in fabulous history, the fifty daughters of Danaus king of Argos. When their uncle Ægyptus came from Egypt with his fifty sons, they were promised in marriage to their cousins; and before the celebration of their nuptials, Danaus, who had been informed by an oracle that he was to be killed by the hands of one of his sons-in-law, made his daughters solemnly promise that they would destroy their husbands. They were provided with daggers by their father; and all except Hypermnestra stained their hands with the blood of their cousins the first night of their nuptials; and, as a pledge of their obedience to their father's injunctions, they presented him each with the head of the murdered sons of Ægyptus. Hypermnestra was summoned to appear before her father, and answer for her disobedience in suffering her husband Lynceus to escape; but the unanimous voice of the people declared her innocent, and she dedicated a temple to the goddess of Persuasion. The sisters were purified of this murder by Mercury and Minerva by order of Jupiter; but according to the more received opinion, they were condemned to severe punishment in hell, and were compelled to fill with water a vessel full of holes, so that the water ran out as soon as poured into it; and therefore their labour was infinite, and their punishment eternal. The heads of the sons of Ægyptus were buried at Argos; but their bodies were left at Lerna, where the murder had been committed.