Daughter of Talaus in the Biantid house at Argos and wife of Amphiaraus, Eriphyle took Polynices' golden necklace as the price of her husband's life and sent him to die at Thebes; a generation later Thersander's robe bribed her again, and her son Alcmaeon killed her for it.1
Apollodorus makes her a daughter of Talaus and Lysimache, sister to Adrastus, Pronax, Mecisteus, and Aristomachus in the Biantid roll, and wife of the seer Amphiaraus. When a dispute once arose between her husband and Tydeus, she adjudicated for Amphiaraus; thereafter the decision in their house lay with her, and Amphiaraus had forbidden her to accept gifts from Polynices.2
Polynices broke that ban. Having learned from Iphis that Amphiaraus could be compelled only through Eriphyle, he gave her the necklace of Harmonia and begged her to send her husband among the Seven. Though she knew the doom, she persuaded Amphiaraus to go; at Thebes he vanished into the earth, and the gold had bought his death.3
The heirloom worked a second time. When the Epigoni gathered, Alcmaeon would not lead until he had punished his mother; Thersander, son of Polynices, gave Eriphyle the robe of Harmonia, and she persuaded her sons to march. After Thebes fell, Alcmaeon, following Apollo's oracle, killed her — some say with his brother Amphilochus, others that he did it alone.4
Pausanias saw her condemned in art as in epic. At Delphi, Polygnotus painted her among the women of the underworld beside Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus — the wife whose greed the Greeks never forgave.5
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