Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Opheltes.
The gallery
Landscape with Hypsipyle and Opheltes
Johann Christian Reinhart, 1816
Reinhart's Karlsruhe landscape sets the infant Opheltes with his nurse Hypsipyle in a Nemean wilderness — the quiet before the serpent strike that Amphiaraus will rename Archemorus, 'Beginning of Doom,' and that founds the Nemean Games.
Hypsipyle Finds Opheltes Killed by a Snake
Karl Ludwig Friedrich Becker, mid-19th century
Becker's Neues Museum mural (surviving in reproduction) stages the discovery: Opheltes slain by the Nemean serpent while Hypsipyle guided the Seven to water. The infant's death is the aetiology of the games held in his honour.
Opheltes (small bronze)
Unknown, ancient / museum display
A small bronze from the Archaeological Museum of Nemea identified with the hero Opheltes — the infant whose heroon and games made Nemea a Panhellenic sanctuary. Cult objects keep Archemorus present where the Seven paused on the road to Thebes.
Opheltes Ensnared by the Snake
K. A. Baumeister (after Braun), 19th century
A handbook reconstruction after an ancient relief shows the infant Archemorus in the serpent's coils — the visual type of Opheltes' death that modern archaeology still cites beside the Nemean shrine.
In play
Nemean Games
Funeral games for Opheltes/Archemorus become the Nemean Games — the infant's death as the origin story of one of the four Panhellenic festivals.
Opheltes
Son of Lycurgus of Nemea, nursed by Hypsipyle, killed by a serpent — renamed Archemorus by Amphiaraus as an omen of the Seven's doom.