Damodice

Also Known As: more often spelled Demodice; Greek Demodike, Doric Damodika, “justice of the people”; called Biadice in some copies of Hyginus, and replaced in other tellings by Gorgopis or Themisto
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: Damodice is a mortal queen with no magic at all, whose only weapon is a false charge that her husband believes at once.
Role in Mythos: She is the woman whose lie drives the young Phrixus out of Greece on the back of the golden ram, in the version of the Golden Fleece story where no famine and no forged oracle are needed.
Relation to Humans: Damodice is one of the Greek accusers, like Phaedra and Stheneboea, who turn a refused advance into a charge of assault. Ancient star-lore used her to explain why the Ram is in the sky, since her lie is what sends it flying.

A boy is clinging to the wool of a ram that should not be able to fly, with the sea wind cold on his face and his sister’s hands slipping at his back. Below them is a strip of grey water that does not have a name yet. It will have one shortly. Everything about that flight is famous, the ram, the girl who falls, the gold skin nailed up at the far end of the world. Hardly anyone remembers the woman on the ground whose lie started it.

Her name was Damodice, or Demodice in the commoner spelling. The fullest account of her is a few lines in the star handbook that goes under the name of Hyginus, in the chapter that explains the constellation of the Ram. There she is the wife of Cretheus, king of Iolcus, one of the sons of Aeolus. That makes her the aunt by marriage of Phrixus, whose father Athamas was the brother of Cretheus. Some copies of the same book call her Biadice instead, and nothing else about her changes.

Where she came from, nobody says. She has no father in the record, no homeland and no children. She steps into the story already a queen, in a hall that smelled of woodsmoke and lamp oil, with the ordinary work of a king’s wife in front of her: the stores, the looms, the guests. Phrixus was one of the guests, a nephew coming and going about the house as kin did. She watched him. Then she wanted him, and she told him so.

He said no. The handbook does not record his words and does not seem to think they matter. What matters is what she did next. She went to her husband and told him the story the other way round, that the young man had laid hands on her. It worked immediately. Cretheus loved his wife and was a king, and a king could not let that stand. He went to his brother Athamas and pressed him to put his own son to death. Athamas agreed.

That is the whole of her part. It is not much.

The rest belongs to others. The cloud goddess Nephele, mother of Phrixus and his sister Helle, came down before the sentence could be carried out and set both children on a ram with a fleece of gold. It rose with them and carried them east. Over the narrow water between Europe and Asia, Helle lost her grip and fell, and the strait has been the Hellespont, Helle’s sea, ever since. Phrixus held on as far as Colchis. He sacrificed the ram there and hung its heavy, glittering hide in a temple, where it waited a generation for Jason and the Argonauts. The ram itself went into the sky as the first sign of the zodiac.

The handbook adds one thing more. Hermes later brought Phrixus home to Athamas and satisfied the father that the boy had run because he was innocent, not because he was guilty. So the lie was found out. What happened to the woman who told it is not recorded. There is no punishment, no confession and no death scene. Phaedra hangs herself and Stheneboea comes to a bad end in more than one telling, but Damodice is simply not mentioned again.

She has a second, even thinner trace. Pindar, in his fourth Pythian ode, says in passing that Phrixus was saved from the wicked weapons of his stepmother and does not name her. An ancient commentator on that line took the trouble to list the names different authors had used. Pindar himself, in a hymn now lost, called her Demodice. The sophist Hippias called her Gorgopis. The early mythographer Pherecydes called her Themisto, and Sophocles had a version of his own. In that tradition she is the wife of Athamas, not of Cretheus, so the charge comes from inside the boy’s own house. Ino, the stepmother most readers know, with her roasted seed corn and her bribed messengers from Delphi, is the same role played with a different plot.

So the name floats. It attaches to a stepmother in one book and an aunt in another, and in both she does the same job. Her power is the kind that needs no gods. She is believed, by a husband who never thinks to ask the nephew for his side. Her limit is just as plain. A lie only holds while the person lied about is silent or far away, and hers lasted exactly as long as it took a god to walk Phrixus back through his father’s door. She could send a boy to the edge of the world. She could not make the story stay told her way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Damodice in Greek mythology?

Damodice, more often spelled Demodice, is a mortal queen in Greek mythology who falsely accused the young Phrixus of assaulting her. In the account given by Hyginus she is the wife of Cretheus, king of Iolcus and uncle of Phrixus. Her accusation is the reason Phrixus fled Greece on the golden ram.

What did Damodice do to Phrixus?

Damodice fell in love with Phrixus and was refused. She then told her husband Cretheus that Phrixus had attacked her. Cretheus persuaded his brother Athamas, the father of Phrixus, to put the boy to death, and Phrixus was saved only when his mother Nephele sent the golden ram to carry him away.

Is Damodice the same as Ino?

Damodice and Ino are different women who fill the same role in different versions of the story. Ino is the stepmother who ruins the harvest and forges an oracle to have Phrixus sacrificed. Damodice needs no famine. She makes a false charge of assault, and in some ancient sources she is named as the stepmother herself.

What other names does Damodice have?

Some copies of Hyginus call Damodice by the name Biadice. An ancient commentator on Pindar says that Pindar called the stepmother of Phrixus Demodice, while Hippias called her Gorgopis and Pherecydes called her Themisto. The names change, but the woman who drives Phrixus away stays the same.

What happened to Damodice in the end?

No ancient source says what happened to Damodice. Hyginus records that Hermes brought Phrixus back to his father Athamas and proved that he had fled in innocence, so her lie was exposed. Her punishment, if there was one, is not recorded.