Antiphera was an Aetolian woman who served as a slave for the royal couple of Boeotia, King Athamas and Queen Ino.
[1] Ino and Athamas had children together, but he soon initiated sexual relations with the slave woman which he tried to keep secret.
[2] Nevertheless his wife Ino found out, and in her jealousy-induced rage, she took her anger out on Melicertes, one her sons by Athamas, by killing him.
[3][4] Joseph Fontenrose compared this story to the myths of Aëdon and Procne, both royal women who killed their sons Itylus/Itys in order to take revenge against their unfaithful husbands Zethus and Tereus/Polytechnus.
[5] This story was used in classical antiquity to explain why slave women were forbidden from entering the shrine of Mater Matuta (the Roman equivalent of the goddess Ino/Leucothea), and the women who brought a single female slave with them would beat and slap them on the head;[1][6] meanwhile in Chaeronea, Plutarch's hometown, the guardian of the temple would take a whip and shout "Let no slave enter, nor any Aetolian, man or woman!"