Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/313

 ERIPHYLE AND ALOLEON. 281 gods had enjoined his sons Alkmaeon and Amphilochus not only to avenge his death upon the Thebans, but also to punish the treachery of their mother, " Eriphyle, the destroyer of her husband." 1 In obedience to this command, and having obtained the sanction of the Delphian oracle, Alkmoeon slew his mother ; 2 but the awful Erinnys, the avenger of matricide, inflicted on him a long and terrible punishment, depriving him of his reason, and chasing him about from place to place without the possibility of repose or peace of mind. He craved protection and cure from the god at Delphi, who required him to dedicate at the temple, as an offering, the precious necklace of Kadmus, that irresistible bribe which had originally corrupted Eriphyle. 3 He further inti- mated to the unhappy sufferer, that though the whole earth was tainted with his crime, and had become uninhabitable for him, yet there was a spot of ground which was not under the eye of the sun at the time when the matricide was committed, and where 1 ' A.v3pn6apavr' 'EpKbvArjv (Pindar, Nem. ix. 16). A poem Eryphite was included among the mythical compositions of Stesichorus : he mentioned in it that Asklepius had restored Kapaneus to life, and that he was for that reason struck dead by thunder from Zeus (Stesichor. Eragm. Kleine, 18, p. 74). Two tragedies of Sophokles once existed, Epigoni and AlkmtEtin ( Welcker, Griechisch. Tragod. i. p. 269) : a few fragments also remain of the Latin Epigoni and Alphesibcea of Attius : Ennius and Attius both composed or translated from the Greek a Latin Alkmcedn (Poet. Scenic. Latin, ed. Both, pp. 33, 164, 198). 2 Hyginus gives the fable briefly (f. 73 ; see also Asclepiades, ap. Schol. Odyss. xi. 326). In like manner, in the case of the matricide of Orestes, Apollo not only sanctions, but enjoins the deed ; but his protection against the avenging Erinnyes is very tardy, not taking effect until after Orestes has been long persecuted and tormented by them (see JEschyl. Eumen. 76, 197 462). In the Alkm<E6n of the later tragic writer Thodektes, a distinction was drawn: the gods had decreed that Eriphyle should die, but not that Alk- moon should kill her (Aristot. Rhetoric, ii. 24). Astydamas altered the story still more in his tragedy, and introduced Alkmseon as killing his mother ignorantly and without being aware who she was (Aristot. Poetic, c. 27). The murder of Eriphyle by her son was one of the irapt^/j.fj.evoi uv&o '. which could not be departed from ; but interpretations and qualifica- tions were resorted to, in order to prevent it from shocking the softened feelings of the spectators : see the criticism of Aristotle on the Alhncedn of Euripides (Ethic. Nicom. iii. 1, 8). 3 Ephorus ap. Athcnse. vi. p. 232.