To Do

Bravo III, pp. 104, 116: how killed: strangled, poisoned?
Gantz
Frazer's notes to Apd. 3.6.4
Hyginus
Apollodorus
Statius
Pausanias

Burial mound: see Bravo III, pp.

Grimal
Brill's New Pauly
Loeb search
LIMC

Current text

New text

Family

Other parents: Euphetes & Kreousa

Gantz, pp. 511—512
Bravo III, pp. 113—114, 116
Nemean Odes hypothesis

The Heroön of Opheltes

Sources

Fourth to third century BC

A fragment attributed to Aristotle associates the Nemean Games with the Seven Against Thebes and the funeral games of Archemorus, so too perhaps did the Parian Marble.^[1] Callimachus ...

References

Sources

Ancient

Apollodorus

1.9.14

Pheres, son of Cretheus, founded Pherae in Thessaly and begat Admetus and Lycurgus. Lycurgus took up his abode at Nemea, and having married Eurydice, or, as some say, Amphithea, he begat Opheltes, afterwards called Archemorus.¹

¹ See below, Apollod. 3.6.4.

3.6.4

Having come to Nemea, of which Lycurgus was king, they sought for water; and Hypsipyle showed them the way to a spring, leaving behind an infant boy Opheltes, whom she nursed, a child of Eurydice and Lycurgus.¹ For the Lemnian women, afterwards learning that Thoas had been saved alive,² put him to death and sold Hypsipyle into slavery; wherefore she served in the house of Lycurgus as a purchased bondwoman. But while she showed the spring, the abandoned boy was killed by a serpent. When Adrastus and his party appeared on the scene, they slew the serpent and buried the boy; but Amphiaraus told them that the sign foreboded the future, and they called the boy Archemorus.³ They celebrated the Nemean games in his honor; and Adrastus won the horse race, Eteoclus the footrace, Tydeus the boxing match, Amphiaraus the leaping and quoit-throwing match, Laodocus the javelin-throwing match, Polynices the wrestling match, and Parthenopaeus the archery match.

¹ As to the meeting of the Seven Champions with Hypsipyle at Nemea, the death of Opheltes, and the institution of the Nemean games, see Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. pp. 424ff. ed. Boeckh; Bacch. 8.10ff. [9], ed. Jebb; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii.34, p. 29, ed. Potter, with the Scholiast; Hyginus, Fab. 74, 273; Statius, Theb. iv.646-vi.; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.717; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode. vol. i. p. 123 （Second Vatican Mythographer 141）. The institution of the Nemean games in honour of Opheltes or Archemorus was noticed by Aeschylus in a lost play. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), p. 49. The judges at the Nemean games wore dark-coloured robes in mourning, it is said, for Opheltes （Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. p. 425, ed. Boeckh）; and the crown of parsley bestowed on the victor is reported to have been chosen for the same sad reason （Serv. Verg. Ecl. 6.68）. However, according to another account, the crowns at Nemea were originally made of olive, but the material was changed to parsley after the disasters of the Persian war （Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. p. 425）. The grave of Opheltes was at Nemea, enclosed by a stone wall; and there were altars within the enclosure （Paus. 2.15.3）. Euripides wrote a tragedy Hypsipyle, of which many fragments have recently been discovered in Egyptian papyri. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 594ff.; A. S. Hunt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Papyracea nuper reperta （Oxford, no date, no pagination）. In one of these fragments (col. iv.27ff.) it is said that Lycurgus was chosen from all Asopia to be the warder （Κληδοῦχος） of the local Zeus. There were officials bearing the same title （κλειδοῦχοι） at Olympia （Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum 1021, vol. ii. p. 168） in Delos （Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, vol. i. p. 252, No. 170）, and in the worship of Aesculapius at Athens （E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, Part ii. p. 410, No. 157）. The duty from which they took their title was to keep the keys of the temple. A fine relief in the Palazzo Spada at Rome represents the serpent coiled round the dead body of the child Opheltes and attacked by two of the heroes, while in the background Hypsipyle is seen retreating, with her hands held up in horror and her pitcher lying at her feet. See W. H. Roscher, Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i.473; Baumeister, Denkmaler des klassichen Altertums, i.113, fig. 119. The death of Opheltes or Archemorus is also the subject of a fine vase-painting, which shows the dead boy lying on a bier and attended by two women, one of whom is about to crown him with a wreath of myrtle, while the other holds an umbrella over his head to prevent, it has been suggested, the sun's rays from being defiled by falling on a corpse. Amongst the figures in the painting, which are identified by inscriptions, is seen the mother Eurydice standing in her palace between the suppliant Hypsipyle on one side and the dignified Amphiaraus on the other. See E. Gerhard, “Archemoros,” Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Berlin, 1866- 1868) i.5ff., with Abbildungen, taf. i.; K. Friederichs, Praxiteles und die Niobegruppe （Leipzig, 1855）, pp. 123ff.; Baumeister, op. cit. i.114, fig. 120.

² See above, Apollod. 1.9.17.

³ That is, “beginner of doom”; hence “ominous,” “foreboding.” The name is so interpreted by Bacch. 8.14, ed. Jebb, σᾶμα μέλλοντος φόνου）, by the Scholiast on Pind. N., Arg. pp. 424ff. ed. Boeckh, and by Lactantius Placidus in his commentary on Statius, Theb. iv 717.

