Ismene- Greek FigureMortal"Princess of Thebes"

Daughter of Oedipus

Ismene was born into ruin. Her parents were Oedipus and Jocasta — the king who killed his father and married his mother. When the truth came out, Jocasta hanged herself, Oedipus gouged out his eyes, and the family was shattered. Ismene, her sister Antigone, and their brothers Eteocles and Polynices were all that remained.

Years later, Ismene traveled to the grove of the Eumenides at Colonus, near Athens, where her blind father had taken refuge. She brought word of the brothers' war: Eteocles held the throne, Polynices marched against Thebes with an Argive army, and both sought their father because an oracle declared the land that held his grave would enjoy divine protection. When Creon's men seized both sisters as hostages to force Oedipus's hand, Theseus intervened and rescued them.

The Choice

When Antigone resolved to defy Creon's edict and bury Polynices — whose body had been left to rot as a traitor's — Ismene begged her to reconsider. They were only women, powerless against the state. Defiance meant certain death. Better to endure and survive.

After Antigone's arrest, Ismene appeared before Creon and tried to claim a share of the guilt, declaring herself a co-conspirator. Antigone rejected her: she had chosen not to act when it mattered and could not share the honor now. Creon dismissed her. She survived — the only one of Oedipus's children to escape a violent end.

An Older Tradition

In a pre-Sophoclean version of the Theban cycle, preserved in fragments, Ismene met a darker fate. Tydeus, one of the Seven against Thebes, killed her at a spring outside the city where she had gone to meet her lover. Athena herself guided him to the place. Later dramatists abandoned this version, but in the older Theban cycle, no child of Oedipus was spared.