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.