User:Paul August/Seven against Thebes

Seven against Thebes

To Do

• link West cites
• Fowler
• Gantz
• Hard
• Frazer
• Tripp

• Date for Thebaid

• Frazer, note to Paus. 9.9.5 p. 40: "hardly later than the eighth century B.C."
• Bravo III, p. 103

• West 2003

New text

The war against Thebes

Army assembled

Adrastus proceeded to assemble a large army to attack Thebes, appointing seven champions to be its leaders. These became known as the Seven against Thebes. One of those chosen, the seer Amphiaraus, had foreseen that the expedition was doomed to fail, and that all of the champions but Adrastus would die, and so refused to join. But when Polynices bribed Amphiaraus' wife Eriphyle to tell her husband to join the expedition, he was forced to obey because of a promise Amphiaraus had made to allow his wife, who was also Adrastus' sister, to settle any disputes between the two men.

The "Seven" champions

• Lycurgus
• Alitherses (See Gantz, p. 517)

• Pausanias, 10.10.3

Near the horse are also other votive offerings of the Argives, likenesses of the captains of those who with Polyneices made war on Thebes: Adrastus, the son of Talaus, Tydeus, son of Oeneus, the descendants of Proetus, namely, Capaneus, son of Hipponous, and Eteoclus, son of Iphis, Polyneices, and Hippomedon, son of the sister of Adrastus. Near is represented the chariot of Amphiaraus, and in it stands Baton, a relative of Amphiaraus who served as his charioteer. The last of them is Alitherses.

Sources

Ancient

Aeschylus

Eleusinians

See Sommerstein, pp. 56–57

Seven Against Thebes

42–56

Seven men, bold leaders of companies, slaughtered a bull, let its blood run into a black-rimmed shield, and touching the bull’s blood with their hands swore an oath by Ares, Enyo, and blood-loving Terror, that they would either bring destruction on the city, sacking the town of the Cadmeans by force, or perish and mix their blood into the soil of this land; and with their own hands, shedding tears, they were adorning the chariot of Adrastus⁹ with mementoes of themselves¹⁰ to take home to their parents. But no word of pity passed their lips: there breathed within them a steel-hearted spirit, blazing with courage, like that of lions with the light of war in their eyes. You have not been delayed in learning this by any slowness of mine: I left them drawing lots, so that according to the fall of the lot each should lead his company against a gate.

⁹ Adrastus is often himself said to have been one of the Seven (as in Euripides, Phoenician Maidens 1134); but he invariably survives the war, and Aeschylus evidently wanted to have all the Seven perish.

¹⁰ Probably locks of hair; on eight vase-paintings (LIMC Septem 24–31) datable between 490 and 460, one of the Seven is shown cutting a lock.

375–396

I can state from accurate knowledge the dispositions of the enemy, and how each has received his allotted station at the gates. Tydeus is already growling near the Proetid Gate, but the prophet⁵⁰ is not allowing him to cross the river Ismenus, because the sacrifices are not giving good signs. Tydeus, lusting madly for battle, is screaming like a snake hissing at midday, and is belabouring the wise prophet, the son of Oecles, with insults, saying that he is cringeing before death and battle through cowardice. As he utters these cries he shakes three crests casting long shadows, the mane of his helmet, and on the underside of his shield bells of beaten bronze make a terrifying clang. Fashioned upon his shield he bears this proud device: a blazing firmament, full of stars. Conspicuous in the centre of the shield is a brilliant full moon, the greatest of the stars, the eye of night. Raving thus, in his boastful armour, he screams by the banks of the river, longing for battle, like a horse panting against the force of bit and bridle and impatiently awaiting the sound of the trumpet. Whom will you station to oppose this man? Who can be relied on to stand before Proetus’ Gate when its bolts are undrawn?

⁵⁰ Amphiaraus.

414

Melanippus

422–436

So indeed may the gods grant him good fortune! Capaneus has been allotted the position at the Electran Gate. This second one is a giant,⁵⁵ bigger than the man previously mentioned,⁵⁶ and his boasts show a pride beyond human limits; for he says that he will sack the city, god willing or unwilling, and that not even the weapons of Zeus crashing down to earth will stand in his way or hold him back—he compares the lightnings and thunderbolts to the heat of the noonday sun. As his device he bears a naked man carrying fire: the torch with which he is armed blazes in his hands, and in golden letters he declares “I will burn the city”. Against such a man you must send—but who can stand against him? Who will await without panic the onset of this braggart man?

⁵⁵ Implying both “of great size” and “an enemy of the gods”.

⁵⁶ Tydeus was a smallish man (Iliad 5.801).

449

Polyphontes

458–471

The third man, for whom the third lot sprang out of the upturned helmet of fine bronze, to lead his company against the Neïstan Gate, is Eteoclus. He is circling with his horses, who are snorting in their harness, eager to fall upon the gate; their muzzles, filled with the breath of their proud nostrils, are whistling a barbarian music. His shield is decorated in no petty style. A fully-armed soldier is climbing a scaling ladder to the top of the enemy’s wall, aiming to sack the city; and he too60 is crying out in written syllables, saying that not even Ares can throw him off the wall. Against this man too you must send someone who can be relied on to save this city from the yoke of slavery.

474

Megareus

486–500

Another, the fourth, assigned to the neighbouring Gate of Athena Onca, is standing near it uttering loud cries, the vast figure and form of Hippomedon. I shuddered, I won’t deny it, to see him brandish his great round threshing-floor of a shield. And it can’t have been a cheap artist who gave him that device on the shield, Typhon emitting dark smoke, the many-coloured sister of flame, from his fire-breathing lips; the round circle of the hollow-bellied shield is floored with coiling snakes. The man himself raised a great war-cry; he is possessed by Ares, and he rages for a fight like a maenad, with a fearsome look in his eye. You need to guard well against the attack of a man like this: Terror itself is now vaunting at the gate.

504

Hyperbius, the brave son of Oenops

527–549

So may it be. Now I tell you of the fifth, assigned to the fifth gate, the North Gate, right by the tomb of Amphion,72 son of Zeus. He stands there with a savage pride, not at all in keeping with his maidenish name,⁷³ and a fierce eye. He swears by the spear he holds, resolved to revere it more than a god and more highly than his eyes, that he will sack the city of the Cadmeans by force. He who says this is the offspring of Ares by a mountain-dwelling mother,⁷⁴ a fair-faced man, little more than a boy: the down is just growing thick and spreading over his cheeks as he comes to the prime of beauty. But he does not stand before the gate without a boastful emblem: on his shield of beaten bronze, the circular protector of his body, he wielded our city’s disgrace, the Sphinx, eater of raw flesh, her bright form beaten out and fastened on with rivets, and under her she bears a man, one of the Cadmeans—so that a great many weapons may be thrown at that man.⁷⁵ Having come here, he is not likely to fight on a petty scale,76 nor to show himself unworthy of the long journey he has made: Parthenopaeus the Arcadian. This man, such as I have described— an immigrant, paying back to Argos the debt due for his fine upbringing⁷⁷—is making threats against these walls which may god not fulfil!

555

Actor, brother of the last-mentioned.

568–596

The sixth man I have to speak of is a man of the highest virtue and an excellent fighter, powerful Amphiaraus, the prophet. Stationed before the Homoloïd Gate, he is casting many reviling words at powerful Tydeus—“murderer”,⁷⁹ “wrecker of your city”, “Argos’ great instructor in evil”, “arouser of a Fury”,⁸⁰ “high priest⁸¹ of Carnage”, “Adrastus’ counsellor in these crimes”. And then again he loudly addresses your brother, turning his name inside out and dwelling on its significance,⁸² and these are the words he utters from his lips: “Is an act like this really smiled on by the gods, is it an honourable thing for posterity to hear and tell of, to devastate one’s fatherland and its native gods by bringing a foreign army to invade it? What claim of justice can quench the mother-source, and if your fatherland is conquered by the spear thanks to your incitement, how can you expect it to be your ally? For my part, I will enrich this land by becoming⁸³ a prophet buried in the soil of the enemy. Let us do battle: I expect an honourable death.” So the prophet spoke, wielding calmly his shield all of bronze. On its circle there was no image; for he desires not the appearance of excellence but the reality, harvesting a deep furrow in his mind from which good counsels grow.⁸⁴ Against him I advise you to send brave and skilful opponents: formidable is he who reveres the gods.

⁷⁹ Tydeus had fled from his native Calydon to Argos after killing one or more kinsmen (early accounts vary widely as to the details); like Polyneices, he married a daughter of Adrastus. Amphiaraus’ ensuing words should not be taken to imply that Tydeus alone was the prime mover behind Adrastus’ decision to attack Thebes, since he also blames Polyneices for urging this course on Adrastus (585).

⁸⁰ i.e. inciter of an act that will incur certain and terrible vengeance.

⁸¹ lit. “servant”; for the personification of Carnage (Φόνος) as a deity cf. Hesiod, Theogony 228 and Shield of Heracles 155.

⁸² Polyneices means “Much-strife”. The passage as transmitted is corrupt, and I suspect that several words that were originally annotations (Polyneices’ name, δίς, and ἐν τελευτῇ) have been incorporated into the text; I have omitted these in the above translation.

⁸³ In his posthumous capacity as a hero. The oracular shrine of Amphiaraus near Thebes was famous throughout, and beyond, the Greek world (Herodotus 1.46, 49, 52; 8.134).

⁸⁴ Plutarch (Aristeides 3.5) says that on hearing this eulogy of Amphiaraus in the theatre, the whole audience turned their eyes to Aristeides “the Just”; but his anecdote derives much of its point from a misquotation (making Amphiaraus desire not the appearance but the reality of justice—appropriate to Aristeides, but not to the Aeschylean context) and should be regarded as fictional.

620

Lasthenes

631

Now this is the seventh, at the Seventh Gate:⁹¹ your own brother.

⁹¹ Both Aeschylus and Euripides (Phoenician Maidens 1104–40), in listing the Seven and the gates they attacked, give names to the first six gates but call the last simply “the seventh”. For Euripides this gate is of no particular importance (in his account no one is killed there), and he clearly regarded “Seventh” as its name. In [Apollodorus], Library 3.6.6, and Pausanias 9.8.4, what seems to be the same gate is called the Hypsistan; if “Seventh” was an alternative name for it, it may have been due to the presence nearby of a sanctuary of Apollo (cf. 800–1).

792–819

MESSENGER

Have no fear, you daughters born of <noble Cadmean> mothers:¹¹⁸ this city has escaped the yoke of slavery. The boasts of mighty men have fallen to the ground, and as in fair weather, so too when much buffeted by the waves, the city has let no water into her hull. The wall has held, and the champions with whom we reinforced the gates proved reliable in single combat. Things are well for the most part—at six gates; but at the Seventh the victor was the awesome Master of Sevens,¹¹⁹ Lord Apollo, wreaking the consequences of Laius’ old act of unwisdom upon the offspring of Oedipus.

...

They killed each other with hands that all too truly shared the same blood. Thus the controlling power¹²¹ was one and the same for both, and he has himself utterly destroyed that ill-fated family. Such are the things we have to rejoice and to weep over: the city is faring well, but its chiefs, the leaders of the two armies,¹²² have had the whole possession of their inheritance divided between them by hammered Scythian iron: they will have so much of the land as they will take in burial, having been swept away to an evil fate in accordance with their father’s curse.

¹¹⁸ A line appears to have been lost from the text, saying something about the maidens’ mothers (and possibly fathers); the words in angled brackets are inserted by the translator for the sake of continuity.

¹¹⁹ This title (ἑβδομαγέτας, lit. “seventh-leader”) is probably an ad hoc coinage based on epithets of Apollo (ἑβδομαγενής, ἑβδόμειος) referring to his having been born on the seventh day of the month and on others that contain the element -αγέτην “leader” (e.g. μοιραγέτης, μουσαγέτης).

...

¹²¹ ὁ δαίμων seems at first to denote a power, not clearly personalized, governing the brothers’ fate; but αὐτός “he himself” turns our thoughts towards a personal divinity, evidently Apollo.

¹²² It is now irrelevant, and forgotten, that the attacking army was actually commanded by Adrastus: all attention is to be concentrated on the two dead brothers.

1005–

HERALD

I have to announce the opinion and the decision of the people’s council of this city of Cadmus. It has been resolved that Eteocles here, on account of his loyalty to his country, shall be buried in the loving recesses of the earth; for he found death while keeping out the enemy at the gates, and in pious defence of the temples of his fathers he has died blamelessly where it is honourable for the young to die. That is what I have been instructed to say about him; but his brother, the dead Polyneices here, is to be cast out unburied, a prey for the dogs, as one who would have been the destroyer of the land of Cadmus, had not some god stood up to hinder his armed attack.

Apollodorus

1.9.13

Bias and Pero had a son Talaus, who married Lysimache, daughter of Abas, son of Melampus, and had by her Adrastus, Parthenopaeus, Pronax, Mecisteus, Aristomachus, and Eriphyle, whom Amphiaraus married. Parthenopaeus had a son Promachus, who marched with the Epigoni against Thebes;¹ and Mecisteus had a son Euryalus, who went to Troy.² Pronax had a son Lycurgus; and Adrastus had by Amphithea, daughter of Pronax, three daughters, Argia, Deipyle, and Aegialia, and two sons, Aegialeus and Cyanippus.

3.6.1

Now Eteocles and Polynices made a compact with each other concerning the kingdom and resolved that each should rule alternately for a year at a time.¹ Some say that Polynices was the first to rule, and that after a year he handed over the kingdom to Eteocles; but some say that Eteocles was the first to rule, and would not hand over the kingdom. So, being banished from Thebes, Polynices came to Argos, taking with him the necklace and the robe.² The king of Argos was Adrastus, son of Talaus; and Polynices went up to his palace by night and engaged in a fight with Tydeus, son of Oeneus, who had fled from Calydon.³ At the sudden outcry Adrastus appeared and parted them, and remembering the words of a certain seer who told him to yoke his daughters in marriage to a boar and a lion,⁴ he accepted them both as bridegrooms, because they had on their shields, the one the forepart of a boar, and the other the forepart of a lion.⁵ And Tydeus married Deipyle, and Polynices married Argia⁶; and Adrastus promised that he would restore them both to their native lands. And first he was eager to march against Thebes, and he mustered the chiefs.

¹ That is, they were to reign in alternate years. Compare Eur. Ph. 69ff.; Eur. Ph. 473ff.; Diod. 4.65.1; Zenobius, Cent. i.30; Hyginus, Fab. 67; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 48ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 152). In this and the sequel Zenobius, Cent. i.30 closely follows Apollodorus and probably copied from him.

² That is, the necklace and the robe which Cadmus had given to Harmonia at their marriage. See above, Apollod. 3.4.2.

³ See above Apollod. 1.8.5.

⁴Adrastus received the oracle from Apollo. See Eur. Ph. 408ff.; Eur. Supp. 132ff. In these passages the poet describes the nocturnal brawl between the two exiled princes at the gate of the palace, and their reconciliation by Adrastus. Compare Zenobius, Cent. i.30; Hyginus, Fab. 69; and the elaborate description of Statius, Theb. i.370ff. The words of the oracle given to Adrastus are quoted by the Scholiast on Eur. Ph. 409. According to one interpretation the boar on the shield of Tydeus referred to the Calydonian boar, while the lion on the shield of Polynices referred to the lion-faced sphinx. Others preferred to suppose that the two chieftains were clad in the skins of a boar and a lion respectively. See Scholiast on Eur. Ph. 409; Hyginus, Fab. 69.

⁵ As to the devices which the Greeks painted on their shields, as these are described by ancient writers or depicted in vase-paintings, see G. H. Chase, “The Shield Devices of the Greeks,” HSCP, vol. xiii. pp. 61-127. From the evidence collected in this essay (pp. 98, 112ff.) it appears that both the boar and the lion are common devices on shields in vase-paintings.

⁶ Compare Diod. 4.65.3; Scholiast on Eur. Ph. 409; Hyginus, Fab. 69; Statius, Theb. ii.201ff.

3.6.2

But Amphiaraus, son of Oicles, being a seer and foreseeing that all who joined in the expedition except Adrastus were destined to perish, shrank from it himself and discouraged the rest. However, Polynices went to Iphis, son of Alector, and begged to know how Amphiaraus could be compelled to go to the war. He answered that it could be done if Eriphyle got the necklace.¹ Now Amphiaraus had forbidden Eriphyle to accept gifts from Polynices; but Polynices gave her the necklace and begged her to persuade Amphiaraus to go to the war; for the decision lay with her, because once, when a difference arose between him and Adrastus, he had made it up with him and sworn to let Eriphyle decide any future dispute he might have with Adrastus.² Accordingly, when war was to be made on Thebes, and the measure was advocated by Adrastus and opposed by Amphiaraus, Eriphyle accepted the necklace and persuaded him to march with Adrastus. Thus forced to go to the war, Amphiaraus laid his commands on his sons, that, when they were grown up, they should slay their mother and march against Thebes.

