The beauteous Epicaste saw I then, Mother of Oedipus, who guilt incurr'd Prodigious, wedded, unintentional, To her own son; his father first he slew, Then wedded her, which soon the Gods divulged. He, under vengeance of offended heav'n, In pleasant Thebes dwelt miserable, King Of the Cadmean race; she to the gates Of Ades brazen-barr'd despairing went, Self-strangled by a cord fasten'd aloft To her own palace-roof, and woes bequeath'd (Such as the Fury sisters execute Innumerable) to her guilty son.
He ended, and his speech found no reply. One godlike Chief alone, Euryalus, Son of the King Mecisteus, who, himself, Sprang from Talaion, opposite arose. He, on the death of Oedipus, at Thebes Contending in the games held at his tomb, Had overcome the whole Cadmean race. Him Diomede spear-famed for fight prepared, Giving him all encouragement, for much He wish'd him victory. First then he threw His cincture to him; next, he gave him thongs Cut from the hide of a wild buffalo. Both girt around, into the midst they moved. Then, lifting high their brawny arms, and fists Mingling with fists, to furious fight they fell; Dire was the crash of jaws, and the sweat stream'd From every limb. Epeüs fierce advanced, And while Euryalus with cautious eye Watch'd his advantage, pash'd him on the cheek He stood no longer, but, his shapely limbs, Unequal to his weight, sinking, he fell. As by the rising north-wind driven ashore A huge fish flounces on the weedy beach, Which soon the sable flood covers again, So, beaten down, he bounded. But Epeüs, Heroic chief, upraised him by his hand, And his own comrades from the circus forth Led him, step dragging after step, the blood Ejecting grumous, and at every pace Rolling his head languid from side to side. They placed him all unconscious on his seat In his own band, then fetch'd his prize, the cup.
CREON, in Greek legend, son of Menoeceus, king of Thebes after the death of Laius, the husband of his sister Jocasta. Thebes was then suffering from the visitation of the Sphinx, and Creon offered his crown and the hand of the widowed queen to whoever should solve the fatal riddle. Oedipus, the son of Laius, ignorant of his parentage, successfully accomplished the task and married Jocasta, his mother. By her he had two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, who agreed after their father's death to reign in alternative years. Eteocles first ascended the throne, being the elder, but at the end of the year refused to resign, whereupon his brother attacked him at the head of an army of Argives. The war was to be decided by a single combat between the brothers, but both fell. Creon, who had resumed the government during the minority of Leodamas, the son of Eteocles, commanded that the Argives, and above all Polyneices, the cause of all the bloodshed, should not receive the rites of sepulture, and that any one who infringed this decree should be buried alive. Antigone, the sister of Polyneices, refused to obey, and sprinkled dust upon her brother's corpse. The threatened penalty was inflicted; but Creon's crime did not escape unpunished. His son, Haemon, the lover of Antigone, killed himself on her grave; and he himself was slain by Theseus. According to another account he was put to death by Lycus, the son or descendant of a former ruler of Thebes (Euripides, _Herc. Fur._ 31; Apollodorus iii. 5, 7; Pausanias ix. 5). Entry: CREON
ANTIGONE, (1) in Greek legend, daughter of Oedipus and Iocaste (Jocasta), or, according to the older story, of Euryganeia. When her father, on discovering that Iocaste, the mother of his children, was also his own mother, put his eyes out and resigned the throne of Thebes, she accompanied him into exile at Colonus. After his death she returned to Thebes, where Haemon, the son of Creon, king of Thebes, became enamoured of her. When her brothers Eteocles and Polyneices had slain each other in single combat, she buried Polyneices, although Creon had forbidden it. As a punishment she was sentenced to be buried alive in a vault, where she hanged herself, and Haemon killed himself in despair. Her character and these incidents of her life presented an attractive subject to the Greek tragic poets, especially Sophocles in the _Antigone_ and _Oedipus at Colonus_, and Euripides, whose _Antigone_, though now lost, is partly known from extracts incidentally preserved in later writers, and from passages in his _Phoenissae_. In the order of the events, at least, Sophocles departed from the original legend, according to which the burial of Polyneices took place while Oedipus was yet in Thebes, not after he had died at Colonus. Again, in regard to Antigone's tragic end Sophocles differs from Euripides, according to whom the calamity was averted by the intercession of Dionysus and was followed by the marriage of Antigone and Haemon. In Hyginus's version of the legend, founded apparently on a tragedy by some follower of Euripides, Antigone, on being handed over by Creon to her lover Haemon to