Iodame

Iodame is presented as a daughter of King Itonus of Iton and thus placed in the local dynastic genealogy (granddaughter of Amphictyon in some accounts). The narrative centers on an event at the temple/precinct of Athena Itonia at Iton: in one tradition she trespassed into the sacred precinct at night, saw Athena appear with the Gorgoneion (Medusa's head) worked on her garment, and was turned to stone; thereafter a priestess kept the altar fire and repeated a formula acknowledging Iodame. An alternate version casts Iodame as a rival figure whose jealousy or contest with Athena (a variant motif comparable to the Athena–Pallas story) results in her being killed by the goddess. Both variants function etiologically to explain the temple's daily ritual practice and to bind local genealogy to cult obligation.

Sources identify Iodame chiefly by social identity: a Thessalian princess and a priestess at Athena Itonia. No sustained pre-transformation physical description is supplied. In the petrifaction variant she is said to have 'turned into a block of stone' as a direct consequence of encountering Athena's manifested attribute (the Gorgoneion). Beyond this post-encounter petrified state (or death in the rivalry version), the records do not portray her as an ongoing animate supernatural form.

Iodame is not described as possessing independent supernatural powers. Her notable roles and actions are human and cultic: she served as a priestess in the temple of Athena Itonia, and in the petrifaction account she trespassed into the sacred precinct at night, precipitating a divine vision. The primary causal force in her fate is Athena's manifestation (the Gorgoneion) or the goddess's agency in a jealous contest. Mythically her presence continues only via ritual commemoration—the daily lighting of the altar fire and the declaration that 'Iodame lives and demands fire'—which integrates her memory into the living cult rather than granting her active powers.