Dion Chrysostomos (Dion Cocceianus von Prusa), 64. Rede über das Schicksal [ΠΕΡΙ ΤΥΧΗΣ], 2 f.:

Über eine Königin Demonassa von Zypern ist sonst nichts bekannt.
Die Autorschaft der Rede ist möglicherweise dem Favorinus, einem Rhetor der Zweiten Sophistik (um 100 u.Z.), zuzuschreiben.

[...] The days of old produced women of distinction [ἐνδόξους γυναῖκας] as well as men – Rhodogunê the warrior (1), Semiramis the queen, Sappho the poetess, Timandra the beauty (2); just so Cyprus had its Demonassa [Δημωνάσσα], a woman gifted in both statesmanship and law-giving.

She gave the people of Cyprus the following three laws: a woman guilty of adultery shall have her hair cut off and be a harlot [τὴν μοιχευθεῖσαν κειραμένην πορνεύεσθαι] – her daughter became an adulteress, had her hair cut off according to the law, and practised harlotry; whoever commits suicide shall be cast out without burial [τὸν αὑτὸν ἀποκτείναντα οὐκ ἔθαψεν] – this was the second law of Demonassa; third, a law forbidding the slaughter of a plough-ox.

Of the two sons which she had, the one met his death for having slain an ox, while the other, who slew himself, she refrained from burying.

Now for a time she not only bore with fortitude the loss of her children but also persevered in her regulations; but having observed a cow lowing in sorrow over a calf which was dying, and having recognized her own misfortune in the case of another, Demonassa melted bronze and leaped into the molten mass [τήξασα χαλκὸν εἰς αὐτὸν ἥλατο].

And there used to be at that place an ancient tower holding a bronze image, an image embedded in bronze, both in order to insure the stability of the statue and also as a representation of the story; and near-by on a tablet there was an inscription:

σοφὴ μὲν ἤμην, ἀλλὰ πάντ’ οὐκ εὐτυχής.
Wise was I, yet in everything ill-starred.

(Dio Chrysostom: Discourses 61-80. Fragments. Letters. Ed. by H. Lamar Crosby. Cambridge (Mass.)/London 1951, pp. 46 sq.)

(1) Tochter des Mithradates I. und Frau des Demetrios Nikator
(2) vielleicht die Frau des Alkibiades