This collar or necklace was a present which Vulcan had given to Harmonia on her marriage with Cadmus, and Polynices had taken it with him on his flight from Thebes.  Eriphyle could not resist so tempting a bribe, and by her decision the war was resolved on, and Amphiaraus went to his certain fate.  He bore his part bravely in the contest, but could not avert his destiny.  Pursued by the enemy, he fled along the river, when a thunderbolt launched by Jupiter opened the ground, and he, his chariot, and his charioteer were swallowed up.

It would not be in place here to detail all the acts of heroism or atrocity which marked the contest; but we must not omit to record the fidelity of Evadne as an offset to the weakness of Eriphyle.  Capaneus, the husband of Evadne, in the ardor of the fight declared that he would force his way into the city in spite of Jove himself.  Placing a ladder against the wall he mounted, but Jupiter, offended at his impious language, struck him with a thunderbolt.  When his obsequies were celebrated, Evadne cast herself on his funeral pile and perished.

Early in the contest Eteocles consulted the soothsayer Tiresias as to the issue.  Tiresias in his youth had by chance seen Minerva bathing.  The goddess in her wrath deprived him of his sight, but afterwards relenting gave him in compensation the knowledge of future events.  When consulted by Eteocles, he declared that victory should fall to Thebes if Menoeceus, the son of Creon, gave himself a voluntary victim.  The heroic youth, learning the response, threw away his life in the first encounter.

The siege continued long, with various success.  At length both hosts agreed that the brothers should decide their quarrel by single combat.  They fought and fell by each other’s hands.  The armies then renewed the fight, and at last the invaders were forced to yield, and fled, leaving their dead unburied.  Creon, the uncle of the fallen princes, now become king, caused Eteocles to be buried with distinguished honor, but suffered the body of Polynices to lie where it fell, forbidding every one on pain of death to give it burial.

Antigone, the sister of Polynices, heard with indignation the revolting edict which consigned her brother’s body to the dogs and vultures, depriving it of those rites which were considered essential to the repose of the dead.  Unmoved by the dissuading counsel of an affectionate but timid sister, and unable to procure assistance, she determined to brave the hazard, and to bury the body with her own hands.  She was detected in the act, and Creon gave orders that she should be buried alive, as having deliberately set at naught the solemn edict of the city.  Her lover, Haemon, the son of Creon, unable to avert her fate, would not survive her, and fell by his own hand.

Antigone forms the subject of two fine tragedies of the Grecian poet Sophocles.  Mrs. Jameson, in her “Characteristics of Women,” has compared her character with that of Cordelia, in Shakspeare’s “King Lear.”  The perusal of her remarks cannot fail to gratify our readers.