Myth Of Adrastus
Seven Against Thebes, the seven champions who were killed fighting against Thebes after the fall of Oedipus, the king of that city. The twins Eteocles and Polyneices, who had been cursed by their father, Oedipus, failed to agree on which of them was to succeed to the Theban throne and decided to rule in alternate years. As Eteocles’ turn came first, Polyneices withdrew to Argos, where he married Argeia, daughter of King Adrastus. Another daughter, Deipyle, married Tydeus, son of the exiled king Oeneus of Calydon. At the end of the year, Polyneices’ turn came to rule Thebes. When Eteocles refused to give up the throne, Adrastus mobilized an army, whose chieftains, in Aeschylus’s tragedy about the Seven, were Tydeus, Capaneus, Eteoclus, Hippomedon, Parthenopaeus, Amphiaraus, and Polyneices. Other authors count Adrastus as one of the Seven and omit Hippomedon or Polyneices. During their assault on the city’s seven gates, Capaneus was struck by Zeus’s lightning bolt; Amphiaraus was swallowed up by the earth; Polyneices and Eteocles killed each other, fulfilling Oedipus’s curse; and the others were killed by the guards at Thebes. When the sons of the dead Seven, the Epigoni, or second generation, had grown to manhood, Adrastus again attacked the city and occupied it after the Thebans had evacuated it by night. He died at Megara on the homeward journey.
During a feud between the most powerful houses in Argos, Talaus was slain by Amphiaraus, and Adrastus being expelled from his dominions fled to Polybus, then king of Sicyon. When Polybus died without heirs, Adrastus succeeded him on the throne of Sicyon, and during his reign he is said to have instituted the Nemean games.
Ten years after this Adrastus persuaded the seven sons of the heroes, who had fallen in the war against Thebes, to make a new attack upon that city, and Amphiaraus now declared that the gods approved of the undertaking, and promised success. This war is celebrated in ancient story as the war of the Epigoni. Thebes was taken and razed to the ground, after the greater part of its inhabitants had left the city on the advice of Tiresias.
The only Argive hero that fell in this war, was Aegialeus, the son of Adrastus. After having built a temple of Nemesis in the neighborhood of Thebes (see Adrasteia), he set out on his return home. But weighed down by old age and grief at the death of his son he died at Megara and was buried there. After his death he was worshiped in several parts of Greece, as at Megara, at Sicyon where his memory was celebrated in tragic choruses, and in Attica.
The legends about Adrastus and the two wars against Thebes have furnished most ample materials for the epic as well as tragic poets of Greece, and some works of art relating to the stories about Adrastus are mentioned in Pausanias.
During a feud between the most powerful houses in Argos, Talaus was slain by Amphiaraus, and Adrastus being expelled from his dominions fled to Polybus, then king of Sicyon. When Polybus died without heirs, Adrastus succeeded him on the throne of Sicyon, and during his reign he is said to have instituted the Nemean games.
Ten years after this Adrastus persuaded the seven sons of the heroes, who had fallen in the war against Thebes, to make a new attack upon that city, and Amphiaraus now declared that the gods approved of the undertaking, and promised success. This war is celebrated in ancient story as the war of the Epigoni. Thebes was taken and razed to the ground, after the greater part of its inhabitants had left the city on the advice of Tiresias.
The only Argive hero that fell in this war, was Aegialeus, the son of Adrastus. After having built a temple of Nemesis in the neighborhood of Thebes (see Adrasteia), he set out on his return home. But weighed down by old age and grief at the death of his son he died at Megara and was buried there. After his death he was worshiped in several parts of Greece, as at Megara, at Sicyon where his memory was celebrated in tragic choruses, and in Attica.
The legends about Adrastus and the two wars against Thebes have furnished most ample materials for the epic as well as tragic poets of Greece, and some works of art relating to the stories about Adrastus are mentioned in Pausanias.
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