2After travelling through Thrace and the whole of India, where he set up pillars,* he arrived in Thebes,* where he forced the women to desert their houses and abandon themselves to Bacchic frenzy on Mount Cithairon. But Pentheus, a son of Echion by Agave, who had inherited the throne from Cadmos, tried to put an end to these practices, and when he went to Mount Cithairon to spy on the Bacchai, he was torn to pieces by his mother Agave, who, in her frenzy, took him for a wild beast. Having shown the Thebans that he was a god, he went to Argos, and there again, when they failed to honour him, he drove the women mad, and they carried their unweaned children into the mountains and feasted on their flesh.
3Wanting to make the sea-passage from Icarios to Naxos, he chartered a pirate ship with a crew of Tyrrhenians. When they had him on board,* however, they sailed past Naxos and pressed on towards Asia hoping to sell him. But he changed the mast and oars into snakes and filled the craft with ivy and the sound of flutes; and the pirates went mad, and jumped into the sea, where they turned into dolphins.
In this way, men came to know that he was a god and paid due honour to him; and after he had brought his mother up from Hades and named her Thyone, he ascended to heaven in her company.
Successors and usurpers at Thebes
4Cadmos left Thebes with Harmonia and went to the land of the Encheleans.* Now the Encheleans were being attacked by the Illyrians, and the god had revealed to them in an oracle that they would obtain victory over the Illyrians if they had Cadmos and Harmonia as their leaders. In obedience to the god, they engaged them as their leaders against the Illyrians, and gained the upper hand. Cadmos became king of the Illyrians and had a son, Illyrios. Later he was turned into a snake* together with Harmonia, and sent to the Elysian Fields by Zeus.
5When Polydoros became king of Thebes, he married Nycteis, the daughter of Nycteus, [son of] Chthonios, and had a son, Labdacos, who lost his life after Pentheus because he thought in much the same way* as him. He left a one-year-old child, Laios, but Lycos, the brother of Nycteus, seized control of the government as long as Laios remained a child.* The two brothers had fled [from Euboea] because they had kilted Phlegyas, son of Ares and Dotis the Boeotian, and had settled at Hyria;* and [from there, they had moved to Thebes,*] where they became citizens as a result of their friendship with Pentheus. So it came to pass that Lycos, after being chosen as polemarch* by the Thebans, seized supreme power, and ruled for twenty years until he was murdered by Zethos and Amphion, for the following reason.
Antiope was a daughter of Nycteus; and Zeus had intercourse with her. When she turned out to be pregnant and her father threatened her, she ran away to Epopeus* in Sicyon, and became his wife. Nycteus was thrown into such despondency that he killed himself,* ordering Lycos to punish Epopeus and Antiope. So Lycos marched against Sicyon, killed Epopeus, and took Antiope prisoner. On the way back, she gave birth to two sons at Eleutherai in Boeotia. They were exposed, but a cowherd discovered them and brought them up, calling one of them Zethos and the other Amphion. Zethos devoted himself to cattle-rearing, while Amphion practised singing to the lyre (for he had been given a lyre by Hermes). As for Antiope, Lycos and his wife Dirce kept her in confinement and ill-treated her. One day, however, without her jailers knowing it, her bonds untied themselves of their own accord, and she made her way to her sons’ farmhouse, hoping to find refuge with them. Recognizing her as their mother, they killed Lycos, and bound Dirce to a bull, and then, when she was dead, hurled her body into the spring that bears the name of Dirce on her account.
After taking power, they built a wall around the city (the stones followed the sound of Amphion’s lyre*) and they expelled Laios. He went to live in the Peloponnese as a guest of Pelops; and while he was teaching Pelops’ son Chrysippos how to drive a chariot, he fell in love with him and carried him off.
