Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

With the Argive assault raging at the gates, the war narrows to the brothers. In Aeschylus, news comes that the city is saved at six gates but that Eteocles and Polynices have killed each other. In Euripides’ *Phoenician Women*, Jocasta (still alive in that version) and Antigone try to stop the duel outside the walls; the brothers refuse. They wound one another mortally: each brother’s spear finds the other’s body, and they die as Oedipus’s curse foretold—dividing the inheritance only in the earth. Creon (or the Theban survivors) holds the field. The Argive host breaks; Adrastus flees. The double death leaves Thebes without either Labdacid claimant and raises the crisis of burial: how to treat the patriot who died for the city and the exile who brought a foreign army against it. That crisis—Creon’s edict, Antigone’s defiance—is the matter of the next entry. Apollodorus states the outcome baldly: the brothers slew one another, and Creon succeeded to the Theban power (as regent for or successor around the next generation). The mutual killing is the curse made flesh: not victory for either son, but reciprocal annihilation that empties the house Oedipus left behind and opens the path for Creon’s harsh order and Antigone’s fatal piety.