Aristotle

Athenaeus

Deipnosophistae

9.396e [= Simonides fr. 553 PMG]

Simonides (PMG 543.7–9) represents Danae as saying about Perseus:

Oh child, what grief I have! But you are asleep, and you slumber as a suckling does.

And in another passage (PMG 553) he says about Archemorus:¹⁸⁰

They wept for the suckling child of a violet-crowned mother, as it breathed out its sweet life.

Bacchylides

9.10–24

There [Phlius] the heroes with red shields, the best of the Argives, held games for the first time in honor of Archemorus, whom a fiery-eyed monstrous dragon killed in his sleep: a sign of the slaughter to come. [15] Powerful fate! The son of Oicles could not persuade them to go back to the streets thronged with good men. Hope robs men [of their sense]: it was she who then sent Adrastus son of Talaus [20] to Thebes ... to Polyneices ... The mortal men who crown their golden hair with the triennial garland from those glorious games in Nemea are illustrious;

Callimachus

fr. 384.21–26 Pfeiffer

he (hurried to Nemea) and swiftly he added more celery from the Argolid^c to that he had gained from Pirene, so that the people of Alexandria and those living on the banks of the river Cinypse may learn that Sosibios received two crowns near-by the two sons—the brother of Learchus and the child that the woman of Myrina suckled^f

^c The prize at the Nemean games was also a celery wreath.

^f The “brother of Learchus” was Melicertes, in whose honour the Isthmian games are said to have been established. The “child that the woman of Myrina suckled” is Opheltes-Archemoros, who was commemorated by the games of Nemea. He was the foster-child of Hypsipyle, daughter of Myrina, after whom the town Myrina of Lemnos was named.

Bravo III, p. 114

Kallimachos calls Opheltes "the one placed under the milk of Myrina," an allusion both to Hypsipyle's role as wet nurse and to her place of origin, Myrina being a city of Lemnos.⁸³ Given that Kallimachos contradicts Euripides regarding the name of Opheltes' father in the ode for Berenike, it is noteworthy that here he does allude to Hypsipyle; this may lend credence to the idea that her role in the myth was not Euripides' invention and has some older authority.

⁸³ So Pfeiffer, ad loc.

The Victory of Sosibios

Euripides

Hypsipyle

test. iiia (Hypothesis) [= P. Oxy. 2455 frs. 14–15, 3652 cols. i and ii.1-15]

Hypsipyle, which begins: ‘(Dionysus), who with (thyrsuses) and fawnskins . . . ’; the plot (is as follows) . . . (about fourteen lines largely lost, perhaps including . . . Amphiaraus . . . arriving . . .) . . . (Hypsipyle) showed (them) the spring . . . (torn asunder by?) a [line 20] serpent . . . the sons born . . . arrived (in the) vicinity in search of their mother, and having lodged with Lycurgus’ wife wanted to compete in the boy’s funeral games; and she having received the [line 25] aforesaid youths as guests approved them, but (planned) to kill their mother (as) having killed (her) son on purpose. . But when Amphiaraus . . . (she?) thanked him . . . (several lines lost) . . . [line 30] the(ir?) mother . . . they found . . . (several lines lost) . . .

test. iv [= Greek Anthology 3.10 = Palatine Anthology 3.10]

On the west side (i.e. of the monument at Cyzicus to Apollonis, mother of Attalus and Eumenes of Pergamum), at the beginning of the tenth plaque are carved Eunoos and Thoas, the sons of Hypsipyle, making themselves known to their mother and displaying the golden vine which was their family’s emblem, and rescuing her from the vengeance of Eurydice prompted by the death of Archemorus.

(Inscription:) ‘Reveal, Thoas, this plant of Dionysus; thus you will rescue your mother from death, the slave Hypsipyle, who endured Eurydice’s wrath when the serpent, offspring of the earth, killed helpless Archemorus. And you too go on your way, leaving Asopia’s rich land to bring your mother to holy Lemnos.’¹

¹ Much of the detail here may well be Euripidean, although in the play Eurydice probably forgave Hypsipyle before she and her sons recognized each other (see Introduction above).

fr. 752h.1–14

...

(Amphiaraus approaches by a side-entrance)

O Zeus, possessor of this Nemean grove, what business brings these newcomers I see close by, distinctively dressed in Dorian clothing, and coming towards this house through the lonely grove?

...

fr. 752h.26–32

Hypsipyle

These are known as the wealthy halls of Lycurgus, who was chosen from all of Asopia to be the temple-keeper of our local Zeus.

