Perigune

For the moth genus, see Perigune (moth).

In Greek mythology, Perigune (Ancient Greek: Περιγούνη) was the daughter of Sinis.^[1] Her name is also spelled Perigouna or Perigone. She is passingly mentioned as Perigenia in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.^[2]

Mythology

Perigune is mentioned in only a few sources and the details are sparse. The most extensive surviving account comes from Plutarch, who states that, after Theseus killed her father, she hid herself in a bed of rushes and asparagus. When Theseus promised not to harm her, she emerged from hiding. She then bore Theseus Melanippus, who became the ancestor of the Ioxides of Caria. These people, Plutarch states, revered the asparagus and the rush and did not burn them. Afterwards Theseus gave her to Deioneus of Oechalia.^[3]

Pausanias also mentions that Theseus fathered Melanippus with the daughter of Sinis, but gives no further details.^[4] In the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus she – again referred to only as the daughter of Sinis – is listed as one of the women taken by Theseus by force. Athenaeus cites the fourteenth book of Istrus's Attika as the source of the information.^[5]

References

1. Gantz (1993) p.251.
2. A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II.i.78.
3. Plutarch, Theseus 8.2–3.
4. Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.25.7.
5. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.4 (=causabon page 557a).

Bibliography

• Athenaeus (1854). The Deipnosophists. Translated by Yonge, C. D. Henry G. Bohn.
• Gantz, Timothy (1993). Early Greek myth: a guide to literary and artistic sources. Johns Hopkins University press. ISBN 0-8018-4410-X.
• Pausanias (1918). Description of Greece. Vol. 4. Translated by Jones, W.H.S. Harvard University Press.
• Plutarch (1914). Parallel Lives. Vol. 1. Translated by Perrin, Bernadotte. Harvard University Press.
• Shakespeare, William (1842). The Works of Shakespeare. Vol. 2. Whittaker & Co.