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Historical person

Eteocles

mythological figure

Eteocles is a figure of Greek mythology and the Theban heroic cycle, traditionally one of the sons of Oedipus and Jocasta. After Oedipus’s fall, Eteocles and his brother Polynices become rivals for control of Thebes. In a common version they agree to alternate the kingship, but Eteocles refuses to surrender power when his term has ended, driving Polynices to seek allies in Argos and return with the expedition known as the Seven Against Thebes.

The brothers ultimately kill one another in the fighting, fulfilling the destructive curse attached to the house of Oedipus. Their deaths do not end the conflict: the new ruler Creon honours Eteocles as a defender of Thebes while denying burial to Polynices, creating the crisis at the centre of Sophocles’ Antigone. Different poets vary the brothers’ responsibility, motives and the order of events, so the narrative should be treated as mythic tradition rather than dynastic history.

Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, included in the linked Prometheus Bound and Other Plays, makes Eteocles the commander organising the defence of the city. Euripides’ Phoenician Women, in Orestes and Other Plays, revisits the brothers’ rivalry from another perspective, while Sophocles’ The Three Theban Plays explores its aftermath. The other linked Greek works belong to the wider heroic tradition rather than constituting a literal biography. In Euripides’ The Bacchae and Other Plays, The Phoenician Women centres on Jocasta’s attempt to reconcile Eteocles and Polynices before their rivalry for the Theban throne ends in civil war and mutual destruction. Homer’s The Iliad recalls the earlier expedition of Polynices and Tydeus against Thebes within its account of Diomedes’ family history; Eteocles belongs to that inherited Theban conflict rather than to the poem’s main Trojan action.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Eteocles (1 series)

Penguin Classics: Ancient World in Order

by various authors 32 books 4.6(13,212)

Penguin Classics: Ancient World brings together foundational works of literature, history, philosophy, drama and poetry from the earliest civilisations through classical Greece and Rome. The wider Penguin Classics series began in 1946 with E. V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey, reflecting its original aim of making important texts…

All books in this series