¹ For the story of the treachery of Eriphyle to her husband Amphiaraus, see also Diod. 4.65.5ff.; Paus. 5.17.7ff.; Paus. 9.41.2; Scholiast on Hom. Od. 11.326 （who refers to Asclepiades as his authority）; Hyginus, Fab. 73; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 49 (First Vatican Mythographer 152). The story is alluded to but not told by Hom. Od. 11.326ff.; Hom. Od. 15.247; Soph. Elec. 836ff.）, and Hor. Carm. 3.16.11-13. Sophocles wrote a tragedy Eriphyle, which was perhaps the same as his Epigoni. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. i. pp. 129ff.

² Compare Diod. 4.65.6; Scholiast on Hom. Od. xi.326; Scholiast on Pind. N. 9.13(30). As the sister of Adrastus （see above, Apollod. 1.9.13） and the wife of Amphiaraus, the traitress Eriphyle might naturally seem well qualified to act as arbiter between them.

3.6.3

Having mustered an army with seven leaders, Adrastus hastened to wage war on Thebes. The leaders were these¹: Adrastus, son of Talaus; Amphiaraus, son of Oicles; Capaneus, son of Hipponous; Hippomedon, son of Aristomachus, but some say of Talaus. These came from Argos; but Polynices, son of Oedipus, came from Thebes; Tydeus, son of Oeneus, was an Aetolian; Parthenopaeus, son of Melanion, was an Arcadian. Some, however, do not reckon Tydeus and Polynices among them, but include Eteoclus, son of Iphis,² and Mecisteus³ in the list of the seven.

¹ For lists of the seven champions who marched against Thebes, see Aesch. Seven 375ff.; Soph. OC 1309ff.; Eur. Ph. 1090ff. and Eur. Supp. 857ff.; Diod. 4.65.7; Hyginus, Fab. 70.

² The place of Eteocles among the Seven Champions is recognized by Aesch. Seven 458ff., Soph. OC 1316, and Euripides in one play （Eur. Supp. 871ff.）, but not in another （Eur. Ph. 1090ff.）; and he is omitted by Hyginus, Fab. 70. His right to rank among the Seven seems to have been acknowledged by the Argives themselves, since they included his portrait in a group of statuary representing the Champions which they dedicated at Delphi. See Paus. 10.10.3.

³ Brother of Adrastus. See Apollod. 1.9.13.

3.6.4

Having come to Nemea, of which Lycurgus was king, they sought for water; and Hypsipyle showed them the way to a spring, leaving behind an infant boy Opheltes, whom she nursed, a child of Eurydice and Lycurgus.¹ For the Lemnian women, afterwards learning that Thoas had been saved alive,² put him to death and sold Hypsipyle into slavery; wherefore she served in the house of Lycurgus as a purchased bondwoman. But while she showed the spring, the abandoned boy was killed by a serpent. When Adrastus and his party appeared on the scene, they slew the serpent and buried the boy; but Amphiaraus told them that the sign foreboded the future, and they called the boy Archemorus.³ They celebrated the Nemean games in his honor; and Adrastus won the horse race, Eteoclus the footrace, Tydeus the boxing match, Amphiaraus the leaping and quoit-throwing match, Laodocus the javelin-throwing match, Polynices the wrestling match, and Parthenopaeus the archery match.

¹ As to the meeting of the Seven Champions with Hypsipyle at Nemea, the death of Opheltes, and the institution of the Nemean games, see Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. pp. 424ff. ed. Boeckh; Bacch. 8.10ff. [9], ed. Jebb; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii.34, p. 29, ed. Potter, with the Scholiast; Hyginus, Fab. 74, 273; Statius, Theb. iv.646-vi.; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.717; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode. vol. i. p. 123 （Second Vatican Mythographer 141）. The institution of the Nemean games in honour of Opheltes or Archemorus was noticed by Aeschylus in a lost play. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), p. 49. The judges at the Nemean games wore dark-coloured robes in mourning, it is said, for Opheltes （Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. p. 425, ed. Boeckh）; and the crown of parsley bestowed on the victor is reported to have been chosen for the same sad reason （Serv. Verg. Ecl. 6.68）. However, according to another account, the crowns at Nemea were originally made of olive, but the material was changed to parsley after the disasters of the Persian war （Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. p. 425）. The grave of Opheltes was at Nemea, enclosed by a stone wall; and there were altars within the enclosure （Paus. 2.15.3）. Euripides wrote a tragedy Hypsipyle, of which many fragments have recently been discovered in Egyptian papyri. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 594ff.; A. S. Hunt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Papyracea nuper reperta （Oxford, no date, no pagination）. In one of these fragments (col. iv.27ff.) it is said that Lycurgus was chosen from all Asopia to be the warder （Κληδοῦχος） of the local Zeus. There were officials bearing the same title （κλειδοῦχοι） at Olympia （Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum 1021, vol. ii. p. 168） in Delos （Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, vol. i. p. 252, No. 170）, and in the worship of Aesculapius at Athens （E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, Part ii. p. 410, No. 157）. The duty from which they took their title was to keep the keys of the temple. A fine relief in the Palazzo Spada at Rome represents the serpent coiled round the dead body of the child Opheltes and attacked by two of the heroes, while in the background Hypsipyle is seen retreating, with her hands held up in horror and her pitcher lying at her feet. See W. H. Roscher, Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i.473; Baumeister, Denkmaler des klassichen Altertums, i.113, fig. 119. The death of Opheltes or Archemorus is also the subject of a fine vase-painting, which shows the dead boy lying on a bier and attended by two women, one of whom is about to crown him with a wreath of myrtle, while the other holds an umbrella over his head to prevent, it has been suggested, the sun's rays from being defiled by falling on a corpse. Amongst the figures in the painting, which are identified by inscriptions, is seen the mother Eurydice standing in her palace between the suppliant Hypsipyle on one side and the dignified Amphiaraus on the other. See E. Gerhard, “Archemoros,” Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Berlin, 1866- 1868) i.5ff., with Abbildungen, taf. i.; K. Friederichs, Praxiteles und die Niobegruppe （Leipzig, 1855）, pp. 123ff.; Baumeister, op. cit. i.114, fig. 120.

² See above, Apollod. 1.9.17.

³ That is, “beginner of doom”; hence “ominous,” “foreboding.” The name is so interpreted by Bacch. 8.14, ed. Jebb, σᾶμα μέλλοντος φόνου）, by the Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. pp. 424ff. ed. Boeckh, and by Lactantius Placidus in his commentary on Statius, Theb. iv 717.

3.6.5

When they came to Cithaeron, they sent Tydeus to tell Eteocles in advance that he must cede the kingdom to Polynices, as they had agreed among themselves. As Eteocles paid no heed to the message, Tydeus, by way of putting the Thebans to the proof, challenged them to single combat and was victorious in every encounter; and though the Thebans set fifty armed men to lie in wait for him as he went away, he slew them all but Maeon, and then came to the camp.¹

¹ For the embassy of Tydeus to Thebes and its sequel, see Hom. Il. 4.382-398; Hom. Il. 5.802-808, with the Scholiast on Hom. Il. 4.376; Diod. 4.65.4; Statius, Theb. ii.307ff.

3.6.6

Having armed themselves, the Argives approached the walls¹; and as there were seven gates, Adrastus was stationed at the Homoloidian gate, Capaneus at the Ogygian, Amphiaraus at the Proetidian, Hippomedon at the Oncaidian, Polynices at the Hypsistan,² Parthenopaeus at the Electran, and Tydeus at the Crenidian.³ Eteocles on his side armed the Thebans, and having appointed leaders to match those of the enemy in number, he put the battle in array, and resorted to divination to learn how they might overcome the foe.

¹ The siege of Thebes by the Argive army under the Seven Champions is the subject of two extant Greek tragedies, the Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus, and the Phoenissae of Euripides. In both of them the attack on the seven gates by the Seven Champions is described. See the Aesch. Seven 375ff.; Eur. Ph. 105ff.; Eur. Ph. 1090ff. The siege is also the theme of Statius's long-winded and bombastic epic, the Thebaid . Compare also Diod. 4.65.7-9; Paus. 1.39.2; Paus. 2.20.5; Paus. 8.25.4; Paus. 10.10.3; Hyginus, Fab. 69, 70. The war was also the subject of two lost poems of the same name, the Thebaid of Callinus, an early elegiac poet, and the Thebaid of Antimachus, a contemporary of Plato. See Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, pp. 9ff., 275ff. As to the seven gates of Thebes, see Paus. 9.8.4-7, with Frazer, commentary （vol. iv. pp. 35ff.）. The ancients were not entirely agreed as to the names of the gates.

² That is, “the Highest Gate.”

³ That is, “the Fountain Gate.”

3.6.7

Now there was among the Thebans a soothsayer ...

So when the Thebans sought counsel of him, he said that they should be victorious if Menoeceus, son of Creon, would offer himself freely as a sacrifice to Ares. On hearing that, Menoeceus, son of Creon, slew himself before the gates.⁶ But a battle having taken place, the Cadmeans were chased in a crowd as far as the walls, and Capaneus, seizing a ladder, was climbing up it to the walls, when Zeus smote him with a thunderbolt.⁷

⁶ As to the voluntary sacrifice of Menoeceus, see Eur. Ph. 911ff.; Paus. 9.25.1; Cicero, Tusc. Disp. i.48.116; Hyginus, Fab. 68; Statius, Theb. 10.589ff.

⁷ As to the death of Capaneus, compare Aesch. Seven 423ff.; Eur. Ph. 1172ff.; Eur. Supp. 496ff.; Diod. 4.65.8; Hyginus, Fab. 71; Statius, Theb. x.827ff.

3.6.8

When that befell, the Argives turned to flee. And as many fell, Eteocles and Polynices, by the resolution of both armies, fought a single combat for the kingdom, and slew each other.¹ In another fierce battle the sons of Astacus did doughty deeds; for Ismarus slew Hippomedon,² Leades slew Eteoclus, and Amphidicus slew Parthenopaeus. But Euripides says that Parthenopaeus was slain by Periclymenus, son of Poseidon.³ And Melanippus, the remaining one of the sons of Astacus, wounded Tydeus in the belly. As he lay half dead, Athena brought a medicine which she had begged of Zeus, and by which she intended to make him immortal. But Amphiaraus hated Tydeus for thwarting him by persuading the Argives to march to Thebes; so when he perceived the intention of the goddess he cut off the head of Melanippus and gave it to Tydeus, who, wounded though he was, had killed him. And Tydeus split open the head and gulped up the brains. But when Athena saw that, in disgust she grudged and withheld the intended benefit.⁴ Amphiaraus fled beside the river Ismenus, and before Periclymenus could wound him in the back, Zeus cleft the earth by throwing a thunderbolt, and Amphiaraus vanished with his chariot and his charioteer Baton, or, as some say, Elato;⁵ and Zeus made him immortal. Adrastus alone was saved by his horse Arion. That horse Poseidon begot on Demeter, when in the likeness of a Fury she consorted with him.⁶

¹ As to the single combat and death of Eteocles and Polynices, see Aesch. Seven 804ff.; Eur. Ph. 1356ff.; Diod. 4.65.8; Paus. 9.5.12; Hyginus, Fab. 71; Statius, Theb. xi.447-579.

² According to Statius, Theb. ix.455-539, Hippomedon was overwhelmed by a cloud of Theban missiles after being nearly drowned in the river Ismenus.

³ As to the death of Parthenopaeus, see Eur. Ph. 1153ff. In the Thebaid , also, Periclymenus was represented as the slayer of Parthenopaeus. See Paus. 9.18.6.

⁴ Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 1066; Scholiast on Pind. N. 10.7(12); Scholiast on Hom. Il. v.126. All these writers say that it was Amphiaraus, not Tydeus, who killed as well as decapitated Melanippus. Pausanias also （Paus. 9.18.1） represents Melanippus as slain by Amphiaraus. Hence Heyne was perhaps right in rejecting as an interpolation the words “who, wounded though he was, had killed him.” See the Critical Note. The story is told also by Statius, Theb. viii.717-767 in his usual diffuse style; but according to him it was Capaneus, not Amphiaraus, who slew and beheaded Melanippus and brought the gory head to Tydeus. The story of Tydeus's savagery is alluded to more than once by Ovid, Ibis 427ff., 515ff., that curious work in which the poet has distilled the whole range of ancient mythology for the purpose of commination. With this tradition of cannibalism on the field of battle we may compare the custom of the ancient Scythians, who regularly decapitated their enemies in battle and drank of the blood of the first man they slew （Hdt. 4.64）. It has indeed been a common practice with savages to swallow some part of a slain foe in order with the blood, or flesh, or brains to acquire the dead man's valour. See for example L. A. Millet-Mureau, Voyage de la Perouse autour du Monde （Paris, 1797）, ii.272 （as to the Californian Indians）; Fay-Cooper Cole, The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao （Chicago, 1913）, pp. 94, 189 （as to the Philippine Islanders）. I have cited many more instances in Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii.148ff. The story of the brutality of Tydeus to Melanippus may contain a reminiscence of a similar custom. From the Scholiast on Hom. Il. v.126 we learn that the story was told by Pherecydes, whom Apollodorus may be following in the present passage. The grave of Melanippus was on the road from Thebes to Chalcis （Paus. 9.18.1）, but Clisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, “fetched Melanippus” （ἐπηγάγετο τὸν μελάνιππον ） to Sicyon and dedicated a precinct to him in the Prytaneum or town-hall; moreover, he transferred to Melanippus the sacrifices and festal honours which till then had been offered to Adrastus, the foe of Melanippus. See Hdt. 5.67. It is probable that Clisthenes, in “fetching Melanippus,” transferred the hero's bones to the new shrine at Sicyon, following a common practice of the ancient Greeks, who were as anxious to secure the miraculous relics of heroes as modern Catholics are to secure the equally miraculous relics of saints. The most famous case of such a translation of holy bones was that of Orestes, whose remains were removed from Tegea to Sparta （Hdt. 1.67ff.）. Pausanias mentions many instances of the practice. See the Index to my translation of Pausanias, s.v. “Bones,” vol. vi. p. 31. It was, no doubt, unusual to bury bones in the Prytaneum, where was the Common Hearth of the city （Pollux ix.40; Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum, ii.467, lines 6, 73; Frazer, note on Paus. viii.53.9, vol. iv. pp. 441ff.）; but at Mantinea there was a round building called the Common Hearth in which Antinoe, daughter of Cepheus, was said to be buried （Paus. 8.9.5）; and the graves of not a few heroes and heroines were shown in Greek temples. See Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. iii.45, pp. 39ff., ed. Potter. The subject of relic worship in antiquity is exhaustively treated by Fr. Pfister, Der Reliquienkult im Altertum （Giessen, 1909-1912）.

⁵ Compare Pind. N. 9.24(59)ff.; Pind. N. 10.8(13); Eur. Supp. 925ff.; Diod. 4.65.8; Strab. 9.2.11; Paus. 1.34.2; Paus. 2.23.2; Paus. 9.8.3; Paus. 9.19.4; Statius, Theb. vii.789-823. The reference to Periclymenus clearly proves that Apollodorus had here in mind the first of these passages of Pindar. Pausanias repeatedly mentions Baton as the charioteer of Amphiaraus （Paus. 2.23.2; Paus. 5.17.8; Paus. 10.10.3）. Amphiaraus was believed to be swallowed up alive, with his chariot and horses, and so to descend to the nether world. See Eur. Supp. 925ff.; Statius, Theb. viii.1ff.; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 49 (First Vatican Mythographer 152). Hence Sophocles speaks of him as reigning fully alive in Hades （Soph. Elec. 836ff.）. Moreover, Amphiaraus was deified （Paus. 8.2.4; Cicero, De divinatione i.40.88）, and as a god he had a famous oracle charmingly situated in a little glen near Oropus in Attica. See Paus. 1.34, with （Frazer, commentary on Paus., vol. ii. pp. 466ff.）. The exact spot where Amphiaraus disappeared into the earth was shown not far from Thebes on the road to Potniae. It was a small enclosure with pillars in it. See Paus. 9.8.3. As the ground was split open by a thunderbolt to receive Amphiaraus （Pind. N. 9.24(59)ff.; Pind. N. 10.8(13)ff.）, the enclosure with pillars in it was doubtless one of those little sanctuaries, marked off by a fence, which the Greeks always instituted on ground struck by lightning. See Frazer on Apollod. 3.7.1.

