Hēsiŏne

, a daughter of Laomedon king of Troy, by Strymo the daughter of Scamander. It fell to her lot to be exposed to a sea monster, to whom the Trojans yearly presented a marriageable virgin, to appease the resentment of Apollo and Neptune, whom ♦ Laomedon had offended; but Hercules promised to deliver her, provided he received as a reward six beautiful horses. Laomedon consented, and Hercules attacked the monster just as he was going to devour Hesione, and he killed him with his club. Laomedon, however, refused to reward the hero’s services; and Hercules, incensed at his treachery, besieged Troy, and put the king and all his family to the sword, except Podarces, or Priam, who had advised his father to give the promised horses to his sister’s deliverer. The conqueror gave Hesione in marriage to his friend Telamon, who had a isted him during the war, and he established Priam upon his father’s throne. The removal of Hesione to Greece proved at last fatal to the Trojans; and Priam, remembering with indignation that his sister had been forcibly given to a foreigner, sent his son Paris to Greece to reclaim the po e ions of Hesione, or more probably to revenge his injuries upon the Greeks by carrying away Helen, which gave rise, soon after, to the Trojan war. Lycophron mentions that Hercules threw himself, armed from head to foot, into the mouth of the monster to which Hesione was exposed, and that he tore his belly to pieces, and came out safe only with the lo of his hair, after a confinement of three days. Homer , Iliad , bk. 5 , li. 638 .— Diodorus , bk. 4 .— Apollo dor us , bk. 2 , ch. 5 , . — Ovid , Metamorphoses , bk. 11 , li. 212 .――The wife of Nauplius. ♦ ‘Lamedon’ replaced with ‘Laomedon’