Dionizova popotovanja in kaznovanje nasprotnikov

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Dionizova popotovanja in kaznovanje nasprotnikov

1. After discovering the vine, Dionysus was driven mad by Hera and wandered through Egypt and Syria. He was first welcomed by Proteus, king of the Egyptians, and later came to Cybela in Phrygia. There Rhea purified him and taught him the rites of initiation; and after receiving his sacred dress from her, he hastened through Thrace toward India. But Lycurgus, son of Dryas, who ruled the Edonians dwelling beside the river Strymon, was the first to treat him with violence and drive him out. Dionysus took refuge in the sea with Thetis, daughter of Nereus, while the Bacchants and the host of Satyrs who followed him were taken captive. Then the Bacchants were suddenly freed, and Dionysus drove Lycurgus mad. In his madness, Lycurgus struck his son Dryas with an axe and killed him, believing that he was cutting a vine branch; only after mutilating the boy did he recover his senses. But the land remained barren, and the god declared through an oracle that it would bear fruit if Lycurgus were put to death.

When the Edonians heard this, they took him to Mount Pangaeum and bound him there. There, by the will of Dionysus, he was torn apart by horses and died.

2. After passing through Thrace and all of India, where he set up pillars, Dionysus came to Thebes and compelled the women to leave their homes and celebrate his rites on Mount Cithaeron. But Pentheus, the son of Echion and Agave, who had received the kingdom from Cadmus, tried to prevent this. When he went to Cithaeron to spy on the Bacchants, his mother Agave tore him limb from limb in her madness, for she thought he was a wild beast. Having shown the Thebans that he was a god, Dionysus came to Argos. There too, because the people refused to honor him, he drove the women mad; and in the mountains they ate the flesh of the infants they carried at their breasts.

3. Wishing to cross from Icaria to Naxos, he hired a trireme belonging to Tyrrhenian pirates. They took him aboard but sailed past Naxos and made for Asia, intending to sell him. But he turned the mast and oars into snakes and filled the vessel with ivy and the sound of pipes. Driven mad, the pirates fled into the sea and became dolphins. Thus mortals came to honor him as a god. He brought his mother up from Hades, named her Thyone, and ascended with her into heaven.

4. Cadmus left Thebes with Harmonia and came to the Encheleans. They were at war with the Illyrians, and the god declared through an oracle that they would defeat the Illyrians if they took Cadmus and Harmonia as their leaders. They obeyed, appointed the two to lead them against the Illyrians, and were victorious. Cadmus became king of the Illyrians, and a son, Illyrius, was born to him. Later he and Harmonia were transformed into serpents and sent by Zeus to the Elysian Plain.

5. Polydorus became king of Thebes, married Nycteis, daughter of Nycteus son of Chthonius, and fathered Labdacus. Like Pentheus before him, Labdacus perished because he held similar views. He left a son, Laius, only a year old, and while the child was still young, Lycus, the brother of Nycteus, seized power. The two brothers had fled from Euboea after killing Phlegyas, the son of Ares and Dotis the Boeotian, and had settled in Hyria. Through their connection with Pentheus they had become citizens of Thebes. Lycus, having been elected commander of the army by the Thebans, laid hold of the sovereign power. After reigning for twenty years, he was killed by Zethus and Amphion for the following reason. Antiope was a daughter of Nycteus, and Zeus lay with her. When she became pregnant, her father threatened her, and she fled to Epopeus in Sicyon and married him. In despair, Nycteus killed himself, charging Lycus to exact vengeance from Epopeus and Antiope. Lycus marched against Sicyon and captured it, killed Epopeus, and led Antiope away as a prisoner. On the journey she gave birth to two sons at Eleutherae in Boeotia. They were exposed, but a herdsman found them and brought them up, calling one Zethus and the other Amphion. Zethus tended herds of cattle, while Amphion practiced singing to the lyre, which Hermes had given him. Meanwhile Lycus kept Antiope imprisoned, and both he and his wife Dirce mistreated her. One day her bonds fell away of their own accord, and she escaped unseen and came to her sons’ dwelling, hoping they would take her in. Recognizing their mother, they killed Lycus, bound Dirce to a bull, and, when she was dead, cast her into the spring named Dirce after her.

