=Amphīon=, was son of Jupiter, by Antiope daughter of Nycteus, who had married Lycus, and had been repudiated by him when he married Dirce. Amphion was born at the same birth as Zethus, on mount Citheron, where Antiope had fled to avoid the resentment of Dirce; and the two children were exposed in the woods, but preserved by a shepherd. _See:_ Antiope. When Amphion grew up, he cultivated poetry and made such an uncommon progress in music, that he is said to have been the inventor of it, and to have built the walls of Thebes at the sound of his lyre. Mercury taught him music, and gave him the lyre. He was the first who raised an altar to this god. Zethus and Amphion united to avenge the wrongs which their mother had suffered from the cruelties of Dirce. They besieged and took Thebes, put Lycus to death, and tied his wife to the tail of a wild bull, which dragged her through precipices till she expired. The fable of Amphion’s moving stones and raising the walls of Thebes at the sound of his lyre, has been explained by supposing that he persuaded, by his eloquence, a wild and uncivilized people to unite together and build a town to protect themselves against the attacks of their enemies. _Homer_, _Odyssey_, bk. 11.――_Apollodorus_, bk. 3, chs. 5 & 10.――_Pausanias_, bk. 6, ch. 6; bk. 6, ch. 20; bk. 9, chs. 5 & 17.――_Propertius_, bk. 3, poem 15.――_Ovid_, _de Ars Amatoria_, bk. 3, li. 323.――_Horace_, bk. 3, ode 11; _Art of Poetry_, li. 394.――_Statius_, _Thebiad_, bk. 1, li. 10.――――A son of Jasus king of Orchomenos, by Persephone daughter of Mius. He married Niobe daughter of Tantalus, by whom he had many children, among whom was Chloris the wife of Neleus. He has been confounded by mythologists with the son of Antiope, though Homer in his Odyssey speaks of them both, and distinguishes them beyond contradiction. The number of Amphion’s children, according to Homer, was 12, six of each sex; according to Ælian, 20; and according to Ovid, 14, seven males and seven females. When Niobe boasted herself greater, and more deserving of immortality than Latona, all her children, except Chloris, were destroyed by the arrows of Apollo and Diana; Niobe herself was changed into a stone, and Amphion killed himself in a fit of despair. _Homer_, _Odyssey_, bk. 11, lis. 261 & 282.――_Ælian_, _Varia Historia_, bk. 12, li. 36.――_Ovid_, _Metamorphoses_, bk. 6, fable 5.――――One of the Argonauts. _Hyginus_, fable 14.――――A famous painter and statuary, son of Acestor of Gnossus. _Pliny_, bk. 36, ch. 10.――――One of the Greek generals in the Trojan war. _Homer_, _Iliad_, bk. 13, li. 692. =Amphipŏles=, magistrates appointed at Syracuse by Timoleon, after the expulsion of Dionysius the younger. The office existed for above 300 years. _Diodorus_, bk. 16.