⁶ Arion, the swift steed of Adrastus, is mentioned by Homer, who alludes briefly to the divine parentage of the animal （Hom. Il. 22.346ff.）, without giving particulars to the quaint and curious myth with which he was probably acquainted. That myth, one of the most savage of all the stories of ancient Greece, was revealed by later writers. See Paus. 8.25.4-10; Paus. 8.42.1-6; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 153; compare Scholiast on Hom. Il. 23.346. The story was told at two places in the highlands of Arcadia: one was Thelpusa in the beautiful vale of the Ladon: the other was Phigalia, where the shallow cave of the goddess mother of the horse was shown far down the face of a cliff in the wild romantic gorge of the Neda. The cave still exists, though the goddess is gone: it has been converted into a tiny chapel of Christ and St. John. See Frazer, commentary on Pausanias, vol. iv. pp. 406ff. According to Diod. 4.65.9 Adrastus returned to Argos. But Pausanias says （Paus. 1.43.1） that he died at Megara of old age and grief at his son's death, when he was leading back his beaten army from Thebes: Pausanias informs us also that Adrastus was worshipped, doubtless as a hero, by the Megarians, Hyginus, Fab. 242 tells a strange story that Adrastus and his son Hipponous threw themselves into the fire in obedience to an oracle of Apollo.

3.7.1

Having succeeded to the kingdom of Thebes, Creon cast out the Argive dead unburied, issued a proclamation that none should bury them, and set watchmen. But Antigone, one of the daughters of Oedipus, stole the body of Polynices, and secretly buried it, and having been detected by Creon himself, she was interred alive in the grave.¹ Adrastus fled to Athens² and took refuge at the altar of Mercy,³ and laying on it the suppliant's bough⁴ he prayed that they would bury the dead. And the Athenians marched with Theseus, captured Thebes, and gave the dead to their kinsfolk to bury. And when the pyre of Capaneus was burning, his wife Evadne, the daughter of Iphis, thew herself on the pyre, and was burned with him.⁵

¹ Apollodorus here follows the account of Antigone's heroism and doom as they are described by Sophocles in his noble tragedy, the Antigone. Compare Aesch. Seven 1005ff. A different version of the story is told by Hyginus, Fab. 72. According to him, when Antigone was caught in the act of performing funeral rites for her brother Polynices, Creon handed her over for execution to his son Haemon, to whom she had been betrothed. But Haemon, while he pretended to put her to death, smuggled her out of the way, married her, and had a son by her. In time the son grew up and came to Thebes, where Creon detected him by the bodily mark which all descendants of the Sparti or Dragon-men bore on their bodies. In vain Herakles interceded for Haemon with his angry father. Creon was inexorable; so Haemon killed himself and his wife Antigone. Some have thought that in this narrative Hyginus followed Euripides, who wrote a tragedy Antigone, of which a few fragments survive. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 404ff.

² As to the flight of Adrastus to Athens, and the intervention of the Athenians on his behalf see Isoc. 4.54-58; Isoc. 12.168-174; Paus. 1.39.2; Plut. Thes. 29; Statius, Theb. xii.464ff., （who substitutes Argive matrons as suppliants instead of Adrastus）. The story is treated by Euripides in his extant play The Suppliants, which, on the whole, Apollodorus follows. But whereas Apollodorus, like Statius, lays the scene of the supplication at the altar of Mercy in Athens, Euripides lays it at the altar of Demeter in Eleusis （Eur. Supp. 1ff.）. In favour of the latter version it may be said that the graves of the fallen leaders were shown at Eleusis, near the Flowery Well （Paus. 1.39.1ff.; Plut. Thes. 29）; while the graves of the common soldiers were at Eleutherae, which is on the borders of Attica and Boeotia, on the direct road from Eleusis to Thebes （Eur. Supp. 756ff.; Plut. Thes. 29）. Tradition varied also on the question how the Athenians obtained the permission of the Thebans to bury the Argive dead. Some said that Theseus led an army to Thebes, defeated the Thebans, and compelled them to give up the dead Argives for burial. This was the version adopted by Euripides, Statius, and Apollodorus. Others said that Theseus sent an embassy and by negotiations obtained the voluntary consent of the Thebans to his carrying off the dead. This version, as the less discreditable to the Thebans, was very naturally adopted by them （Paus. 1.39.2） and by the patriotic Boeotian Plutarch, who expressly rejects Euripides's account of the Theban defeat. Isocrates, with almost incredible fatuity, adopts both versions in different passages of his writings and defends himself for so doing （Isoc. 12.168-174）. Lysias, without expressly mentioning the flight of Adrastus to Athens, says that the Athenians first sent heralds to the Thebans with a request for leave to bury the Argive dead, and that when the request was refused, they marched against the Thebans, defeated them in battle, and carrying off the Argive dead buried them at Eleusis. See Lys. 2.7-10.

³ As to the altar of Mercy at Athens see above Apollod. 2.8.1; Paus. 1.17.1, with my note （vol. ii. pp. 143ff.）; Diod. 13.22.7; Statius, Theb. xii.481-505. It is mentioned in a late Greek inscription found at Athens （Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum, iii.170; G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca ex lapidibus conlecta 792）. The altar, though not mentioned by early writers, was in later times one of the most famous spots in Athens. Philostratus says that the Athenians built an altar of Mercy as the thirteenth of the gods, and that they poured libations on it, not of wine, but of tears （Philostratus, Epist. 39）. In this fancy he perhaps copied Statius, Theb. xii.488, “lacrymis altaria sudant”.

⁴ The branch of olive which a suppliant laid on the altar of a god in token that he sought the divine protection. See Andoc. 1.110ff.; Jebb on Sophocles, OT 3.

⁵ For the death of Evadne on the pyre of her husband Capaneus, see Eur. Supp. 1034ff.; Zenobius, Cent. i.30; Prop. i.15.21ff.; Ovid, Tristia v.14.38; Ovid, Pont. iii.1.111ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 243; Statius, Theb. xii.800ff., with the note of Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. v. 801; Martial iv.75.5. Capaneus had been killed by a thunderbolt as he was mounting a ladder at the siege of Thebes. See Apollod. 3.6.7. Hence his body was deemed sacred and should have been buried, not burned, and the grave fenced off; whereas the other bodies were all consumed on a single pyre. See Eur. Supp. 934-938, where συμπήξας τάφον refers to the fencing in of the grave. So the tomb of Semele, who was also killed by lightning, seems to have stood within a sacred enclosure. See Eur. Ba. 6-11. Yet, inconsistently with the foregoing passage, Euripides appears afterwards to assume that the body of Capaneus was burnt on a pyre （Eur. Supp. 1000ff.）. The rule that a person killed by a thunderbolt should be buried, not burnt, is stated by Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii.145 and alluded to by Tertullian, Apologeticus 48. An ancient Roman law, attributed to Numa, forbade the celebration of the usual obsequies for a man who had been killed by lightning. See Festus, s.v. “Occisum,” p. 178, ed. C. O. Müller. It is true that these passages refer to the Roman usage, but the words of Eur. Supp. 934-938 seem to imply that the Greek practice was similar, and this is confirmed by Artemidorus, who says that the bodies of persons killed by lightning were not removed but buried on the spot （Artemidorus, Onirocrit. ii.9）. The same writer tells us that a man struck by lightning was not deemed to be disgraced, nay, he was honoured as a god; even slaves killed by lightning were approached with respect, as honoured by Zeus, and their dead bodies were wrapt in fine garments. Such customs are to some extent explained by the belief that Zeus himself descended in the flash of lightning; hence whatever the lightning struck was naturally regarded as holy. Places struck by lightning were sacred to Zeus the Descender （Ζεὺς καταιβάτης ） and were enclosed by a fence. Inscriptions marking such spots have been found in various parts of Greece. See Pollux ix.41; Paus. 5.14.10, with （Frazer, Paus. vol. iii. p. 565, vol. v. p. 614）. Compare E. Rohde, Psyche(3), i.320ff.; H. Useher, “Keraunos,” Kleine Schriften, iv.477ff., （who quotes from Clemens Romanus and Cyrillus more evidence of the worship of persons killed by lightning）; Chr. Blinkenberg, The Thunder-weapon in Religion and Folklore （Cambridge, 1911）, pp. 110ff. Among the Ossetes of the Caucasus a man who has been killed by lightning is deemed very lucky, for they believe that he has been taken by St. Elias to himself. So the survivors raise cries of joy and sing and dance about him. His relations think it their duty to join in these dances and rejoicings, for any appearance of sorrow would be regarded as a sin against St. Elias and therefore punishable. The festival lasts eight days. The deceased is dressed in new clothes and laid on a pillow in the exact attitude in which he was struck and in the same place where he died. At the end of the celebrations he is buried with much festivity and feasting, a high cairn is erected on his grave, and beside it they set up a tall pole with the skin of a black he-goat attached to it, and another pole, on which hang the best clothes of the deceased. The grave becomes a place of pilgrimage. See Julius von Klaproth, Reise in den Kaukasus und nach Georgien （Halle and Berlin, 1814）, ii.606; A. von Haxthausen, Transkaukasia （Leipsig, 1856）, ii.21ff. Similarly the Kafirs of South Africa “have strange notions respecting the lightning. They consider that it is governed by the umshologu, or ghost, of the greatest and most renowned of their departed chiefs, and who is emphatically styled the inkosi; but they are not at all clear as to which of their ancestors is intended by this designation. Hence they allow of no lamentation being made for a person killed by lightning, as they say that it would be a sign of disloyalty to lament for one whom the inkosi had sent for, and whose services he consequently needed; and it would cause him to punish them, by making the lightning again to descend and do them another injury.” Further, rites of purification have to be performed by a priest at the kraal where the accident took place; and till these have been performed, none of the inhabitants may leave the kraal or have intercourse with other people. Meantime their heads are shaved and they must abstain from drinking milk. The rites include a sacrifice and the inoculation of the people with powdered charcoal. See “Mr. Warner's Notes,” in Col. Maclean's Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs （Cape Town, 1866）, pp. 82-84. Sometimes, however, the ghosts of persons who have been killed by lightning are deemed to be dangerous. Hence the Omahas used to slit the soles of the feet of such corpses to prevent their ghosts from walking about. See J. Owen Dorsey, “A Study of Siouan Cults,” Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology （Washington, 1894）, p. 420. For more evidence of special treatment accorded to the bodies of persons struck dead by lightning, see A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast （London, 1890）, p. 39ff.; A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast （London, 1894）, p. 49; Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Notes on some customs of the Lower Congo people,” Folk-Lore, xx. （1909）, p. 475; Rendel Harris, Boanerges （Cambridge, 1913）, p. 97; A. L. Kitching, On the backwaters of the Nile （London, 1912）, pp. 264ff. Among the Barundi of Central Africa, a man or woman who has been struck, but not killed, by lightning becomes thereby a priest or priestess of the god Kiranga, whose name he or she henceforth bears and of whom he or she is deemed a bodily representative. And any place that has been struck by lightning is enclosed, and the trunk of a banana-tree or a young fig-tree is set up in it to serve as the temporary abode of the deity who manifested himself in the lightning. See H. Meyer, Die Barundi （Leipsig, 1916）, pp. 123, 135.

Bacchylides

9.10–24

There [Phlius] the heroes with red shields, the best of the Argives, held games for the first time in honor of Archemorus, whom a fiery-eyed monstrous dragon killed in his sleep: a sign of the slaughter to come. [15] Powerful fate! The son of Oicles [i.e. Amphiaraos] could not persuade them to go back to the streets thronged with good men. Hope robs men [of their sense]: it was she who then sent Adrastus son of Talaus [20] to Thebes ... to Polyneices ... The mortal men who crown their golden hair with the triennial garland from those glorious games in Nemea are illustrious;

Catalogue of Women

Hesiod fr. 136 Most [= Hes. fr. 193 MW]

136 (193 MW; 90 H) P. S. I. 131 + P. Lit. Palau Rib. 21

136 Papyrus of the Società Italiana and Barcelona papyrus

] Alcmaon, shepherd of the people

] the long-robed Theban women

they,] seeing the body before them

] the burial of much-suffering Oedipus

[5] ] engaged in conflict for the sake of wealth

] the Danaan [heroes,] servants of Ares

] doing a favor for Polynices

[ going] against Zeus’ oracles [

[9] from deep-eddying Alpheus

Diodorus Siculus

4.65.1

When the sons had attained to manhood, they go on to say, and the impious deeds of the family became known, Oedipus, because of the disgrace, was compelled by his sons to remain always in retirement, and the young men, taking over the throne, agreed together that they should reign in alternate years. Eteocles, being the elder, was the first to reign, and upon the termination of the period he did not wish to give over the kingship.

4.65.2

But Polyneices demanded of him the throne as they had agreed, and when his brother would not comply with his demand he fled to Argos to king Adrastus.

At the same time that this was taking place Tydeus, they say, the son of Oeneus, who had slain his cousins Alcathoüs and Lycopeus in Calydon, fled from Aetolia to Argos.

4.65.3

Adrastus received both the fugitives kindly, and in obedience to a certain oracle joined his daughters in marriage to them, Argeia to Polyneices, and Deïpylê to Tydeus. And since the young men were held in high esteem and enjoyed the king's favour to a great degree, Adrastus, they say, as a mark of his good-will promised to restore both Polyneices and Tydeus to their native lands.

4.65.4

And having decided to restore Polyneices first, he sent Tydeus as an envoy to Eteocles in Thebes to negotiate the return. But while Tydeus was on his way thither, we are told, he was set upon from ambush by fifty men sent by Eteocles, but he slew every man of them and got through to Argos, to [p. 25] the astonishment of all, whereupon Adrastus, when he learned what had taken place, made preparations for the consequent campaign against Eteocles, having persuaded Capaneus and Hippomedon and Parthenopaeus, the son of Atalantê, the daughter of Schoeneus, to be his allies in the war.

4.65.5

Polyneices also endeavoured to persuade the seer Amphiaraüs to take part with him in the campaign against Thebes; and when the latter, because he knew in advance that he would perish if he should take part in the campaign, would not for that reason consent to do so, Polyneices, they say, gave the golden necklace which, as the myth relates, had once been given by Aphroditê as a present to Harmonia, to the wife of Amphiaraüs, in order that she might persuade her husband to join the others as their ally.

4.65.6

At the time in question Amphiaraüs, we are told, was at variance with Adrastus, striving for the kingship, and the two came to an agreement among themselves whereby they committed the decision of the matter at issue between them to Eriphylê, the wife of Amphiaraüs and sister of Adrastus. When Eriphylê awarded the victory to Adrastus and, with regard to the campaign against Thebes, gave it as her opinion that it should be undertaken, Amphiaraüs, believing that his wife had betrayed him, did agree to take part in the campaign, but left orders with his son Alcmaeon that after his death he should slay Eriphylê.

4.65.7

Alcmaeon, therefore, at a later time slew his mother according to his father's injunction, and because he was conscious of the pollution he had incurred he was driven to madness. But Adrastus and Polyneices and Tydeus, adding to their number four leaders, Amphiaraüs, [p. 27] Capaneus, Hippomedon, and Parthenopaeus, the son of Atalantê the daughter of Schoeneus, set out against Thebes, accompanied by a notable army.

4.65.8

After this Eteocles and Polyneices slew each other, Capaneus died while impetuously ascending the wall by a scaling-ladder, and as for Amphiaraüs, the earth opened and he together with his chariot fell into the opening and disappeared from sight.

4.65.9

When the rest of the leaders, with the exception of Adrastus, had likewise perished and many soldiers had fallen, the Thebans refused to allow the removal of the dead and so Adrastus left them unburied and returned to Argos. So the bodies of those who had fallen at the foot of the Cadmeia¹⁵ remained unburied and no one had the courage to inter them, but the Athenians, who excelled all others in uprightness, honoured with funeral rites all who had fallen at the foot of the Cadmeia.¹⁶

¹⁵ The acropolis of Thebes.

¹⁶ According to Athenian tradition, Theseus made war upon Thebes in order to recover the bodies of the Seven and buried them in Eleusis. The Athenians took great pride in this achievement (cp. Herodotus, 9.27), it being made the theme of the Suppliants of Euripides and of the lost Eleusinians of Aeschylus.

Euripides

The Phoenician Women

67–76

... [Oedipus] pronounced an impious curse on his sons, that they should divide this house with the whetted sword.

The sons, becoming afraid that the gods would bring the curse to fulfillment if they lived together, reached an agreement that Polynices, as younger brother, should be the first to leave the country voluntarily, that Eteocles should stay behind and be king, and that the two should trade places year by year. But once Eteocles was settled on the seat of power, he would not give it up and thrust Polynices from the land as an exile.

408–442

JOCASTA

How did you come to Argos? With what purpose?

POLYNICES

I do not know: heaven called me to my fate.

JOCASTA

The god is wise. But how did you win your bride?

POLYNICES

Loxias gave an oracle to Adrastus.

JOCASTA

What oracle do you mean? I am unclear.

POLYNICES

“To lion and to boar thy daughters marry.”

JOCASTA

What share had you, son, in the name of beast?

