Greek Tragedy

Aegialeus

First appears: Euripides, The Suppliants — Scene 9

Life events

  • Aegialeus and Diomedes will lead an armed host to sack Thebes in revenge for their fathers.(Euripides, The Suppliants — Scene 9 · 📍 Thebes)
    • With: Diomedes
    • “Soon as the beards your cheeks o’ershadow must ye lead an armed Danaid host against the battlements of Thebes with sevenfold gates.”

Euripides, The Suppliants — Scene 9

  • mentor: Athena “And this shall be the form thereof: We Argives swear we never will against this land lead on our mail-clad troops to war, and, if others come, we will repel them. But if they violate their oath and come against the city, pray that the land of Argos may be miserably destroyed. Now hearken while I tell thee where thou must slay the victims. Thou hast within thy halls a tripod with brazen feet, which Heracles, in days gone by, after he had o’erthrown the foundations of Ilium and was starting on another enterprise, enjoined thee to set up at the Pythian shrine. O’er it cut the throats of three sheep; then grave within the tripod’s hollow belly the oath; this done, deliver it to the god who watches over Delphi to keep, a witness and memorial unto Hellas of the oath. And bury the sharp-edged knife, wherewith thou shalt have laid the victims open and shed their blood, deep in the bowels of the earth, hard by the pyres where the seven chieftains burn; for its appearance shall strike them with dismay, if e’er against thy town they come, and shall cause them to return with sorrow. When thou hast done all this, dismiss the dead from thy land. And to the god resign as sacred land the spot where their bodies were purified by fire, there by the meeting of the triple roads that lead unto the Isthmus. Thus much to thee, Theseus, I address; next to the sons of Argos I speak; when ye are grown to men’s estate, the town beside Ismenus shall ye sack, avenging the slaughter of your dead sires; thou too, Aegialeus, shalt take thy father’s place and in thy youth command the host, and with thee Tydeus’ son marching from Aetolia,—him whom his father named Diomedes.”

Also listed in Other Figures — Minor Figures

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Extracted from the original text of Greek Tragedy. Made with Rho MD.

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