Amphiaraus

And if we think those figures the inventions of fabling licence — Mopsus, Tiresias, Amphiaraus, Calchas, Helenus (whom, however, not even the fables would have made augurs if the thing were wholly to be rejected) — shall we not, taught by examples even from our own house, prove the divinity of the gods?

Or shall Amphiaraus be a god, and Trophonius?

On these grounds, then, and from his friendship for him in other matters, he was suspected of betraying the city to Antigonus, and, being denounced by Aristodemus, withdrew from Eretria and stayed awhile in Oropus in the temple of Amphiaraus.

When Hierocles, who was in command of the Piraeus, walked up and down along with him in the shrine of Amphiaraus, and talked much of the capture of Eretria, he made no other reply beyond asking him what Antigonus’s object was in treating him as he did.

To some one who had devoured his patrimony he said, The earth swallowed Amphiaraus, but you have swallowed your land.

Daughter of the sun with dazzling zone, O moon, you circle of golden light, how quietly, with what restraint he drives, goading first one horse, then the other!

That, lady, is the prophet Amphiaraus;

To the gates of Proetus came the prophet Amphiaraus, bringing the victims on a chariot;

To Amphiaraus, of whose courage and fate he had heard, he dedicated a shield made entirely of gold and a spear all of solid gold, point and shaft alike.

He went first to Thebes where he inquired of Ismenian Apollo (sacrifice is there the way of divination, as at Olympia), and moreover he bribed one who was no Theban but a stranger to lie down to sleep in the shrine of Amphiaraus.

No Theban may seek a prophecy there, for Amphiaraus bade them by an oracle to choose which of the two they wanted and forgo the other, and take him either for their prophet or for their ally.

For once Adrastus fled from bold-thinking Amphiaraus and terrible civil strife, from his ancestral home, Argos;

But, for the sake of Amphiaraus, Zeus with his all-powerful thunderbolt split the deep-breasted earth, and concealed him together with his horses, before he could be struck in the back by the spear of Periclymenus, and his warlike spirit disgraced.

The sons of Talaus gave man-conquering Eriphyle, as a faithful pledge, in marriage to Amphiaraus son of Oicles, and became the most powerful of the golden-haired Danaans;

And so it befell, as the story goes, that when the verses composed by Aeschylus upon Amphiaraus were recited in the theater:

Mardonius was slain by a man of Sparta named Arimnestus, who crushed his head with a stone, even as was foretold him by the oracle in the shrine of Amphiaraus.

but the Lydian, on lying down in the precinct of Amphiaraus, dreamed that an attendant of the god stood by his side and bade him be gone, and on his refusal, hurled a great stone upon his head, insomuch that he died from the blow (so ran the man’s dream).

The sixth man I will name is of the highest moderation and a seer brave in combat, mighty Amphiaraus.

Yet Tydeus, raging and eager for battle, shouts like a serpent hissing at high noon, and lashes skilled Oecles’ son, with the taunt that he cringes in cowardice before death and battle.

Just so the seer, Oecles’ son, although a moderate, just, noble, reverent man and a great prophet, mixes with impious, rash-talking men against his own judgment, men stretching out in a procession that is long to retrace, and, if it is Zeus’s will, he will be be dragged down in ruin along with them.

And their desire for both these is greater than their desire for money, to which they attach only the slightest value, because they have never yet experienced want, as Pittacus said in his pithy remark on Amphiaraus.

The son of Oicles could not persuade them to go back to the streets thronged with good men.

\"Do you hear this, Amphiaraus, hidden beneath the earth?

or Amphiaraus, who is recorded as being older by one generation than the capture of Ilium, having been among the seven who marched against Thebes;

For let there be silence about Cometes the Cretan, Cinyras the Cypriot, Admetus the Thessalian, Aristaeus the Cyrenian, Amphiaraus the Athenian, Timoxenus the Corcyrean, Demaenetus the Phocaean, Epigenes the Thespian, Nicias the Carystian, Ariston the Thessalian, Dionysius the Carthaginian, Cleophon the Corinthian, and Hippo the daughter of Chiron, and Boeo and Manto, and the multitude of the Siby …

I went in spite even of Amphiaraus.

You proposed that these tribes should restore the mountain to Amphiaraus and the price of produce from it which they had sold;

A little later in the same decree you propose that the eight tribes shall provide compensation and pay it to the other two so that they shall not suffer unfairly.

And when you, who proposed a decree like that, were fined a mere twenty-five drachmas, is the man who lay down in the temple at the people’s request even to be refused a grave in Attica?

And you, son of Diodotus, emulating the warrior Meleager, emulating Hector and Amphiaraus, breathed out your blossoming youth in the front ranks, where the best men sustained the strife of war at the limit of their hopes.

Hagesias, that praise is ready for you, which once Adrastus’ tongue rightly spoke for the seer Amphiaraus, son of Oicles, when the earth swallowed up him and his shining horses.

“I long for the eye of my army, a man who was good both as a prophet and at fighting with the spear.

And by exalting the clan of the Midylids, you fulfill the prophecy which once Amphiaraus the son of Oicles spoke in riddling words, when he saw, in seven-gated

For he alone of the Danaan army will gather the bones of his dead son, by the fortune sent from the gods, and come with his people unharmed to the spacious streets of Argos, the city of Abas.

And Amphiaraus in the poet doth not do amiss when he consoles the mother of Archemorus, who was even sick with grief for the untimely death of her infant son.

While the deep furrows of his noble mind Harvests of wise and prudent counsel bear.

Aeschylus wrote these verses on Amphiaraus— His shield no emblem bears;

No, for I know that the prince Amphiaraus was ensnared by a woman’s chain of gold and swallowed up.

One such is swift-speared Amphiaraus, a matchless warrior, and a matchless diviner;

the rest which is said to have passed from men to divinity, like Hercules, Amphiaraus.

Amphiaraus when he fought against Thebes, gained great praise and won from the gods the honour of immortality.

And he had for pupils in venery and in other noble pursuits—Cephalus, Asclepius, Meilanion, Nestor, Amphiaraus, Peleus, Telamon, Meleager, Theseus, Hippolytus, Palamedes, Odysseus, Menestheus, Diomedes, Castor, Polydeuces, Machaon, Podaleirius, Antilochus, Aeneas, Achilles, of whom each in his time was honoured by gods.