Amphiaräus when forced into the first attack of Thêbes—against his own foreknowledge and against the warnings of the gods—had enjoined his sons Alkmæôn and Amphilochus not only to avenge his death upon the Thêbans, but also to punish the treachery of their mother, “Eriphylê, the destroyer of her husband.”[666] In obedience to this command, and having obtained the sanction of the Delphian oracle, Alkmæôn slew his mother;[667] but the awful Erinnys, the avenger of matricide, inflicted on him a long and terrible punishment, depriving him of his reason, and chasing him about from place to place without the possibility of repose or peace of mind. He craved protection and cure from the god at Delphi, who required him to dedicate at the temple, as an offering, the precious necklace of Kadmus, that irresistible bribe which had originally corrupted Eriphylê.[668] He further intimated to the unhappy sufferer, that though the whole earth was tainted with his crime, and had become uninhabitable for him, yet there was a spot of ground which was not under the eye of the sun at the time when the matricide was committed, and where therefore Alkmæôn yet might find a tranquil shelter. The promise was realized at the mouth of the river Achelôus, whose turbid stream was perpetually depositing new earth and forming additional islands. Upon one of these, near Œniadæ, Alkmæôn settled, permanently and in peace: he became the primitive hero of Akarnania, to which his son Akarnan gave name.[669] The necklace was found among the treasures of Delphi, together with that which had been given by Aphroditê to Helen, by the Phôkian plunderers who stripped the temple in the time of Philip of Macedôn. The Phôkian women quarrelled about these valuable ornaments: and we are told that the necklace of Eriphylê was allotted to a woman of gloomy and malignant disposition, who ended by putting her husband to death; that of Helen to a beautiful but volatile wife, who abandoned her husband from a preference for a young Epirot.[670] [666] Ἀνδροδάμαντ᾽ Ἐριφύλην (Pindar, Nem. ix. 16). A poem _Eryphilê_ was included among the mythical compositions of Stesichorus: he mentioned in it that Asklêpius had restored Kapaneus to life, and that he was for that reason struck dead by thunder from Zeus (Stesichor. Fragm. Kleine, 18, p. 74). Two tragedies of Sophoklês once existed, _Epigoni_ and _Alkmæôn_ (Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. i. p. 269): a few fragments also remain of the Latin _Epigoni_ and _Alphesibæa_ of Attius: Ennius and Attius both composed or translated from the Greek a Latin _Alkmæôn_ (Poet. Scenic. Latin. ed. Both. pp. 33, 164, 198).