Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Aegialeus, son of Adrastus and Amphithea (or Demoanassa in some notices), marches with the Epigoni against Thebes to avenge the Seven. He is the Argive king’s heir and the structural counterpart to his father’s unique survival in the first war: where Adrastus alone of the Seven came home, Aegialeus alone of the principal Afterborn dies in the field. In Apollodorus the armies clash under Theban command of Laodamas, son of Eteocles. Laodamas kills Aegialeus; Alcmaeon then kills Laodamas (or Laodamas flees in other tellings). The death does not stop the Argive victory: Teiresias advises evacuation, the Cadmeians quit the city by night, and the Epigoni sack Thebes and install Thersander. For Argos the loss is dynastic and personal—Adrastus, who had lived to see the second expedition, is broken by his son’s fall (see 165). Pausanias knows Aegialeus’s tomb and cult links on the road of the Epigoni and at Megara in connection with Adrastus’s end. Catalogue Aegialeus as the one Epigonus who dies—mirror-image of Adrastus’s survival—slain by Laodamas before Thebes falls to the sons.