The sons of Phineus, Fate and blinding in Antigone

The last two strophes of the fifth ode of Antigone enrich the theme that Fate cannot be dodged, outwitted, or subjected to our will.

From Danae's permeable prison in Argos, to Lycurgus's hopeless repression of Bacchus in Thrace -- both touched on here -- the fifth ode moves to Salmydessus and the tale of the sons of Phineus.

It's a tale of a very bad stepmother -- Idaea, or Eidothea, the second wife of Phineus. This king first married Cleopatra, the daughter of Boreas and Orytheia. The choral ode reminds us that Cleopatra was not only high-born, but that through her mother she traced her lineage to Erechtheus -- the first Athenian culture hero and sacred offspring of an averted rape of Athena by Hephaestus. (More on Erechtheus here.)

The ode, then, concerns a king who was married to a woman descended from the founding hero of Athens and from the North Wind, who bore him two sons. But he put Cleopatra away and married Idaea/Eidothea, the stepmother described in the ode using her shuttle to crush the eyes of the sons of Cleopatra and Phineus.

παρὰ δὲ κυανεᾶν πελάγει διδύμας ἁλὸς 
ἀκταὶ Βοσπόριαι ἥδ᾽ ὁ Θρῃκῶν ἄξενος 
970Σαλμυδησσός, ἵν᾽ ἀγχίπτολις Ἄρης 
δισσοῖσι Φινείδαις 
εἶδεν ἀρατὸν ἕλκος 
τυφλωθὲν ἐξ ἀγρίας δάμαρτος 
ἀλαὸν ἀλαστόροισιν ὀμμάτων κύκλοις 
975ἀραχθέντων, ὑφ᾽ αἱματηραῖς 
χείρεσσι καὶ κερκίδων ἀκμαῖσιν.

And by the waters of the Dark Rocks, the waters of the twofold sea, are the shores of Bosporus and the Thracian city Salmydessus, [970] where Ares, neighbor of that city, saw the accursed, blinding wound inflicted on the two sons of Phineus by his savage wife. It was a wound that brought darkness to the hollows, making them crave vengeance [975] for the eyes she crushed with her bloody hands and with her shuttle for a dagger.

κατὰ δὲ τακόμενοι μέλεοι μελέαν πάθαν 
980κλαῖον, ματρὸς ἔχοντες ἀνύμφευτον γονάν: 
ἁ δὲ σπέρμα μὲν ἀρχαιογόνων 
ἄντασ᾽ Ἐρεχθειδᾶν, 
τηλεπόροις δ᾽ ἐν ἄντροις 
τράφη θυέλλαισιν ἐν πατρῴαις 
985Βορεὰς ἅμιππος ὀρθόποδος ὑπὲρ πάγου 
θεῶν παῖς. ἀλλὰ κἀπ᾽ ἐκείνᾳ 
Μοῖραι μακραίωνες ἔσχον, ὦ παῖ.

Wasting away in their misery, they bewailed their miserable suffering [980] and their birth from their mother stripped of her marriage. But she traced her descent from the ancient line of the Erechtheids, and in far-distant caves she was raised amidst her father's gusts. She was the child of Boreas, running swift as horses over the steep hills, a daughter of gods. Yet she, too, was assailed by the long-lived Fates, my child.

Phineus is variously said to be the son of Agenor or of Phoenix - either way, he's a close relation, possibly a brother, of Cadmus. In a sense, he's a variant of Cadmus -- both were sent to find their sister Europa. Both failed. Cadmus via an oracle ends up founding Thebes, marrying Harmonia, and siring a line that leads to Dionysus, Amphion and Oedipus. Phineus chooses a woman who destroys his family, and according to some versions of his story, causes him to be cursed with blindness for blinding his sons. He also is said to have became endowed with prophecy.

Phineus cancels an alliance with the human cult hero of Athens for a marriage with a woman so violent (ἀγρίας δάμαρτος = savage spouse) as to personally mutilate children.

At this point we can at least see how this background creates a link to the earlier ode that begins:

εὐδαίμονες οἷσι κακῶν ἄγευστος αἰών. 
οἷς γὰρ ἂν σεισθῇ θεόθεν δόμος, ἄτας 
585οὐδὲν ἐλλείπει γενεᾶς ἐπὶ πλῆθος ἕρπον: 
ὅμοιον ὥστε ποντίαις οἶδμα δυσπνόοις ὅταν 
Θρῄσσαισιν ἔρεβος ὕφαλον ἐπιδράμῃ πνοαῖς, 
590κυλίνδει βυσσόθεν κελαινὰν θῖνα καὶ 
δυσάνεμοι, στόνῳ βρέμουσι δ᾽ ἀντιπλῆγες ἀκταί.

