Classical Mythology

380 THE GREEK SAGAS: GREEK LOCAL LEGENDS

Chthonius

I

r^ i

Dirce m. Lycus Nycteus

H-i

I I Zeus m. Antiope Nycteis (m. Polydorus)

Amphion m. Niobe Zethus m. Thebe

Figure 17.2. The Descendants of Chthonius

exile. They built walls for the city, whose stones were moved into place by the

music of Amphion's lyre. Amphion married Niobe (whose story is told on

p. 203), and Zethus married Thebe, in whose honor the newly walled city was

renamed Thebes.

The story of the family of Lycus repeats motifs from the story of Cadmus.

The walling of Cadmeia and its renaming is a doublet of the founding of the

city by Cadmus, and just as Cadmus and Harmonia civilized their people, so

Amphion's music demonstrated the power of harmony and beauty over the dis-

united and inanimate stones.

LAIUS

After a reign of many years Amphion and Zethus died, and Laius returned from

exile and resumed the kingship of which he had been deprived as an infant. In

exile, he had been hospitably received by Pelops, king of Elis. The ties of guest

and host were among the most sacred of human relationships, and Laius brought

upon himself and his descendants a curse by abducting Chrysippus, the son of

Pelops, with whom he had fallen in love. Apollo foretold the working out of the

curse in the first generation when Laius (now king of Thebes) consulted the Del-

phic oracle about the children who should be born to him and his wife, Jocasta.

This is the reply of the oracle (Sophocles, Argument to Oedipus Tyrannus):

I will give you a son, but you are destined to die at his hands. This is the deci-

sion of Zeus, in answer to the bitter curses of Pelops, whose son you abducted;

all this did Pelops call down upon you.

OEDIPUS, SON OF LAIUS AND JOCASTA

When a son was born, Laius attempted to avoid the fate foretold by the oracle

by ordering the infant to be exposed upon Mt. Cithaeron, with a spike driven