''Amphiaraus'' (, ''Amphiaraos'') is a lost Greek play by the

Athenian Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

poet

Sophocles Sophocles ( 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least two plays have survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those ...

. It is believed to have been a

satyr play The satyr play is a form of Attic theatre performance related to both comedy and tragedy. It preserves theatrical elements of dialogue, actors speaking verse, a chorus that dances and sings, masks and costumes. Its relationship to tragedy is st ...

, although it is not clear which incident pertaining to the title character was the subject of the play, nor even which incident would lend itself to satyr play treatment. One fragment of the play is known to be extant, and was translated by

Hugh Lloyd-Jones Sir Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones (21 September 1922 – 5 October 2009)

as "The sentinel crab of this prophetic chorus..." A one-sentence fragment of Sophocles (fragment 958) telling of the death of

Amphiaraus Amphiaraus or Amphiaraos (; Ancient Greek: Ἀμφιάραος, Ἀμφιάρεως, "very sacred") was in Greek mythology the son of Oicles, a seer, and one of the leaders of the Seven against Thebes. Amphiaraus at first refused to go with Adr ...

– that the ground of Thebes opened up to receive him, his arms, his horses and chariot – is possibly from ''Amphiaraus'' also, but may belong to one of several other plays Sophocles wrote about Amphiaraus and his son Alcmaeon. In addition, second century Greek rhetorician

Athenaeus Athenaeus of Naucratis (, or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; ) was an ancient Greek rhetorician and Grammarian (Greco-Roman), grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century ...

noted that within "the satyr play ''Amphiaraus''," Sophocles had a character who "dances the letters." This comment by Athenaeus came after he had noted a number of instances within other plays in which an illiterate character described the letters of a word that he could not read himself, and that the dance by the Sophocles character was "similar." Within

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

, the title character

had not wanted to take part in an attack against the city of Thebes, led by his wife's brother

Adrastus In Greek mythology, Adrastus or Adrestus (Ancient Greek: Ἄδραστος or Ἄδρηστος), (perhaps meaning "the inescapable"), was a king of Argos, and leader of the Seven against Thebes. He was the son of the Argive king Talaus, but w ...

and by

Polynices In Greek mythology, Polynices (also Polyneices) (; ) was the son of Oedipus and either Jocasta or Euryganeia and the older brother of Eteocles. When Oedipus was discovered to have killed his father and married his mother, Oedipus was expelled ...

, since Amphiaraus knew the attack was doomed. This attack was dramatized by

Aeschylus Aeschylus (, ; ; /524 – /455 BC) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek Greek tragedy, tragedian often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is large ...

in his play ''

Seven Against Thebes ''Seven Against Thebes'' (, ''Hepta epi Thēbas''; ) is the third play in an Oedipus-themed trilogy produced by Aeschylus in 467 BC. The trilogy is sometimes referred to as the ''Oedipodea''. It concerns the battle between an Argive army, led by ...

'', and the aftermath was dramatized by Sophocles himself in ''

Antigone ANTIGONE (Algorithms for coNTinuous / Integer Global Optimization of Nonlinear Equations), is a deterministic global optimization solver for general Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programs (MINLP). History ANTIGONE is an evolution of GloMIQO, a global ...

''. Polynices bribed Amphiaraus' wife

Eriphyle Eriphyle (; ) was a figure in Greek mythology who, in exchange for the Necklace of Harmonia (also called the Necklace of Eriphyle) given to her by Polynices, persuaded her husband Amphiaraus to join the doomed expedition of the Seven against Theb ...

, who was also Adrastus' sister, to coerce Amphiaraus to take part in the attack. Amphiaraus had charged their son Alcmaeon to avenge him on Eriphyle, and after Alcmaeon killed Eriphyle, he was pursued by the

Erinyes The Erinyes ( ; , ), also known as the Eumenides (, the "Gracious ones"), are chthonic goddesses of vengeance in ancient Greek religion and mythology. A formulaic oath in the ''Iliad'' invokes them as "the Erinyes, that under earth tak ...

, similar to the fate of

Orestes In Greek mythology, Orestes or Orestis (; ) was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and the brother of Electra and Iphigenia. He was also known by the patronymic Agamemnonides (), meaning "son of Agamemnon." He is the subject of several ...

after killing

Clytemnestra Clytemnestra (, ; , ), in Greek mythology, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and the half-sister of Helen of Sparta. In Aeschylus' ''Oresteia'', she murders Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan p ...

. One episode from the myth of Amphiaraus that scholars believe may have lent itself to the plot of this satyr play is the time when Amphiaraus went into hiding to avoid taking part in the attack against Thebes. Another episode that has been postulated as the basis for this play is Amphiaraus role in founding the

Nemean Games The Nemean Games ( or Νέμεια) were one of the four Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece, and were held at Nemea every two years (or every third). With the Isthmian Games, the Nemean Games were held both the year before and the year after th ...

. Since Sophocles wrote several play involving the myth of Amphiaraus and Alcmaeon, it is possible that ''Amphiaraus'' was the satyr play following a connected

trilogy A trilogy is a set of three distinct works that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games. Three-part works that are considered components of ...

related to this myth. If so, the tragedies in the trilogy may have included ''Eriphyle'', ''

Epigoni In Greek mythology, the Epigoni or Epigonoi (; from , meaning "offspring") are the sons of the Argive heroes, the Seven against Thebes, who had fought and been killed in the first Theban war, the subject of the ''Thebaid'', in which Polynices an ...

'', in which Alcmaeon kills Eriphyle, and ''Alcmaeon'', which may have involved the sequel to the killing, including the pursuit of Alcmaeon by the Erinyes, his eventual purification, and subsequent death.

References

{{Authority control Plays by Sophocles Satyr plays Lost plays Seven against Thebes