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In Greek mythology, Oenone (; Ancient Greek: Οἰνώνη Oinōnē; "wine woman") was the first wife of Paris Troy, whom he abandoned for Helen. Oenone was also the ancient name of an island, which was later named after Aegina, daughter of the river god Asopus. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, Aeacus
Her prediction came true when Paris abandoned her, returning to his birth parents in Troy and sailing across the Aegean for Helen, the queen of Sparta. Out of revenge for Paris's betrayal, she sent Corythus to guide the Greeks to Troy. Another version has it that she used her son to drive a rift between Paris and Helen, but Paris, not recognizing his own son, killed him.Conon, Narrations 23
One of the only extensive surviving narrations of Oenone and Paris is Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica, Book X, ll. 259–489, which tells the return of the dying Paris to Oenone. On-line text of Posthomerica; Alternative text Mortally wounded by Philoctetes's arrow, he begged Oenone to heal him with her herbal arts,"Oenone, skilled in drugs". according to Lycophron, 61. but she refused and cast him out with scorn, to return to Helen's bed, and Paris died on the lower slopes of Ida. Then, overcome with remorse, Oenone, the one whole-hearted mourner of Paris, threw herself onto his burning funeral pyre, which the shepherds had raised.Posthomerica, Book X, from lines 260 and 410
A fragment of Bacchylides suggests that she threw herself off a cliff,Bacchylides, fr. 20D in the Bibliotheke it is noted "when she found him dead she hanged herself", and Lycophron imagines her hurtling head first from the towering walls of Troy. Her tragic story makes one of the Love Romances of Parthenius of Nicaea, where she jests to the messenger that Paris should have asked Helen to heal him but sets out to save her former husband all the same. Still, she arrives too late, and ends her life out of grief.Parthenius, 4 from Book of Poets of Nicander and the Trojan History of Cephalon of Gergitha
Ovid includes an imagined reproachful letter from Oenone to Paris in his Heroides, Heroides v. a text that has been extended by a number of spurious post-Ovidian interpolations, which include an elsewhere unattested rape of Oenone by Apollo.Sergio Casali, reviewing The Cambridge Heroides in The Classical Journal 92.3 (February 1997, pp. 305–314) pp306-07.
William Morris included "The Death of Paris" in The Earthly Paradise.
Lawrence Binyon published Paris and Oenone, a one-act Closet drama in blank verse, in 1906.
Alfred Tennyson adapted the source material of Smyrnaeus for "The Death of Oenone" (1892), distilling its tragic essence.Tennyson dedicated his poem to the classical scholar Benjamin Jowett as "a Grecian tale retold" and in his Memoirs (ii.386) credited it with being "even more strictly classical in form and language than the old", as Wilfred P. Mustard noted in The American Journal of Philology 23.3 (1902), p 318. See "The death of Oenone" This was Tennyson's second poem on the subject; his previous attempt, "Oenone", was critically panned when first published in 1833.Thorn, Michael. (1992) Tennyson, p. 106. New York: St. Martin's Press. The poem was practically rewritten between then and 1842 and the revised version has been described as exquisitely beautiful.Notes to Poetical Works of Lord Tennyson, Collins, published ca. 1940
In Jean Racine's Phèdre, the name Oenone is given to Phaedra's nurse, a character who also commits suicide.
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