Amphiaraus

(I would like to ask) to take some running water in pitchers, so we may pour a (proper) libation to the gods. The30 trickles of stagnant water are not clear, and are being all churned up by our numerous host.

fr. 753

I’ll show the Argives Achelous’ stream.¹

¹ The great river Achelous could be regarded as the source or parent of minor rivers and springs throughout Greece.

fr. 753d

Part of a lyric exchange between Hypsipyle (returning from the spring without the baby) and the Chorus, vv. 1–9 very damaged but including 4 O me! from Hypsipyle, then:

fr. 754

Probably from the same sung dialogue:

. . . †picking† one quarry of flowers after another with joyful spirit, his child’s mind unsatisfied.

fr. 754a

Spoken dialogue later in the same scene:

<Hypsipyle?>

. . . a spring (is shaded?) . . . a serpent living by it . . . staring fiercely . . . shaking its helm, (in fear?) of which . . . shepherds . . . (text uncertain)¹ . . . . . . to do . . . and . . .

¹ Wilamowitz noted that the text might yield either ‘when silently’ or ‘(it) approaches)’, either presumably referring to the serpent.

fr. 757

...

Why do you seize on words so cleverly (and) . . . spin them out at length (when you have killed) Opheltes, (the joy) of my eyes? . . . and do not remind me (of my troubles?)1 . . . for me and my son whom (you have killed).

Do you (then) mean to kill me thus in anger, mistress, before you have properly learned the truth of this matter? You are silent, and give me no reply? O, how I suffer! I do not greatly complain that I must die, but if I wrongly seem to have killed the child, my nursling, whom I fed and cherished in my arms in every way except that I did not bear him—and he was a great blessing to me. O prow †and water whitening from the brine† of Argo! O my two sons, I face a terrible death! O seer, son of Oicles, I am about to die: defend me, come, don’t see me die so shamefully accused, for I die because of you! Come—you know what I have done, and she would accept you as the truest witness of my misfortune. (to Eurydice’s servants, despairing)

Take me, then; I see no friend nearby to save me. My deference, it seems, was wasted.

(Amphiaraus re-enters from the direction of the spring)

Amphiaraus

Wait, you who are sending this woman to be slaughtered, mistress of this house—for your dignified bearing shows me you are of free birth.

Hypsipyle

(kneeling before him)

O, by your knees—I fall as your suppliant, Amphiaraus—and by your chin and the skill you have from Apollo; for you have come just in time for me in my troubles. Save me, for I am to die because of my service to you. I am facing death, you see me bound at your knees, who went with you strangers then and assisted you. You will act righteously since you are righteous; but if you forsake me, you will bring reproach on the people of Argos and of Greece. Come, you who perceive events for the Danaans through (pure) burnt offerings, (tell) her what happened to her son. You (know) since you were there, yet she claims I plotted against her family and killed her boy on purpose.

Amphiaraus

I have come well acquainted with and had guessed your situation and what you would suffer because of the child’s death. I am here now to defend you in your misfortune, relying not on force but on piety. ...

...

Amphiaraus

...

But it is our inevitable lot to harvest life like a fruitful crop, for one of us to live, one not: why should we lament these things, which by our very nature we must endure? ... For he will be famous . . . and . . . a contest for him . . . giv(ing?) crowns . . . he will be envied . . . in this . . . will be remembered . . . was given the name . . . in the grove of Nemea . . . For she is blameless . . . For with good . . . (for you?) . . . will make you and your son . . .

Eurydice

My son, the . . . for you . . . less than . . . We should look at the natures of the good and the bad, and at their actions and their ways of life, putting much trust in those who are temperate, and not consorting at all with the unrighteous.

fr. 759a

58–110 (Collard and Cropp, pp. 310–317)

... then from the reunion celebration of Hypsipyle, Euneos, Thoas (mute) and Amphiaraus:

(singing joyfully) . . . (our fortune?) has driven (me) and my sons along a single path, this way and that, swerving us now towards fear, now towards gladness, but in time has shone out bright and fair.

Amphiaraus

(speaking) Lady, you now have the favour that I owed you. As you were generous to me when I made my request, so I have repaid you generously concerning your two sons. Keep yourself safe, now—and you two protect your mother; and prosper, while we, as we set out to do, will lead our army on and come to Thebes.

(Amphiaraus departs)

Hypsipyle

(speaking)

Good fortune to you, for you are worthy of it, stranger.

Euneos

(speaking)

Good fortune indeed—but as for you, poor mother, how greedily some god has fed on your misfortunes!

Hypsipyle

(singing her replies)

Alas, the flight that I fled, my son—if you only knew it—from sea-girt Lemnos, because I did not cut off my father’s grey head!¹

¹ See Introduction above on the Lemnian massacre and Hypsipyle’s role in it.

Euneos

Did they really order you to kill your father?

Hypsipyle

I am gripped by fear of those evil events—O my son, like Gorgons they slew their husbands in their beds!

Euneos

And you—how did you steal away and so escape death?

Hypsipyle

I came to the deep-resounding shore and the swelling sea, the lonely refuge of birds.

Euneos

And how did you come here from there, what transport did you use?

Hypsipyle

Seafarers, rowing, took me on a foreign voyage to Nauplion harbour and sold me into slavery—O my son—in this land, ship-borne, a pitiful piece of merchandise.

Euneos

Alas for your hardships—

Hypsipyle

Don’t grieve at what turned out well! But how were you and your brother raised, my son, and in whose care? Tell, tell this to your mother, O my son!

Euneos

Argo took us to the Colchians’ city.

Hypsipyle

Yes, just lately weaned as you were from my breast!

