Note 2 — Chapter III · CAVE DEITIES: SUBTERRANEAN TRANSLATION

That the translation of Amphiaraos in the form so frequently repeated by later authors (clearly following an important and influential original) appeared already in the Thebaïs of the epic cycle is taken by Welcker for granted, Ep. Cykl. ii, 362, 66. The view is intrinsically probable: but it can claim more definite grounds. Pi., O. vi, 12–17, tells us that after Amphiaraos and his team had been swallowed up by the earth, Adrastos, over the seven funeral-pyres (which consumed the bodies of the Argives who had fallen in battle), said ποθέω στρατιᾶς ὀφθαλμὸν ἐμᾶς, ἀμφότερον, μάντιν τ’ ἀγαθὸν καὶ δουρὶ μάρνασθαι. That this famous lament was taken ἐκ τῆς κυκλικῆς Θηβαΐδος, fr. 5 Kinkel, p. 12, is proved by the testimony of the ancient scholia on ποθέω κτλ., quoting Asklepiades. This means that in the Thebaïs too, after the battle was over Amphiaraos was not to be found either among the fallen or the survivors—was in fact translated. Pindar must have taken not merely the words of the lament of Adrastos but the whole situation that led up to these words, as he described it, from the Thebaïs. (Bethe, Theb. Held. [1891], p. 58 f., 94 ff., claims to prove that Pindar took nothing but the words ἀμφότερον κτλ. from the Thebaïs which said nothing of the burial of these who had fallen before Thebes, and that Pindar added this last on his own account, O. vi, as well as N. ix, 25. But the “proofs” of this view, in itself highly improbable, on closer examination come to nothing.)—In the Odyssey it is said of Amph. ὄλετ’ ἐν Θήβῃσι ο 247; θάνεν Ἀμφιάραος 253. The expression “is naturally to be understood as merely implying disappearance from the earth” says Welcker, Ep. C. ii, 366. All we can claim is that the expression does not indeed prevent us from assuming that the story of the “disappearance” of Amph. was known also to the poet of these lines. Thus in the OC. of Soph. Antigone says twice over (ll. 1706, 1714) that Oedipus ἔθανε, whereas he really was like Amphiaraos translated alive (ἄσκοποι πλάκες ἔμαρψαν 1681).