POLYNICES

It was night: to Adrastus’ vestibule I came.

JOCASTA

Seeking a bed, as wandering exile would?

POLYNICES

Just so. And then another exile came.

JOCASTA

Who? He too must have suffered misery!

POLYNICES

Tydeus, who’s said to be the son of Oeneus.

JOCASTA

So why did Adrastus liken you to beasts?

POLYNICES

Because we came to blows about a bed.

JOCASTA

Then Talaus’ son²⁴ perceived Apollo’s meaning?

POLYNICES

Yes: to us two he married his two daughters.

JOCASTA

Are you happy with your wife, then, or unhappy?

POLYNICES

Up to this hour I make no complaint.

JOCASTA

How did you get an army to come with you?

POLYNICES

Adrastus swore to his two sons-in-law [, Tydeus and me, for he is a sharer with me in marriage,] that he would bring us both back from exile, beginning with me. Many nobles of Argos and Mycenae are here, rendering me a favor that I need but that brings me pain: it is my country I am marching against. I swear by the gods that I fight my brother against my will: it is he who wills it. But the ending of these woes depends upon you: [mother, by reconciling those of kindred blood,] rescue yourself and me and the whole city from calamity. [It was said long ago, but I will say it nevertheless: money is held in the highest esteem by mortals, and of all that is in the world of men it has the greatest power. It is to get this that I have come here with ten thousand spearmen. The nobleman who is poor is nothing.]

911–952 [Loeb]

TEIRESIAS

Hear then the course of my prophecies [by performing which you will save the city]: you must slaughter your son Menoeceus here, for the country’s sake: you yourself asked for your fate.

930–952 [Loeb]

TEIRESIAS

[You are right to ask me and to enter a contest of words.] This boy must be slaughtered in the chamber where the earthborn snake, guardian of Dirce’s waters, came to birth: he must give the earth a libation of blood because of the ancient grudge of Ares against Cadmus: Ares is now avenging the death of the earthborn snake. If you do this, you will have Ares as your ally. And if the ground receives offspring in place of offspring and mortal blood for blood, Earth will be propitious to you, Earth who once sent forth the gold-helmeted harvest of the Sown Men. One of this race must die, one begotten from the jaw of the snake. You are one of the last remaining members of the Sown Men here, of pure lineage on your mother’s and father’s side. [And so are your children. Haemon’s coming marriage prevents him from being slaughtered, for he is not a man unwed. Even if he has not yet experienced the bed of love, still he has a wife.] This colt, sacrificial animal for the city, will rescue his fatherland by his death. Sorry is the homecoming he will give Adrastus and the Argives, casting black death upon their eyes, and glorious will he make Thebes. Of these two fates choose one: save your son or your city.

1009–1011 [Loeb]

I shall go now, take my stand upon the high battlements, slit my own throat above the deep black precinct of the serpent, the place the seer named, and set the city free.

1104–1138 [Loeb]

[And first the huntswoman’s son Parthenopaeus brought his company, bristling with close-ranked shields, to the Neïstan Gate. He had a fitting symbol in the middle of his shield, Atalanta overcoming the Aetolian boar with her far-darting arrows. To the Proetid Gate came the seer Amphiaraus with sacrificial victims on his chariot. He had no arrogant device but a shield modestly unmarked.

Hippomedon marched to the Ogygian Gate. In the center of his shield was the all-seeing Argus, with eyes dappling his body, some opening in concert with rising stars and some closing with setting ones, as we later could see after his death.

Tydeus was stationed near the Homoloïd Gate, wearing on his shield the pelt of a lion with bristling mane. In his right hand he carried a torch, a Titan Prometheus, in order to burn the city.

Your son Polynices brought his soldiery against the Crenaean Gate. Upon his shield pranced in panic the wild mares of Potniae, 51 skillfully twisting upon pivots from inside the shield, below the shield strap itself, so that they seem to be insane.

Capaneus, whose pride in war is like that of Ares himself, brought his company against the Electran gates. Upon the iron-backed circle of his shield was an earthborn Giant, who had pried up the whole city from its foundations with a crowbar and was carrying it on his back, an indication of what our city would suffer.

At the seventh gate was Adrastus, who had pictured on his shield a hundred snakes, hydras he bore on his left arm, an Argive boast. And from the middle of the battlements the snakes were bearing off with their teeth the Thebans’ children.

1104–1138

First to the Neitian gate, Parthenopaeus, son of the huntress, [1105] led a company bristling with thick rows of shields, and he had his own device in the centre of his shield: Atalanta slaying the Aetolian boar with an arrow shot from far. To the gates of Proetus [1110] came the prophet Amphiaraus, bringing the victims on a chariot; he had no boastful sign, but weapons chastely plain.

Next lord Hippomedon came marching to the Ogygian gates with this device in the middle of his shield: [1115] Argus the all-seeing dappled with eyes on the watch, some open with the rising stars, others hiding when they set, as could be seen after he was slain.

At the Homoloian gates Tydeus had his post, [1120] a lion's skin with shaggy mane upon his shield, while the Titan Prometheus bore a torch in his right hand, to fire the town.

Your own Polyneices led the battle against the Fountain gate; upon his shield for a device [1125] were the colts of Potniae galloping at frantic speed, revolving by some clever contrivance on pivots by the handle, so as to appear distraught.

At Electra's gate Capaneus brought up his company, bold as Ares for the battle; [1130] this device his shield bore upon its iron back: an earth-born giant carrying on his shoulders a whole city which he had wrenched from its base, a hint to us of the fate in store for Thebes.

Adrastus was at the seventh gate; [1135] a hundred vipers engraved on his shield, [ as he bore on his left arm the hydra] the boast of Argos, and serpents were carrying off in their jaws the sons of Thebes from within our very walls.

The Suppliants

8–19 [Loeb]

AETHRA

Demeter, guardian of this land of Eleusis, and you servants of the goddess who keep her temple, ...

I make this prayer as I look upon these old women [The CHROUS of Suppiants]. They have left their homes in Argos and are falling with suppliant branches at my knees because of their terrible sufferings. They have lost their children: their seven noble sons perished before Cadmus’ gates,³ men once led by Adrastus, king of Argos, when he tried to secure for his son-in-law, the exiled Polynices, his portion of the heritage of Oedipus.⁴ The spear laid these men low, and their mothers want to bury them. But those in power prevent them: flouting the gods’ ordinances they refuse them permission to take up their dead.

³ Thebes is called “city of Cadmus” and the Thebans “Cadmeans” throughout this play.

⁴ Oedipus, angry with his two sons Eteocles and Polynices, laid a curse upon them that they would divide their inheritance with a sword. In most versions of the story, after the brothers had made an agreement that each should rule a year in turn, with the other leaving the country, Eteocles refused to give up the throne when his year was over. Polynices sought help from Adrastus, whose daughter he had married, and an Argive army tried to put him on the throne. But Eteocles and Polynices, facing each other at one of the seven gates, each received a mortal wound at the other’s hand, and the attack on Thebes failed.

131–154 [Loeb]

THESEUS

But why did you march seven companies against Thebes?

ADRASTUS

I did this as a favor to my two sons-in-law.

THESEUS

To which of the Argives did you give your daughters?

ADRASTUS

It was no native marriage tie that I made for my house.

THESEUS

So you gave Argive girls to foreign husbands?

ADRASTUS

<Yes,> to Tydeus and to Theban-born Polynices.

THESEUS

What made you desire such a marriage?

ADRASTUS

I was beguiled by Apollo’s dark oracles.

THESEUS

What did Apollo say to ordain marriage for the maidens?

ADRASTUS

“Your daughters to a boar and lion marry.”

THESEUS

And how did you interpret the god’s oracle?

ADRASTUS

Two exiles came to my door by night . . .

THESEUS

You tell me two at once. What men are they?

ADRASTUS

. . . and fought each other, Tydeus and Polynices.

THESEUS

You gave your daughters to these men, thinking they were beasts?

ADRASTUS

Yes: I thought they battled like two wild animals.

THESEUS

Why did they leave their own countries?

ADRASTUS

Tydeus was in exile for shedding kindred blood.

THESEUS

And the <son> of Oedipus, why did he leave Thebes?

ADRASTUS

Because of his father’s curse, to avoid killing his brother.

THESEUS

A wise act, this voluntary exile!

ADRASTUS

But those who stayed behind wronged those who left.

THESEUS

Surely his brother did not rob him of his property?

ADRASTUS

It was this crime I came to punish. And there I was destroyed.

155–161 [Loeb]

THESEUS

Did you consult seers and examine the flames of burnt offerings?

ADRASTUS

Ah! You press me hard just where my failure is greatest!

THESEUS

It appears you went to war without the gods’ good will.

ADRASTUS

And what is more I went against the wish of Amphiaraus.⁹

⁹ A seer and the only pious man among the Seven, Amphiaraus was forced by his wife to take part in the expedition.

THESEUS

Did you so lightly turn aside from divine guidance?

ADRASTUS

Yes: the shouting of young men put me out of my wits.

THESEUS

It was bravery rather than prudence that you pursued.

755–759 [Loeb]

ADRASTUS

The corpses for which they fought, did you bring them back?

MESSENGER

Yes, those who led the seven famous companies.

ADRASTUS

What do you mean? Where are the rest of the dead?

MESSENGER

They are buried near the glens of Cithaeron.

ADRASTUS

On the far or near side? By whom were they buried?

MESSENGER

By Theseus, near Eleutherae’s shady eminence.²⁵

²⁵ A small village on the Attic side of the mountain.

857–909 [Loeb]

ADRASTUS

Listen, then. In fact the task you assign me of praising these friends is not unwelcome since I want to say what is true and just about them. ... Capaneus ... The second man I mention is Eteoclus ... The third of them, Hippomedon ... Another was the son of Atalanta the huntress, the splendidly handsome lad Parthenopaeus. He was an Arcadian, but he came to the streams of the Inachus and was raised in Argos. As for Tydeus, I shall give him high praise in brief compass. ... His richly endowed mind was eager for honor, but the source of his pride was in deeds, not words.

925–931 [Loeb]

THESEUS

As regards the noble son of Oecles,²⁸ the gods by snatching him away alive, chariot and all, into the depths of the earth openly praise him. As for the son of Oedipus, I mean Polynices, it would be no lie if we were to praise him. He was my guest friend in the days before he left the city of Cadmus and came over to Argos in voluntary exile.

²⁸ Amphiaraus: see note on line 158.

934–938 [Loeb]

THESEUS

Capaneus, struck down by the fire of Zeus . . .

ADRASTUS

Will you bury him apart from the others, as a corpse sacred to the gods?

THESEUS

Yes: all the others I shall cremate on a single pyre.

ADRASTUS

Where will you put the tomb you are setting apart for him?

THESEUS

I shall build his grave here right beside this temple.

---

857–931

Adrastus

Listen then. For in giving this task to me you find a willing eulogist of friends, whose praise I would declare in all truth and sincerity. ...

934–938

Theseus

As for Capaneus, stricken by the bolt of Zeus—

Adrastus

Will you bury him apart as a consecrated corpse?

Theseus

Yes; but all the rest on one funeral pyre.

Adrastus

Where will you set the tomb apart for him?

Theseus

Here near this temple I have built him a sepulchre.

980–989

Chorus

Ah! there I see the sepulchre ready even now for Capaneus, his consecrated tomb, and the votive offerings Theseus gives to the dead outside the shrine, and near to that lightning-smitten chief I see his noble bride, Evadne, [985] daughter of King Iphis. Why does she stand on the towering rock, which overtops this temple, advancing along the path?Evadne is seen on a rock which overhangs the burning pyre. She is dressed as though for a festival.

990–1008

Evadne

[990] What light, what radiancy did the sun-god's chariot dart forth, and the moon above the heaven, where they ride through the gloom, [995] in the day that the city of Argos raised the stately chant of joy at my wedding, in honor of my marriage with Capaneus, alas! of the bronze armor? [1000] Now from my home in frantic haste with frenzied mind I rush to you, seeking to share with you the fire's bright flame and the same tomb, to be rid of my weary life, my suffering, in Hades; [1005] yes, for it is the sweetest death to die with those we love, if only fate will sanction it.

1009–1071

...

1072

Chorus

chanting

O lady, you have done a fearful deed!

First Vatican Mythographer

152

Hellanicus

fr. 98 Fowler (Fowler 2008, p. 190) [= FGrHist 4 F 98 = Schol. Euripides, The Phoenician Women 71. Vide Phere. fr. 96]

Herodotus

5.67.3

When Cleisthenes had brought him in, he consecrated a sanctuary for him in the government house itself, where he was established in the greatest possible security. Now the reason why Cleisthenes brought in Melanippus, a thing which I must relate, was that Melanippus was Adrastus' deadliest enemy, for Adrastus had slain his brother Mecisteus and his son-in-law Tydeus.

9.27

To these words the Athenians replied: “It is our belief that we are gathered for battle with the barbarian, and not for speeches; but since the man of Tegea has made it his business to speak of all the valorous deeds, old and new, which either of our nations has at any time achieved, we must prove to you how we, rather than Arcadians, have by virtue of our valor a hereditary right to the place of honor ... [3] Furthermore, when the Argives who had marched with Polynices against Thebes had there made an end of their lives and lay unburied, know that we sent our army against the Cadmeans and recovered the dead and buried them in Eleusis.

Hesiod

Catalogue of Women

Hesiod fr. 136 Most [= Hesiod fr. 193 MW]

136 (193 MW; 90 H) P. S. I. 131 + P. Lit. Palau Rib. 21

136 Papyrus of the Società Italiana and Barcelona papyrus

...

...doing a favor for Polynices... [7]

Works and Days

156–165

When the earth covered up this race too, Zeus, Cronus’ son, made another one in turn upon the bounteous earth, a fourth one, more just and superior, the godly race of men-heroes, who are called demigods, the generation before our own upon the boundless earth. Evil war and dread battle destroyed these, some under seven-gated Thebes in the land of Cadmus while they fought for the sake of Oedipus’ sheep, others brought in boats over the great gulf of the sea to Troy for the sake of fair-haired Helen.

Homer

Iliad

2.565–566

Euryalus, a godlike warrior, son of king Mecisteus, son of Talaus;

2.572

Sicyon, wherein at the first Adrastus was king;

4.365–400

Then found he the son of Tydeus, Diomedes high of heart, as he stood in his jointed car; and by his side stood Sthenelus, son of Capaneus. At sight of him too lord Agamemnon chid him, and spake and addressed him with winged words: [370] “Ah me, thou son of wise-hearted Tydeus, tamer of horses, why cowerest thou, why gazest thou at the dykes of battle? Tydeus of a surety was not wont thus to cower, but far in advance of his comrades to fight against the foe, as they tell who saw him amid the toil of war; for I never [375] met him, neither saw him; but men say that he was pre-eminent over all. Once verily he [Tydeus] came to Mycenae, not as an enemy, but as a guest, in company with godlike Polyneices, to gather a host; for in that day they were waging a war against the sacred walls of Thebe, and earnestly did they make prayer that glorious allies be granted them; [380] and the men of Mycenae were minded to grant them, and were assenting even as they bade, but Zeus turned their minds by showing tokens of ill. So when they had departed and were with deep reeds, that coucheth in the grass, there did the Achaeans send forth Tydeus on an embassage. [385] And he went his way, and found the many sons of Cadmus feasting in the house of mighty Eteocles. Then, for all he was a stranger, the horseman Tydeus feared not, all alone though he was amid the many Cadmeians, but challenged them all to feats of strength and in every one vanquished he them [390] full easily; such a helper was Athene to him. But the Cadmeians, goaders of horses, waxed wroth, and as he journeyed back, brought and set a strong ambush, even fifty youths, and two there were as leaders, Maeon, son of Haemon, peer of the immortals, [395] and Autophonus' son, Polyphontes, staunch in fight. But Tydeus even upon these let loose a shameful fate, and slew them all; one only man suffered he to return home; Maeon he sent forth in obedience to the portents of the gods. Such a man was Tydeus of Aetolia; howbeit the son [400] that he begat is worse than he in battle, though in the place of gathering he is better.”

4.401–410

So he spake, and stalwart Diomedes answered him not a word, but had respect to the reproof of the king revered. But the son of glorious Capaneus made answer. “Son of Atreus, utter not lies, when thou knowest how to speak truly. [405] We declare ourselves to be better men by far than our fathers: we took the seat of Thebe of the seven gates, when we twain had gathered a lesser host against a stronger wall, putting our trust in the portents of the gods and in the aid of Zeus; whereas they perished through their own blind folly. [410] Wherefore I bid thee put not our fathers in like honour with us.”