[583] Blest are those whose days have not tasted of evil. For when a house has once been shaken by the gods, [585] no form of ruin is lacking, but it spreads over the bulk of the race, just as, when the surge is driven over the darkness of the deep by the fierce breath of Thracian sea-winds, [590] it rolls up the black sand from the depths, and the wind-beaten headlands that front the blows of the storm give out a mournful roar.

Phineus's house has been shaken - the sea winds of Thrace, roiling the ocean, are a fit image of his kingdom overturned by his love of Idaea. We are reminded that Cleopatra was the daughter of the North Wind. 

This relevance of one ode to another leads us to consider that the odes of Antigone might be read as a closely composed group of mutually allusive texts -- a subject for a book-length study. Having no time for that just now, let's just look briefly at two passages that bring the tale of Phineus into line with salient lines of earlier odes:

The first evokes how a house can violently lose light -- a blinding:

(599) For now that dazzling light (φάος) that had been spread over the last roots of the house of Oedipus in its turn is cut down by the blood-stained dust of the gods infernal and mindlessness in speech and frenzy.

The second, from the ode addressing Eros, speaks in a strangely detailed manner to the errant love of Phineus:

. . . you (i.e., Eros) roam over the sea and among the homes of men in the wilds. Neither can any immortal escape you, [790] nor any man whose life lasts for a day. He who has known you is driven to madness.

φοιτᾷς δ᾽ ὑπερπόντιος ἔν τ᾽ ἀγρονόμοις αὐλαῖς: 
καί σ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἀθανάτων φύξιμος οὐδεὶς 
790οὔθ᾽ ἁμερίων σέ γ᾽ ἀνθρώπων. ὁ δ᾽ ἔχων μέμηνεν.

If nothing else, the tale of Phineus is an apt illustration of one who has been "driven to madness" by love. In the ode we have been reading, his tale follows those of Acrisius and Lycurgus -- two other kings who strove to outwit destiny, to subject Fate to their will.

It is this that the last strophe addresses. Though the entitled sons of Cleopatra had every reason to "look forward to" a distinguished life as royal princes, as well as scions of Boreas, they languish in a prison, where they see only darkness. The future we have the temerity to anticipate exists for us as a mode of unauthorized prophecy -- it can prove false, as it did for these children, as well as for Cleopatra.

If any one could have outrun fate, or dodged the Symplegades, it would have been Cleopatra:

She was the child of Boreas, running swift as horses over the steep hills, a daughter of gods.

But no:

Yet she, too, was assailed by the long-lived Fates, my child.

In fact, the ode tells us, we are, and can only be, blind to the future. Anticipation is illusion. No matter how much cause we might have to foresee great things (or terrible things) for ourselves, what comes is not what we prophesy to ourselves, but what Fate holds in store. As Oedipus came to see, the Fate he dreaded was what he, the unriddler, saw too late. We are always too late to control what is to come.

By coincidence, or Fate, the next voice we hear is that of Teiresias, who knows what we can and cannot see, or foresee.

When Laius met Pelops, and other tales of Thebes

The third choral ode in the Antigone refers to the house of Oedipus, naming his grandfather, Labdacus:

I see that the ancient sorrows of the house of the Labdacids [595] are heaped upon the sorrows of the dead.

Another ode later in the play alludes to Niobe. It might be helpful to situate these and other key figures in the back story of Thebes. The problem is, there isn't one epic tale that manages to weave them all into one text. The Cypria apparently made an effort, but only 50 lines survive.

One thing to note is, the line of Theban kings beginning with Cadmus and going past Creon is rife with dynastic interruptions. Amphion and Zethus, who built the walls of the Thebes later ruled by Oedipus, were not Cadmeians, but were sons of Antiope and (not unlike Theseus) two fathers: Zeus and a mortal, Epopeus. Niobe was Amphion's wife.

The pair seized power at a certain point, as others would at other points. An overview of the line of kings is here. Note the frequent appearance of regents. Lycus is twice a regent, once for Labdacus and once for Laius. Later on Creon similarly will twice be a regent. Many events seem paired, for example, Labdacus will be torn apart by Bacchantes just as Pentheus had been. Labdacus was the son of Polydorus, who was the son of Cadmus and Harmonia, and the brother of Semele.

