Eriphyle

Sister of Adrastus and wife of the seer Amphiaraus, who under their marriage-oath had given Eriphyle the right to settle any dispute that might arise between her brother and her husband (Apollodorus 3.6.2; Hyginus *Fab.* 73). When Polynices brought to Argos the necklace of Harmonia — the Cadmean wedding-gift the smith Hephaestus, husband of Aphrodite, had cursed against every wearer in vengeance for the love-affair of his wife with Ares (Harmonia being the bride and the daughter of Ares + Aphrodite) — and offered it to Eriphyle as a bribe to compel her husband to join the doomed expedition, she took it and ruled in favour of Adrastus's vote. Amphiaraus, knowing he would die, charged his sons Alcmaeon and Amphilochus to kill their mother in vengeance once they were grown (Apollodorus 3.6.2 + 3.7.5; Diodorus 4.65.5–7). Homer remembers her at *Od.* 11.326–327 ('hateful Eriphyle who took precious gold for her dear husband's life') and at *Od.* 15.244–247. The matricide ten years later by Alcmaeon at the start of the Epigoni's expedition is the dramatic centre of the lost epic *Alcmeonis* and of Sophocles's lost *Eriphyle* and *Alcmeon*.

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