Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/296

 264 HISTORY OF GREECE. Amphion and Zethus, having banished Laius, become kings of Thebes. The former, taught by Hermes, and possessing exquis- ite skill on the lyre, employs it in fortifying the city, the stones of the walls arranging themselves spontaneously in obedience to the rhythm of his song. 1 Zethus marries Aedon, who, in the dark and under a fatal mis- take, kills her son Itylus : she is transformed into a nightingale, while Zethus dies of grief. 2 Amphion becomes the husband of Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, and the father of a numerous off- spring, the complete extinction of which by the hands of Apollo and Artemis has already been recounted in these pages. Here ends the legend of the beautiful Antiope and her twin sons the rude and unpolished, but energetic, Zethus and the refined and amiable, but dreamy, Amphion. For so Euripides, in the drama of Antiope unfortunately lost, presented the twc eighth fable of Hyginus contains the tale of Antiope as given by Euripides and Ennius. The story of Pausanias differs from both. The Scholiast ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 735. says that there were twc persons named Antiope ; one, daughter of Asopus, the other, daughter of Nykteus. Pausanias is content with supposing one only, really the daughter of Nyk- teus, but there was a tyfjfiri that she was daughter of Asopus (ii. 6, 2). Asius made Antiope daughter of Asopus, and mother (both by Zeus and by Epo- peus : such a junction of divine and human paternity is of common occur rence in the Greek legends) of Zethus and Amphion (ap. Paus. 1. c.). The contradictory versions of the story are brought together, though no/ very perfectly, in Sterk's Essay De Labdacidamm Historia, p. 38-43 (Ley- den, 1829). 1 This story about the lyre of Amphion is not noticed in Homer, but il was narrated in the ancient ITD? if 'Evpunr/v which Pausanias had read : the wild beasts as well as the stones were obedient to his strains (Paus ix. 5, 4). Pherekydes also recounted it (Pherekyd. Fragm. 102, Didot). The tablet of inscription (' Avaypap?}) at Sikyon recognized Amphion as the first com poser of poetry and harp-music (Plutarch, de Musica, c. 3. p. 1132). 525). Pausanias adds the statement that Zethus died of grief (ix. 5, 5 : Pherekydes, Fragm. 102, Did.). Pausanias, however, as well as Apollodo- ros, tells us that Zethus married Thebe, from whom the name Thebes was given to the city. To reconcile the conflicting pretensions of Zethus and Amphion with those of Kadmus, as founders of Thebes, Pausanias supposes that the latter was the original Settler of the hill of the Kadmeia, while thf two forme* extended the settlement to the lower city (ix. 5, 1-3).
 * The tale of the wife and son of Zethus is as old as the Odyssey (xix.