Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

During the Argive siege Teiresias declares that Thebes will not stand unless a descendant of the sown men (Spartoi) dies for the city—blood to appease Ares, still owed for Cadmus’s slaughter of the dragon. The lot falls on the house of Creon: his son Menoeceus, still a youth, is the required victim. Creon, hearing the oracle, plans to smuggle the boy out of Thebes to safety. Menoeceus pretends to agree, then slips away to the walls. On the highest battlement, over the dragon’s old lair or the place Pausanias later shows as his tomb, Menoeceus cuts his own throat and falls, giving his blood freely so that Thebes may live. Euripides makes the act voluntary and patriotic—the boy refuses exile and chooses the city’s life over his own—contrasting Creon’s political calculation with the son’s piety. The sacrifice succeeds as Teiresias promised: the city holds long enough for the brothers’ duel and the Argive failure, though the house of Creon pays again later through Antigone and Haemon. Apollodorus notes the death among the siege’s turning rites. Catalogue Menoeceus apart from Creon’s tyranny and from Antigone’s burial so the Phoenissae sacrifice stands clear.