Most suffered grave misfortune or, even worse, died horrible deaths:. In his tragedy The Bacchae? Euripides points out the parallels between their punishment and the fate of Actaeon at several crucial moments during the play.
Agave and her son made the mistake of offending Dionysus by denying that he was a god. Pentheus made matters worse by forbidding the women of Thebes from taking part in the wild rites held in Dionysus's honor. To punish them both, Dionysus drove Agave mad and tricked Pentheus into spying on a Dionysian festival open only to women. When they caught Pentheus, the revelers, deluded into believing he was a mountain lion, ferociously tore the king apart. Like his cousin Actaeon and his aunt Semele, Pentheus had suffered a gruesome death brought on by witnessing something he should never have seen.
Two generations later, Laius? But usurpers forced the young boy to run away to Olympia, site of the future Olympic Games. After he grew to manhood, Laius returned to Thebes to reclaim the throne. Some storytellers contend that Hippodameia, Pelops's wife, spurred two of her sons, Atreus and Thyestes, to go to Thebes and kill Chrysippus to prevent Pelops from naming the boy as his successor.
Others suggest that Hippodameia killed the boy herself, using Laius's sword after creeping into his bedchamber at night. Laius escaped punishment because Chrysippus named his stepmother as his murderer with his dying breath. Yet before he left Olympia, Laius betrayed King Pelops? Laius had become enamored with Chrysippus, Pelops's illegitimate son. Laius kidnapped the boy, bringing him to Thebes to serve as his sexual plaything.
Chrysippus soon killed himself to escape his shame. As king of Thebes, Laius married within the House of Cadmus. Laius and Jocasta remained childless for many years. Oedipus sent for the Theban shepherd and the truth was discovered. Oedipus at Colonus. At Colonus Oedipus bid farewell to his daughters and then miraculously disappeared from the earth, observed only by Theseus. A hero-cult was established at the place where he vanished. He prayed that after his death they might fight to divide the kingdom.
Oedipus died at Thebes in this version , and his sons quarreled over the throne, agreeing finally that each should reign in alternate years while the other went into exile.
Eteocles and Polynices. After the first year, Eteocles refused to give up the throne, and Polynices raised an army with the help of Adrastus, king of Argos, to march against Thebes.
This is the start of the saga of the Seven against Thebes. The Seven. He ordered his sons to avenge his death by punishing Eriphyle. Hypsipyle and Opheltes. The Seven against Thebes. Tydeus, one of the Seven, failed in a peace embassy to Thebes and escaped an ambush set by the Thebans.
Hero-cults in his honor were established in Thebes and elsewhere. Polynices and Eteocles killed each other in single combat. Antigone defied the edict of Creon forbidding the burial of Polynices. Obeying instead the decrees of Zeus, she gave her brother symbolic burial and was condemned to death by Creon. Burial of the Heroes.
Theseus helped the widows and mothers of the dead Argive heroes recover the unburied corpses and give them proper funerals. Alcmaeon and Eriphyle.
Pursued by the Furies, he came to Arcadia, where he married the daughter of King Phegeus, to whom he gave the necklace of Harmonia. As a matricide, he was a pollution on the land and was driven out.
His sons became the founders of the Greek district of Acarnania. About the Book. Having followed the cow, Cadmus established the site of Thebes. He sent his companions to fetch water from a nearby spring that was guarded by a dragon. When the dragon killed a number of his companions Cadmus slew it. Athena appeared and told him to sow the dragon's teeth. After doing so, armed men sprang up ready to fight, so Cadmus threw a stone among them and they fell upon themselves until only five warriors remained, each of whom offered to serve Cadmus in building Thebes.
However, Ares was angered at the killing of the dragon and forced Cadmus to serve him for eight years. Cadmus was then awarded the lovely Harmonia as his wife, and all the Olympians attended the wedding, bringing splendid gifts for the bride.
Cadmus ruled well, making Thebes a prosperous city. He and Harmonia lived to grow old peacefully, but their old age was troubled by terrible events.
Having abdicated the throne in favor of his grandson, Pentheus, Cadmus emigrated from Thebes after Pentheus was slain by his mother in Dionysian madness.
Cadmus' other daughters had unhappy fates, for Semele was blasted by Zeus; another leapt from a cliff holding her dead son; and a fourth had her son Actaeon torn to bits. Although some of these catastrophes were justifiable, unmerited suffering seemed to plague the House of Cadmus. Its founder was no exception. Sent abroad in their old age, Cadmus and Harmonia were changed into snakes before they died. Yet their death was favorable, for they went to the Blessed Isles.
Eventually Cadmus' great-grandson Laius became king at Thebes. Laius married Jocasta, but learned from the Delphic oracle that he would die by the hands of his own child. However, he got drunk one night and conceived a son. Laius and Jocasta exposed the infant on a mountain, riveting its ankles together. The child was found by a Corinthian peasant who took it to the childless King Polybus. Polybus accepted the boy and raised it as his own, naming it Oedipus. As a young man Oedipus consulted the Delphic oracle, and it told him he would murder his father and marry his mother.
Horrified, Oedipus did not return to Corinth, thinking that Polybus and his queen, Merope, were his true parents. Instead he went to Thebes, where a monster called the Sphinx was waylaying travelers and killing everyone who could not answer her riddle.
The Sphinx had the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the head and chest of a woman. When Oedipus confronted her she asked him what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs at evening. Oedipus answered, "Man," realizing the riddle referred to man's progress from infancy to old age. The Sphinx then killed herself, and the Thebans welcomed Oedipus as their king for having delivered them.
He married Queen Jocasta and fathered two sons and two daughters on her. Thebes flourished under King Oedipus. But then a plague struck the city, decimating the inhabitants. Pledged to aid the city, Oedipus sent his brother-in-law Creon to the Delphic oracle to learn how the plague might be stopped.
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