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Antiope (mother of Amphion)
Greek mythological figure From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In Greek and Roman mythology, Antiope (/ænˈtaɪəpi/; Ancient Greek: Ἀντιόπη, romanized: Antiópē) is the mother of the twin heroes Amphion and Zethus by Zeus the king of the gods. Although stated in early sources to be a daughter of the Boeotian river god Asopus, most authors made her a child of king Nycteus of Thebes. Although her myth has many variations, they all agree that Antiope is forced to expose her children after their birth and then spends many years being abused by her uncle and his wife before her sons save her.
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Antiope's myth inspired a number of artists in both the classical and post-classical period. Her myth is best known from its adaptation by Athenian playwright Euripides in the now lost play Antiope, produced in the last quarter of the fifth century BC. During the Roman era, it was common for Zeus to be portrayed as having taken the form of a satyr to approach Antiope.
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Family
Usually Antiope is presented as the daughter of Nycteus by Polyxo, although in Homer and Apollonius Rhodius her father is Asopus, the river-god.[1] She bore the twins Amphion and Zethus to Zeus.[2] Through Nycteus she had two sisters, Polyxo and Nycteïs.
Mythology
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The Epic Cycle
The earliest mention of Antiope can be found in the eight-century BC poem Odyssey. When the travelling king of Ithaca Odysseus arrives to the Underworld and summons the souls of the dead queens and princesses, Antiope is one of the several who appear, described as a daughter of the river-god Asopus who is proud to have laid with Zeus and borne his sons, Amphion and Zethus, heroes who founded seven-gated Thebes.[3]
Another entry of the Epic Cycle, the Cypria, apparently references Antiope with the story of how Epopeus was ruined for seducing the daughter of Lycurgus (or Lycus depending on manuscript).[4] Other traditions make Antiope the daughter of Nycteus, brother to Lycus and regent of Thebes, which was founded by Cadmus. It is unclear what lineage was known to Hesiod; the accomplishments of Amphion and Zethus are mentioned in the Catalogue of Women,[5] and so it probably discussed their mother's ancenstry, but it is impossible to determine which version that work utilised.[6]
Euripides
The fullest and most influential account of the myth is found in Athenian playwright Euripides' dramatization of the story, the now lost play Antiope, of which many fragments and a summary are preserved. It was produced in the late 400s BC, with both 420s and 409 BC proposed as the original producation dates.[7]
According to the play, Antiope fell pregnant when Zeus visited her bed 'as a bad man'.[8] Fearing her father's reaction she fled to Sicyon, where she was given shelter by king Epopeus, whom she also married.[9] Nycteus was enraged, and before dying, he tasked his brother Lycus to punish Antiope.[10] Lycus went to Sicyon, and after killing Epopeus, dragged Antiope back to Thebes, who gave birth to twin boys in Eleutherae near Cithaeron. She left the infants to a kindly herdsman to raise. She called them Amphion and Zethus, due to giving birth to them on the road (amphodon) and asking for an easy labour (ezetese).[11][10]
Back in Thebes Lycus assumed the vacant regency, while he and his cruel wife Dirce abused Antiope and treated her as a slave. Eventually after many years of torment she found a chance at escape and made a run for it, reaching Eleutherae and finding there her grown-up sons, Amphion a talented singer and musician, Zethus a hard-working herdsman.[1] Euripides contrasted their active and contemplative lives via a debate between the two, with Zethus advocating for hard work and berating his brother for his love of music and pleasure.[12][13] Unlike her however her sons did not recognise her, and did not believe her when she claimed to be their mother with Zeus as the father.[8] Suspecting Antiope of being an escaped slave, they refused to shelter her.[9][14]
Dirce soon arrived to attend the worship of Dionysus, being a Bacchante. She spotted and recognised the runaway Antiope, and had Amphion and Zethus tie her to a wild bull with the intention of letting the animal loose to wreak havoc and kill Antiope in the process.[10] The boys' foster father arrived then and revealed to Amphion and Zethus their true parentage.[15] The twins then untied Antiope and tied Dirce instead, letting the wild bull drag the queen to her demise as punishment for her cruel treatment of their mother all those years.[10]
They were about to kill Lycus as well when he too joined them on Cithaeron, but Hermes intervened and convinced them to spare Lycus, who then left the throne of Thebes to them both.[16][15] Hermes also instructed them to built the fortifications of the city using Amphion's lyre and music, which magically prompted the building stones to put themselves in place.[16]
Late authors
In later authors starting in the Roman era, Zeus was commonly portrayed as taking the form of a satyr to seduce or rape Antiope.[17][18] Arthur Bernard Cook commented that the portrayal of him as a satyr, and Antiope as a Maenad, gave the story a Dionysian flavour.[19]
Nycteus' death also varies; in some versions he kills himself out of shame of Antiope's disgrace,[20] while in others he is the one to lead the initial campaign against Sicyon, only to be mortally wounded so he transfers regency and responsibility to punish Antiope and Epopeus over to his brother Lycus.[21]
