Eteocles

Also known as: ETEOCLES / Eteoc / Eteoc. / Etéocles · Family: Thebes · Role: king · First appears: Aeschylus, The Seven Who Fought Against Thebes — Scene 1

At first, Eteocles and Polynices confined Oedipus to hide their family’s horrors, after which Oedipus cursed his sons to divide their inheritance by the sword. The brothers agreed to reign in alternating years, with Eteocles taking the first turn, but when Polynices returned for the kingdom, Eteocles refused to yield and sent him away. Other accounts describe Eteocles persuading Creon and the citizens to banish his elder brother, seizing the sovereignty of Thebes and retaining Polynices’ share of the palace. When Jocasta brought Polynices back under truce to reconcile them, Eteocles insisted on sole rule: “we shall not agree in any other way, than on the terms proposed, that I holding the sceptre be monarch of this land.”

When Polynices brought an Argive army against Thebes, Eteocles ordered the citizens to arm themselves and defend the walls, threatening trial and stoning for those who disobeyed. He appointed defenders to the city’s gates, including Melanippus, Polyphontes, Megareus, Hyperbios, and Lasthenes, while recognizing that Oedipus’s curse was being fulfilled. He also sent Menoeceus to summon Tiresias, and, before battle, confirmed the marriage vow between Antigone and Haemon should he fail. Eteocles decreed that Polynices must remain unburied if Thebes prevailed, while Tiresias warned that the brothers were destined to die by each other’s hands.

After a truce, Eteocles faced Polynices in single combat. The brothers killed each other, “By mutual slaughter and by brothers' hands,” fulfilling Oedipus’s curse through Erinnys. The Cadmeian authorities decreed an honorable burial for Eteocles because of his goodwill toward the land, while Antigone and Ismene came to mourn the brothers’ deaths; in another account, Jocasta also died after finding her sons’ bodies.