Having taken power, they fortified the city, the stones following the music of Amphion’s lyre, and drove Laius into exile. While living in the Peloponnese, Laius was received as a guest by Pelops. He taught Pelops’s son Chrysippus to drive a chariot, fell in love with him, and carried him off.

6. Zethus married Thebe, from whom the city of Thebes took its name, and Amphion married Niobe, daughter of Tantalus. She bore seven sons—Sipylus, Eupinytus, Ismenus, Damasichthon, Agenor, Phaedimus, and Tantalus—and as many daughters: Ethodaea, or, according to some, Neaera, Cleodoxa, Astyoche, Phthia, Pelopia, Astycrateia, and Ogygia. Hesiod, however, says that they had ten sons and ten daughters; Herodorus, two sons and three daughters; and Homer, six sons and six daughters.

Proud of her many children, Niobe declared that she was more blessed in her offspring than Leto. In anger, Leto urged Artemis and Apollo against them. Artemis shot down the daughters in their home, while Apollo killed all the sons together as they hunted on Cithaeron. Of the sons, Amphion survived, and of the daughters, the elder Chloris, whom Neleus married. According to Telesilla, however, the survivors were Amyclas and Meliboea. Amphion too was shot down by the gods. Niobe herself left Thebes and went to her father Tantalus at Sipylus. There she prayed to Zeus and was changed into stone; and tears flow from that stone by night and day.

7. After Amphion’s death, Laius took over the kingdom. He married a daughter of Menoeceus, whom some call Jocasta and others Epicaste. Though the god had warned him through an oracle not to father a child, since the child would kill his father, Laius lay with his wife while drunk. When the child was born, he pierced its ankles with pins and gave it to a shepherd to expose. The shepherd left it on Cithaeron, but herdsmen belonging to Polybus, king of Corinth, found the infant and brought it to his wife Periboea. She took it in and passed it off as her own. After tending its ankles, she named it Oedipus, giving it this name because its feet were swollen. When the boy grew to manhood, surpassing his companions in strength, they taunted him out of envy with being a supposititious child. He questioned Periboea but could learn nothing from her, so he went to Delphi to inquire about his true parents. The god told him not to return to his homeland, for he would kill his father and lie with his mother. On hearing this, and believing himself the son of those who were said to be his parents, he stayed away from Corinth. As he traveled through Phocis in a chariot, he encountered Laius, also riding in a chariot, on a narrow road. Polyphontes, Laius’s herald, ordered him to make way, and when he refused and delayed, killed one of his horses. Enraged, Oedipus killed both Polyphontes and Laius, and went on to Thebes.

8. Damasistratus, king of Plataea, buried Laius, and Creon, son of Menoeceus, took over the kingdom. During his reign, a great calamity befell Thebes. Hera sent the Sphinx, whose mother was Echidna and whose father was Typhon. She had the face of a woman, the breast, feet, and tail of a lion, and the wings of a bird. Having learned a riddle from the Muses, she seated herself on Mount Phicium and put it to the Thebans. The riddle was this: What is it that has one voice, yet becomes four-footed, two-footed, and three-footed? An oracle had told the Thebans that they would be rid of the Sphinx when they solved the riddle, so they often gathered together to discover its meaning. But whenever they failed, she seized one of them and devoured him. After many had perished, and last of all Creon’s son Haemon, Creon proclaimed that he would give both the kingdom and Laius’s wife to whoever solved the riddle. Oedipus heard the proclamation and solved it, saying that the answer to the Sphinx’s riddle was a human being: as an infant, a person is four-footed, moving on all four limbs; in maturity, two-footed; and in old age takes a staff as a third support. The Sphinx then threw herself from the acropolis, while Oedipus took over the kingdom and unwittingly married his mother. By her he fathered two sons, Polynices and Eteocles, and two daughters, Ismene and Antigone. Some, however, say that his children were born to him by Euryganeia, daughter of Hyperphas.

9. When the truth that had lain hidden was later revealed, Jocasta hanged herself, and Oedipus blinded himself and was driven from Thebes. He laid curses upon his sons, who had watched him being expelled from the city without coming to his aid. With Antigone he came to Colonus in Attica, where the sacred precinct of the Eumenides stands, and sat down there as a suppliant. Theseus received him, and not long afterward he died.