Dirce- Greek FigureMortal"Queen of Thebes"

The Persecution of Antiope

Dirce was the wife of Lycus, regent of Thebes. Antiope, a Boeotian woman carrying twins fathered by Zeus, fled to Thebes after her father's death — only to fall into worse hands. Dirce claimed her as a slave, kept her in chains, and set her to hard labor for years. The twins, Amphion and Zethus, were born during the captivity but exposed at birth on Mount Cithaeron. Shepherds found the boys and raised them, and they grew up knowing nothing of their mother or the woman who held her in chains.

The Bull

Antiope eventually escaped her bonds and wandered to Cithaeron, where she found her grown sons by chance. When Amphion and Zethus learned what Dirce had done to their mother, they went after her. Dirce had come to the mountain as a maenad, dancing in the rites of Dionysus, and she stumbled upon the fugitive Antiope among the herdsmen's huts. She tried to drag her back to servitude, but the twins caught her instead.

They tied Dirce to the horns of a wild bull. It dragged her across the rocky ground until she was torn apart.

The Spring

Dionysus transformed Dirce's remains into a spring near Thebes — honoring a devotee who had worshipped him faithfully, whatever else she had done. The Spring of Dirce flowed from the western slope of the Cadmea. Pindar invoked its waters in his odes, drinking from a fountain named for a woman torn apart by a bull.