Ismene’s Family Tree

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Family

• Jocasta(parent),Oedipus(parent),Antigone(sibling),Eteocles(sibling),Polynices(sibling)— Marriage

  Oedipus unknowingly married his mother Jocasta after saving Thebes from the Sphinx. They had four children — Antigone, Ismene, Eteocles, and Polynices — before the truth of their incestuous union was revealed.

  ⚠ Pausanias (9.5.11) cites the Oedipodia as attributing the four children to a second wife Euryganeia, not Jocasta. Sophocles and Apollodorus follow the Jocasta tradition.

Slain by

• Tydeus

  In the pre-Sophoclean tradition preserved by Mimnermus and a scholiast on the Iliad, Tydeus killed Ismene at a spring outside Thebes where she was meeting her lover, guided there by Athena.

Associated with

• Antigone

  Ismene refused to help Antigone bury Polynices, fearing Creon's punishment. After Antigone's arrest, Ismene tried to share her sister's guilt, but Antigone rejected her claim to the act.

• Creon

  Creon attempted to seize Ismene and Antigone at Colonus to use them as leverage against their father Oedipus. Theseus rescued both sisters from Creon's men.

• Oedipus

  Ismene traveled to Colonus to warn her exiled father Oedipus that both Eteocles and Polynices sought to control his burial site, as an oracle had promised power to the land that held his grave.