Euneos

And when my father Jason died, mother . . .

Hypsipyle

Alas, you tell me of evils and bring tears to my eyes, my son.

Euneos

. . . Orpheus took us to the region of Thrace.

Hypsipyle

What service was he doing for your hapless father? Tell me, my son!

Euneos

He taught me the music of the Asian lyre, and trained my brother in Ares’ martial arms.³

³ The politically fundamental functions of music and warfare are divided between the twins, as between Amphion and Zethus in Antiope (especially F 223.86–95). For Euneos’ connection with music at Athens see Introduction above.

Hypsipyle

And how did you travel across the Aegean to Lemnos’ shore?

Euneos

Thoas your father conveyed †the children of two†.⁴

⁴ Restoration uncertain: ‘the twin sons’ or ‘his son’s sons’, Wecklein; ‘your two sons’, Collard.

Hypsipyle

Is he really safe, then?

Euneos

Yes, through Bacchus’ contriving.

Hypsipyle

. . . (of/from?) hardships . . . expectation of life . . . brought (his?) son for your mother . . . (to/for?) me.

Euneos

. . . Thoas’(?) wine-dark grape-bunch.⁵

⁵ Possibly a gold ornament used as a recognition token (see Introduction above).

Hyginus

Fabulae

15

The Women of Lemnos ... [Hypsipyle] was sold into the service of King Lucurgus.* [See below: Smith and Trzaskoma, pp. 189, 190, 191]

74

Hypsipyle The seven generals were on their way to attack Thebes when they came to Nemea, where Hypsipyle, Thoas' daughter, was enslaved to King Lycurgus,* [See below: Smith and Trzaskoma, pp. 189, 190, 191] whose son Archemorus (or Ophites) she was nursing. She had received an oracle that warned her not to put the boy down on the earth before he could walk. So the seven generals who were goimg to Thebes came to Hypsipyle in search of water and asked her to show them where they could find some. Afraid to put the boy down on the earth, she placed him instead in a deep patch of parsley that sat next to the spring. While she was drawing the water for them, the serpent that was guarding the spring devoured the boy. Adrastus and the others killed the serpent, appealed to Lycurgus on Hypsipyle's behaf, and established funeral games in the boy's honor. These games still occur every fourth year, and the winners receive a crown of parsley.

[Grant:] The seven chieftains on their way to attack Thebes came to Nemea, where Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, as a slave, was caring for the boy Archemorus or Ophites, son of King Lycus. He had been warned by an oracle not to put the child on the ground until he could walk. When the seven leaders who were going to Thebes came to Hypsipyle in their search for water, and asked her to show them some, she, fearing to put the boy on the ground, . . . [found] some very thick parsley near the spring, and placed the child in it. But while she was giving them water, a dragon, guardian of the spring, devoured the child. Adrastus and the others killed the dragon, and interceded for Hypsipyle to Lycus, and established funeral games in honour of the boy. They take place every fifth year, and the victors receive a wreath of parsley.

273.6

Those Who Established Competitions up to Aeneas, the Fifteenth [1] ...

...

[6] Ninth is the competition held in Nemea for Archemorus, the son of Lycugus* [See below: Smith and Trzaskoma, pp. 189, 190, 191] and Eurydice, established by the seven generals who were on their way to sack Thebes. Later at these games Euneus and Deipylus, the sons of Jason and Hypsipyle, were victorious.

Ovid

Ibis

481–483

Nor mayst thou be more lightly stung by poisoned snake than the daughter-in-law of old Oeager and Calliope: or than Hypsipyle’s babe,

Pausanias

2.15.2

In Nemea is a noteworthy temple of Nemean Zeus, but I found that the roof had fallen in and that there was no longer remaining any image. Around the temple is a grove of cypress trees, and here it is, they say, that Opheltes was placed by his nurse in the grass and killed by the serpent.

2.15.3

The Argives offer burnt sacrifices to Zeus in Nemea also, and elect a priest of Nemean Zeus; moreover they offer a prize for a race in armour at the winter celebration of the Nemean games. In this place is the grave of Opheltes; around it is a fence of stones, and within the enclosure are altars. There is also a mound of earth which is the tomb of Lycurgus, the father of Opheltes. The spring they call Adrastea for some reason or other, perhaps because Adrastus found it.

Pindar

Nemean

8.50–51

Yes, truly the hymn of victory existed long ago, even before that strife arose between Adrastus and the Cadmeans.¹¹

¹¹ That is, there were encomia before the Nemean games were founded by Adrastus and his army on their way to Thebes (schol.).

9.8–9

Let us rouse up, then, the resounding lyre and rouse the pipe for the very apex of contests for horses, which Adrastus established for Phoebus by the streams of Asopus.

10.26–28

[he] won the crown at both the Isthmus and Nemea and gave the Muses work for their plow, by thrice winning crowns at the gates to the sea,¹² and thrice on the hallowed ground in Adrastus’ institution.¹³

¹² I.e. at the Isthmus.

¹³ Adrastus instituted the Nemean games on his way to Thebes (cf. Nem. 8.51).

Olimpian

13.33

Two wreaths of wild parsley (σελίνων) crowned him

when he appeared at the Isthmian

festivals, and Nemea offers no opposition.