5.793–808

And to the side of Tydeus' son sprang the goddess, flashing-eyed Athene. She found that prince beside his horses and car, [795] cooling the wound that Pandarus had dealt him with his arrow. For the sweat vexed him beneath the broad baldric of his round shield; therewith was he vexed and his arm grew weary, so he was lifting up the baldric and wiping away the dark blood. Then the goddess laid hold of the yoke of his horses, and said: [800] “Verily little like himself was the son that Tydeus begat. Tydeus was small in stature, but a warrior. Even when I would not suffer him to fight or make a show of prowess, what time he came, and no Achaean with him, on an embassage to Thebes into the midst of the many Cadmeians— [805] I bade him feast in their halls in peace—yet he having his valiant soul as of old challenged the youths of the Cadmeians and vanquished them in everything full easily; so ' present a helper was I to him.

10.285–290

Follow now with me even as thou didst follow with my father, goodly Tydeus, into Thebes, what time he went forth as a messenger of the Achaeans. Them he left by the Asopus, the brazen-coated Achaeans, and he bare a gentle word thither to the Cadmeians; but as he journeyed back he devised deeds right terrible [290] with thee, fair goddess, for with a ready heart thou stoodest by his side.

14.114

of Tydeus, whom in Thebe the heaped-up earth covereth.

14.121

And [Tydeus] wedded one of the daughters of Adrastus,

23.346–7

Arion, the swift horse of Adrastus, that was of heavenly stock,

23.677–680

Euryalus alone uprose to face him, a godlike man, son of king Mecisteus, son of Talaus, who on a time had come to Thebes for the burial of Oedipus, [680] when he had fallen, and there had worsted all the sons of Cadmus.

Odyssey

11–326–327

and hateful Eriphyle, who took precious gold as the price of the life of her own lord.

15.243–247

and Oicles [begot] Amphiaraus, the rouser of the host, [245] whom Zeus, who bears the aegis, and Apollo heartily loved with all manner of love. Yet he did not reach the threshold of old age, but died in Thebe, because of a woman's gifts.

Hyginus

Fabulae

67

[5] ... When [Oedipus] asked Tiresias why Thebes was plagued ... he responded that if a descendant of the Sparti was still alive and died and died for his country, it would be freed from plague. Then Menoeceus, Jocasta's [and Creon's] father, threw himself from the city walls to his death.

[7] ... [Oidipus] then handed his kingdom over to his sons to share in alrernate year ...

68

After a year had past, Polynices ... sought to reclaim the throne from his brother Eteocles, but he refused to give it up. So Polynices, with the help of king Adrastus, came with seven generals to attack Thebes. There Capaneus was struck down by a thunderbolt while scaling the wall, because he said he would capture Thebes even in opposition to Jupiter's will. Amphiaraus was swallowed whole by the earth. Eteocles and Polynices fought and killed each other. There Capaneus was struck down by a thunderbolt while scaling the wall, because he said he would capture Thebes even in opposition to Jupiter's will. Amphiaraus was swallowed whole by the earth. Eteocles and Polynices fought and killed each other. The citizens of Thebes performed funeral sacrifices for them, and although there was a strong wind blowing, the smoke from the altars at no time wafted upward in a single diection but broke off into two separate streams. When the others assaulted Thebes and the Theban's were worried about their chances, the augur Tiresias son of Evers prophesied that the city would be saved from destruction if a descendant of the Sparti died. Menoeceus saw that he alone could secure his city's deliverance and so he threw himself off the city walls to his death. The Thebans gained victory.

69 Adrastus

[1] Adrastus, the son of Talaus and Eurynome, received an oracle from Apollo that foretold he would marry his daughters Argia and Deipuyle to a boar and a lion. [2] ... one had on a boar's hide and the other that of a lion ...

70

The Seven Kings Who Set Out against Thebes Adrastus son of Talaus by Eurynome ... from Argos.

Polynices son of Oedipus by Jocasta ... from Thebes

Tydeus son of Oeneus, by his captive slave Periboea, from Calydon.

Amphiaraus son of Oecles (or son of Apollo as some authors say) ...

Capaneus son of Hipponous ... from Argos

Hippomedon son of Mnesimachus by Metidice daughter of Talaus (and so Adrastus' sister), from Argos.

Parthenopaeus son of Meleager by Alalanta, ... from ... Arcadia.

All of these generals perished at Thebes except Adratus son of Talaus. He was saved, thanks to his horse ...

71

72

73

74

Isocrates

Panegyricus

54

The character and power of Athens may be judged from the appeals which sundry people have in times past made to us for our help.... but long before the Trojan War ... Adrastus, Talaus’s son, king of Argos. Adrastus, on his return from the expedition against Thebes where he had met with disaster and had not by his own efforts been able to recover the bodies of those who had fallen under the Cadmean fortress, called upon our city to lend aid in a misfortune which was of universal concern, and not to suffer that men who die in battle be left unburied nor that ancient custom and immemorial law be brought to naught.

Lysias

Funeral Oration

[7–10]

When Adrastus and Polyneices had marched against Thebes and had been vanquished in battle, and the Cadmeans would not allow the corpses to be buried, the Athenians decided that ... the corpses of the Argives—they buried them in their own land of Eleusis. Such, then, is the character that they [the Athenians] have evinced in regard to those of the Seven against Thebes who were slain.

Pausanias

1.34.1

1.34.2

1.39.1

1.39.2

A little farther on from the well is a sanctuary of Metaneira, and after it are graves of those who went against Thebes. For Creon, who at that time ruled in Thebes as guardian of Laodamas the son of Eteocles, refused to allow the relatives to take up and bury their dead. But Adrastus having supplicated Theseus, the Athenians fought with the Boeotians, and Theseus being victorious in the fight carried the dead to the Eleusinian territory and buried them here. The Thebans, however, say that they voluntarily gave up the dead for burial and deny that they engaged in battle.

1.43.1

2.20.5

A little farther on is a sanctuary of the Seasons. On coming back from here you see statues of Polyneices, the son of Oedipus, and of all the chieftains who with him were killed in battle at the wall of Thebes. These men Aeschylus has reduced to the number of seven only, although there were more chiefs than this in the expedition, from Argos, from Messene, with some even from Arcadia. But the Argives have adopted the number seven from the drama of Aeschylus, and near to their statues are the statues of those who took Thebes: Aegialeus, son of Adrastus; Promachus, son of Parthenopaeus, son of Talaus; Polydorus, son of Hippomedon; Thersander; Alcmaeon and Amphilochus, the sons of Amphiaraus; Diomedes, and Sthenelus. Among their company were also Euryalus, son of Mecisteus, and Adrastus and Timeas, sons of Polyneices.

2.23.2

5.17.8

5.19.6

Polyneices, the son of Oedipus, has fallen on his knee, and Eteocles, the other son of Oedipus, is rushing on him. Behind Polyneices stands a woman with teeth as cruel as those of a beast, and her fingernails are bent like talons. An inscription by her calls her Doom, implying that Polyneices has been carried off by fate, and that Eteocles fully deserved his end.

5.17.7ff.

8.2.4

8.25.4

9.5.12

Polyneices retired from Thebes while Oedipus was still alive and reigning, in fear lest the curses of the father should be brought to pass upon the sons. He went to Argos and married a daughter of Adrastus, but returned to Thebes, being fetched by Eteocles after the death of Oedipus. On his return he quarrelled with Eteocles, and so went into exile a second time. He begged Adrastus to give him a force to effect his return, but lost his army and fought a duel with Eteocles as the result of a challenge.

9.8.3

9.8.4

In the circuit of the ancient wall of Thebes were gates seven in number, and these remain to-day. One got its name, I learned, from Electra, the sister of Cadmus, and another, the Proetidian, from a native of Thebes. He was Proetus, but I found it difficult to discover his date and lineage. The Neistan gate, they say, got its name for the following reason. The last of the harp's strings they call nete, and Amphion invented it, they say, at this gate. I have also heard that the son of Zethus, the brother of Amphion, was named Neis, and that after him was this gate called.

9.8.5

The Crenaean gate and the Hypsistan they so name for the following reason. . . and by the Hypsistan is a sanctuary of Zeus surnamed Hypsistus （Most High）. Next after these gates is the one called Ogygian, and lastly the Homoloid gate. It appeared to me too that the name of the last was the most recent, and that of the Ogygian the most ancient.

9.8.6

The name Homoloid is derived, they say, from the following circumstance. When the Thebans were beaten in battle by the Argives near Glisas, most of them withdrew along with Laodamas, the son of Eteocles. A portion of them shrank from the journey to Illyria, and turning aside to Thessaly they seized Homole, the most fertile and best-watered of the Thessalian mountains.

9.8.7

When they were recalled to their homes by Thersander, the son of Polyneices, they called the gate, through which they passed on their return, the Homoloid gate after Homole. The entry into Thebes from Plataea is by the Electran gate. At this, so they say, Capaneus, the son of Hipponous, was struck by lightning as he was making a more furious attack upon the fortifications.

9.9.1

This war between Argos and Thebes was, in my opinion, the most memorable of all those waged by Greeks against Greeks in what is called the heroic age. In the case of the war between the Eleusinians and the rest of the Athenians, and likewise in that between the Thebans and the Minyans, the attackers had but a short distance through which to pass to the fight, and one battle decided the war, immediately after which hostilities ceased and peace was made.

9.9.2

But the Argive army marched from mid-Peloponnesus to mid-Boeotia, while Adrastus collected his allied forces out of Arcadia and from the Messenians, and likewise mercenaries came to the help of the Thebans from Phocis, and the Phlegyans from the Minyan country. When the battle took place at the Ismenian sanctuary, the Thebans were worsted in the encounter, and after the rout took refuge within their fortifications.

9.9.3

As the Peloponnesians did not know how to assail the walls, and attacked with greater spirit than knowledge, many of them were killed by missiles hurled from the walls by the Thebans, who afterwards sallied forth and overcame the rest while they were in disorder, so that the whole army was destroyed with the exception of Adrastus. But the action was attended by severe losses to the Thebans, and from that time they term a Cadmean victory one that brings destruction to the victors.

9.9.4

A few years afterwards Thebes was attacked by Thersander and those whom the Greeks call Epigoni （Born later）. It is clear that they too were accompanied not only by the Argives, Messenians and Arcadians, but also by allies from Corinth and Megara invited to help them. Thebes too was defended by their neighbors, and a battle at Glisas was fiercely contested on both sides.

9.8.3

9.9.5

Some of the Thebans escaped with Laodamas immediately after their defeat; those who remained behind were besieged and taken. About this war an epic poem also was written called the Thebaid. This poem is mentioned by Callinus, who says that the author was Homer, and many good authorities agree with his judgment. With the exception of the Iliad and Odyssey I rate the Thebaid more highly than any other poem.

So much for the war waged by the Argives against the Thebans on account of the sons of Oedipus.

9.18.1

The road from Thebes to Chalcis is by this Proetidian gate. On the highway is pointed out the grave of Melanippus, one of the very best of the soldiers of Thebes. When the Argive invasion occurred this Melanippus killed Tydeus, as well as Mecisteus, one of the brothers of Adrastus, while he himself, they say, met his death at the hands of Amphiaraus.

9.18.6

9.19.4

9.25.1

9.23.2

9.41.2

10.10.3

Near the horse are also other votive offerings of the Argives, likenesses of the captains of those who with Polyneices made war on Thebes: Adrastus, the son of Talaus, Tydeus, son of Oeneus, the descendants of Proetus, namely, Capaneus, son of Hipponous, and Eteoclus, son of Iphis, Polyneices, and Hippomedon, son of the sister of Adrastus. Near is represented the chariot of Amphiaraus, and in it stands Baton, a relative of Amphiaraus who served as his charioteer. The last of them is Alitherses.

Pherecydes

fr. 96 Fowler (Fowler 2008, pp. 327–328) [= FGrHist 3 F 96 = Schol. (MAB) Euripides, The Phoenician Women 71

fr. 97 Fowler (Fowler 2008, p. 328) [= FGrHist 3 F 97 = Schol. (A, b codd. BC, T) Il. 5.126 (2.22.75 Erbse)]

fr. 98 Fowler (Fowler 2008, pp. 328–329) [= Schol. (BDEGQ) Pind. Pyth. 4.288a (2.136.18 Drachmann)]

Pindar

Nemean

8.50–51

Yes, truly the hymn of victory existed long ago, even before that strife arose between Adrastus and the Cadmeans.¹¹

¹¹ That is, there were encomia before the Nemean games were founded by Adrastus and his army on their way to Thebes (schol.).

9.8–27 [Loeb]

Let us rouse up, then, the resounding lyre and rouse the pipe for the very apex of contests

for horses, which Adrastus established for Phoebus by the streams of Asopus. Having mentioned them,

I shall exalt the hero with fame-bringing honors, [10]

who, reigning there at that time, made the city famous

by glorifying it with new festivals and contests for men’s strength and with polished chariots.

For in time past, to escape bold-counseling Amphiaraus and terrible civil strife, he had fled

from his ancestral home and Argos. No longer were Talaus’² sons rulers; they had been overpowered by discord.

But the stronger man puts an end to a former dispute.³ [15]

After giving man-subduing Eriphyle as a faithful pledge

to Oecles’ son⁴ for a wife, they⁵ became the greatest of the fair-haired Danaans . . .

and later they led an army of men to seven-gated Thebes

on a journey with no favorable omens, and Cronus’ son brandished his lightning and urged them not to set out

recklessly from home, but to forgo the expedition.⁶ [20]

But after all, the host was eager to march, with bronze

weapons and cavalry gear, into obvious disaster, and on the banks of the Ismenus⁷

they laid down their sweet homecoming and fed the white-flowering smoke with their bodies,

for seven pyres feasted on the men’s young limbs.⁸ But for Amphiaraus’ sake Zeus split the deep-bosomed

earth with his almighty thunderbolt and buried him with his team, [25]

before being struck in the back by Periclymenus'⁹ spear

and suffering disgrace in his warrior spirit.

² Talaus was Adrastus’ father.

³ I.e. Adrastus put an end to the quarrel by giving his sister Eriphyle in marriage to Amphiaraus. Others take it to refer to Amphiaraus: the stronger man puts an end to what was just before. The scholia support both interpretations.

⁴ Amphiaraus. Eriphyle persuaded him to embark on the expedition against his better judgment.

⁵ The sons of Talaus. No convincing supplement has been proposed for the lacuna at the end of the verse.

⁶ For lightning as a warning to hold back, see Od. 24.539–544. If οὐδέ is taken with both ἐλελίξαις and ἐπώτρυν᾿, the passage means: and by not brandishing his lightning Cronus’ son did not urge them to set out.

⁷ A river near Thebes.

⁸ There was a pyre for each contingent of the Seven.

⁹ A Theban defender, son of Poseidon and Chloris (Teiresias’ daughter), with the same name as the son of Neleus at Pyth. 4.175 (schol.).

10.7–9

and at Thebes the earth, blasted with Zeus’ thunderbolts, received beneath her Oecles’ son the seer, a storm cloud of war.⁷

⁷ Amphiaraus, one of the Argive chieftains who attacked Thebes, was swallowed up in the earth near Thebes (cf. Nem. 9.24–27).

10.26–28

[he] won the crown at both the Isthmus and Nemea and gave the Muses work for their plow, by thrice winning crowns at the gates to the sea,¹² and thrice on the hallowed ground in Adrastus’ institution.¹³

¹² I.e. at the Isthmus.

¹³ Adrastus instituted the Nemean games on his way to Thebes (cf. Nem. 8.51).

Olympian 6.13–17 [Loeb]

that Adrastus once justly proclaimed aloud about the seer Amphiaraus, son of Oecles, when the earth had swallowed up the man himself and his shining steeds.

Afterwards, when the corpses of the seven funeral pyres had been consumed,³ Talaus’ son⁴

spoke a word such as this at Thebes: “I dearly miss the eye of my army,

good both as a seer and at fighting with the spear.”

³ These are apparently pyres for each of the seven contingents led by Adrastus against Thebes.

⁴ Adrastus.

Plutarch

Theseus

29.4

He also aided Adrastus in recovering for burial the bodies of those who had fallen before the walls of the Cadmeia,¹ not by mastering the Thebans in battle, as Euripides has it in his tragedy,² but by persuading them to a truce; for so most writers say, and Philochorus adds that this was the first truce ever made for recovering the bodies of those slain in battle,

¹ The citadel of Thebes.

² Eur. Supp. 653 ff.

29.5

although in the accounts of Heracles it is written that Heracles was the first to give back their dead to his enemies. And the graves of the greater part of those who fell before Thebes are shown at Eleutherae, and those of the commanders near Eleusis, and this last burial was a favour which Theseus showed to Adrastus. The account of Euripides in his Suppliants¹ is disproved by that of Aeschylus in his ‘Eleusinians,’² where Theseus is made to relate the matter as above.

¹ Eur. Supp. 1213 ff.

² Not extant.

