Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

After Oedipus’s fall (blinding and, in most tragic lines, exile), his sons Eteocles and Polynices are to share or alternate the kingship of Thebes—often under Creon’s influence at first. The brothers agree, in the widespread version, to rule in turn, year by year. When Eteocles’s year ends he refuses to yield the throne. Polynices is driven out—or flees—into exile. Polynices goes to Argos, to the court of King Adrastus. There, by a prophetic token (a quarrel overnight matching an oracle about a lion and a boar, or simply by Adrastus’s hospitality), he is received and married to Adrastus’s daughter Argeia; Tydeus of Calydon, another exile, marries Deipyle. Adrastus pledges to restore both sons-in-law to their rights. Polynices thus gains an Argive army and six famous captains beside himself—the core of the expedition later called the Seven Against Thebes. Meanwhile Eteocles fortifies Thebes, consults Teiresias, and prepares to defend the seven gates. The fraternal conflict is not mere ambition: it inherits Oedipus’s curse that the brothers will divide their inheritance with the sword. Polynices’ exile is the political hinge between Oedipus’s ruin and the first Theban war; Eteocles’ refusal to share power makes civil war inevitable and draws Argos into Cadmeid bloodshed.