Nicolaus of Damascus meanwhile places the events of the story during Laius' reign; Antiope, kept as a slave by Dirce, approched her sons in court and begged them to save her. Amphion and Zethus killed Lycus and stoned Dirce to death, but Laius allowed them to have Lycus' house as reparations for they were Antiope had been treated.[22]
The Sicyonian version
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As evidenced by the Cypria fragment, an important element of Antiope's story is her relation with the king of Sicyon. The Archaic poet Asius of Samos (following apparently the Sicyonian tradition) probably presented Epopeus and Antiope's relationship in a positive manner, more akin to seduction and elopment than abduction; nevertheless Nycteus waged a war against Sicyon in order to fetch his daughter back, and after being killed Lycus picked up from where his brother left off.[25] His job was easy because as Pausanias relates Epopeus died of his wounds and his successor handed Antiope over to Lycus with no fuss.[26]
Asius likely placed Antiope's impregnation by Zeus after her marriage to Epopeus and might have included the element of heteropaternal superfecundation (meaning that one twin was fathered by Zeus and the other by Epopeus), in analogy with the pregnancies of Alcmene, Leda and Chione.[27] Her relation with him is not always positive however; Pausanias wrote that Epopeus kidnapped Antiope,[21] although Nycteus' reaction might indicate Antiope colluded in her abduction.[28] Epopeus can be seen as an embodiment of Zeus himself; his name means 'he who sees all', and it was used as one of Zeus' own cult epithets.[29]
Hyginus records a version in which Epaphus the son of Io (probably a misspelling of Epopeus) raped Antiope so her husband-uncle Lycus kicked her out, and it was then that she was impregnated by Zeus.[9] Lycus' new wife Dirce threw Antiope into a prison cell out of jealousy, but by Zeus' will her chains came undone, allowing Antiope to give birth to her sons away from Thebes. The story then proceeded as standard.[30] The two Vatican Mythographers also recounted this version with Epaphus.[31]
Later life
In some traditions, Dionysus inflicted madness upon Antiope for Dirce's murder, as the queen had been a devoted worshipper to the god. Antiope wandered restlessly all around Greece until she chanced upon Phocus on Mount Parnassus, who cured her and married her.[32][33] They were buried together in the same tomb when they died.[34]
Antiope's line did not get to keep the rulership of Thebes. Zethus married Aëdon, who accidentally killed their only child Itylus in her effort to harm her sister-in-law by killing her son Amaleus.[35] Amphion married Niobe, whose twelve or fourteen children were shot dead by Apollo and Artemis after their mother bragged of being a more accomplished mother than Leto.[36] After the deaths of the heirless Amphion and Zethus, the throne passed to Laius, whom Nycteus had been regent for.
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In Greek culture
Summarize
Perspective
Antiope is an exceptional example of a woman suffering extended punishment for promiscuity, linked sexually to three different men, but also for being close to other people who commit some crime (her sons killing Dirce).[37]
At Sicyon, Antiope was important enough that a chryselephantine cult image was created of her and set up in the temple of Aphrodite. Pausanias speaks of it.[38] Only one priestess, an elderly woman, was permitted to enter the cella of the temple, with a young girl chosen each year, to serve as Lutrophoros.[39]
Euripides' Antiope,[40] presented about 408 BCE, was widely quoted, in Plato's Gorgias[41] and many other authors, resulting in a large array of fragments. In 1890 Flinders Petrie discovered further papyrus fragments, which had been reused in constructing a 3rd-century BCE Ptolemaic mummy case found in the Fayoum; the palaeography suggested that the scroll was old before it was reused as waste, making these fragments the earliest surviving text of any Greek play;[42] the discovery occasioned a rash of new readings of the existing fragments. The modern comprehensive reconstruction of all the fragments is that of Jean Kambitsis, ed. and commentator, L'Antiope d'Euripide (Athens, 1972).
Parallels
Burkert notices similarities[example needed] between the myth of Antiope and her sons and the Athenian myth of Athena Polias and Erechtheus.[43]
Antiope's twin sons were Amphion, son of Zeus, and Zethus, son of the mortal Epopeus. Another pair of twins with dual parentage are the Dioscuri, who often appear as snakes, protecting temples.[44]
Dionysos, to whose worship Antiope was devoted, visited her with madness, causing her to wander restlessly all over Greece until she was cured. This myth is similar to that of Io, a priestess of the goddess Hera in Argos who was stung by a gadfly and wandered in madness to Egypt.[45] Io's sons Cadmus and Danaos returned to Greece, where they became kings of Thebes and Argos respectively.
The trope of a city founded by royal twins also appears in the myth of Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome.
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Genealogy
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See also
Notes
- The sleeping nude, from the ducal gallery at Mantua, was not identified as Antiope before the 18th century; the painting is discussed by Lauren Soth[23] who remarks that a sleeping Antiope would be an innovation with ancient or Renaissance precedent and reidentifies the subject as Terrestrial Venus; Marcin Fabiański carries the analysis further.[24]
References
Bibliography
External links
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