Stheneboea (Homer's Anteia / Antea) is daughter of Iobates of Lycia and queen of Proetus at Tiryns — the wife whose failed seduction of Bellerophon and false accusation of rape send the hero to Lycia with a sealed death-token and on to the Chimera. Distinct from the Arcadian Stheneboea whom early genealogy makes daughter of Apheidas (sister of Aleus). By Proetus she is mother of the Proetids; later versions end in her suicide or death when Bellerophon casts her from Pegasus.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Stheneboea" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Family and names
By the time of Euripides' lost Stheneboea her father is Iobates, king of Lycia; she is Proetus's queen at Tiryns while he shares the Argolid with Acrisius. Hesiod's Catalogue of Women instead makes Stheneboea daughter of Apheidas and sister of Aleus — the Arcadian strand the atlas keeps off this Proetid id.
By Proetus she bore three daughters, Iphinoë, Iphianassa, and Lysippe, the Proetids. Homer's Iliad knows the queen as Anteia; Apollodorus and Hyginus use Stheneboea for the same figure.
II.Bellerophon
When Proetus welcomed Bellerophon, Stheneboea desired the hero and was refused. Bitterly rejected, she accused him of rape and urged Proetus to kill him. Bound by guest-right, Proetus sent Bellerophon to Iobates with a sealed letter ordering the bearer's death; Iobates, likewise unwilling to slay a guest, set the Chimera and other deadly tasks — all of which Bellerophon survived.
Iobates then gave Bellerophon the hand of Stheneboea's sister Philonoe. Hyginus has Stheneboea kill herself in despair at the news. Another version (Euripides' hypothesis and scholia) has Bellerophon pretend to return her love, take her up on Pegasus toward Caria, and cast her into the sea near Melos; fishermen recover the body for Proetus.
III.Aftermath and parallels
Divine judgement followed: the three Proetids were driven mad by Hera or Dionysus and ranged the mountains as maenads, assaulting travellers.
The failed seduction belongs to a widespread triangle — Potiphar's wife and Joseph, Phaedra and Hippolytus, Astydamia and Peleus, Biadice and Phrixus, and the Egyptian Tale of the Two Brothers — a pattern Robert Graves and others have mapped across Greek, Hebrew, and Near Eastern narrative.