Erigone

Erigone, his daughter, roamed about in search of her father until she found his corpse in a well, and then she hanged herself. By way of atonement, the dreadful event is now repeated in a harmless form in the swinging of the Athenian girls.

Burkert identifies Erigone's self-hanging as the foundational trauma ritually replayed in the girls' swing-festival, and further notes multiple versions of her myth — as 'Early Born,' as 'the Roamer,' as Dionysos's wife — marking her as a multivalent sacred figure.

Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977thesis

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According to one version she was Erigone, the daughter of Aegisthus, who pursued her father's murderer, Orestes, all the way to Athens to accuse him. When he was acquitted, however, she took her own life. In another version, Erigone was the daughter of that Ikarios who was visited

Burkert distinguishes the two mythographic Erigones — the Aegisthean avenger and the Dionysian mourner — as rival aetiological explanations for the same ritual, the festival of Aletis the Wanderer.

Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972thesis

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Aletis (Erigone), 154, 158

Kerényi's index entry equates Erigone with her epithet Aletis, placing her at the precise textual junctures where the Dionysian arrival narratives and the aiora festival intersect in his larger argument.

Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976supporting

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Erigone (daughter of Icarius), 104, 157, 188

Otto's index places Erigone at three significant loci in his argument — alongside fruit under Dionysos's care, the fig tree as sexual symbol, and the maenad complex — indicating her role as a figure connecting Dionysian vegetation, death, and feminine cultic practice.

Otto, Walter F, Dionysus Myth and Cult (1965), 1965supporting

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from the corpse of Ikarios. In Athens the girls let themselves be swung in chairs hanging from trees, and the boys were permitted to imitate them, since on Choes Day, the 'day of the wine pitchers,' they imitated as far as possible everything that was done publicly at the great feast of Dionysos.

Kerényi situates the aiora — the swing-festival arising from Erigone's myth — within the broader Dionysian Anthesteria complex, arguing that swinging is a spontaneous sacred act whose festive meaning is intrinsic, not appended.

Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976supporting

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visit with Ikarios, 223, 242, and Erigone, 243

Burkert's index entry links Erigone to Dionysos's visit with Ikarios, positioning her within the sacrificial and wine-introduction narrative that is central to the Anthesteria mythology in Homo Necans.

Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting

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arrivals of Dionysos are reported in connection with wine-growing mountain villages first in the eastern coastal region and then in the west

Kerényi's account of Dionysian arrival narratives in Attica provides the narrative context within which the Ikarios–Erigone myth is embedded, though Erigone is not named directly in this passage.

Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976aside

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