Macaria

Daughter of Heracles by Deianira, the self-sacrificing maiden of Euripides's *Heraclidae* (430–428 BC). When an oracle at Athens demanded the sacrifice of a noble virgin as the price of victory over Eurystheus, she offered herself willingly rather than let lots be drawn among the Heraclid sisters (Eur. *Heracl.* 474–607 — the sacrifice-scene that is the dramatic and moral centre of the play). The play's manuscripts call her only Παρθένος, 'the Maiden,' and never name her; the name Makaria ('Blessed') is post-classical and first surfaces at Pausanias 1.32.6 as the name of a spring on the Marathon plain — whether the girl gave her name to the spring or the spring to the girl was already disputed in antiquity, as the scholiast on Aristophanes *Equites* 1151 notes while glossing the proverb 'go to Makaria' as a euphemism for 'go to the ravens.'

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