Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/308

 276 HISTORY OF GREECE. Adrastus, thus deprived of the prophet and warrior whom he regarded as " the eye of his army," and having seen the other chiefs killed in the disastrous fight, was forced to take flight sin- gly, and was preserved by the matchless swiftness of his horse Areion, the offspring of Poseidon. He reached Argos on his return, bringing with him nothing except " his garments of woe and his black-maned steed." 1 Kreon, father of the heroic youth Mencekeus, succeeding to the administration of Thebes after the death of the two hostile brothers and the repulse of Adrastus, caused Eteokles to be buried with distinguished honor, but cast out ignominiously the body of Polynikes as a traitor to his country, forbidding every one on pain of death to consign it to the tomb. He likewise refused permission to Adrastus to inter the bodies of his fallen comrades. This proceeding, so offensive to Grecian feeling, gave rise to two further tales ; one of them at least of the highest pathos and interest. Antigone, the sister of Polynikes, heard with indignation the revolting edict consigning her brother's body to the dogs and vultures, and depriving it of those rites which were considered essential to the repose of the dead. Unmoved by the dissuading counsel of an affectionate but timid sister, and unable to procure assistance, she determined to brave the hazard and to bury the body with her own hands. She was detected in the act ; and Kreon, though forewarned by Teiresias of the con- sequences, gave orders that she should be buried alive, as having deliberately set at naught the solemn edict of the city. His son Haemon, to whom she was engaged to be married, in vain inter- ceded for her life. In an agony of despair he slew himself in the sepulchre to which the living Antigone had been consigned ; 1 Pausan. viii. 25, 5, from the Cyclic ThebaTs, Ec^ara Avypd <(ifpuv ai>v 'Apelovi KvavoxaiTq ; also Apollodor. iii. 6, 8. The celebrity of the horse Areion was extolled in the Iliad (xxiii. 346), in the Cyclic Thebals, and also in the Thebats of Antimachus (Pausan. 1. c.) : by the Arcadians of Thelpusia he was said to be the offspring of Dcme- ter by Poseidon, he, and a daughter whose name Pausanias will not com- municate to the uninitiated (fa TO ovofta if uTfTiearovf Aeyetv ov vo/j.iovai t 1. C.). A different story is in the Schol. Iliad, xxiii. 346 ; and in Antimach- us, who affirmed that " Gaea herself had produced him, as a wonder to mor tal men" /ce Antimach. Frag. 16. p. 102 ; Epic. Grace. Frag. ed. Diintzer).