Propertius

Elegies

2.34.37–39

how Adrastus’ Arion spoke aloud,⁸⁸ the horse which had gained victory⁸⁹ at the funeral games of ill-starred Archemorus: the fate of Amphiaraus’ chariot will not avail you

⁸⁸ When it warned Adrastus of the outcome of the fight (cf. Statius, Theb. 11.442).

⁸⁹ Ridden by Polynices (ib. 6.316) and granted victory by favour of Neptune (ib. 6.529).

Simonides

fr. 553 PMG [= Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 9.396e]

553 Athen. 9. 396e (ii 365 Kaibel)

553 Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner (on γαλαθηνός, ‘suckling’)

Simonides makes Danae say of Perseus, 'My child, . . . and with childish¹ heart you slumber' (543). In other lines he says of Archemorus,²

they wept for the suckling babe of violet-crowned <Eurydice> as he breathed out his sweet soul.

¹ Lit. ‘suckling’.

² Text uncertain.

Bravo III, p. 104

Athenaios preserves what amounts to our earliest known reference to the story (Simonides fr. 48 PMG =T 1). In the course of discussing the adjective γαλαθηνός, he cites two lines, which he says Siminides wrote about Archemoros:

...

For the suckling child of violet-crowned ... they wept,

As he breathed out his sweet life.

Gantz, p. 510

Our first reference to this second phase of their journey [the stop at Nemea] comes from Simonides, who says that they lamented the death of child [Archemoros] (533 PMG)

Statius

Thebaid

4.727–729

Great glory awaits the Nymph when every other year the games at which Achaea’s leaders sweat and the festival of death shall renew the memory of sad Hypsipyle and sacred Opheltes.

4.730–745

Therefore no longer do they have strength to carry hot shields or the tight fabric of corselets; so harsh thirst parches them. Not only are their mouths and constricted throats burnt up, an inner force convulses them. ... Adrastus sends scouts this way and that; are the Licymnian meres still there, does any of Amymone’s water survive? All stagnate, drained by hidden fires, nor is there hope of a watery sky. They might as well scour yellow Libya and the sandy deserts of Africa and Syene that no cloud ever shades.

4.746–752

At last as they wander in the forest (so Euhius himself had planned it) suddenly they see Hypsipyle, fair in her sadness. Opheltes, not hers but the ill-starred child of Inachian Lycurgus, hangs at her breast, her hair is dishevelled, her clothing poor; yet on her face are marks of royalty, her dignity shows, not sunk in her misfortune.

5.534–540

What god’s allotting, little one, gave you the burden of so great a fate? By this enemy do you lie low scarcely at life’s first threshold? Or was it to make you die sacred through the ages henceforth to the peoples of Greece, worthy of so grand a tomb? Grazed by the lash of the tail tip, you perish, child, and the snake knows not of it. Sleep fled your limbs straightway and your eyes opened only to death. ...

5.541–554

But when from your shocked lips 50 a dying wail passed out upon the air and the plaint hushed broken like the unfinished utterances of a dream, Hypsipyle heard. In deathly fear she hurries faint knees that will not run easily. Now certain of disaster by her mind’s augury and scattering her gaze in all directions, she ranges the ground in search, vainly crying over and over words familiar to the babe. Nowhere is he, and the meadow has lost the recent tracks. The sluggish enemy lies gathered in a green round, filling broad acres even so, his neck exposed aslant on his belly. The wretched woman shuddered at the sight and with scream upon scream stirred the forest to its depth;

5.605–634

She took the torn limbs to her bosom, poor soul, and twined them in her hair. At last her voice was loosed to find a passage for her sorrow and her moans dissolved into words: ‘Sweet semblance of the children who have forsaken me, Archemorus, 57 solace of my lost estate and country, pride of my servitude, what guilty gods took your life, my joy, whom but now in parting I left at play, crushing the grasses as you hastened in your forward crawl? Ah, where is your starry face? Where your words unfinished in constricted sounds, and laughs and gurgles that only I could understand? How often would I talk to you of Lemnos and the Argo and lull you to sleep with my long tale of woe! So I would console my sorrow and give the little one a mother’s breasts. Now in my bereavement the milky flow comes to me in vain, dropping hapless into your wounds. I recognize the gods. Ah dire presages of my slumber, terrors of the night, and Venus, who never in the darkness appeared to my startled eyes save to my cost! What gods do I accuse? ’Twas I myself—I am to die, so why fear to confess?—who exposed you to the Fates. What madness drew my mind? Could such forgetfulness of such a charge take [p. 316] hold of me? As in my vanity I rehearsed the story of my country and the tale of my renown (such sense of duty, such fidelity!), I paid you, Lemnos, the crime I owed. Where is the deadly snake? Bring me, chieftains, if you have any gratitude for my grievous service, any favour for my words; or slay me yourselves with the sword so that I may not see my sad masters again and bereaved Eurydice, a thing of hate—though my love and grief yield not to hers. Shall I bear this melancholy burden to pour into his mother’s lap? What earth should first sink me in profoundest dark?’

