Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/300

 268 HISTORY OF GREECE The disputes of Eteokles and Polynikes for the throne of their father gave occasion not only to a series of tragical iamily inci- dents, but also to one of the great quasi-historical events of legen- dary Greece the two sieges of Thebes by Adrastus, king of Argos. The two ancient epic poems called the Thebai's and the Epigoni (if indeed both were not parts of one very comprehen- sive poem) detailed these events at great length, and as it appears, with distinguished poetical merit ; for Pausanias pronounces the Cyclic Thebai's (so it was called by the subsequent critics to dis- tinguish it from the more modern Thebai's of Antimachus) infe- rior only to the Iliad and Odyssey ; and the ancient elegiac poet Kallinus treated it as an Homeric composition. 1 Of this once- valued poem we unfortunately possess nothing but a few scanty fragments. The leading points of the legend are briefly glanced at in the Iliad ; but our knowledge of the details is chiefly derived from the Attic tragedians, who transformed the narratives of their predecessors at pleasure, and whose popularity constantly eclips- ed and obliterated the ancient version. Antimachus of Kolophon, contemporary with Euripides, in his long epic, probably took no less liberties with the old narrative. His Thebai'd never became generally popular, but it exhibited marks of study and elabora- tion which recommended it to the esteem of the Alexandrine critics, and probably contributed to discredit in their eyes the old cyclic poem. The logographers, who gave a continuous history of this siege of Thebes, had at least three preexisting epic poems the The- bi'as, the CEdipodia, and the Alkmaeonis, from which they ness of GEdipus; but it seems doubtful whether this circumstance was inclu- ded in the narrative of Pherekydes. 1 Pausan, ix. 9. 3. 'ETroiri&r} 6s f rbv nohepov TOVTOV /cat CTIV/, Qr]3aif T& <5e ITTJ? ravra Ka/l/ltvof, utyiKofievof avruv f [IVTJ/LITJV, e^Tjaev 'Opijpov rdv xoirjoavra elvai. KcMiivy 6e trol.'Xoi TE nal agioi "kdyov Kara ravra lyvuaav iya) de TT)V Troir/ffiv raiirnv fiera ye 'IXiaSa not ra ZTTTI ru If 'Odvaaea iiraivu fiuTiiara. The name in tho text of Pausanias stands KaAatVoc, an unknown person : most of the critics recognize the propriety of substituting Kc/Wtvo?, and Leutsch and Welcker have given very sufficient reasons for doing so. The 'ApQiupEu i&haaia if Qriftas, alluded to in the pseudo-Herodotean life of Homer, seems to I the description of a special passage in this The- '