Merope was the daughter of King Cypselus of Arcadia

Arcadia

Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...

 and wife of Cresphontes

Cresphontes

In Greek mythology, Cresphontes was a son of Aristomachus, husband of Merope, and brother of Temenus and Aristodemus. He was a great-great-grandson of Heracles and helped lead the fifth and final attack on Mycenae in the Peloponnesus...

, the Heraclid

Heracleidae

In Greek mythology, the Heracleidae or Heraclids were the numerous descendants of Heracles , especially applied in a narrower sense to the descendants of Hyllus, the eldest of his four sons by Deianira Other Heracleidae included Macaria, Lamos, Manto, Bianor, Tlepolemus, and Telephus...

 king of Messenia

Messenia

Messenia is a regional unit in the southwestern part of the Peloponnese region, one of 13 regions into which Greece has been divided by the Kallikratis plan, implemented 1 January 2011...

. After the murder of her husband and her two older children by Polyphontes (another Heraclid), Merope was forced to marry the murderer, but she managed to save her youngest son, Aepytus

Aepytus

Aepytus can refer to several people in Classical mythology:*Aepytus was one of the mythical kings of Arcadia. He was the son of Eilatus, and originally ruled over Phaesana on the Alpheius in Arcadia. When Cleitor, the son of Azan, died without leaving any issue, Aepytus succeeded him and became...

, whom she sent secretly to Aetolia

Aetolia

Aetolia is a mountainous region of Greece on the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth, forming the eastern part of the modern prefecture of Aetolia-Acarnania.-Geography:...

. Several years later, when Aepytus grew up, he killed Polyphontes with the collaboration of Merope, and he took revenge for the murder of his relatives and the insult to his mother

Euripides' Cresphontes

Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

 based his (lost) tragedy

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 Cresphontes (Κρεσφόντης) on this myth. According to Hyginus

Hyginus

Hyginus can refer to:People:*Gaius Julius Hyginus , Roman poet, author of Fabulae, reputed author of Poeticon astronomicon*Hyginus Gromaticus, Roman surveyor*Pope Hyginus, also a saint, Bishop of Rome about 140...

' description of the plot (Fabulae 184), Merope's son (in this version also named Cresphontes), once grown, set in motion the plan to avenge his father's death by presenting himself incognito to Polyphontes as his own killer, claiming the price Polyphontes had put on his head. As the tired 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" (trans. Cropp, p. 121). Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

 quotes a line spoken by Merope in this scene in his essay On Meat-Eating (Moralia

Moralia

The Moralia of the 1st-century Greek scholar Plutarch of Chaeronea is an eclectic collection of 78 essays and transcribed speeches. They give an insight into Roman and Greek life, but often are also fascinating timeless observations in their own right...

998e) and adds, "what a stir she rouses in the theatre as she brings them to their feet in terror lest she wound the youth before the old man [who had served as secret messenger between mother and son] can stop her!" Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

 cites this as an intended action that would have been performed involuntarily due to Merope's ignorance of the particular circumstances of the action: "one might think one's son was an enemy, as Merope did" (Nicomachean Ethics

Nicomachean Ethics

The Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle's best known work on ethics. The English version of the title derives from Greek Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, transliterated Ethika Nikomacheia, which is sometimes also given in the genitive form as Ἠθικῶν Νικομαχείων, Ethikōn Nikomacheiōn...

III.1, 1111a11-12, trans. Ross

W. D. Ross

Sir David Ross KBE was a Scottish philosopher, known for work in ethics. His best known work is The Right and the Good , and he is perhaps best known for developing a pluralist, deontological form of intuitionist ethics in response to G.E. Moore's intuitionism...

). Hyginus continues: "When Merope realised her enemy had given her the opportunity of avenging herself, she made things up with Polyphontes. As the joyful king was performing a religious ceremony his guest, falsely pretending to have killed the victim, killed him and regained his paternal kingdom."

Sources

• M.J. Cropp, "Cresphontes," in Collard, Cropp, and Lee (eds.), Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays I (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1995), pp. 121-147
• Emmy Patsi-Garin: «Επίτομο λεξικό Ελληνικής Μυθολογίας», εκδ. οίκος Χάρη Πάτση, Αθήνα 1969.