Demophon

Son of Theseus and Phaedra (Apollodorus *Epitome* 1.18; Diodorus 4.62.1), king of Athens in the generation after his father, and the defining host of the Attic refuge-tradition for the Heraclidae: he received Hyllus and the children of Heracles against Eurystheus's demand for their surrender — the plot of Euripides's *Heraclidae* (430–428 BC; his refusal of the herald's demand at 236–287, the decision to fight at 381–437 against the threat of invasion). Distinct from the more famous infant Demophon of Eleusis (whom Demeter tried to immortalise in the *Homeric Hymn to Demeter*) and from Demophon son of Celeus at the same court — three different figures the post-classical tradition sometimes conflates. A late civic tradition also made him the Athenian host of Orestes (the Aeschylean *Eumenides* assigns Orestes's asylum to Athena directly, but the later tradition supplied a human partner). He is not in Homer.

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