be slain, was secretly carried off by him, and concealed in a shepherd's hut, where she bore him a son Maeon. When the boy grew up, he went to some funeral games at Thebes, and was recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body. This led to the discovery that Antigone was still alive. Heracles pleaded in vain with Creon for Haemon, who slew both Antigone and himself, to escape his father's vengeance. On a painted vase the scene of the intercession of Heracles is represented (Heydermann, _Über eine nacheuripideische Antigone_, 1868). Antigone placing the body of Polyneices on the funeral pile occurs on a sarcophagus in the villa Pamfili in Rome, and is mentioned in the description of an ancient painting by Philostratus (_Imag._ ii. 29), who states that the flames consuming the two brothers burnt apart, indicating their unalterable hatred, even in death. Entry: ANTIGONE
The history of Cyrus very soon became involved and quite overgrown with legends. Herodotus (i. 95) tells us that he knew four different traditions about him. One makes him the son of Mandane, a daughter of Astyages (originally evidently by a god), who is exposed in the mountains by his grandfather on account of an oracle, but suckled by a dog (a sacred animal of the Iranians) and educated by a shepherd; i.e. the myth which we know from the stories of Oedipus, Perseus, Telephus, Pelias and Neleus, Romulus, Sargon of Agade, Moses, the Indian hero Krishna, and many others, has been transferred to the founder of the Persian empire. At the same time, the rule of Cyrus and the Persians is legitimated by his family connexion with Astyages. This account is partly preserved in Justin i. 4. 10 (probably from Charon of Lampsacus) and in Aelian, _Var. Hist._ xiv. 42, and alluded to by Herodotus i. 95 and 122. The second account, which Herodotus follows, is a rationalized version of the first, where the dog is changed into a woman (the wife of the shepherd) named Spako (bitch). In the later part of his story Herodotus is dependent on the family traditions of Harpagus, whose treason is justified by the cruelty with which Astyages had treated him (the story of Atreus and Thyestes is transferred to them). Harpagus afterwards stood in high favour with Cyrus, and commanded the army which subdued the coasts of Asia Minor; his family seems to have been settled in Lycia. In a third version, preserved from Ctesias in Nicolaus Damasc. p. 66 (cf. Dinon ap. Athen. xiv. 633 C), Cyrus is the son of a poor Mardian bandit Atradates (the Mardians are a nomadic Persian tribe, Herod. i. 125), who comes as a voluntary slave to the court of Astyages, and finds favour with the king. A Chaldaean sage prophesies to him his future greatness, and another Persian slave, Oebares, becomes his associate. He flies to Persia, evades the pursuers whom Astyages sends after him, and begins the rebellion. After the victory Oebares kills Astyages against the will of Cyrus, and afterwards kills himself to evade the wrath of Cyrus. Parts of this story are preserved also in Strabo xv. p. 729, and Justin i. 6. 1-3; 7. 1; cf. Ctesias _ap._ Photium 2-7; many traces of it were afterwards transferred to the story of Ardashir I. (q.v.), the founder of the Sassanid empire. With this version Ctesias and Nicolaus have connected another, in which Cyrus is the son of a Persian shepherd who lives at Pasargadae, and fights the decisive battle at this place. The didactic novel of Xenophon, the _Cyropaedia_, is a free invention adapted to the purposes of the author, based upon the account of Herodotus and occasionally influenced by Ctesias, without any independent traditional element. The account of Aeschylus, _Pers._ 765 ff., is a mixture of Greek traditions with a few oriental elements; here the first king is Medos (the Median empire); his nameless son is succeeded by Cyrus, a blessed ruler, beloved by the gods, who gave peace to all his friends and conquered Lydia, Phrygia, Ionia. Then comes his nameless son, then Mardos (i.e. Smerdis, to whom the name of the Mardians is transferred) who is killed by Artaphrenes (i.e. Artaphernes, Herod. iii. 78, one of the associates of Darius), then Maraphis (eponym of the Maraphian tribe), then another Artaphrenes, then Darius. Entry: 1
ETEOCLES, in Greek legend, king of Thebes, son of Oedipus and Jocasta (Iocaste). After their father had been driven out of the country, he and his brother Polyneices agreed to reign alternately for a year. Eteocles, however, refused to keep the agreement, and Polyneices fled to Adrastus, king of Argos, whom he persuaded to undertake the famous expedition against Thebes on his behalf. The two brothers met in single combat, and both were slain. The Theban rulers decreed that only Eteocles should receive the honour of burial, but the decree was set at naught by Antigone (q.v.), the sister of Polyneices. The fate of Eteocles and Polyneices forms the subject of the _Seven against Thebes_ of Aeschylus and the _Phoenissae_ of Euripides. Entry: ETEOCLES