Polyphontes

Polyphontes holds Messenia by force of a crime — the killing of Cresphontes and his sons — and has spent years hunting the one survivor, the infant Aepytus, without success. His reign is defined by that missing heir: he rejoices at any rumor of the boy's death, and his hospitality to strangers is shadowed by the fear of who they might be. He matters because his guilt is the fixed point of the play's moral world, and the sacrifice he celebrates in supposed safety becomes the occasion of his own undoing.