5.638–644

And now a sudden report that ran through the dwelling of Lycurgus as he was at sacrifice filled himself and his house with tears—himself as he approached from the top of Perseus’ mountain where he had offered portions to the unfriendly Thunderer, shaking his head as he returned from the angry entrails. Here he was keeping himself, taking no part in the Argive war; not that he lacked courage, but temple and altars held him back.

5.653–679

But great-hearted Lycurgus’ love for his son is up and doing. It takes strength from calamity; a father’s furious anger sucks back his tears, and with long strides he despatches the fields that stay him, shouting ‘And where is she to whom spilt blood of mine is a trifle or a pleasure? Does she live? Take her, thrust her, comrades, bring her quickly. I shall make her forget all her rigmarole of Lemnos, and her father, and the lie of race divine that she is so proud of.’ Snatching up a sword and advancing, he was about to deal death in his rage, when the hero son of Oeneus went into action, ... Keep it, and let the victory of the Greeks find you still at the graveside bewailing this fatality.'

5.710–730

Which of the High Ones solaced her calamity, balancing her tears with an answer to her great prayer, and brought back unlooked-for joy to sad Hypsipyle? You it was, Euhan, founder of the family, who had brought the two youths 67 from Lemnos’ shore to Nemea, preparing a wondrous destiny. Their mother was the reason for their journey and the hospitable dwelling of Lycurgus had given them entry, when the report reached the king of his offspring piteously killed. So they are there as his companions and (oh chance and men’s minds blind to the future!) support the king. But as soon as Lemnos and Thoas’ name come to their ears, they rush through weapons and hands and, both weeping, tear their mother apart with greedy embraces, taking her to their bosoms in turn. She stays fixed like a stony rock, her eyes unmoving, not daring to trust the gods she has experienced. But when she sees their faces and the signs of Argo on the swords Jason had left behind and Jason’s name inwoven on their shoulders, her sorrows left her, and overcome by so great a boon she collapsed, her eyes bedewed with other tears. Signs too were manifest in heaven, cries of tumultuous joy and the drums and cymbals of the god crashed through the resonant air.

5.733

‘Hear, ruler of Nemea

6.1–5

Rumour travels at large gliding through the Danaan cities with report that the sons of Inachus are founding rites for a new tomb and games to boot, in which martial valour will sweat in preparation for war and set itself alight, a festival according to Greek custom.

Modern

Bravo III

Athenaios preserves what amounts to our earliest known reference to the story (Simonides fr. 48 PMG =T 1). In the course of discussing the adjective γαλαθηνός, he cites two lines, which he says Simonides wrote about Archemoros:

...

For the suckling child of violet-crowned ... they wept,

As he breathed out his sweet life.

p. 105

p. 106

p. 107

The play is the earliest attestation of several other figures in the Opheltes legend, most prominently Hypsipyle, the former queen of Lemnso, who comes to be a slave in Nemea.³⁷ There she serves as nurse in the household of Lykourgos. Details about him emerge from ann exchange between Hypsipyle and Amphiaraos in an early scene (F 752h.24-28 = T 10):

..

(Amph.) To which man of the land of Philous is this house

With flocks of sheep reckoned to belong, O Stranger?

(Hyps.) The prosperous halls of Lykourgos are these called,

Who by selection from all Asopia

Is priest of the local Zeus.

³⁸ ...

p. 108

p. 109

p. 110

At least one other playwright treated the hero Opheltes, but precious little information survives. Aischylos must have written about him in a play since we learn from the Pindaric scholia that he too regarded the origin of the Nemean Games as the funeral games for Archemoros. Unlike Euripides, however, he reckoned the hero to be the son of Nemea (Schol. Pi. N. hyp. (c) ... A logical place, but by no means certain, for Aischylos to have treated the child's story is in his play Nema, of which only the title survives in a list of his works, but it is not even certain what the proper acentuation of the title is, whether it takes its name from the place or the eponymous nymph (Νεμέα) or else from the Nemean Games (Νέμεα).

Kallimachos calls Opheltes "the one placed under the milk of Myrina," an allusion both to Hypsipyle's role as wet nurse and to her place of origin, Myrina being a city of Lemnos.⁸³ Given that Kallimachos contradicts Euripides regarding the name of Opheltes' father in the ode for Berenike, it is noteworthy that here he does allude to Hypsipyle; this may lend credence to the idea that her role in the myth was not Euripides' invention and has some older authority.

⁸³ So Pfeiffer, ad loc.

