself. Wrath seized the king, yet awe of murdering a suppliant stayed his hand: he graved baneful tokens in a folded tablet and sent the hero to Lycia, bidding him show them to his own wife's father, that he might be slain. Homer calls the queen Anteia; Apollodorus and Hyginus call her Stheneboea — one woman, two names in the tradition.3⚖
Hyginus adds that when she heard Bellerophon had married her sister Philonoe and won half the Lycian kingdom, Stheneboea killed herself out of love and shame at her rebuff — the queen's false charge answered by the hero's triumph and her own ruin.4
Apollodorus also records an Arcadian Stheneboea — daughter of Apheidas, or in another passage sister of Aleus — given in marriage to Proetus. That genealogical rival must never share this star: the wife of the lying letter is Iobates' daughter from Lycia, not a princess of Tegea.5
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story