Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Parthenopaeus, son of Atalanta (by Meleager, Melanion, or Ares in variant genealogies), marched with the Seven against Thebes as one of the Argive champions—young, beautiful, and fierce, still beardless in Aeschylus’s description, bearing a Sphinx device on his shield that mocked the city Oedipus had saved. Assigned a gate (often the Electran or Neïstan in the tragic catalogues), he swore to sack Thebes and insulted the defenders with the arrogance of youth and Arcadian pride in his huntress mother. In the battle he fell before the walls. Apollodorus and the tragic tradition commonly give his killer as Periclymenus, son of Poseidon (or, in other notices, Amphidicus / Asphodicus): Parthenopaeus is struck as he scales or presses the gate, ending the Arcadian contingent of the Seven. Euripides’ *Phoenician Women* stages him among the champions whose deaths the messenger reports—another of Adrastus’s losses before the brothers’ duel. Unlike Capaneus (blasted by Zeus) or Amphiaraus (swallowed living), Parthenopaeus dies a mortal’s death in ordinary combat; his pathos is maternal and generational—Atalanta’s son cut down in the same war that will later claim the Epigoni’s fathers’ unfinished work. Pausanias notes Boeotian tomb traditions. Catalogue him apart so the Atalantid Seven-champion has his own death entry.