[3]
They first laid waste
the surrounding villages; then, when the Thebans advanced against them, led by
Laodamas, son of Eteocles, they fought bravely,1 and though Laodamas killed Aegialeus, he
was himself killed by Alcmaeon,2
and after his death the Thebans fled in a body within the walls. But as Tiresias told them
to send a herald to treat with the Argives, and themselves to take to flight, they did
send a herald to the enemy, and, mounting their children and women on the wagons,
themselves fled from the city. When they had come by night to the spring called Tilphussa,
Tiresias drank of it and expired.3 After travelling far the Thebans built the city of Hestiaea and took up
their abode there.
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1 The battle was fought at a place called Glisas, where the graves of the Argive lords were shown down to the time of Pausanias. See Paus. 9.5.13; Paus. 9.8.6; Paus. 9.9.4; Paus. 9.19.2; Scholiast on Pind. P. 8.48(68), who refers to Hellanicus as his authority.
2 According to a different account, King Laodamas did not fall in the battle, but after his defeat led a portion of the Thebans away to the Illyrian tribe of the Encheleans, the same people among whom his ancestors Cadmus and Harmonia had found their last home. See Hdt. 5.61; Paus. 9.5.13; Paus. 9.8.6. As to Cadmus and Harmonia in Illyria, see above, Apollod. 3.5.4.
3 See Paus. 9.33.1, who says that the grave of Tiresias was at the spring. But there was also a cenotaph of the seer on the road from Thebes to Chalcis (Paus. 9.18.4). Diod. 4.67.1 agrees with Pausanias and Apollodorus in placing the death of Tiresias at Mount Tilphusium, which was beside the spring Tilphussa, in the territory of Haliartus.
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