Simonides

fr. 553 Campbell [= fr. 553 PMG = Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 9.396e]

553 Athen. 9. 396e (ii 365 Kaibel)

553 Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner (on γαλαθηνός, ‘suckling’)

Simonides makes Danae say of Perseus, 'My child, . . . and with childish¹ heart you slumber' (543). In other lines he says of Archemorus,²

they wept for the suckling babe of violet-crowned <Eurydice> as he breathed out his sweet soul.

¹ Lit. ‘suckling’.

² Text uncertain.

• Bravo III, p. 104

Athenaios preserves what amounts to our earliest known reference to the story (Simonides fr. 48 PMG =T 1). In the course of discussing the adjective γαλαθηνός, he cites two lines, which he says Siminides wrote about Archemoros:

...

For the suckling child of violet-crowned ... they wept,

As he breathed out his sweet life.

• Gantz, p. 510

Our first reference to this second phase of their journey [the stop at Nemea] comes from Simonides, who says that they lamented the death of child [Archemoros] (533 PMG)

Sophocles

Antigone

21–38

ANTIGONE

Why, has not Creon honoured one of our brothers and dishonoured the other in the matter of their burial? Eteocles, they say, in accordance with justice and with custom he has hidden beneath the earth, honoured among the dead below. But as for the unhappy corpse of Polynices, they say it has been proclaimed to the citizens that none shall conceal it in a grave or lament for it, but that they should leave it unwept for, unburied, a rich treasure house for birds as they look out for food. This is the proclamation which they say the good Creon has made to you and to me—yes, I count myself also—and he is coming this way to make the proclamation clear to those who do not know of it. He is not treating the matter as unimportant, but for anyone who does any of these things death in the city is ordained, by stoning at the people’s hand. There you have the way things stand, and you will soon show whether your nature is noble or you are the cowardly descendant of valiant ancestors.

127–140

For Zeus detests the boasts of a proud tongue, and when he saw them advancing in full flood, with the arrogance of flashing gold, with the fire he hurls he flung down him who was already hastening to shout forth his victory on the topmost ramparts.^a

And he fell upon the hard ground, shaken down, the torchbearer who in the fury of his mad rush breathed upon us with the blast of hateful winds. This indeed went otherwise; and different fates were dispensed to different persons by the mighty war-god who shattered them, a horse that carried our chariot to victory.

^a Capaneus, one of the Seven Against Thebes.

141–147

For seven captains posted against seven gates, man against man, left behind their brazen weapons for Zeus the god of trophies, except for the unhappy two, who, sprung of one father and one mother, set their strong spears against each other and both shared a common death.

141–147 [Jebb]

For the seven captains, stationed against an equal number at the seven gates, left behind their brazen arms in tribute to Zeus the turner of battle—all but the accursed pair who, born of one father and one [145] mother, set against each other their spears, both victorious, and who now share in a common death.

Epigoni (or Eriphyle?)

fr. 187

ALCMEON

You are the brother of a woman who killed her husband!

ADRASTUS

And you are the murderer of the mother who gave you birth!^a

^a Adrastus, king of Argos and leader of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, was brother of Eriphyle and uncle of Alcmeon. A fragmentary passage of Philodemus’ book on music seems to imply that in this play a dispute between Alcmeon and Adrastus was put an end to by the power of music.

Oedipus at Colonus

1292–1298

I have been driven from my native land and into exile, because I claimed that by the right of the first-born I should sit upon the throne and exercise full power. Eteocles, who is younger, expelled me from the land; he did not vanquish me in argument or come to the test of strength and action, but persuaded the city.

1302–1325

I got Adrastus as my father-in-law, and established as sworn allies all who are called the first in the Apian land and are honoured for their valour, so that with their aid I could muster the expedition against Thebes with seven spears and either die in a just cause or expel from the land those who had done this.

So be it! Why have I now come here? I have come to entreat you as a suppliant, father, on behalf of myself and my allies, who now with seven companies and seven spears surround all the land of Thebes. They are men such as the spear-brandishing Amphiaraus,^d first in martial valour and first in interpreting the ways of birds. The second is the Aetolian Tydeus, the son of Oeneus; the third is Eteoclus, Argive by birth; the fourth is Hippomedon, sent by his father Talaus; the fifth is Capaneus,^e who boasts that he will soon destroy the city of Thebes, burning it to the ground; the sixth is Parthenopaeus, rushing forth, [the trusty] son of her who was formerly virgin, who takes his name from her [, Atalanta who in the end gave birth]. And I, your son, who even if I am not your son, but the child of evil destiny, am at least called yours, lead the fearless army of Argos to Thebes.

^d See Electra 837 f.

^e See Antigone 131 f.

Statius

1.390–512 (Oracle, Polynices and Tydeus' fight and discovery by Adrastus)

2.307ff. [Tydeus' embassy]

4.32–250 (list of Seven)

Now, old-time Fame and secret Antiquity of the world, whose care it is to remember leaders and extend their lives, set me forth the men. And you, queen of the tuneful grove, Calliope, raise your lyre and tell what bands, what arms Gradivus set moving, how many cities he left deserted of their peoples. For to none comes deeper understanding from the fount you drain.

King Adrastus, sad and sick with weight of cares and nearer to departing years, walks scarce of his own accord amid words of good cheer, content with the steel that girds his side; soldiers bear his shield behind him. His driver grooms the swift horses right at the gate and Arion is already fighting the yoke. For him Larisa arms her menfolk and lofty Prosymna and Midea more fit for herds and sheep-wealthy Phlius and Neris fearing Charadros as he ...

8.353–357

By lot Creon goes from the Ogygian, the Neistan send forth Eteocles, Haemon takes the lofty Homoloian, the Proetian and the Electran discharge Hypseus and tall Dryas, Eurymedon’s band shakes the Hypsistan, while great-hearted Menoeceus throngs the Dircaean ramparts.

Stesichorus

fr. 222A Campbell [= P. Lille 76 + 73]

222Α P. Lille 76 + 73 (ed. G. Ancher, C. Meillier, C.R.I. P.E.L. 4, 1977, 287ss.; v. etiam P. J. Parsons, Z.P.E. 26, 1977, 7ss.)

222A Papyrus (before 250 b.c.)

201-217

201–234³ . . . to our sorrows do not add harsh anxieties, and do not show me heavy hopes for the future. For the immortal gods did not for all time alike establish over the holy earth strife unending for mortals, no, nor friendship either, but the gods establish within one day a different mind. As for your prophecies, may the far-working lord Apollo not accomplish them all. But if it is destined that I see my sons slain each by the other and the Fates have spun it, may the end of hateful death at once be mine before ever I see these lamentable tearful things (added?) to my sorrows, my sons dead in the palace or the city captured.

³ The queen (Jocasta or Epicaste rather than Eurygania) is addressing Tiresias.

218-269

No, come, my sons, obey my words, my dear children; for thus do I reveal the outcome for you, that one of you have the palace and dwell (by the spring of Dirce?),⁴ and the other have the flocks and all the gold of his dear father and depart—he who in the shaking of lots⁵ is the first to obtain his portion, thanks to the Fates. For this, I think, might be your release from the evil doom in the warning of the holy seer, if truly the son of Cronus means to guard the family and city of lord Cadmus, putting off for a long time the misfortune which is fated for the royal family.’ So said the noble lady, speaking with gentle words, checking her sons from strife in the palace, and along with her Tiresias, interpreter of portents; and her sons obeyed,

235–269⁶ and (at once?) . . . that one (should live in) the land of Thebes . . . and . . ., and the other should have the flocks and precious gold and depart . . ., (the treasure which the descendants of Cadmus?) had heaped up within and all the splendid flocks they pastured . . . horses with fine manes . . . obscure oracles . . . in his breast. . ., and he himself⁷ jumped up . . . (and) spoke these words: .. (otherwise?) . . . (she?) has revealed (a good?) plan . . . (you), obeying (her words?) . . . many things . . . spiritless. . .

270-303⁸ . . . (you brothers?), putting an end to great griefs: (you, Polynices, must go to Argos?) . . . to take the crumpled-horned cattle and the horses . . . in accordance with fate. (I tell you) what is destined to happen: (you will reach) the house of lord Adrastus,⁹ and he will (welcome you and) give you his beautiful daughter . . . and the people (and city of Acrisius) will give you . . . (at the prompting?) of lord (Adrastus). (And to) Eteocles (I say) straight out . . . (I am?) terribly (afraid?) at heart (that he, wanting) to have (the portion) of Polynices . . . may fashion (great disaster) for the whole city and for his [ mother (perplexity and fresh) grief always. (May he ward off this evil, whoever) of all the gods is most (kindly to wretched) mortals.’

So spoke famous Tiresias, and at once (the hero left) the house and departed; (and with) their dear Polynices (went the best leaders) of the Thebans. Making his way he began his journey along the road, passing the great wall¹⁰ . . . (and with) him . . . many . . . the men came to the furthest point (of Athens)¹¹ under the escort (of the gods); and (soon) they reached the Isthmus of the sea-god,¹² (the earth-shaker,) . . . (and were accomplishing their journey?) with prayers; and (then they departed for) the fair towns of Corinth, and quickly came to (well-built) Cleonae. . .

⁴ In Thebes.

⁵ I.e. the brother whose lot jumps out first from the helmet will get the worse portion, exile from Thebes.

⁶ Mostly line-endings. 235 ff. may have recounted the sons’ acceptance of the queen’s proposal, 244 ff. may have told how they cast lots and Polynices lost.

⁷ Tiresias? It is he who speaks 270 ff.

⁸ Mostly more extensive line-endings.

⁹ King of Argos.

¹⁰ Of Thebes? Perhaps of Erythrae.

¹¹ Eleusis (at the western edge of Attica)?

¹² The marginal letter Γ marks v. 300 of the poem.

Thebaid

fr. 1 West pp. 44, 45 ...

Modern

Fowler 2013

p. 409

p. 411

p. 412

p. 413

Gantz

p. 296

The second act of statesmanship, Theseus' assistance to Adrastos in recovering the bodies of the Seven against Thebes, is dramatized for us in Euripides' preserved Hiketides [Suppliants], a play dating somewhere in the vicinity of 420 B.C. Plutarch, however, tells us that Aischylos had already prsented the same tale, with Theseus as a character, in his play Eleusinioi (Thes. 29.4-5). Plutarch's primary concern is to contrast the version of Aischylos, in which the Theban's are persuaded by diplomacy to return the bodies for burial, with that of Euripides, in which Theseus and the Athenians must actually defeat the Thebans in battle in order to accomplish their aim. Isokrates for his part refers to both verisons, and asks who has not heard of these events from the tragic poets, with never a mention of any epic or other early source (12, Panath 168-71). We should also observe that Pindar, in an ode dating probably to 476 or 474 B.C., speaks of the fallen commanders at Thebes as feeding seven funeral pyres by the banks of the Ismenos, that is, at Thebes, as if there was no question of the bodies ever being denied burial or reclaimed by relatives (Nem 9.22-24). ... the presence of venerated [cont.]

p. 297

funeral monuments ...

p. 502

... In Hesiod's Works & Days we encounter the idea that the conflict of the great heroes of the fourth age at Thebes was over the flocks of Oedipous, ... (W&D 162-63). ...

Polyneikes and Eteokles

The expedition of the Seven against Thebes, and the quarrel between Oedipous' sons which caused it, appears as early as Iliad 4, but we learn nothing beyond the fact of Tydeus' pre-attack embassy into the city and its bloody aftermath (Il. 4.376-98). Eteokles and Polyneikes are mentioned nowhere else in Homer and not anywhere in Hesiod, while the Ehoiai has only a passing reference to Polyneikes (Hes fr 193 MW). The Thebais was an epic devoted entirely to this event, since we know its opening line to have been "sing, goddess, of thirsty Argos, whence the lords ..." (fr. 1 PEG). This might seem to begin the poem with Adrastos, but other fragments show that the poet went back to the source of the conflict, as we would expect. Whether any such origins of the dispute were recounted in the Oidpodeia we do not know. What the Thebais does tell us about the beginnings is that Oedipous on at least two separate occasions cursed his sons for poor tendance of him. ...

p. 503

...

From epic we turn to Stesichorus' account of these matters as attested by the new fragments in Lille (PLille 76a, b, c).³⁶ As we saw, Oidipous is here probably dead, but the boys' mother is not, and she speaks all the lines in question. From her words we gather that Teiresias has just uttered a prophecy concerning their mutual slaughter and the danger to the city. ... In any case, the mother (we remember that she is unnamed) ... proposes that one son retain the gold and other possessions of their father but leave Thebes, while the other remain behind in the city (and presumably occupy the throne, although this is not stated). The choice will be made by lot, and as the fragment breaks off both sons prepare to obey. Something very similar (minsu the lot) is preserved for us by Hellanikos ...

One might think that at this juncture we could consult Aischylos' version [cont.]

p. 504

of the quarrel in his Hepta, where ...

p. 505

...

For the end of the fifth century we have evidence from both Euripides and Sophokles. ... [Euripides'] Phoinissai, especially the prologue spoken by Iokaste ...

p. 506

... But here [in the Phoinissai] for the first time we encounter the idea of an exchange of roles, that is, that the two brothers have agreed to alternate between ruling Thebes and staying in exile. Polynices takes the first shift of a year away from Thebes, then finds himself permanently ousted when Eteokles fails to adhere to the bargain. As their susequent debate shows, Eteokles stands throughout this debate as the villian; he acknowledges the injustice oh his conduct but holds it of no account when set against the chance to retain power. ...

Thus we have a variety of possibilities for the quarrel, ... Later authors such as Diodoros and Apollodoros give us the same version of dispute as the Phoinissai, so that the roatting-year motif, whatever its antiquity, has become far and away the most familiar form of the story (DS 4.65.1; ApB 3.6.1; Fab 67 makes Oidipous ordain this alteration of rule after his self-blinding). In all accounts, after leaving Thebes Polyneikes makes his way to Argos, where he marries the daughter of Adrastos and mobilizes the Archives for a military expedition against his homeland. ...

Adrastos, Eriphyle, and Amphiaraos

In chapter 5 we found that for the Ehoiai ... Bias and Pero's marriage ...

p. 507

already appeared in the Iliad as ruler of Sicyon (Il. 2.572),

The famous Middle Corinthian krater once in Berlin (and considered in chapter 5 for its illiustration of the funeral games for Pleias) shows on its other side Amphiaraos' departure for the battle (Berlin: Lost F1655). ...

As the Pindar scholia relate these matters, there was a quarrel over something (land and power, presumably) between the descendants of Melampous (i.e. Amphiaraous) and those of his brother Bias (Talaos and his family: Σ Nem 9.30 passim).

p. 508

...

The further developments ... In any event Asklepiades' ... (12F29). Somehow ... the two men declare that in the future they will always abide by her decision in disputes between them. When the expedition for Thebes is taking shape, Amphiaraos tries to warn the Archives of their impending doom, but is himself forced to join them by Eriphyle, who received from Polyneikes the necklace of Harmonia. ...

Backtracking now from this early attested phase of Polyneikes' recruitment of allies, we must start at the beginning of the affair, his actual arrival in Argos and marriage to Adrastos' daughter ...

p. 509

With ... a Chalkidian calyx krater of about 530 B.C. on which we can see a scene of the arrival: to the right Adrastos (named) reclines on his couch, with a woman standing to one side; both look to the far left where two men are seated on the ground, their mantles wrapped round them, with two more women standing over them talking to each other (Copenhagen VII 496). One of the two seated men is inscribed as Tydeus, the other (perhaps: the inscription is not immediately beside him) as [Pr]omachos. No other names survive, but it seems a reasonable guess that the female figures are Adrastos' wife (Amphithea?) and two daughters, and that Promachos (or whoever) is meant to be Polyneikes, come like Tydeus in search of shelter.

p. 510

... In any event, the result of Polyneikes' marriage is always the same: Adrastos promises his help, Eriphyle is bribed to commit her husband to the endeavor, and an expedition of Archives and their allies sets forth for Thebes to restore the exile to the throne his brother occupies.

The Expedition of the Seven

As we saw above, the Iliad knows of the march on Thebes by a generation prior to the one at Troy, and we learn from Sthenelos that his father Kapaneus and Diomedes' father Tydeus joined Polyneikes in his unsuccessful assault (Il 4.405-10). Agamemnon adds the tale of Tydeus' embassy to which we will return shortly. The Works & Days counts the event together with the siege of Troy as the two great exploits of the age of heroes (W&D 161-63), and the epic Thebais, as the opening line showed us, began (and no doubt concluded) with it. From this last work we gain the name of another participant, Parthenopaios (fr. 6 PEG), and perhaps a speech in honor of Amphiaraous (fr. 10 PEG) but little more (possibly Tydeus' devouring of Melanipos' brains: see below). Pausanias saw Eteokles and Polyneikes actually fighting each other on the Chest of Kypselos (with a Ker: Paus. 5.19.6). Hekataios is named among those who made Parthenopaios a son of Talaos (and thus it would seem a brother of Adrastos: 1F32). But beyound these few scraps we must rely on the fifth century, and in particulkar Pindar, Bakchylides, and of course Aischylos, to be followed at century's end by Euripides' two plays previously mentioned, the Hiketides and Phoinissai.