There are many side plots and strange intersections. For example, Labdacus dies in a battle with Athens over a border. Athens wins in part because its king, Pandion, receives aid from Tereus of Thrace. Tereus is of course the notorious rapist of Philomela, whose tale Ovid told with gruesome relish.

One could go on. But here's one thing that might shed light on the curse on the Labdacids, which the chorus mentioned. It has to do with Labdacus' son, Laius. We all know that Laius was given a prophecy that he should not ever have a child, and that if he did, that child would murder him. One version of the tale explains the reason for the prophecy, and it has to do with the mighty Peloponnesian hero and son of Tantalus, Pelops:

While Laius was still young, Amphion and Zethus usurped the throne of Thebes. Some Thebans, wishing to see the line of Cadmus continue, smuggled Laius out of the city before their attack, in which they killed Lycus and took the throne.[1] Laius was welcomed by Pelops, king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus.[2] According to some sources, mostly belonging to the Christian era, Laius abducted and raped the king's [bastard] son, Chrysippus, and carried him off to Thebes while teaching him how to drive a chariot, or as Hyginus records it, during the Nemean games. This abduction is thought to be the subject of one of the lost tragedies of Euripides. Most scholars agree that the rape or seduction of Chrysippus was a late addition to the Theban myth. With both Amphion and Zethus having died in his absence, Laius became king of Thebes upon his return.

There are other variants. In one, Pelops' wife Hippodamia tries to get her two sons by Pelops to kill Chrysippus, the bastard by a nymph. Those two sons of Hippodamia and Pelops are Atreus and Thyestes, father and uncle respectively of Agamemnon and Menelaos. (See Parada, Greek Mythology Link, for more on this story). Surprise connections between the mythologies of different Houses of Greece pop up like this.

Anyway, after this we get to the part of the tale which most have heard:

After the rape of Chrysippus, Laius married Jocasta or Epicasta, the daughter of Menoeceus, a descendant of the Spartoi. Laius received an oracle from Delphi which told him that he must not have a child with his wife, or the child would kill him and marry her; in another version, recorded by Aeschylus, Laius is warned that he can only save the city if he dies childless. One night, however, Laius was drunk and fathered Oedipus with her . . .

And thus we arrive by a commodius vicus at Sophocles' tale of Antigone.

Epigonoi

The arc of the story of Thebes is not complete without the story of the Epigonoi, the sons of the first Seven who returned 10 years after the first attack (in which 6 of the 7 original Argive generals lost their lives) and succeeded in taking the city.

Thersander 1, son of Polynices and Argia 1 (daughter of Adrastus 1), was determined to sit on the throne he believed should have belonged to his father, by deposing his cousin Laodamas 2, son of Eteocles 1, now king of Thebes. The EPIGONI appointed as their commander in chief Alcmaeon 1, son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle, following an oracle that predicted them victory under his leadership. This time they made sure that the army marching against Thebes would be strong enough. For that purpose, they added to their forces from Argos contingents from Messenia, Arcadia, Corinth, and Megara. More here.

Interestingly, a fragment of a play by Sophocles titled Epigonoi was found a few years ago, part of a cache that made for an exciting discovery announced in 2005:

Wisdom awakes: Sophocles' words are legible again. 

Speaker A: . . . gobbling the whole, sharpening the flashing iron. 

Speaker B: And the helmets are shaking their purple-dyed crests, and for the wearers of breast-plates the weavers are striking up the wise shuttle's songs, that wakes up those who are asleep. 

Speaker B: And he is glueing together the chariot's rail. 

These words were written by the Greek dramatist Sophocles, and are the only known fragment we have of his lost play Epigonoi (literally 'The Progeny'), the story of the siege of Thebes. Until last week's hi-tech analysis of ancient scripts at Oxford University, no one knew of their existence, and this is the first time they have been published.

Other accounts of the war of the Epigoni were produced by Pseudo-Apollodorus and Pausanias.

Indeed, the arc of the tale of Thebes was quite an arc. An earlier epic about the Epigonoi is lost, which was part of the four-epic Theban Cycle. Shameless crib from Wikipedia:

The epics of the Theban Cycle were as follows: 

The Oedipodea, attributed to Cinaethon: told the story of Oedipus' solution to the Sphinx's riddle, and presumably of his incestuous marriage to his mother Epicaste or Jocasta. 

