This article is about the figure in Greek mythology. For the play by Sophocles, seeAmphiaraus (play). For the Jovian asteroid, see10247 Amphiaraos.
Amphiaraus on his chariot.
Amphiaraus orAmphiaraos (/ˌæmfiəˈreɪəs/;Ancient Greek: Ἀμφιάραος, Ἀμφιάρεως, "very sacred"[1]) was inGreek mythology the son ofOicles, a seer, and one of the leaders of theSeven against Thebes. Amphiaraus at first refused to go withAdrastus on this expedition against Thebes as he foresaw the death of everyone who joined the expedition. His wife,Eriphyle, eventually compelled him to go.[2]
Amphiaraus marriedEriphyle, the sister of his cousinAdrastus (the grandson of Melampus's brotherBias), and by her was the father of two sons,Alcmaeon andAmphilochus.[9] From the geographerPausanias, we hear of three daughters,Eurydice,Demonissa andAlcmena. He reports seeing on the Chest ofKypselos atOlympia, a scene showing Amphiararaus's departure for the expedition against Thebes. Pausanias identifies (possible from inscriptions) other participants in the scene as: the infant Amphilochus, Eryphyle, her daughters,Eurydice andDemonissa, and a naked Alcmaeon.[10] He goes on to add that the poetAsius also has Alcmena as a daughter of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle.[11] According toPlutarch,Alexida was a daughter of Amphiaraus.[12]
The Clytidae (alternate spelling "Klytidiai"), a clan of seers atOlympia, claimed to be the descendants of aClytius, who they said was the son of Amphiaraus's son Alcmaeon.[13] According to Roman legends, the founder of the town of Tibur (modernTivoli) nearRome, was a son of Amphiaraus.[14]
Amphiaraus was a seer, and greatly honored in his time. BothZeus andApollo favored him, and Zeus gave him his oracular talent. In the generation before theTrojan War, Amphiaraus was one of the heroes present at theCalydonian boar hunt[15] and also counted as anArgonaut.[16]
The material of the tragic war of theSeven against Thebes was taken up from several points of view by each of the three great Greek tragic poets. Eriphyle persuaded Amphiaraus to take part in the raiding venture, against his better judgment, for he knew he would die.[17] She had been persuaded byPolynices, who offered her thenecklace of Harmonia, daughter ofAphrodite, once part of the bride-price ofCadmus, as a bribe for her advocacy. Amphiaraus reluctantly agreed to join the doomed undertaking, but aware of his wife's corruption, asked his sons,Alcmaeon andAmphilochus, to avenge his inevitable death by killing her, should he not return. He had foreseen the failure and for this reason did not agree to join first.[18] On the way to the battle, Amphiaraus repeatedly warned the other warriors that the expedition would fail,[17] and blamedTydeus for starting it. For this, he would eventually prevent the dying Tydeus from being immortalized byAthena, by giving him the still-living severed head of his foeMelanippus, whose brains Tydeus devoured along with his last breath, revolting the goddess. (This scene, as rendered byStatius, provided the model forDante's own seminal account ofUgolino gnawing onRuggieri's skull in Cantos XXXII and XXXIII of theInferno.) At some point, while the allies of Polyneices sat down to feast, an eagle swooped down and grabbed Amphiaraus's spear, taking it to a great height and then letting it drop on the earth. The spear was fixed in the soil, and transformed into a laurel tree.[19]
In the battle, Amphiaraus sought to flee fromPericlymenus, the "very famous"[20] son ofPoseidon, who wanted to kill him, but Zeus threw his thunderbolt, and the earth opened to swallow and conceal Amphiaraus – right on the same spot the laurel had grown from his spear[19] – and his chariot, before Periclymenus could stab him in the back and thereby disgrace his honor.[21] Thus becoming achthonic hero, Amphiaraus was later propitiated and consulted at his sanctuary.
Alcmaeon killed his mother when Amphiaraus died. He was pursued by theErinyes as he fled across Greece, eventually landing at the court of KingPhegeus, who gave him his daughterAlphesiboea in marriage. Exhausted, Alcmaeon asked anoracle how to avoid the Erinyes and was told that he needed to stop where the sun was not shining when he killed his mother. That was the mouth of the riverAchelous, which had been silted up. Achelous himself,god of that river, promised him his daughter,Callirrhoe in marriage if Alcmaeon would retrieve the necklace and clothes which Eriphyle wore when she persuaded Amphiaraus to take part in the battle. Alcmaeon had given these jewels to Phegeus who, outraged, had his sons kill Alcmaeon when he discovered Alcmaeon's plan.
