Menoeceus

[muh-nee-see-uhs, -syoos]

noun

Classical Mythology.

1. a descendant of the Sparti and the father of Jocasta and Creon, who sacrificed himself to end a plague in Thebes.

2. the son of Creon of Thebes, who took his own life because of the prophecy that the Seven against Thebes would fail only if a descendant of the Sparti sacrificed himself.

Example Sentences

The endpoint is inevitable, but as the Greek philosopher Epicurus noted in his Letter to Menoeceus, death should not be feared because we never meet it, since “when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”

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This was Creon’s younger son, Menoeceus.

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But Menoeceus had not died in vain; in the end the Thebans prevailed and of the seven champions all were killed except Adrastus only.

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I have taken this story from the Antigone and the Oedipus at Colonus, two of Sophocles’ plays, with the exception of the death of Menoeceus, which is told in a play of Euripides, The Suppliants.

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He told Creon that Thebes would be saved only if Menoeceus was killed.

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