Parthenopaeus, the Arcadian, was a son of Atalanta and one of the Seven who marched against Thebes, where he fell at the city wall.1
His mother was Atalanta — the one parent on whom every account agrees — but his father is disputed. Apollodorus names him simply 'son of Melanion, an Arcadian' when he enrols him among the Seven, and elsewhere records that by Melanion, or else by Ares the war-god, Atalanta bore the son who went to the war against Thebes.2
Hyginus gives a rival paternity together with the origin of the name. He calls the boy the son of Meleager by Atalanta, daughter of Iasius, and tells how she exposed him on Mount Parthenius — to feign that she had stayed a virgin — so that from the mountain he was named Parthenopaeus. Twice more Hyginus styles him son of Meleager and Atalanta: once in the roll of the seven leaders who died at Thebes, and once in the catalogue of the most beautiful youths.3
When the Argive host gathered behind Adrastus to restore Polynices to Thebes, Parthenopaeus rode in their number. At the funeral games for Opheltes he won the archery match, and in the assault on the city he was posted at the Electran gate.4
He died at the Theban wall, but the name of his slayer is disputed. Apollodorus reports that Amphidicus, one of the sons of Astacus, struck him down, then adds that Euripides made the killer Periclymenus, son of Poseidon.5
Pausanias gives a third version. By the Fountain of Oedipus he marks the grave of Asphodicus, who in the Theban account killed Parthenopaeus in the fighting with the Argives, though the poet of the Thebaid, he notes, made the slayer Periclymenus. (Here Pausanias styles the hero 'son of Talaus,' conflating him with the Argive Parthenopaeus.)6
His line did not end before the wall. Parthenopaeus had a son, Promachus, who marched a generation later with the Epigoni, the sons of the Seven, and shared in the taking of Thebes that their fathers had failed to win.7
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
