Amymone

In Greek mythology, Amymone ("blameless, innocent") was a daughter of Danaus, king of Libya and Europe, a queen. As the "blameless" Danaid, her name identifies her as, perhaps, identical to Hypermnestra ("great wooing" or "high marriage"), the one Danaid who did not assassinate her Egyptian husband on their wedding night, as her 49 sisters did. The author of the Bibliotheca, however, mentions Hypermnestra and Amymone in his list of names for the Danaids.
== Mythology ==
Poseidon had dried up all the regions of Argos' springs after the Argolid was awarded to the protection of Hera. It would appear from the myth that Poseidon preceded Hera in the heartland of her cult. But he rescued Amymone from a chthonic satyr who was about to rape her. To possess her himself, the god revealed the springs of Lerna, a cult site of great antiquity near the shores of the Argolid. To Poseidon, Amymone bore Nauplius, "the navigator", who gave his name to the port city of Nafplio in the Argolid.
Amymone was eventually reconciled with her father and given in marriage to Lynceus, with whom she founded a race of kings that led to Danaë, the mother of Perseus, founder of Mycenae. Thus, this founding myth of Argos also asserts that Argos was the metropolis of Mycenae.
Amymone is represented with a water pitcher, a reminder of the sacred springs and lake of Lerna and of the copious wells that made Argos the "well-watered" and, by contrast, a reminder that her sisters were forever punished in Tartarus for their murderous crimes by fruitlessly drawing water in pitchers with open bases.
Aeschylus wrote a now lost satyr play called Amymone about the seduction of Amymone by Poseidon, which followed the trilogy that included The Suppliants.
Category:Danaids
Category:Princesses in Greek mythology
Category:Consorts of Poseidon
Category:Mortal parents of demigods in classical mythology
Category:Libyan characters in Greek mythology
Category:Mythology of Argos