The Scholiast ad Apollôn. Rhod. i. 735. says that there were two persons named Antiopê; one, daughter of Asôpus, the other, daughter of Nykteus. Pausanias is content with supposing one only, really the daughter of Nykteus, but there was a φήμη that she was daughter of Asôpus (ii. 6, 2). Asius made Antiopê daughter of Asôpus, and mother (both by Zeus and by Epôpeus: such a junction of divine and human paternity is of common occurrence in the Greek legends) of Zêthus and Amphiôn (ap. Paus. 1. c).
The contradictory versions of the story are brought together, though not very perfectly, in Sterk’s Essay De Labdacidarum Historiâ, p. 38-43 (Leyden, 1829).
[631] This story about the lyre of Amphiôn is not noticed in Homer, but it was narrated in the ancient ἔπη ἐς Εὐρώπην which Pausanias had read: the wild beasts as well as the stones were obedient to his strains (Paus. ix. 5, 4). Pherekydês also recounted it (Pherekyd. Fragm. 102, Didot). The tablet of inscription (Ἀναγραφὴ) at Sikyôn recognized Amphiôn as the first composer of poetry and harp-music (Plutarch, de Musicâ, c. 3. p. 1132).
[632] The tale of the wife and son of Zêthus is as old as the Odyssey (xix. 525). Pausanias adds the statement that Zêthus died of grief (ix. 5, 5; Pherekydês, Fragm. 102, Did.). Pausanias, however, as well as Apollodôrus, tells us that Zêthus married Thêbê, from whom the name Thêbes was given to the city. To reconcile the conflicting pretensions of Zêthus and Amphiôn with those of Kadmus, as founders of Thêbes, Pausanias supposes that the latter was the original settler of the hill of the Kadmeia, while the two former extended the settlement to the lower city (ix. 5, 1-3).
[633] See Valckenaer. Diatribe in Eurip. Reliq. cap. 7, p. 58; Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. ii. p. 811. There is a striking resemblance between the Antiopê of Euripidês and the Tyrô of Sophoklês in many points.
Plato in his Gorgias has preserved a few fragments, and a tolerably clear general idea of the characters of Zêthus and Amphiôn (Gorg. 90-92); see also Horat. Epist. i. 18, 42.
Both Livius and Pacuvius had tragedies on the scheme of this of Euripidês, the former seemingly a translation.
[634] See the description of the locality in K. O. Müller (Orchomenos, c. i. p. 37).
The tombs of Laius and his attendant were still seen there in the days of Pausanias (x. 5, 2).
[635] Apollodôr. iii. 5, 8. An author named Lykus, in his work entitled Thêbaïca, ascribed this visitation to the anger of Dionysus (Schol. Hesiod, Theogon. 326). The Sphinx (or Phix, from the Bœôtian Mount Phikium) is as old as the Hesiodic Theogony,—Φῖκ᾽ ὀλόην τέκε, Καδμείοισιν ὄλεθρον (Theog. 326).