What was the herb of doom?

By Chelsie Vandaveer

January 27, 2003

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Study for Lycurgus Showing the Ancients of Sparta Their King, Oracle of Delphi—>Click here.

When King Oedipus was exiled from Thebes, his twin sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, agreed to share rule of the city. Each would rule a year, abdicating the throne to the other at year's end. Eteocles, the elder brother ruled the first year, but when time came for him to give the throne to Polyneices, he refused.

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Polyneices raised seven armies led by seven heroes to force his brother from the throne. As the armies were traveling to Thebes, they passed through Nemea. Needing water for the men and horses, Polyneices asked a slave woman, Hypsipyle, to show the men a spring. Hypsipyle was the nurse of the baby, Opheltes, heir to the Nemean throne. The Oracle of Delphi had told King Lycurgus to never let his son touch the ground until he learned to walk.

Hypsipyle laid Opheltes on a bed of petroselinon (rock celery) and led Polyneices' men to a spring. Upon returning to the babe, she found a serpent had killed the boy. Amphiaraus, a prophet and one of the seven heroes, saw this deed as an omen of disaster to the armies. He renamed the child Archemorus, "the beginning of doom".

The Nemean games were instituted at the death of Archemorus. The judges wore black and the athletes were crowned with wreaths of petroselinon. Hypsipyle was made the prize to the winning athlete for slaughter upon the altar of Zeus. She was saved by two mysterious strangers.

But six of the "Seven against Thebes" were killed during the fighting at the city's gates. To the ancient Greeks, petroselinon or parsley became the herb associated with death and doom.

The University of California, Berkeley has an excellent website on the Nemean myths. To learn more about the ruins of Nemea and the myths surrounding the country, click on the link:

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~clscs275/nemeamyth2.htm

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