Collard and Cropp

p. 251

Hypsipyle was one of Euripides’ latest and most elaborate tragedies. Its heroine was the daughter of Thoas, a son of the god Dionysus and king of the island of Lemnos. As a young woman she had borne twin sons to Jason during the Argonauts’ visit to Lemnos, but Jason took these sons with him to Colchis and Hypsipyle later had to flee the island after refusing to kill her father when the other women of Lemnos massacred their menfolk. Seized by marauders, she was sold as a slave to Lycurgus, priest at the rural sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea, and later became nurse to Opheltes, son of Lycurgus and his wife Eurydice. Meanwhile Jason died, probably at Colchis, and left his sons to be raised by his comrade Orpheus in Thrace. They were eventually reunited there with their grandfather, returned with him to Lemnos, and set out to find their mother. In the play, they reach Nemea just as the army of the Seven is passing by on its march to Thebes, and Hypsipyle admits them to the house without recognizing them. She also agrees to guide the Argive seer Amphiaraus to a spring where he can find fresh water for a sacrifice, but at the spring she negligently allows the infant Opheltes to be killed by a serpent. His mother wishes to punish Hypsipyle with death, but Amphiaraus persuades Eurydice to accept the boy’s fate, interpreting it as a portent for the Seven and advising that a funeral should be celebrated with games; these will be perpetuated as the Nemean Games and the boy remembered in cult as Archemorus, ‘First to die’ (see F 757.908–18 with note 4). Hypsipyle’s sons compete in the games, a recognition is effected, and thus redeemed she returns with them to Lemnos at the end of the play.

Hypsipyle’s involvement in the events at Nemea seems to have been invented by Euripides, for earlier sources connect her only with events on Lemnos (especially Homer, [cont.]

Connelly

p. 238

In the sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea, also in the Peloponnese ... a hero shrine to the baby Opheltes, mythical prince of the city, has been unearthed close to the temple.¹⁰⁰ Here, as at Athens, a child of the local king dies, is buried near the local temple, and is honored in funeral games. The son of King Lykourgos, Opheltes was born under a dark prophecy. Death would come to the child if any part of his body touched ground before he learned to walk. One day when in a leafy grove with his nurse Hypsipyle, Opeltes met his fate when seven Archive warriors passed by and asked for a drink of water. Hypsipyle laid the baby down in a bed of celery, whereupon a snake sprang out and fatally bit the child. The warriors killed the snake and instituted funeral games in the boys honor, changing his name to Archemoros.¹⁰¹

Pausanias saw the heroön of Opheltes and the tomb of his father, King Lykourgos, during his visit to Nemea in the second century A.D.¹⁰² Excavations have revealed a pentagonal, open-air precinct, identified as the enclosure for the tomb and altar of Opheltes-Archemoros.¹⁰³ It represents the Helenistic phase of the shrine already established in the Archaic period, when the Nemean Games were inaugurated (573 B.C.) and the first temple of Zeus was built.¹⁰⁴ Not far from Opheltes's shrine, twenty-three planting pits for fir or cypress trees have been unearthed, constituting a sacred grove that memorialized the spot where Opheltes died among celery plants.¹⁰⁵

Gantz

p. 510

Our first reference to this second phase of their journey [the stop at Nemea] comes from Simonides, who says that they lamented the death of child [Archemoros] (533 PMG) Bakchylides takes matters a step further: at Philous the Archive heroes set up the Nemian games in honor of Archemoros, whom a snake has slain in his sleep; the event is somehow taken as an omen of Archive failure at Thebes (Bak 9.10-20). Pindar agrees, in Nemian 9, that [cont.]

p. 511

Adrastos founded the Nemean games on the banks of the Asopos (the river that flows past Phlios and Sikyon) but does not say why (Nem 9.9). The hypothesis to the Nemean Odes as a whole offers several different versions of the story, including the fact that in Aischylos, among others, this Archemoros is the son of Nemea. Presumably, then the child's death and the games' founding were subjects of his lost play Nemea. Unfortunately, neither the hypothesis nor any other source tells us anything more about Aischylos' handling of the tale.

The loss of Aischylos' play is the greater because Euripides in his patially preserved Hypsipyle offers us quite a different mother for the same child, one Eurydike, wife of Lykourgos, a priest of Nemean Zeus; Hypsipyle, the former paramour of Iason, is involved because she has become the childs nurse, after being exiled from Lemnos and captured by pirates. The child here has as his given name Opheltes, to be changed to Archemoros in the course of the story. As the action of the play opens Amphiaros and his companions are on their way north to Thebes, and encounter Hypsipyle while searching for water with which to perform a sacrifice.⁴⁴ She takes the seer to a spring quarded by a serpent, and there the serpent somehow manages to kill the child. Eurydike is naturally bent on revenge, but Amphiaros persuades her that what has happened was destined: the child will be called Archemoros, as signalling the begining of the expedition's doom, and games will be established. Eurydike yields to this explanation, and for the remainder of the play—Hypsipyle's recognition of her sons, who have come to find her– need not concern us here. Apollodorus (ApB 3.6.4), Hyginus (Fab 74, with a prophecy that the child is not to be put down until he can walk), and the Nemean Odes hypothesis all provide a similar account of Archemoros' parentage and death. The hypothesis' one other significant variation lies in the presenting a third set of parents, Euphetes and Kreousa. That Aischylos told this same story of Lemnian nurse and snake in his Nemea with merely a different name for the mother (and the father) is possible, but I doubt it: surely neither Aischylos nor anyone else would have named such a play after the child's mother if the plot focused on the misfortunes of the nurse who failed to guard her charge. We must allow, I think, that Aischylos' version may well not have included Hypsipyle at all.

⁴⁴ (p. 834) The bulk of our information about this play derives from the text of a papyrus first published in 1908 and hence not included in Nauk. See Bonds'sedition of all this material, with commentary (Oxford 1963).

