Dirce

Did You Know?

• The death of Dirce is depicted in a marble statue known as the Farnese Bull, now in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.
• The Farnese Bull is a first-century-AD Roman copy of a second-century-BC Hellenistic Greek original, first excavated in the 16th century in the Baths of Caracalla.
• Some scholars identify the Farnese Bull with a statue group mentioned in Pliny's Natural History, but this is disputed.

Mythology

Dirce's niece-by-marriage, Antiope, was impregnated by Zeus. Antiope fled to King Epopeus of Sicyon, but Lycus brought her back by force, and she gave birth to twins, Amphion and Zethus, along the way. Lycus then handed Antiope over to Dirce, who hated her and treated her harshly for many years until Antiope escaped. In Euripides's lost play, Antiope returned to the cave where she had given birth, where the twins now lived as young men. They did not believe she was their mother and refused to help her. When Dirce arrived seeking Antiope and ordered her killed, the shepherd who had raised the twins convinced them of Antiope's identity. They killed Dirce by tying her to a bull's horns. Dirce had been devoted to Dionysus, and the god caused a spring to flow where she died, either on Mount Cithaeron or at Thebes. A local custom required the outgoing Theban hipparch to swear in his successor at her tomb. In Statius's Thebaid, the spring symbolizes Thebes, and its name is used metonymically for the city itself.