In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, Antiope (icon) was the name of the daughter of the Boeotia

Boeotia

Boeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. It was also a region of ancient Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, the second largest city being Thebes.-Geography:...

n river god

River God

River God is a novel by author Wilbur Smith. It tells the story of the talented eunuch slave Taita, his life in Egypt, the flight of Taita along with the Egyptian populace from the Hyksos invasion, and their eventual return. The novel can be grouped together with Wilbur Smith's other books on...

 Asopus

Asopus

Asopus or Asôpos is the name of four different rivers in Greece and one in Turkey. In Greek mythology, it was the name of the gods of those rivers.-The rivers in Greece:...

, according to Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

; in later sources she is called the daughter of the "nocturnal" king Nycteus

Nycteus

In Greek mythology, Nycteus was a king of Thebes. His rule began after the death of Polydorus, and ended when he was succeeded by his brother Lycus.-Genealogy:...

 of Thebes

Thebes, Greece

Thebes is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It played an important role in Greek myth, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others...

 or, in the Cypria, of Lycurgus

Lycurgus

Lycurgus or Lykurgus may refer to:People:* Historical:** Lycurgus of Sparta, creator of constitution of Sparta** Lycurgus of Athens, one of the ten notable orators at Athens,...

, but for Homer her site is purely Boeotian. Her beauty attracted Zeus

Zeus

In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...

, who, assuming the form of a satyr

Satyr

In Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus — "satyresses" were a late invention of poets — that roamed the woods and mountains. In myths they are often associated with pipe-playing....

, took her by force. A.B. Cook noted that her myth "took on a Dionysiac colouring, Antiope being represented as a Maenad

Maenad

In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus , the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones"...

 and Zeus as a Satyr". This is the sole mythic episode in which Zeus is transformed into a satyr. After this she was carried off by Epopeus

Epopeus

Epopeus was a mythical Greek king of Sicyon, with an archaic bird-name that linked him to epops , the hoopoe, the "watcher"...

, who was venerated as a hero in Sicyon

Sicyon

Sikyon was an ancient Greek city situated in the northern Peloponnesus between Corinth and Achaea on the territory of the present-day prefecture of Corinthia...

; he would not give her up till compelled by her uncle Lycus (brother of Nycteus)

Lycus (brother of Nycteus)

In Greek Mythology, Lycus was a ruler of the ancient city of Ancient Thebes . His rule was preceded by the regency of Nycteus, and he was succeeded by the twins Amphion and Zethus.-Genealogy:...

.

On the way home she gave birth, in the neighbourhood of Eleutherae

Eleutherae

Eleutherae is a city in the northern part of Attica, bordering the territory of Boeotia. One of the best preserved fortresses of the Ancient Greece stands now on the spot of Ancient Eleutherae with walls of very fine masonry that average 2.6m thick. A stretch of wall 206m long containing six...

 on Mount Cithaeron, to the twins Amphion and Zethus

Amphion and Zethus

Amphion and Zethus , in ancient Greek mythology, were the twin sons of Zeus by Antiope. They are important characters in one of the two founding myths of the city of Thebes, because they constructed the city's walls....

, of whom Amphion was the son of the god, and Zethus the son of Epopeus. Both were left to be brought up by herdsmen. At Thebes Antiope now suffered from the persecution of Dirce

Dirce

Dirce was the wife of Lycus in Greek mythology, and aunt to Antiope whom Zeus impregnated. Antiope fled in shame to King Epopeus of Sicyon, but was brought back by Lycus through force, giving birth to the twins Amphion and Zethus on the way...

, the wife of Lycus, but at last escaped towards Eleutherae, and there found shelter, unknowingly, in the house where her two sons were living as herdsmen. This is the situation in Euripides' Antiope, which turns upon the recognition of mother and sons and their rescue of her.

Here she was discovered by Dirce, who had come to celebrate a Bacchic festival; she ordered the two young men to tie Antiope to the horns of a wild bull. They were about to obey, when the old herdsman, who had brought them up, revealed his secret, and they carried out the punishment on Dirce instead, for cruel treatment of Antiope, their mother, who had been treated by Dirce as a slave. In Euripides, the descent of Hermes

Hermes

Hermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Kyllini in Arcadia. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and...

 stops the brothers from putting their uncle to death; Lycus then resigns power in the Cadmeia of Thebes to the twins.

For the treatment of Dirce, it is said, Dionysus

Dionysus

Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...

, to whose worship she had been devoted, visited Antiope with madness, which caused her to wander restlessly all over Greece until she was cured, and married by Phocus of Tithorca, on Mount Parnassus

Mount Parnassus

Mount Parnassus, also Parnassos , is a mountain of limestone in central Greece that towers above Delphi, north of the Gulf of Corinth, and offers scenic views of the surrounding olive groves and countryside. According to Greek mythology, this mountain was sacred to Apollo and the Corycian nymphs,...

, where both were buried in one grave.

Amphion became a great singer and musician after Hermes

Hermes

Hermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Kyllini in Arcadia. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and...

 taught him to play and gave him a golden lyre; Zethus was a hunter and herdsman. For Greeks of the Classical age, the contrast between the lifestyles of the two became the most salient element in the narrative; in Euripides' Antiope the best-recalled scene was where the two brothers in debate contrasted their active and contemplative lives. Together they built and fortified Thebes, huge blocks of stone forming themselves into walls at the sound of Amphion's lyre. Amphion married Niobe

Niobe

Niobe was a daughter of Tantalus and of either Dione, the most frequently cited, or of Eurythemista or Euryanassa, and she was the sister of Pelops and Broteas, all of whom figure in Greek mythology....

, and killed himself after the loss of his wife and children. Zethus married Aedon

Aedon

Aëdon is, in Greek mythology, the daughter of Pandareus of Ephesus. According to Homer she was the wife of Zethus, and the mother of Itylus....

, or sometimes Thebe. The brothers were buried in one grave.
At Sicyon

Sicyon

Sikyon was an ancient Greek city situated in the northern Peloponnesus between Corinth and Achaea on the territory of the present-day prefecture of Corinthia...

, Antiope was important enough that a chryselephantine

Chryselephantine

Chryselephantine is a term that refers to the sculptural medium of gold and ivory...

 cult image was created of her and set up in the temple of Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....

. Pausanias speaks of it. Only one priestess, an elderly woman, was permitted to enter the cella

Cella

A cella or naos , is the inner chamber of a temple in classical architecture, or a shop facing the street in domestic Roman architecture...

of the temple, with a young girl chosen each year, to serve as Lutrophoros.

Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

' Antiope, presented about 408 BCE, was widely quoted, in Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's Gorgias and many other authors, resulting in a large array of fragments. In 1890 Flinders Petrie discovered further papyrus fragments, which had been reused in constructing a 3rd century BCE Ptolemaic mummy case found in the Fayoum; the palaeography suggested that the scroll was old before it was reused as waste, making these fragments the earliest surviving text of any Greek play; the discovery occasioned a rash of new readings of the existing fragments. The modern comprehensive reconstruction of all the fragments is that of Jean Kambitsis, ed. and commentator, L'Antiope d'Euripide (Athens, 1972).

Popular Culture

Antiope, as the mother of Amphion and Zethos, and the mother-in-law of Niobe, appears in the following novels: