Thersander, son of Polynices, was one of the Epigoni, the sons of the seven fallen captains who marched a second time on Thebes and took the city their fathers had failed to win.1
He was the son of Polynices, the exiled son of Oedipus who had brought the Seven against his own city; thus Thersander was born to the losing side of the first Theban war. Hyginus tells that his mother was Argia, the elder daughter of Adrastus of Argos, given to Polynices when the king matched his daughters to the two storm-driven exiles who came to his door.2
When the sons of the seven prepared their revenge, the campaign hung on Amphiaraus's seer-son Alcmaeon, who was loath to march. Apollodorus tells that Thersander broke the deadlock as his father once had: he gave the robe of Harmonia to Eriphyle, and she, twice corrupted by a Theban heirloom, persuaded her sons to join the war. With Alcmaeon chosen as their leader, the Epigoni made war on Thebes.3
Pausanias names Thersander first among the leaders of this second war, the men the Greeks call the Epigoni, the Born-After. They came with allies from Argos, Messenia, Arcadia, Corinth and Megara, and the battle at Glisas was fiercely contested on both sides before Thebes fell.4
Hyginus likewise lists him in the catalog of those who attacked Thebes a second time, "Thersander, son of Polynices," beside Aegialus son of Adrastus, Polydorus son of Hippomedon, Alcmaeon and Diomedes son of Tydeus.5
With the city taken, the Argives handed Thebes over to Thersander, son of Polynices, the throne his father had died trying to win now passing to the son by conquest. Pausanias records that it was Thersander who later recalled the scattered Thebans to their homes, so that the gate by which they returned was named the Homoloid after Homole.6
Pausanias' king-list also gives him a consort from the Argive seer-house: Demonassa daughter of Amphiaraus, mother of Tisamenus — a marriage that carried the Melampid line into the Epigon dynasty on the Cadmeia.7
When Agamemnon's expedition against Troy mistook its course and came ashore in Mysia, Telephus armed his people and drove the Greeks back to their ships, killing many. Apollodorus says Thersander fell there, the man who had made a stand. Pausanias adds that he died at Telephus's hands having proved the bravest Greek of that fight, that his tomb was shown at Elaea, and that his son Tisamenus — still too young to command — could not sail in his father's place; Thebes sent Peneleos to the later muster instead, and only after Peneleos fell did Tisamenus take the throne.8
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