For the preliminaries to the expedition we do, however, have useful information from the Iliad: Polyneikes and Tydeus together come to Mykenai to seek assistance, and the citizens there are minded to help them, but Zeus sends contrary omens, and the mission fails (Il 4.376–81). Homer then proceeds to the embassy to Thebes (logically enough, since Tydeus is the topic at hand) and omits the stop at Phlious. Our first reference to this second phase of their journey comes from Simonides, who says that they lamented the death of child [Archemoros] (533 PMG) Bakchylides takes matters a step further: at Philous the Archive heroes set up the Nemian games in honor of Archemoros, whom a snake has slain in his sleep; the event is somehow taken as an omen of Archive failure at Thebes (Bak 9.10-20). Pindar agrees, in Nemian 9, that [cont.]

p. 511

Adrastos founded the Nemean games on the banks of the Asopos (the river that flows past Phlios and Sikyon) but does not say why (Nem 9.9). The hypothesis to the Nemean Odes as a whole offers several different versions of the story, including the fact that in Aischylos, among others, this Archemoros is the son of Nemea. Presumably, then the child's death and the games' founding were subjects of his lost play Nemea. Unfortunately, neither the hypothesis nor any other source tells us anything more about Aischylos' handling of the tale.

The loss of Aischylos' play is the greater because Euripides in his patially preserved Hypsipyle offers us quite a different mother for the same child, one Eurydike, wife of Lykourgos, a priest of Nemean Zeus; Hypsipyle, the former paramour of Iason, is involved because she has become the childs nurse, after being exiled from Lemnos and captured by pirates. The child here has as his given name Opheltes, to be changed to Archemoros in the course of the story. As the action of the play opens Amphiaros and his companions are on their way north to Thebes, and encounter Hypsipyle while searching for water with which to perform a sacrifice.⁴⁴ She takes the seer to a spring quarded by a serpent, and there the serpent somehow manages to kill the child. Eurydike is naturally bent on revenge, but Amphiaros persuades her that what has happened was destined: the child will be called Archemoros, as signalling the begining of the expedition's doom, and games will be established. Eurydike yields to this explanation, and for the remainder of the play—Hypsipyle's recognition of her sons, who have come to find her– need not concern us here. Apollodorus (ApB 3.6.4), Hyginus (Fab 74, with a prophecy that the child is not to be put down until he can walk), and the Nemean Odes hypothesis all provide a similar account of Archemoros' parentage and death. The hypothesis' one other significant variation lies in the presenting a third set of parents, Euphetes and Kreousa. That Aischylos told this same story of Lemnian nurse and snake in his Nemea with merely a different name for the mother (and the father) is possible, but I doubt it: surely neither Aischylos nor anyone else would have named such a play after the child's mother if the plot focused on the misfortunes of the nurse who failed to guard her charge. We must allow, I think, that Aischylos' version may well not have included Hypsipyle at all.

⁴⁴ (p. 834) The bulk of our information about this play derives from the text of a papyrus first published in 1908 and hence not included in Nauk. See Bonds'sedition of all this material, with commentary (Oxford 1963).

Elsewhere there is some scant evidence that might relate to the Euripidean parents, ... Pausanias tells us that on the Amyklai Throne Adrastos and Tydeus halt a fight between Amphiaraos and Lykourgos, son of Pronax (3.18.12). The same scene is apparently represented on the elbow guard of a shield-strap from Olympia where a central figure named as Adrastos stands with raised arm between two warriors closing in battle; ... if this is the Lykourgos of the Hypsipyle, and if he was present to [cont.]

p. 512

witness or hear of his son's death in some accounts (in Euripides, he is out of town), he might well blame Ampiaraos for the tragedy and seek vengeance. But against this possibility is the fact that the shield-relief offers no sign of a woman or child, although there is certainly room for them. We saw too, that in the Nemean Odes scholia Pronax is the son of Talaos and brother of Adrastus, and this arrangement occurs also in Apollodorus (ApB 1.9.13). Thus, if Pausanias' information is right, the Lykourgas of the Throne would be Adrastos' nephew, and more likely a part of the expedition setting out from Argos than someone encountered along the way at Nemea. For what it is worth, Apollodorus himself distinguishes two Lykourgoi in his discussion of these legends, the one a son of Pronax of whom we hear nothing more, the other a son of Pheres (and brother of Admentos) who marries Eurydike and begets Opheltes (ApB 1.9.14). How early this figure might be we cannot say; or Archaic sources neither mention or exclude him. In any case, and with one father or other, the child and his death seem an established part of the tale. ...

The third event preliminary to the actual assualt on Thebes is that mentioned several times by the Iliad, the sending of Tydeus into the city alone to negotiate with Eteokles. In Iliad 4, Agamemnon says that this happened when the forces had come to the Asopos River, and completed a good part of their journey; thus he is thinking of the Boitian Asopos that runs south of Thebes, not the Sikyonian Asopos where the Nemean games were founded (Il 4.382-400). Tydeus arrives in the city with a message for the Kadmeians, and finds the leaders gathered together in feasting at the home of Eteokles. Undaunted, he challenges them all to contests, and with Athena's help [cont.]

p. 513

wins everything easily. The losers are sufficiently angered that they send a force of fifty men, led by Maion and Polyphontes, to ambush Tydeus on his way back to the Asopos. He kills forty-nine of these, sparing only Maion, whom he sends back to Thebes on advice from the gods. Athena and Diomedes both mention this same event more briefly in later parts of the poem (Il 5.800-808, 10.285-90); the only new detail is Diomedes' statement that Tydeus was carrying a "gentle message," that is, not just a threat. hat we do not learn from any of these passages is how the Kadmeians responded to the message; presumably they rejected any appeal for negotiation, and then too Tydeus' aristeia, not his diplomatic skill, is the point of the story. In diodoros' version, ... (DS 4.65.4). ... Statius devotes most of Book 2 of his Thebais to the episode; ... Apollodorus returns to the Homeric version, (ApB 3.6.5). Likely enough the adventure played a major role in the epic Theabais or some early narrative as a foretale to the actual assault; Statius' lengthy treatment shows how easily the story lends itself to elaboration.

p. 514

We come finally to the actual attack on the city, and in this connection must consider the identity of the seven champions who mount the assault. And in this connection must consider the identity of the seven champions who mount the assualt. For seven or any specific number in the Thebais there is no evidence, unless Asklepiades' comment that Pindar borrowed lines from that work for his Olympian 6 refers to 6.15 (with its seven pyres; so too Nem 9.22-24) as well as the lament for Amphiataos which follows (Σ Ol 6.26). But even if that were so (and it seems unlikely) we would have to debate for the Thebais, as well as for the Pindar what those seven pyres might signify. In Olympians 6 and all other preserved accounts, Amphiaraos is swallowed up by the earth and does not require cremation; likewise Adrastos, on all occasions on which he is one of the attackers, survives. In theory, then Pindar should have just five or six pyres, if their were originally seven champions. Possibly though, as the scholia suggest, he means that there was a pyre for the armies of each of the seven champions (Σ Ol 6.23d), or perhaps a pyre for the fallen at each of Thebes' seven gates. But we cannot totally exclude the idea that an original group of seven [cont.]

p. 515

did all perish in some early versions, or the possibility that from a larger group some survived. Indeed Pausanias claims that Aischylos brought the number down to seven from something larger, including heroes from Messenia and Arkadia (2.20.5). To such a notion we might object that seven champions is the logical number to utilize when one is assaulting a city with seven gates, but nothing before Aischylos pairs off attackers with gates, and surprisingly few sources after him, leaving us to wonder whether this motif has any early authority. All that we have then for the period before the fifth century is a group of uncertain size, from which we can guarantee Polyneikes, Tydeus, Kapaneusu, Amphiaraos, and Parthenopaios, plus perhaps Lykourgos and of course Adrastos, if he is in early versions a combatant.

For the ... There is also from the first half of the [fifth] century an Etruscan gem, now in Berlin, which shows five of the heroes (names inscribed) in converstion orbrandishing weapons (Berlin:Ch GI 194).⁴⁹ The names provided are Parthenopaios, Amphiaraos, Polyneikes (all sitting), plus Tydeus and Adrastos standing in arms; of those we might definitely expected to find only Kapaneus is missing. That only five figures appear is probably not significant, given the difficulty of putting even that many on a gem.

p. 516

In Euripides' Hiketides we find a list identical to the Heptas; Adrastos is again not an actual attacker, and survives to seek from Theseus and the Atheneians the recovery of the slian (E: Hik 857-931).

p. 517

... Our only real piece of evidence for that point comes from Pausanias, who says that in the Thebais Adrastos flees Thebes on his horse Areion, wearing "mournful clothing" (8.25.8). ...

We should note in concluding that even among the Archives the list of participants seems not to have been firmly fixed: Pausanias ...

Turing now to details of the combat, we must for the period before 500 B. C. content ourselves with the two bits of certain information seen above from Thebais, that Periklymenos defeated Parthenopaios and that Adrastos fled on his famous horse. ...

p. 518

... As for the remaining figures both Bakchylides (fr. 41 SM) and Pherekydes (3F97) tell us that Athena intended to make Tydeusimmortal, and Pherekydes futher explains the occasion as the moment of Tydeus' death in battle: he whas been wounded by Melanippos, and when Amphiaraos kills the latter and throws Tydeus the head, he begins to gnaw on its brains in his rage. At this critical juncture Athena arrives from ouranos bearing immortality, but when she sees Tydeus' savage behavior she throws it away in disgust. ...

... Adrastos is as we saw always saved, combatant or not, ... Aischylos has, save for the allusion to Kapaneus' fate, none of [cont.]

p. 519

this; a messenger simply reports back to the chorus that at six of the gates all has gone well, while at the seventh Oidipous' two sons have killed each other. but in the Phoinissae we get a more unusual sequence of events: after an initial pitched battle in which Kapaneus is struck by a thunderbolt and Parthenopaios is slain by Periklymenos, the Thebans gain the upper hand, and Adrastos pulls his forces back (Pho 1141-99, 1219-39). Etokles then offers to fight Polynices in single combat to decide the entire outcome; in the resulting duel, he uses a Thessalian trick to deliver a fatal wound to his bruther, but fails to finish him off before taking the spoils (Pho 1356-1424). ...

One other important detail to be noted in the Phoinissai is the prophecy of Teiresias that the city will be savd only if Menoikeus—a hitherto unattested son of Kreon—should throw himself from the walls to the spot where Kadmos slew the dragon, in atonement for that deed (Pho 903-19=018).

Antigone and the Burial of the Seven

Next in the sequence of events following the attack of the Seven come Kreon's refusal to inter their bodies, and the defiance of this proclamation by Antigone ...

p. 521

...

As for those other burials and the fate of the rest of the Seven, we have already seen in chapter 9 that Aischylos' lost play is our first evidence for such a prohibition of burial or Theseus' intervention; the Iliad's statement that Ty- [cont.]

p. 522

deus is buried at Thebes (Il 14.114) and Pindar's ... In Euripides' Hiketides, we see Theseus and the Athenians defeating the [Thebans] in battle to obtain the corpses, but Plutarch tells us that in Aiscylos' version the same result was obtained by diplomacy (Thes 29.4). The one significant detail of the funeral in Euripides, once the bodies are recovered, is that Euadne, wife of Kapaneus, throws herself on her husband's pyre. Such events could easily find a place in epic (more easily, I think, than Antigone's heroism) although we must ask how early Thesues and/or the Athenians are likely to have played such a central role. Later accounts offer nothing useful, but Pausanias does mention seeing tombs on the road out of Eleusis (1.39.2). As noted before, the antiquity of this kind of veneration (or rather, the objects of it) is a question that only adds to our uncertainties.

Hard

p. 315

THE THEBAN WARS AND THEIR AFTERMATH

Polyneikes, son of Oedipus, quarrels with his brother Eteokles and departs to Argos

POLYNEIKES and ETEOKLES, the two sons of Oedipus, quarrelled over the succession after the exile or death of their father (or when he became to old to rule, or when they were due to take over from Kreon who had been ruling as regent until they came of age). The resulting conflict proved disastrous to both of them, for they were destined to kill one another when Polyneikes tried to settle the matter by marching against Thebes with foreign allies from Agrgos. The quarrel also brought disaster to Thebes itself; for although it remained unconquered during this first Theban War, the sons of the defeated Argive leaders launched a second expeditio ten years later and captured the city, which never recovered its former strength and glory. The first expedition was known as that of the Seven because its leader appointed seven of the bravest participants to serve as champions, and the second as that of the Epigonoi (i.e. the after-born or successors).

p. 316

The stories that were put forward to explain how the feud between the brothers initially developed fall into three main patterns. ... Hellanicus ... early lyric poet Stesichorus, ... it is reasonable to assume that he [Polyneikes] was originally thought to be the guilty party. In the second main version ... Pherecydes, ... Or in a third version which first appears in Euripides' Phoenician Women, the two brothers agreed to rule in alternate years, but Eteokles refused to surrender the throne ... after ... the first year, ... This was the account that was generally favoured in the later tradition.¹²⁹

Whatever the exact circumstances of his exile, Polneikies travelled across the Isthmus of Corinth to the city of Argos, where he married a daughter of the king and gained support from him for an expedition against his native city. Euripides provides the earliest surviving account of the events that led up to his marriage. After reaching Argos at night, he sought shelter in the portch of the palace, but soon quarrelled and came to blows with another man who arrived there with the same intent, namely TYDEUS, son of Oineus, a violent Aetolian prince who had been exiled from his homeland for murder (see p. 418). The noise was sufficient to awaken the king, ADRASTOS, son of Talaos, who hurried down to investigate. On observing the ferocious brawl, he was reminded of a mysterious oracle that he had received from Apollo ordering him to marry his daughters to a lion and a boar; since the two men resembled wild animals fighting over a den, he welcomed them into his palace in spite of the unfortunate circumstances of their meeting, and offered his daughter ARGEIA to Polyneikes and his other daughter, Deipyle, to Tydeus.¹³⁰ He promised to restore them to their native lands furthermore, beginning with Polyneikes.¹³¹ Some later authors explained his interpretation of the oracle in other ways, saying that he recognized the two men as the lion and boar because Polyneikes had a lionskin on his shoulders and Tydeus a boar's hide, or because they had images of the foreparts of such animals on their shields (referring to the Sphinx and Calydonian boar respectively).¹³²

Pausanias records an account of Polyneikes' exile and marriage that follows a quite different pattern. ...

p. 317

... Polyneikes went into exile for a second time, ...¹³³ in the Hesiodic Catalogue, ... [Argeia] is reported to have attended the funeral of Oedipus,¹³⁴ ...

Adrastos appoints seven champions for an expedition against Thebes; Ampiaraos and Eriphyle

Adrastos lost no time in gathering together a sizeable army to attack Thebes. In tragedy and the later tradition at least, he appointed seven campions to lead the assault, one for each of the seven gates in the walls of the city. It is not known whether these champions; who were known as the Seven against Thebes, already figured in early epic; Pindar may have been following the epic tradition in stating that the Archive dead were burned on seven funeral pyres,¹³⁵ but this does not necessarily imply that there were seven champions (especially if it is remembered that two of the usual champions, Amphiaraos and Kapaneus, could have been cremated, for reasons that will become apparent presently).

Most sources agree on the names of at least six of the Seven.¹³⁶ Three of the most important of them belonged to Archive royal lines, namely Adrastos himself, who was descended from Bias, Amphiaros, son of Oikles, who was descended from Melampos, and Kapaneus son of Hippnoos, who belonged to the old Inachid ruling line as a descendant of Proitos. To these we can add the two outsiders Polyneikes and Tydeus, and also Partheopaios, who was usually regarded as a son of Atalanta from Arcadia (but sometimes as a son of Talaos and brother of Adrastos). As for the remaining champion ...

