Argia Helps Bury Polynices (Variant)

Catalogue ID: 03-heroes/160-argia-buries-polynices-variant

Cycle: Heroes — Theban / burial aftermath

Version line: Handbook / post-Sophoclean variant (Argia with Antigone)

Sources: Hyginus, *Fabulae* 72; Statius, *Thebaid* 12 (Roman epic amplification, labeled); scholia and mythographic notices contrasting Sophocles; Apollodorus, *Library* 3.7.1 (Antigone alone in the main Greek prose line)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/03-heroes/160-argia-buries-polynices-variant.md

Characters

Adrastus — Argia’s father; sometimes arrives later for negotiation or war’s end (background)
Antigone — sister of Polynices; partner in the forbidden rites
Argeia — widow of Polynices; co-burier in this variant
Creon — forbids the burial; punishes the women
Haemon — in strands that keep Sophocles’ sequel (optional)
Polynices — dead; object of the burial

Places

Mount Helicon — Argia’s origin; Adrastus’s home
Theban battlefield — where Polynices lies unburied
Thebes — Creon’s city and edict

Themes

Narrative

In Sophocles, Antigone alone steals out to cover Polynices against Creon’s edict; Argia is not on stage. A persistent handbook and later poetic variant brings Argia to Thebes after the battle to seek her husband’s body. Finding Antigone at the same pious work, she joins her—two women, sister and widow, defying the decree together. Creon catches them; punishments follow the familiar shape (death, enclosure, or pursuit), sometimes with Argia escaping or dying beside Antigone depending on the teller. The variant answers a narrative pressure the Attic play leaves aside: the Argive wife’s claim on the corpse of the man Argos sent to war. Statius’s Roman *Thebaid* expands the night search and recognition into a full episode; Hyginus preserves the paired burial in Latin handbook form that reflects older mythographic choice. Catalogue this as a distinct version line beside Sophocles’ solitary Antigone—not a replacement of 03/102, but the Argia-inclusive burial strand.