Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Parthenopaeus.
The gallery
The Oath of the Seven Chiefs
After John Flaxman, illustration for Alfred J. Church, 1879
A neoclassical line engraving showing the seven champions of the Argive expedition swearing their oath before marching on Thebes — among them Parthenopaeus, the Arcadian son of Atalanta, the youngest and most beautiful of the Seven. The seven warriors gather over a sacrificial victim, hands raised in solemn pledge to take the city or die at its gates, an iconic moment dramatized in Aeschylus' tragedy. The plate is drawn in the austere outline manner derived from John Flaxman's celebrated designs for the Greek tragedians and appeared in Alfred J. Church's 'Stories from the Greek Tragedians' (1879). It is the principal image illustrating Parthenopaeus' role in the saga, since the youth is rarely portrayed in isolation and is most often encountered as one of the doomed band before Thebes.
Parthenopaios with Atalanta (Apulian Red-Figure Calyx-Krater)
Lycurgus Painter, c. 350 BC
Side A of this Apulian red-figure calyx-krater by the Lycurgus Painter (Trendall–Cambitoglou RVAp 16/6) names Parthenopaios seated on a kline beside a veiled Atalanta — his mother in the Arcadian tradition — with an old man (often read as Teiresias) and a woman in attendance, while gods watch from above. It is one of the rare ancient vases to label the youngest of the Seven Against Thebes by name, fixing the beautiful Arcadian warrior in South Italian mythological painting. Museo Archeologico, Milan (A 0.9.1872 / St. 6873).
Illustration for "Seven Chiefs Against Thebes"
John Flaxman Jr., c. 1794
A preparatory drawing by John Flaxman for his Aeschylean outline series shows the Seven Chiefs Against Thebes in the spare neoclassical line that would dominate nineteenth-century Greek-tragedy illustration. Parthenopaeus belongs to that doomed company as Atalanta's son and the youngest champion; Flaxman's sheet, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the studio origin of the oath and march imagery later reprinted in popular editions such as Church's Stories from the Greek Tragedians.