Hard

p. 318

The death of Opheltes and embassy of Tydeus

As Adrastos and his army were marching toward the Isthmus they passed through Nemea in the northern Argolid, where they became involved in a strange incident that led to the founding of the Nemean Games. The city was ruled at that time by Lykourgos, son of Pheres, an immigrant from Thessaly (see p. 426), who had appointed HYPSIPYLE, the former queen of Lemnos, to act as nursemaid to his infant son OPHELTES. As we will see, the Lemnian women had onspired together to kill all their menfolk, but Hypsipyle had broken the agreement by sparing her aged father Thoas (see p. 384); and when the other women had discovered this, they sold her into slavery. Or in another version, she had escaped abroad after her action had been discovered, but had then been captured by pirates who had sold her to Lykourgos.¹³⁹ Adrastos and his companions now encountered her in Nemea and asked her to show them the way to a spring, for they were thirsty after their long journey (or else needed water for a sacrifice). So she placed the infant Opheltes on a bed of parsley and led them to water. Although an oracle had warned that Opheltes should never be placed on the ground until he could walk, she thought that he would be safe because he would not actually be in contact with the ground. On returning from the spring, however, she found that the child had been killed by a snake. Adrastos and his followers killed the snake, and interceded with Lykourgos on Hypsipyle's behalf; and they then gave little Opheltes a magnificent funeral, renaming him Archemoros (Beginning of Doom) because Amphiaros declared that his death was an evil sign that indicated that many members of the army would lose their lives in the forthcoming conflict. They also held funeral games in honour of the dead child, so founding the Nemean Games, at which the judges wore dark clothing as a sign of mourning and the victors were awarded a crown of wild parsley.

LSJ

s.v. σέλινον

A.celery, Apium graveolens, ... of the chaplets with which the victors at the Isthmian and Nemean games were crowned, Pi.O.13.33;

Parada

s.v. Opheltes 1.

Ὀφέλτης

He was nursed by Hypsipyle. She left him behind when she went to show the way to a spring to the SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, who had come to Nemea.

•a)Lucurgus 3 ∞ Amphithea 2.

•b)Lycurgus 3 ∞ Eurydice 1.

♇a)Killed by Serpent 10.

♇b)Killed by Dragon 5.

D.-•a)b)Apd.1.9.14. D.Apd.3.6.4.

•b)Stat.Theb.4.741., 5.632.

♇a)Apd.3.6.4., Stat.Theb.5.534ff.

♇b)Hyg.Fab.74.

Smith and Trzaskoma

p. 189

15. King Lycurgus, We hesitantly have restored Lycurgus for Lycus in the belief that it is an error of transmission and not a mistake on the part of Hyginus (See Lact. Plac. ad Stat. Theb. 5.29 [noted in Marshall] and esp. First Vatican Mythographer 2.31).

p. 190

74 Lycurgus: We correct F's Lycus to Lycurgus; see our endnote to Fab. 15

p. 191

173.6 Lycurgus: As elswhere (Fab. 15, 74), we have corrected F's Lycus to Lycurgus.

Smith

s.v. Opheltes 1

（Ὀφέλτης.) A son of Lycurgus, who was killed by a snake at Nemea, as his nurse Hypsipyle had left him alone. (Apollod. 1.9.14; Paus. 2.15.3; comp. ADRASTUS.）

Tripp

s.v. Opheltes

A son of Lucurgus, king of Nemea, and Amphithea or Eurydice. According to Hyginus, Lycurgus (or Lycus) was warned by an oracle not to set Opheltes on the ground until he could walk. Therefore, Opheltes' nurse Hypsipyle, laid him on a thick bed of parsley while she was showing the SEVEN AGAINST THEBES [C] the way to a spring. In spite of this precaution the child was killed by a snake that guarded the spring. The Seven buried the child under the name of Archemorus (Beginning of Doom), for the seer Amphiaraüs said that his death meant just that for them. Adrastus interceded for Hypsipyle with the king and founded the Nemean games in the child's honor. [Hyginus., Fabulae 74.]

West

p. 7

For most details of the campaign we have to turn to other authors, who may or may not give an accurate reflection of the narrative of the Thebaid.⁴ On reaching Nemea the expedition paused to honor with funeral games the boy Opheltes, also called Archemoros, who had been fatally bitten by a snake: this was the mythical origin of the Nemean Games.⁵ If the episode occurred in the Thebaid, the poem must date from after 573, when the Nemean Games in fact began.

⁴ See especially Iliad 4.372–398, 5.801–808, 10.285–290; Pindar, Ol. 6.13–17, Nem. 9.13–27; Bacchylides 9.10–20; Diodorus 4.65.5–9; Apollodorus 3.6.3–8; Pausanias 9.5.12, 8.7–9.3; Hyginus, Fabulae 68; Gantz, Early Greek Myth, 510–519.

⁵ Bacchylides 9.10–24; Euripides, Hypsipyle; Hypotheses to Pindar’s Nemeans; Apollodorus 3.6.4; Hyginus, Fabulae 74, 273.6. For a parallel myth about a heroic origin for the Isthmian Games see below on Eumelus’ Corinthiaca.

^ Bravo III, p. 111.

[1] Bravo III, p. 111.

[1]