Epigoni

The Epigoni are the named generation of sons (epigónoi, 'those who come after') of the Argive champions who fell in the war of the Seven against Thebes. Ten years after the first failed assault, these sons assemble to avenge their fathers, launch a renewed campaign against Thebes, and thereby bring about a new settlement of Theban affairs. They appear as the subject of a now-lost early epic (the Epigoni, often treated as part of the Theban cycle), are summarized in authors such as Apollodorus and Pausanias, and were also the subject of a lost tragedy by Sophocles. Ancient local memory and monuments (statues at Argos and Delphi) reflect civic commemoration of the group.

Ancient literary sources give no consistent supernatural physical description of the Epigoni as a whole; they are presented as mortal young warriors, each identifiable by patronymic descent from the earlier Argive heroes. Artistic and cultic attestations (statues at Argos and Delphi, vase and sculptural scenes referenced in secondary literature) represent them in the standard heroic armed guise of Greek martial iconography. No sources in the supplied material attribute any non-human or supernatural corporeal features to them.

The Epigoni are defined by collective martial capacity and filial purpose rather than supernatural powers: they organize as an army to avenge their fathers and to seize Thebes. Ancient accounts differ on leadership (Apollodorus names Alcmaeon as chosen leader—Delphi promised success if he led—while Pausanias reports Thersander as leader, later king of Thebes). Narrative outcomes vary: in Apollodorus Aegialeus is slain by Laodamas but Alcmaeon kills Laodamas and the Thebans are routed and the city taken; Pausanias records Laodamas fleeing and Thersander becoming king. Their role in the literary tradition is also thematic: they embody inheritance, generational vengeance, and the recurrence of heroic conflict in the Theban cycle and related tragedy.