After
Zeus impregnated Dirce's niece
Antiope, the latter fled in shame to King
Epopeus of
Sicyon, but was brought back by Lycus through force, giving birth to the twins
Amphion and Zethus on the way. Lycus gave Antiope to Dirce. Dirce hated Antiope and treated her cruelly, until Antiope, in time, escaped.[4]
In
Euripides's lost play Antiope, Antiope flees back to the cave where she gave birth to Amphion and Zethus; they are now living there as young men. They disbelieve her claim to be their mother and refuse her pleas for sanctuary, but when Dirce comes to find Antiope and orders her to be killed, the twins are convinced by the shepherd who raised them that Antiope is their mother. They kill Dirce by tying her to the horns of a bull.
Dirce was devoted to the god
Dionysus, who caused a spring to flow where she died, either at
Mount Cithaeron or at
Thebes, and it was a local tradition for the outgoing Theban
hipparch to swear in his successor at her tomb.[5] In
Statius's Thebaid, the spring is a symbol of
Thebes, and its name is often used metonymically to refer to the city itself.
In Roman culture
The death of Dirce is depicted in a marble statue known as the
Farnese Bull, which is now in the collections of the
National Archaeological Museum in
Naples. The colossal piece, a first-century-AD Roman copy of a second-century-BC
Hellenistic Greek original, was first excavated in the 16th century in the
Baths of Caracalla. Some scholars identify it with the statue group mentioned in Pliny's Natural History, but this is disputed.
This scene was recreated in spectacles in the Roman arena.
Clement, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, recounts how Christian women were
martyred.[6]
Callimachus, Callimachus and Lycophron with an English translation by A. W. Mair ; Aratus, with an English translation by G. R. Mair, London: W. Heinemann, New York: G. P. Putnam 1921. Internet Archive
Euripides, Heracles, translated by E. P. Coleridge in The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. Volume 1. New York. Random House. 1938.
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.