Melanippus and Comaetho

In an Achaean town called Patrae, there was a sanctuary to Artemis that practiced human sacrifices for generations. It all started at the time when Comaetho (Κομαιθώ) was a young priestess in the temple of Triklarian Artemis.

Comaetho was a beautiful young virgin priestess when she fell in love with a handsome youth named Melanippus (Μελάνιππος). Melanippus did the right thing in asking her parents for her hand in marriage, but her father refused. Melanippus received no help from his own family.

In desperation and longing, the unhappy pair secretly made love in the shrine of Artemis. The goddess' own priestess had defiled her shrine. In anger, Artemis caused famine to ruin crops around the countryside of Patrae and pestilence swept through the town.

The people of Patrae sought advice from the oracle of Delphi. The oracle informed them that the goddess was punishing them for desecration of her shrine by Comaetho and Melanippus. The goddess would only be appeased if they sacrificed the lovers, and they must continue to sacrifice to the goddess one youth and one maiden, each year. They were told that the custom would only end when a strange king arrived on their soil, bearing a new god.

Upon their return, they seized and sacrificed Melanippus and Comaetho on the goddess' bloody shrine.

For generations, the citizens of Patrae offered one of their young men and women in annual human sacrifices to the implacable goddess, waiting desperately for the end of their bloody custom. These youths and maidens were innocent of any sins, but the people feared to stop the sacrifice.

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The custom ended generations later. Pausanias relates how it ended with the arrival of Eurypylus (Εὐρύπυλος), one of the Thessalian captains, who had fought in the Trojan War.

Eurypylus was the son of Evaemon. Eurypylus had brought forty ships to Troy, from the cities of Ormenion and Asterion. Eurypylus was remembered in the Iliad when Patroclus, companion of Achilles, attended to his wound. It was the news of Eurypylus that made Patroclus to fight in Achilles' place (see the Iliad about Patroclus' death). Eurypylus was one of the leaders who was inside the belly of the Wooden Horse, and he survived the war but he never returned home.

When the Greeks sacked Troy, Eurypylus received a beautifully crafted wooden chest as his spoil. The chest belonged to the Trojan hero, Aeneas. When Aeneas was forced to leave Troy to its fate, he left the chest behind. Cassandra, the Trojan seeress, and the daughter of King Priam, cursed any Greek who opened and looked inside the chest.

Curious to know what was hidden in the chest; Eurypylus opened the lid, and discovered a statuette of the wine god Dionysus. The sight of the statue drove him mad. Eurypylus fled from his men, and wandered aimlessly back to Greece.

When Eurypylus arrived at Delphi, he consulted the Pythian priestess for the cure for his madness. The oracle told him that must find the people who annually sacrifice one youth and one maiden to the goddess Artemis.

Eurypylus arrived in Patrae, just in time to stop the latest sacrifices. When the king installed the statue of Dionysus in the shrine of Artemis, Eurypylus was cured. The people of Patrae remembered the oracle, and ended their annual human sacrifices.

The people of Patrae welcomed the foreign king and crowned Eurypylus as their new king. Eurypylus never returned home to Thessaly. He lived and died in Patrae, where he was buried in a tomb near the shrine of Laphrian Artemis. Eurypylus was worshipped as Patrae's hero.