Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Amphilochus, son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle, brother of Alcmaeon, belongs to the Epigoni generation. After the second fall of Thebes and the tangled endings of Alcmaeon’s story, Amphilochus appears as a wandering founder. Traditions credit him (alone or with Mopsus) with settling Mallos in Cilicia; with an oracle or quarrel that ends in mutual killing of Amphilochus and Mopsus; and, on the Greek mainland, with Amphilochian Argos in the Ambracian region—where Thucydides knows the ethnonym and a colonial tale from Argos. Pausanias also knows Amphilochus in connection with the oracular cult of his father Amphiaraus (Oropus) and with Argive returns. The myths are brief and etiological rather than a single epic arc: a seer’s son who plants cities and oracles at the edge of the Greek world, sometimes fatally paired with Mopsus. Catalogue the founder notices together so the Epigoni house is seen to end not only in pollution (Alcmaeon) but in colonial prophecy (Amphilochus).