#palaephatus

AMPHION, son of Jupiter and Antiope, ruled Thebes in the 2636th year since the founding of the world, the 1326th before Christ was born. He was such an exceptional musician that he is said to have received a lyre from Mercury, whose melody was imagined by the poets to have enticed and drawn out the stones to build Thebes.

Eusebius explained this in his Chronicle: he said, “Certain listeners were hard-hearted and (just as I say) stony.” Horace agreed to this in his Ars Poetica, saying:

The priest and interpreter of the gods [deterred] the wild people,

Et cetera, and a little later:

And Amphion, founder of the city of Thebes, was said To move the stones with the sound of his lyre, and by smooth requests To lead them where he wanted. This was wisdom once, To separate public from private, sacred from profane, To prohibit fickle intercourse, to give laws to the married, To build cities, to carve laws on wood.

"About the Cadmeian Sphinx it is said that there was a beast with the body of a dog, the head and face of a girl, the wings of a bird, and a human voice-....-She killed whoever was unable to solve the riddle. ...The account is faithless and weak. No such form can exist, while eating those unable to solve a riddle is childish, and the Cadmeians not being able to shoot the beast with arrows, but instead to watch their citizens being eaten up as enemies, is silly. So the truth is as follows: Cadmus had an Amazonian wife whose name was Sphinx. He came to Thebes, killed Drakon and took the kingdom. Afterwards he took the sister of Drakon, whose name was Harmonia. Sphinx felt that he was going to marry the other woman, so she persuaded many of the citizens to come away with her. They seized most of the money, and the swift-footed hound that Cadmus brought, and took them to Mt. Phikion. There she waged war on Cadmus, setting ambushes at appropriate moments and tearing to pieces those she killed. The Cadmeians called the ambush "riddle". It was common talk among the citizens that "The savage Sphinx tears us to pieces having set a riddle, and sits upon a mountain." No one was able to discover the riddle, from it being impossible to fight openly. For she doesn't run but flies, and is dog and woman, so swift-footed she is." Cadmus proclaims that he will give lots of money to whoever kills Sphinx. So Oedipus comes, a Corinthian man good at military things, with a swift horse. He made a band of the Cadmeians and they went out at night and ambushed her. He found the riddle, i.e. the ambush, and killed Sphinx" -Palaephatus

what The fuck Did I just read.