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Case file s628 · Greece and Rome · 1250 BCE
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1250 BCE
Antigone Gives Token Burial to the Body of Her Brother Polyniceslabel QS:Len,"Antigone Gives Token Burial to the Body of: Drawing; Drawings
Antigone Gives Token Burial to the Body of Her Brother Polyniceslabel QS:Len,"Antigone Gives Token Burial to the Body of. Eugène Lenepveu. CC0, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
c. 1250 BC (traditional dating, a generation before the Trojan War)
Place
Thebes (Thiva), Greece
Field
kingship of Thebes · Royalty and nobility on the timeline
Legal tradition
agreement to alternate rule; Greek burial custom · Civil law
Historical event
The war of the Seven against Thebes, as told by Aeschylus (467 BC) and Sophocles
Greece and RomeConditions from the graveBodies, bones and burialsMurder and sudden deathCrowns and successionAncient worldEuropeGreece

Legend: this account comes from tradition, an epic or an old chronicle. Records do not prove it happened as told.

The plays say Oedipus's sons agreed to rule Thebes in alternate years, then killed each other, and the new king forbade burial of one of them

The tradition says that after Oedipus left Thebes, his sons Eteocles and Polynices divided the kingdom by time. The mythographer Apollodorus records that they agreed "that each should rule alternately" for a year. Eteocles ruled first and would not hand over the throne. Polynices went into exile at Argos, taking with him the necklace and robe of Harmonia, the family's heirlooms. He gave the necklace to Eriphyle so that she would persuade her husband Amphiaraus to join the war. Seven champions attacked the seven gates of Thebes. Aeschylus's play Seven Against Thebes, first performed in 467 BC, sets the brothers' duel at the seventh gate, where each killed the other. Their uncle Creon took the throne. In Sophocles's Antigone, Creon orders that Eteocles be buried with full rites and that Polynices be left "unburied, a corpse for birds and dogs to eat," with death by stoning for anyone who disobeys. Their sister Antigone buries him. Creon has her shut alive in a rock tomb. His son Haemon, who was to marry her, kills himself, and Creon's wife Eurydice then kills herself. Apollodorus adds that ten years later the sons of the dead champions, the Epigoni, took Thebes, and that Eriphyle's son killed her over the necklace and robe.

What the law took from it

A division with no enforcement mechanism lasts only as long as the first holder agrees to leave.

Sources
  1. classics.mit.eduScholarship
  2. theoi.comPress
  3. worldhistory.orgPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “The plays say Oedipus's sons agreed to rule Thebes in alternate years, then killed each other, and the new king forbade burial of one of them,” story s628, https://www.celebrity.estate/oedipus-1250-bc, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Greece and RomeConditions from the graveBodies, bones and burialsMurder and sudden deathCrowns and successionAncient worldEuropeCivil lawGreece