Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

AMPHIAEAOS AND ERIPHYLE. 185
with the one exception of Adrastos. But he had promised CHAP,
the Argive king that in any differences which might .
arise between them- he would abide by the decision of his
wife Eriphyle, and Eriphyle had been bribed by Polyneikes
with the gift of the necklace and peplos of Harmonia to de-
cide in favour of the expedition. Thus Amphiaraos departs
for Thebes with a presentiment of his own coining doom
as strong as the consciousness of Achilleus that his career
must be brief; but before he sets out, he charges his
sons Amphilochos and Alkmaion to slay their mother, so
soon as they hear of his death, and to inarch against the
hated city of Thebes; and thus the starting point was
furnished not only for the Theban war, but for a new series
of woes to be wrought by the Erinyes of Eriphyle.
The germs of the rivalry, which in the case of the sons of The sod
Oidipous grew into a deadly hatred, are seen in the points °
of contrast afforded by almost all the correlative deities of
Greek and Yedic mythology, and the twin heroes whether
of the east or the west. 1 Thus there is a close parallel
between the Dioskouroi and the sons of Oidipous. The
former may not be seen together; the latter agree to reign
over Thebes in turn ; and it was a ready device to account
for the subsequent feud by saying that the brother whose
time was over refused to abide by his compact. Hence
Polyneikes became an exile ;
but it is not easy to determine
precisely to what degree a purely moral element has forced
its way into this series of legends from the horror which a
union like that of Iokaste and Oidipous, when regarded as a
fact in the lives of two human beings, could not fail to in-
spire. Here also the Erinys might exercise her fatal office,
for the blood of Iokaste must cry for vengeance as loudly as
that of Iphigeneia or Amphiaraos; and the same feeling
which suggested the curse of Amphiaraos on Eriphyle would
also suggest the curse of Oidipous on his children. In the
1 They are, in short, the rival brothers True and Untrue, by Big Peter and
not only of the royal houses of Sparta, Little Peter in Dasent's Xorse Tales.
but in a vast number of stories in Aryan In the story of the Widow's Son (Dasent)
folk-lore, and are represented by Ferdi- we have a closer adherence to the type
nand the Faithful and Ferdinand the of the Dioskouroi in the two princes, one
Unfaithful in Grimm's collection, by of whom is turned into a horse.
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