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From Greek and Roman Mythology & Heroic Legend, by Professor H. Steuding, Translated from the German and Edited by Lionel D. Barnett. The Temple Primers, London: J. M. Dent; 1901; pp. 95-99.

[95]

Heroic Poetry

IX.  The Theban Legend-Cycle.   § 167.  The all-pervading idea that we find underlying the stories combined in the Theban series of legends (Kyklos, cycle) is the doctrine that man is neither by wisdom nor by power and strength able to fulfil his own designs against the will and determination of the gods. Indeed, the very foresight which seeks to bring to naught the purpose of the gods as announced by oracles and other signs must itself subserve the execution of divine will. This is shown in the simplest shape in the march of the Seven against Thebes described in the Thebais, of which the campaign of the Epigonoi or ‘Descendants’ is a later counterpart; and it appears in more complicated form in the Oidipodeia, which had already in early Homeric times treated what is probably the oldest part of the whole legend, and led up to the conflict of the Thebais. The concluding Alkmaionis, from the beginning of the sixth century B.C., depicts finally the power of the godhead to punish murder of kindred. In the surviving Thebais of the Roman poet Statius 96 the leading thoughts of all these lost epics are brought together. This group of legends is still more fully treated from the purely moral standpoint in Attic tragedy, from which still survive the Seven against Thebes of Aischylos, the Oidipus King, Oidipus at Kolonos, and the Antigone of Sophokles, as well as the Phoenician Women of Euripides.

§ 168.  Laios the son of Labdakos was by the will of the gods to have been the last king of Thebes from the race of Kadmos. He was therefore told by the oracle at Delphoi that if he begot a son this son would slay him and wed his mother. When nevertheless a son was born to him by his wife Iokaste (or Epikaste, as she is styled in the epics), the sister of the last Spartos Kreon, he pierced his feet, tied them together, and caused him to be exposed on the neighbouring Mount Kithairon, in order thus by the slaughter of his child to make the fulfilment of the oracle impossible. The child however was found by a herdsman, brought to Sekyon or Corinth before King Polybos, and by him adopted and called Oidipus, i. e. (as popularly explained) ‘Swell-foot.’ When grown up Oidipus questioned the oracle at Delphoi as to his true origin, but received for answer only the ominous words that he would go in unto his mother, bring into the world a race loathsome to human sight, and slay the father who begot him (Oidipus King, 791 ff.). To make the threat futile he did not return to Corinth; while still near Delphoi however he met his father Laios at a crossway, and on being insulted slew him without recognising him.

§ 169.  Meanwhile Thebes had fallen into sore straits. The Sphinx (‘Strangler’) — a monster compounded of the upper part of a winged maiden and the lower part of a lion with a snaky tail, and probably in origin a goblin-like ghost, although later it was completely confused with the similarly formed Egyptian and Babylonian symbol of power and speed — lodged on a hill near to the city, and set to every passer-by the riddle “Who is it that in the morning walks on four legs, at mid-day on two, and in the evening on three?” All who failed to guess it she slew, among them, according 97 to the older legend, Kreon’s son Haimon. Kreon was now on the death of his brother-in-law Laios ruler in Thebes. He promised as reward for liberation from this pest the hand of the queen and the kingship of Thebes. Oidipus rightly explained the riddle as meaning man, and became now king in his native city as well as husband of his mother. According to the older epos the gods made manifest this sin shortly after; Epikaste slew herself and Oidipus blinded himself, but afterwards begot by another wife Euryganeia the sons Eteokles and Polyneikes as well as the two daughters Antigone and Ismene. Later epos and the tragedians do not speak of any second marriage of Oidipus, but make all these children his offspring by Iokaste herself. According to them his guilt was first revealed by the seer Teiresias in consequence of his own infatuation.

§ 170.  For an insignificant offence Oidipus afterwards laid on his sons the curse that they should divide their inheritance with the edge of the sword. He himself died in Thebes, or — in the Attic version of the story — in exile at the sanctuary of the Semnai in Kolonos, near Athens, under the protection of Theseus.

§ 171.  In the division of their heritage and the kingdom Eteokles and Polyneikes fell to quarrelling; the latter then fled to Adrastos, King of Argos and Sekyon. As son-in-law of the latter he set on foot an expedition against his brother. Adrastos himself undertook to lead it, and his brother-in-law the Aitolian Tydeus, the valiant son of Oineus of Kalydon, his brothers Hippomedon and Parthenopaios, the mighty Kapaneus, and the brave seer Amphiaros, another brother-in-law, supported him. Amphiaraos indeed foresaw that he would perish in the campaign, but was nevertheless induced to take a part by his wife Eriphyle, who had been bribed by Polyneikes with a splendid necklace that brought disaster to its owner. He therefore commanded his son Alkmaion (‘the mighty one’) that he avenge his father’s death on his mother as soon as he had grown up.

§ 172.  In spite of signs prophetic of disaster the Seven, 98 confident in their own power, pressed onward against Thebes and beset the seven gates of the city. Kapaneus had already mounted the wall when the thunderbolt of Zeus hurled him down again. The two brothers Eteokles and Polyneikes slew one another in a duel. But the struggle was kept up with terrible fury; Tydeus indeed as he died mangled with his teeth the head of his fallen opponent, and sucked his brain out of his cloven skull. Amphiaros sank alive with his chariot near Thebes into a rift of the earth which Zeus opened up before him by a blow of his thunderbolt. Here he ruled as a spirit dispensing oracles by means of dreams; he received the same devout worship in other places, especially at Oropos, where the site of his temple and his healing spring have recently been brought to light (compare § 4.)

§ 173.  Of the Seven, according to the later version, Adrastos alone escaped, being saved by his swift charger Arion. The Thebans were persuaded by him, or, in the Attic story, constrained by Theseus, to surrender the corpses of the fallen Argives for burial. Aischylos and Sophokles further connected with this the ruin of Antigone. According to them, Polyneikes as enemy of his native land was doomed to lie unburied. His sister Antigone however, in defiance of this edict, laid him upon the funeral pile of Eteokles, or at least covered him with earth. Seized by the appointed watchman, she was condemned to death for this deed, enjoined as it was by sisterly love and divine law.

§ 174.  Ten years afterwards the sons of the fallen heroes, the Epigonoi, now attended by the gods’ favour, marched against Thebes, conquered and destroyed it, and established on the throne Thersandros, the son of Polyneikes. The whole expedition was thoroughly worked up by later poetry as a counterpart of the first. Alkmaion, the leader of the host, fulfilled before departure his father’s injunction, and to avenge him slew his mother. Although however Apollon himself had given his approval to this, Alkmaion was pursued like Orestes by the Erinyes until after long wanderings he found final rest on the island of Acheloos in Akarnania, which had 99 just arisen from the sea and therefore was not defiled by the murder of his mother.





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Heroic Poetry :

X.  The Achaian and Trojan Cycle.



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