In a sanctuary at theAmphiareion of Oropos, northwest ofAttica, Amphiaraus was worshipped with ahero cult. He was considered a healing and fortune-telling god and was associated withAsclepius. The healing and fortune-telling aspect of Amphiaraus came from his ancestry: he descended from the great seerMelampus. After making a sacrifice of a few coins, or sometimes a ram, at the temple, a petitioner slept inside[22] and received a dream detailing the solution to the problem. Games, called the Amphiaria (ἀμφιαράϊα), were celebrated in his honour there.[23]
Etruscan tradition inherited by theRomans is doubtless the origin of a son for Amphiaraus named Catillus who escaped from the slaughter at Thebes and led an expedition to Italy, where he founded a colony where eventually appeared the city ofTibur (nowTivoli), named after his eldest son Tiburtus.
In thePython, the first book to describePyrrhonist philosophy, the book's author,Timon of Phlius first meetsPyrrho on the grounds of the temple of Amphiaraus. The symbolism of this may be due to Pyrrho being a member of the Clytidae, a clan of seers inElis who interpreted the oracles of theTemple of Zeus at Olympia. The founder of the clan was claimed to be Clytius, the grandson of Amphiaraus.[24]
InDante Alighieri'sInferno, King Amphiaraus was seen in the Sorcerers' section ofHell's Circle of Fraud where his action of foreseeing his death is mentioned.
InJohn Lydgate'sSiege of Thebes, Amphiorax, foreseeing the future, attempts to hide from the Greeks when they seek his advice but is given up by his wife, who in Lydgate is torn between her promise to him and her womanly duty of honesty.[28]
^The descendants of Melampus included many notable seers, the most notable, after Melampus and Amphiaraus, being theCorinthian seerPolyidus; for a discussion see Hard,pp. 429–430.
^For a discussion of the dynastic history of the Argolid, see Hard,pp. 332–335.
^Apollodorus,1.9.13,3.6.2 (Eriphyle as wife) &3.7.2 (father of Alcmaeon and Amphilochus). Eriphyle as Amphiaraus's wife is alluded to byHomer,Odyssey11.326–327 ("hateful Eriphyle, who took precious gold as the price of the life of her own lord"),15.246–247 ("Amphiaraus" [who died at Thebes] "because of a woman's gifts"). For Eriphyle as wife, see alsoPindar,Nemean9.16–17;Diodorus Siculus,4.65.6. For Alcmaeon as son see alsoPausanias,6.17.6.
^Smith 1854,s.v. Tibur; Smith 1873,s.v. Amphiaraus; Grimal, s.v. Amphiaraus;Gaius Julius Solinus,Polyhistor2.8–9;Pliny the Elder,Natural History,16.87. Solinus, reports that, according toCato, "Catillus the Arcadian", an officer ofEvander, was the founder of Tibur, and Solinus goes on to say that this Catillus was the son of Amphiaraus, and that, on his grandfather Oicles's orders, he migrated to Italy, had three sons Tibertus, Coras and Catillus, expelled the Sicilia from the town of Sicani, and renamed the town Tibur after his eldest son Tibertus. Pliny the Elder, says that the founder of Tivoli was Amphiaraus's son Tiburnus. See alsoVirgil,Aeneid7.670–672,Horace,Odes1.18.2,2.6.5.
^Apollodorus,1.8.2: "Atalanta was the first to shoot the boar in the back with an arrow, and Amphiaraus was the next to shoot it in the eye; but Meleager killed it by a stab in the flank...".
Frazer, J. G.,Pausanias's Description of Greece. Translated with a Commentary by J. G. Frazer. Vol III. Commentary on Books II-V, Macmillan, 1898.Internet Archive.
Grimal, Pierre,The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996.ISBN978-0-631-20102-1.
Hard, Robin,The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004,ISBN9780415186360.Google Books.
Hyginus, Gaius Julius,Fabulae inApollodorus'Library and Hyginus'Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, Translated, with Introductions by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Hackett Publishing Company, 2007.ISBN978-0-87220-821-6.
Plutarch,Greek and Roman Parallel Stories, inMoralia, Volume IV: Roman Questions. Greek Questions. Greek and Roman Parallel Stories. On the Fortune of the Romans. On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander. Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom?. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt.Loeb Classical Library 305. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1936.
Plutarch,Quaestiones Graecae inMoralia, Volume IV: Roman Questions. Greek Questions. Greek and Roman Parallel Stories. On the Fortune of the Romans. On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander. Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom?. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt.Loeb Classical Library No. 305. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1936.ISBN978-0-674-99336-5.Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
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