In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, Themisto , daughter of Hypseus

Hypseus

In Greek mythology, the name Hypseus may refer to:*Hypseus, King of the Lapiths, son of the river god Peneus by the naiad Creusa, daughter of Gaia. By Chlidanope he had four daughters: Cyrene, Themisto, Alcaea and Astyagyia .*Hypseus, who fought on Phineus' side against Perseus...

, was the third and last wife of Athamas

Athamas

The king of Orchomenus in Greek mythology, Athamas , was married first to the goddess Nephele with whom he had the twins Phrixus or Frixos and Helle. He later divorced Nephele and married Ino, daughter of Cadmus. With Ino, he had two children: Learches and Melicertes...

. According to Apollodorus

Apollodorus

Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace...

, she had five children by him: Leucon, Erythrius, Schoeneus

Schoeneus

In Greek mythology, Schoeneus was the name of several individuals:#Schoeneus was a Boeotian king, the son of Athamas and Themisto. He was the father of Atalanta by Clymene.#Schoeneus was the son of Autonous and Hippodamia...

, Ptous, and Porphyrion

Porphyrion

In Greek mythology, Porphyrion was a giant, one of the sons of Uranus and Gaia. After the Olympian gods imprisoned the Titans in Tartarus, Porphyrion was one of twenty-four anguipede giants who made war on Olympus....

. In other sources there were but two: Sphincius and Orchomenus, or else Schoeneus and Leucon. Some say that the father of Leucon was Poseidon

Poseidon

Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...

 (see also Leuconoe).

When Athamas returned to his second wife, Ino

Ino

-Arts and music:*"I'm Not Okay" , a 2004 song by American alternative rock band My Chemical Romance*I-No, a character in the Guilty Gear series of video games*Ino , a queen of Thebes in Greek mythology...

, Themisto dressed all her own children in white clothing, and Ino's in black. Themisto then proceeded to kill all the black-clothed children, as an act of revenge against Athamas. What Themisto did not realise was that Ino had switched the children's clothing, and so she in fact killed her own children (except, apparently, for Schoeneus). Upon discovering that, she killed herself. According to Apollodorus, however, Themisto married Athamas after the death of Ino, and the whole story with the murder of the children did not take place.

Her name is derived from the Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

word: "θεμιστος" which means "belonging to the law," or "belonging to the customs."