The Penguin Book of Classical Myths by Jenny March

Author:Jenny March
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141920597
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

The expedition of the Seven against Thebes was one of the great mythological campaigns of the ancient world, by no means as large as the expedition of the Greeks against Troy, immortalized by Homer in the Iliad, but still one in which many great heroes and their followers took part. Sadly, the epic Thebais which told the story at length is lost, apart from a few tiny fragments, so the myth must be pieced together from other sources. Here Apollodorus (3.6), as so often, is helpful. And since this dramatic story was a favourite with the Greek tragedians, we are also fortunate to have several of the relevant plays extant.

It all began when the two sons of Oedipus, Eteokles (‘True Glory’) and Polyneikes (‘Much Strife’), quarrelled over the rule of Thebes. Kreon had been regent until they came of age, but then both brothers wished to be king, and there are various accounts of how they settled the matter. Either they agreed that they would each have alternately a year in power, then a year in exile, and Eteokles took the first year as king, but refused to give up the throne when the year was over. Or Eteokles simply took the throne and drove Polyneikes out. Or the brothers made a bargain that one of them would rule while the other left Thebes for ever, taking a large share of the property. When they came to draw lots, it was Eteokles who won the kingship and Polyneikes who left Thebes with many possessions. (These included the beautiful necklace and robe of Kadmos’s wife Harmonia, each of which would play a fateful part in the subsequent story.) Unfortunately Polyneikes later changed his mind and decided that he still wanted to be king. Whatever the details, the end result was the same: Polyneikes, finding himself exiled from his homeland, resolved to win the throne of Thebes by force.

He had taken refuge with Adrastos, the king of Argos, arriving at the very same time as another exile, Oineus’s son Tydeus, who had been banished from Kalydon for murder. One fateful night, Adrastos was awakened by the two young men fighting for possession of a bed in the palace porch, and at once he was reminded of an oracle that said he must yoke his daughters in marriage to a lion and a boar. Either the two men were fighting like these same wild beasts; or they had on their shields the emblems of a lion (Polyneikes) and a boar (Tydeus); or they were clad in the skins of those animals; or the creatures were symbols of their homelands, the lion standing for the lion-bodied Sphinx of Thebes and the boar for the Kalydonian Boar. Whatever the reason, Adrastos remembered the oracle and married his daughters to the young men, Argeia to Polyneikes and Deipyle to Tydeus.

The couples settled at Argos, but Adrastos promised his new sons-in-law that he would restore them to their lost kingdoms. First of all he would help Polyneikes to recover Thebes.

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