The Thebaid, of uncertain authorship but sometimes attributed in antiquity to Homer: told the story of the war between Oedipus' two sons Eteocles and Polynices, and of Polynices' unsuccessful expedition against the city of Thebes with six other commanders (the "Seven Against Thebes"), in which both Eteocles and Polynices were killed. 

The Epigoni, attributed in antiquity to either Antimachus of Teos or Homer: a continuation of the Thebaid, which told the story of the next generation of heroes who attacked Thebes, this time successfully. 

The Alcmeonis, of unknown authorship: told the story of Alcmaeon's murder of his mother Eriphyle for having arranged the death of his father Amphiaraus (told in the Thebaid).

For our purposes, it is worth noting that the role of a woman, Antigone, is pivotal in the overall plot.

Antigone 141-154: Mathematics and the Dance

ἑπτὰ λοχαγοὶ γὰρ ἐφ᾽ ἑπτὰ πύλαις 
ταχθέντες ἴσοι πρὸς ἴσους ἔλιπον 
Ζηνὶ τροπαίῳ πάγχαλκα τέλη, 
πλὴν τοῖν στυγεροῖν, ὣ πατρὸς ἑνὸς 
145μητρός τε μιᾶς φύντε καθ᾽ αὑτοῖν 
δικρατεῖς λόγχας στήσαντ᾽ ἔχετον 
κοινοῦ θανάτου μέρος ἄμφω.

[141] For the seven captains, equal number stationed against an equal number at the seven gates, left behind their brazen arms in tribute to Zeus the turner of battle—all but the accursed pair who, born of one father and one mother, set against each other their double-slaying spears, both victorious, and who now share in a common death.

In bold are the specific numerical terms as well as some that involve a mathematical operation like adding or averaging. The language is markedly formal, a spectacle of mirroring symmetries - seven against seven, of course, but also the idea of one generating two who fight and share one death. So there are symmetries of space as well, we could say, of time, (and unity of plot): beginning (1), middle (2), end (1). Common to both the seven and the pair of brothers is the moment of mutual-annihilation -- a fateful act that first showed itself when Cadmus, sowing the dragon's teeth, witnessed the symmetric mutual destruction of all but five of the spartoi.

Mathematical symmetry (equality, ἰσότης) is the root of ratio that allows for laws, alliances, and the balances of nature, Jocasta tells her sons in Euripides' Phoenician Women:

Equality . . . always joins friend to friend, city to city, allies to allies; for Equality is naturally lasting among men; but the less is always in opposition to the greater, [540] and begins the dawn of hatred. For it is Equality that has set up for man measures and divisions of weights, and has determined numbers. Night's sightless eye, and radiant sun proceed upon their yearly course on equal terms, [545] and neither of them is envious when it has to yield.

Even as Jocasta says these lines, her sons are preparing to kill one another. Equality at Thebes seems doomed to yield mutual annihilation.

After this militant display of numbers, the first Ode of the Antigone concludes with the chorus of elders turning to Bacchus and to forgetting:

ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἁ μεγαλώνυμος ἦλθε Νίκα 
τᾷ πολυαρμάτῳ ἀντιχαρεῖσα Θήβᾳ, 
150ἐκ μὲν δὴ πολέμων 
τῶν νῦν θέσθαι λησμοσύναν, 
θεῶν δὲ ναοὺς χοροῖς 
παννυχίοις πάντας ἐπέλθωμεν, ὁ Θήβας δ᾽ ἐλελίχθων 
Βάκχιος ἄρχοι.

[148] But since Victory whose name is glory has come to us, smiling in joy equal to the joy of chariot-rich Thebes, let us make for ourselves forgetfulness (λησμοσύναν) after the recent wars, and visit all the temples of the gods with night-long dance and song. And may Bacchus, who shakes the earth of Thebes, rule our dancing! 

The earth shaking -- ἐλελίχθων -- of Bacchus comes from ἐλελίζω - to whirl round, to cause to vibrate, to turn.  Dionysus here stands counterposed to Ζηνὶ τροπαίῳ -- Zeus turner of battle -- in the preceding strophe.

Where Zeus's tropism powered a decisive victory for Thebes against the Argives, the city-shattering power of Bacchus is bound up with music and rhythm, which the god is said to lead. There is no equality here, just the power of the ruling god, leading mortals to forget the strife of wars, ambition and mathematics as they turn in the dance.