AMPHIARAOS, the most formidable of the men who were selected as champions by Adrastos, was a gifted seer like his forebear Melampous and relized that the expedition was doomed to disaster. ... ERIPHYLE ... Adrastos had given his sister Eriphyle to Ampiaros on the sworn agreement that they should accept her decision if they should ever quarrel in the future. So [cont.]

p. 318

Polyneices approached [Eriphyle] in secret ... ¹³⁷

The Iliad reports that Tydeus and Polyneikes visited Mycenae before the war in the hope of enlisting allies; but although the Mycenaeans initially sgreed to provide a force of troops, Zeus dettere them by sending bad omens.¹³⁸

The death of Opheltes and embassy of Tydeus

As Adrastos and his army were marching toward the Isthmus they passed through Nemea in the northern Argolid, where they became involved in a strange incident that led to the founding of the Nemean Games. The city was ruled at that time by Lykourgos, son of Pheres, an immigrant from Thessaly (see p. 426), who had appointed HYPSIPYLE, the former queen of Lemnos, to act as nursemaid to his infant son OPHELTES. As we will see, the Lemnian women had onspired together to kill all their menfolk, but Hypsipyle had broken the agreement by sparing her aged father Thoas (see p. 384); and when the other women had discovered this, they sold her into slavery. Or in another version, she had escaped abroad after her action had been discovered, but had then been captured by pirates who had sold her to Lykourgos.¹³⁹ Adrastos and his companions now encountered her in Nemea and asked her to show them the way to a spring, for they were thirsty after their long journey (or else needed water for a sacrifice). So she placed the infant Opheltes on a bed of parsley and led them to water. Although an oracle had warned that Opheltes should never be placed on the ground until he could walk, she thought that he would be safe because he would not actually be in contact with the ground. On returning from the spring, however, she found that the child had been killed by a snake. Adrastos and his followers killed the snake, and interceded with Lykourgos on Hypsipyle's behalf; and they then gave little Opheltes a magnificent funeral, renaming him Archemoros (Beginning of Doom) because Amphiaros declared that his death was an evil sign that indicated that many members of the army would lose their lives in the forthcoming conflict. They also held funeral games in honour of the dead child, so founding the Nemean Games, at which the judges wore dark clothing as a sign of mourning and the victors were awarded a crown of wild parsley. ... the two sons she had had with Jason.¹⁴⁰

Before launching his assualt against Thebes, Adrastos sent Tydeus ahead to the city to see whether the dispute could be settled in Polyneikes' favour by diplomatic means. According to the Iliad, Tydeus set off after the army had passed some distance on its way and had reached the thickly reeded Asopos (presumably the river of that [cont.]

p. 319

name in southern Boeotia). Apollodorus states that he set off from Kithairon, in much the same area, while Diodorus offers a different version in which Adrastos sent him from Argos before the start of the expedition. As the story is recounted in the Iliad, Tydeus found the Kadmeians (i.e. Thebans) feasting in the palace of Eteokles on his arrival, and challenged them all to contests, doubtless in wrestling or the like, which he won easily with a little help from Athena. Angered by the humiliation, the Thebans arranged for fifty young men to ambush him during his return journey, but he killed them with the sole exception of Maion, the son of Haimon and grandson of Kreon, whom he spared in response to signs from the gods. As in the case of the similar embassy before the Trojan War (see p. 454), the mission failed its purpose.¹⁴¹

The fighting at Thebes and the fate of the Seven

Although we have almost no direct information on how the fighting at Thebes was described in the early epic tradition, there seems to be gneral agreement from an early period on the fate of the main Archive champions.¹⁴² After an initial [cont.]

p. 320

confrontation in which the Tebans were driven back into their city, the attacker tried to storm the walls but were driven back in their turn. The major casualty during the assualt was the impiously arrogant Kapaneus, who boasted that he would enter and set fire to the city whether Zeus wished it or not, provoking that god to strike him with a thunderbolt while he was scaling the walls. According to Apollodorus,¹⁴³ this incident marked a turning-point, for it caused the other Argives to flee back from the city walls. Either during the attack on the walls or during a pause in the fighting after the attackers fell back, Polyneikes and Eteokles confronted one another in single combat and killed one another.¹⁴⁴ As the battle proceeded in front of the city, Tydeus was fatally wounded by Melanippos, son of Astakos, a descendant of one of the Spartoi (sown Men, who were supposed to have founded the military caste at Thebes, see p. 296). Tydeus was a favourite of Athena, who planned to confer imortality on him; but Amphiaraos hated him for his violent ways and for having helped to instigate the war, and was determined to frustrate the goddess's intent. So he cut off the head of Melanippos, and tossed it to Tydeus in expectation of a savage reaction; and when Tydeus cracked it open to gulp down the brains of his killer, Athena was so revolted whe withheld the magical potion that she had intended to apply to him. Melanippos was commonly said to have been killed by Amphiaraos (although an interpolation in Apollodorus' text suggests that Tydeus had managed to kill him after being wounded by him).¹⁴⁵ Parthenopaios was killed by Periklmenos, son of Poseidon and Chloris, daughter of Teiresias,¹⁴⁶ who went on to pursue Amphiaros from the battlefield, and would [cont.]

p. 321

...

Aeschylus presents an idiosyncratic account of the conflict ...

Kreon tries to forbid the burial of the Archive dead

After the death of the two sons of Oedipus, KREON took power at Thebes once again, either as king in his own right or as regent for Laodamas, the infant son of Eteokles. He ordered ... that the bodies of the attackers should be left to rot, a decree that [cont.]

p. 322

... ¹⁵² There is no indication that this story of the prohibition was known before the fifth century BC (although it should be remembered that we have very little early archaic evidence on anything connected to the war). When the fateful decree first appears in Attic tragedy, it has two notable consequences: Kreon's niece Antigone tries to bury her brother Polyneikes, ... and Adrastos enlists the aid of Theseus, ... to force the Thebans to allow the burial of the Archive dead. Polyneikes was finally buried at Thebes, ... in some accounts,¹⁵³ while the bodies of the other champions (apart from Amphiaraos of course) were taken off to Attica to be buried at Eleusis.¹⁵⁴ Pindar is doubtless drawing on the early epic tradition when he speakes of seven funeral pyre burning near Thebes itself.¹⁵⁵

The decree forbidding the burial of the Archive dead is first attested for the Eleusinians of Aschylus, a lost tragedy dating to the first quarter of the fifth century. In this play, Theseus helped Adrastos to recover the bodies of his comrades by negotiating a settlement, evidently with the threat of force, rather than by defeating the Thebans in battle as in the usual account.¹⁵⁶ Pausanias reports that the Thebans themselves preferred this version of the story,¹⁵⁷ as is wholly understandable; ... ¹⁵⁸ ... When the theme is taken up in Euripides' Suppliants, a play written half a century later, the chorus is made up of the mothers of the Archives dead, who accompany Adrastos to Athens and appeal as suppliants to Aithra, the mother of Theseus, at the shrine of Demeter at Eleusis. On arriving to investigate, Theseus responds sympathetically to the entreaties of Adrastos snd warns him not to set foot on Theban soil, Thesues collects an army together to attack Thebes, defeats Creon and the Thebans, and takes the dead back to give them an honourable burial. Since Kapaneus was killed by a thunferbolt from Zeus, his corpse is marked off from the others as sacred and burned on a separate funeral-pyre;¹⁵⁹ as it is burning, his wife Euadne throws herself on it to join him in death.¹⁶⁰

p. 323

p. 325

The Epigonoi capture Thebes under the leadership of Alkmaion

Then years after the expedition of the Seven, the sons of the fallen champions launched a second expedition against Thebes to avenge the fate of their fathers. ...

p. 330

When Thebes was about to be attacked by the Seven, for instance, he revealed that there was only one salvation for the city, since the blood-quilt for the sacred dragon (see p. 296) still weighed heavily on it; to atone for its death and finally allay the anger of Ares, it was necessary that a descendant of the Spartoi who was still a virgin should scrifice his own life on the spot where the dragon had been killed. MENOIKEUS, son of Kreon, who alone answered these specifications, resolved to take this action for the sake of the city in spite of his father's opposition, and stabbed himself accordingly on the city walls, enduring he would fall into the former lair of the dragon below. This legend and indeed Menoikeus himself first appear in the Phoenician Women of Euripides.²¹¹

p. 645

¹²⁹ Eur. Phoen. 69-80; cf. Apollod. 3.6.1; D.S 4.65.1; Hyg. Fab. 67 states that Oedipus ordered the alternation.

¹³⁰ Eur. Phoen. 408-29, Suppl. 132-50.

¹³¹ Eur. Phoen. 427-9, Apollod. 3.6.1.

¹³² Hyg. Fab. 73; Apollod. 3.6.1 respectively.

¹³² Paus. 9.5.6.

¹³⁴ Hes. fr. 192.

¹³⁵ Pi. Nem. 9.24, Ol. 6.15

¹³⁶ For records of their names, see Aesch. Seven 375ff., Soph. Oed. Col. 1313ff, Eur. Suppl. 861ff, Phoen. 1090ff, D.S. 4.65.7, Apollod. 3.6.3, Paus. 10.10.2, Hyg. Fab. 70.

¹³⁷ Apollod. 3.6.2, cf. ...

¹³⁸ Hom. Il. 4.376–81.

¹³⁹ Apollod. 3.6.4 and Hyg. Fab. 15 respectively.

p. 645

¹⁴¹ Hom. Il. 4.382-400, 5.802-8, Apollod. 3.6.5, cf. D.S. 4.65-4.

¹⁴² For a useful summary of course of events, see Apollod. 3.6.7-8.

¹⁴³ Aesch. Seven 423-46, Eur. Phoen. 1172-86, Suppl. 496-9, Apollod. 3.6.7.

¹⁴⁴ Aesch. Seven 807-19, Eur. Phoen. 1356-1424, Apollod. 3.6.8.

...

¹⁵² E.g. Apollod. 3.7.1 (Kreon succeeds as king, forbids burial), Paus. 9.5.6 (as regent for Laodamas)

¹⁵³ Aesch. Seven 914, 1002-4, cf. schol. Pi. Ol.6.22, together at family burial place. Paus 9.18.3, near Proteian Gates, where honoured in hero-cult; when offerings were burned to them, so it was claimed, the flames and even the smoke would divide into two, cf. Hyg. Fab 68.

¹⁵⁴ Where their supposed graves could be seen in historical times, Paus. 1.39.2; see also Hdt. 9.27, Plut. Thes. 29.

¹⁵⁵ Pi. Ol. 6.15, Nem. 9.22-4.

¹⁵⁶ As reported in Plut. Thes. 29.

¹⁵⁷ Paus. 1.39.2

¹⁵⁸ Plut. Thes. 29.

¹⁵⁹ Eur. Suppl. 934-7, 980-1.

¹⁶⁰ Eur. Suppl. 990-1107, Apollod. 3.7.1, Hyg. Fab. 243.

p. 647

²¹¹ Eur. Phoen. 834ff; parting speech of Menoikeus, 927-1018, Kreon laments his death, 1310-21. Cf. Apollod. 3.6.7, Hyg. Fab. 68.

Kovacs

1998

p. 4

In our play Adrastus, king of Argos, and the mothers and sons of the Seven have come to Eleusis in Attica to appeal to the Athenians for help in burying their dead. They first approach Aethra, Theseus’ mother, who is in Eleusis to sacrifice to the two goddesses of Eleusis, Demeter and Kore (Persephone). But then Theseus, king of Athens, arrives,and Adrastus addresses him. At first he refuses to help: Adrastus, he has learned, ignored warnings against the expedition from god and seer alike.

p. 6

...Their grieving is redoubled when the cortege arrives bearing the bodies of their sons, and Adrastus joins the Chorus in a long duet of lamentation.

Theseus asks Adrastus for an oration over the fallen, an explanation of their great courage. It was the custom at Athens for a public oration to be made each year over those who died for the city in war. Here Adrastus, in myth a speaker notable for his eloquence, is given the role that fell to Pericles and others in historical times. He describes the way of life adopted by the five men he praises, a life of modesty, poverty, and physical austerity. Training like this, he says, taught them to be brave. (Only Capaneus, Eteoclus, Hippomedon, Parthenopaeus, and Tydeus are eulogized by Adrastus. Amphiaraus’ body is not available since both he and his chariot were swallowed up in the earth. Polynices himself was presumably buried in Theban soil.)

2002

Parada

s.v. SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

The seven leaders who followed Adrastus 1 in his war against Thebes. They failed but ten years later the EPIGONI, their sons, took the city. [The lists include defenders and the names of the Gates of Thebes.]

--> Aes.Sev.375ff., Soph.OC.1313ff.:

Assailant.= Defender. = Gate

Amphiaraus. = Lasthenes. = Homoloidian.

Capaneus. = Polyphontes 2. = Electran

Eteoclus. = Megareus 1. = Neistan.

Hippomedion 1. = Hyperbius 2. = Oncaidian

Parthenopaues. = Actor 5. = Borraean

Polynices. = Eteocles 1. =

Tydeus. = Melanippus 1. = Proetidian.

#	Attacker	Defender	Gate
1	Tydeus	Melanippus	Proetidian
2	Capaneus	Polyphontes	Electran
3	Eteoclus	Megareus	Neistan
4	Hippomedon	Hyperbius	Oncaidian
5	Parthenopeus	Actor	Borraean
6	Amphiaraus	Lasthenes	Homoloidian
7	Polynices	Eteocles

--> Apd.3.6.3:

Assailant.= Gate

Adrastus 1. = Homoloidian.

Amphiaraus

Capaneus

Eteoclus

Meicisteus 1

Parthenopaues

Polynices

Tydeus

Sommerstein

2009a

p. 147

Towards the end of Seven there are several passages of highly suspect authenticity.¹⁷ The final scene, in which a herald forbids the burial of Polyneices, Antigone defies him, and the chorus divide in two, half escorting the body of one brother and half that of the other, ruins an ending which till then had stressed, over and over again, the equality of the brothers in death, and leaves the action of the play, and therefore of the trilogy, lacking any closure; at one point, moreover (1039, where see note), the text can hardly be understood without prior acquaintance with Sophocles’ Antigone. It is overwhelmingly probable, therefore, that this scene was added for a restaging of Seven, at a time when Sophocles’ play had made it impossible to think of the mutual slaughter of Eteocles and Polyneices without also thinking of the tragic heroism of their sister.

¹⁷ See R. D. Dawe, CQ 17 (1967) 16–28; Taplin, Stagecraft 169–191; Sommerstein AT 130–4.

2009b

pp. 56–57

Our information about this play comes mainly from a reference to it in Plutarch’s Life of Theseus (29.4–5), which shows that it dealt with the same events as Euripides’ Suppliants—the recovery by Theseus, at the request of Adrastus, of the bodies of the Seven against Thebes, which the Theban authorities were refusing to release for burial. In Euripides, Theseus secures possession of the bodies by defeating the Thebans in battle; in Aeschylus, according to Plutarch (compare also Isocrates, Panathenaicus 168–171), he did so by a negotiated agreement, and afterwards gave Adrastus permission to have the bodies buried at Eleusis.¹ The play may have formed a trilogy with Women of Argos and Epigoni (qq.v.)

¹ Where “the tombs of the Seven” existed in Pausanias’ time (Pausanias 1.39.2) and doubtless in Aeschylus’ time too. Euripides also speaks of tombs being built at Eleusis (Suppliants 935–8), but these appear to be cenotaphs, since while he has the Seven cremated at Eleusis, their ashes are then taken back to Argos (Suppliants 1185–8).

Tripp

s.v. Seven against Thebes

Argive champions who besieged Thebes.

A. When ADRASTUS (1), son of Talaüs, was a king of Argos, he was awakened one night by two young men quarreling over a couch on the porch of his palace. He separated them and lerned that one was POLYNEICES, son of Oedipus, from Thebes, and the other Tydeus, son of Oeneus, from Calydon. Instead of rebuking the brawlers, the king promptly married them to his daughters Argeia and Deïpyle, for, noticing that Polyneices wore on his shield the device of a lion and Tydeus that of a boar, he recalled that an oracle had told him long ago that he should yoke his daughters to a lion and a boar. The double marriage pleased the young men, for both had come to Argos to secure armed assistance in recovering their kingdoms. Tydeus had been banished from his for murder. Polyneices and his brother Eteocles, had agreed to rule Thebes in alternate years after the deposition of OEDIPUS, but, cursed by their father with the fate of dying by each other's hands, they had soon quarreled, and Eteocles had refused to relinquish the throne, at the end of his term.

B. Adrastus promised to help Polyneices first. It was not difficult for him to raise an army ...

C. The seven champions, under the leadership of Adrasus, left for Thebes with their followers. (those who count the foreigners, Polyneices and Tydeus, among the Seven do not mention Mecisteus or Eteoclus.) ...

D. The Seven now marched with troops against Thebes. ... The famous seer Teiresias declared that the city would be saved if Menoeceus, son of Eteocles' uncle, Creon, were to sacrifice himself. This the youth willingly did.

E. ... [Apollodorus 3.6-7; Aescylus, Seven Against Thebes; Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1254-1447, and Antigone; Euripides' The Phoenician Women and The Suppliants.]

West

p. 4

The Theban and Trojan Wars were the two great military enterprises of the mythical age, the wars which according to Hesiod (Works and Days 161-165) brought to an end the race of heroes, who are called demigods. The poet of the Iliad knows of the earlier war and refers to it in several places.