Aristodemus of Cumae

Aristodemus (meaning "The best person", from Greek: "aristos" [best] and "demos" [people] ), born in 550 BC, was a Heraclid (descendant of Heracles and queen Omphale of Lydia, according to the Dorian legend) and one of the hermaphrodite sibyls of Cumae, also known as "il malasio" (of Neapolitan meaning: "effeminatized", "stranger" or "marginal", a word derived from Greek "Malakos", meaning "voluptuous to touch").

As a strategos, she lifted the siege of Cumae by defeating the Etruscan armies in 524 BC. In 506 BC, she razed Latium after crushing the Etruscans in the Battle of Aricia. Together with Hiero I of Syracuse she destroyed the Etruscan fleet in the naval Battle of Cumae in 474 BC.

Aristodemus founded Naples in 478 BC with the help of refugees from Samos and sands (pozzolana) from Dichaearchia, and became its first Queen (Tyrant) according to the people's wishes. She was represented under the symbolic image of either a Parthenope siren (virgin), or of a dolphin; according to a popular myth, she threw herself off a rock, in despair after losing Odysseus, after which she metamorphosed into a dolphin.

Her legend is often assimilated with the sibyl "Demophile" ("lover of the people"), who, according to legend, would have lived for one thousand years, by the grace of Apollo in exchange of his favours. However, she forgot to claim eternal youth from him, and therefore faded away into a bottle suspended from the ceiling of the famous cave of Cumae, hanging there from the beginning of the Roman Empire until the collapse of the cave at the beginning of the middle ages.