Amphion, Niobe, and their children
6Zethos married Thebe, from whom the city of Thebes derives its name, and Amphion married Niobe, daughter of Tantalos, who bore him seven sons, Sipylos, Eupinytos, Ismenos, Damasichthon, Agenor, Phaidimos, and Tantalos, and the same number of daughters, Ethodaia (or according to some, Neaira), Cleodoxa, Astyoche, Phthia, Pelopia, Astycrateia, and Ogygia. According to Hesiod, however, they had ten sons and ten daughters, while Herodoros says that they had two male and three female children, and Homer* that they had six sons and six daughters. Having so many children, Niobe said that she was better blessed with children than Leto; and Leto was so angered by this that she incited Artemis and Apollo against them, and Artemis shot down the female children inside the house, and Apollo all the male children as they were hunting on Mount Cithairon. Of the males, Amphion alone survived,* and of the females, only the eldest, Chloris,* who later became the wife of Neleus (though according to Telesilla, those who survived were Amyclas and Meliboia, and Amphion was amongst their victims). Niobe herself left Thebes and went to stay with her father Tantalos at Sipylos; and there, in response to her prayers to Zeus, she was transformed into a stone* that streams with tears by night and day.
Laios and Oedipus
7After the death of Amphion,* Laios took over the kingdom. He married a daughter of Menoiceus whom some call Iocaste, others Epicaste.* An oracle from the gods had warned him not to have a child, for if he did, the son who would be born to him would become his father’s murderer; but while he was drunk with wine, he had intercourse with his wife. When the child was born, he pierced its ankles with buckle-pins and passed it to a herdsman for exposure. But when he exposed it on Mount Cithairon, the herdsmen of Polybos, king of Corinth, discovered the baby and brought it to the king’s wife, Periboia. She took him in and passed him off as her own son, and after she had healed his ankles she called him Oedipus*giving him that name because of his swollen feet.
When the boy grew up and surpassed the others of his age in strength, they grew jealous and poured scorn on him for being a supposititious child.* He questioned Periboia but could learn nothing from her, so he went to Delphi and asked who his true parents were. The god told him not to return to his native land, for if he did, he would murder his father and sleep with his mother. Hearing this, and believing that he really was born from those who were said to be his parents, he kept away from Corinth. But as he was travelling through Phocis in his chariot, he came across Laios, also driving in a chariot, on a certain narrow track.* And when Polyphontes, the herald of Laios, told him to make way, and killed one of his horses because he refused to obey or was slow to do so, Oedipus was enraged and killed both Polyphontes and Laios; and he drove on to Thebes.
8Laios was buried by Damasistratos, king of Plataea, and Creon, son of Menoiceus,* succeeded to the throne. During his reign, a disaster of no small proportion struck Thebes; for Hera sent the Sphinx.* The mother of the Sphinx was Echidna and her father Typhon, and she had the face of a woman, the chest, feet, and tail of a lion, and the wings of a bird. She had learned a riddle from the Muses, and seated on Mount Phicion, she posed it to the Thebans. The riddle ran as follows: what is it that has a single voice,* and has four feet, and then two feet, and then three feet? Now the Thebans possessed an oracle telling them that they would be freed from the Sphinx when they solved her riddle, so they gathered together repeatedly to seek the solution; but when they failed to discover it, the Sphinx would carry one of them off and devour him. When many had died in this way, including, ultimately, Creon’s son Harmon, Creon proclaimed that he would give both the kingdom and the widow of Laios to the man who could solve the riddle. When Oedipus heard of this, he supplied the answer, saying that the riddle of the Sphinx referred to man; for he is four-footed as a baby when he crawls on all fours, two-footed as an adult, and takes on a third limb in old age in the form of a stick. So the Sphinx hurled herself from the Acropolis, and Oedipus took over the kingdom, and also, without realizing it, married his mother. He had two sons by her, Polyneices and Eteocles, and two daughters, Ismene and Antigone. There are some who say, however, that these children were born to him by Euryganeia,* daughter of Hyperphas.