Ianthe
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Ianthe (Purple or violet flower) refers to four figures in Greek mythology.
1. Ianthe was a Cretan girl who was betrothed to Iphis. Iphis was a woman raised as a man; she also fell in love with Ianthe and prayed to the gods to allow the two women to marry. She was changed by Isis into a man, and became Ianthe's husband. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, IX, 666-797.
2. Ianthe, one of the 3,000 sons and daughters of the Titan Oceanus and Tethys, the Oceanids
3. Ianthe, a young girl, so beautiful that when she died the Gods made purple flowers grow around her grave.
4. Ianthe, a nymph mentioned in homeric hymn to Demeter, who was with the Goddess of Spring, Persephone when she was captured by Hades, the God of the Underworld.
[edit] Other uses
1. Ianthe was the nickname the poet Lord Byron gave to his patron Lady Charlotte Mary, to whom Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is dedicated.
2. In Percy Shelley's poem, "Queen Mab," the fairy queen visits a character named Ianthe. The fairy then takes the dead soul of Ianthe and leads it across existence and uses the soul to highlight the good and pure in mankind. Shelley uses this to illustrate the evil in man's nature. Shelley also named his eldest daughter with Harriet Westbrook, Eliza Ianthe (born 23rd June 1813).
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