Seven Against Thebes

The last play of a Theban trilogy about the curse on the house of Laius, Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes was produced in 467 BC, and according to the ancient hypothesis the trilogy won the first prize. There is little action on stage. The play consists mainly of speeches and dialogue between Eteocles, king of Thebes, a Scout who reports from outside the walls, and a Chorus of frightened Theban girls, while an Argive army led by Eteocles’ brother Polynices attacks the city. Eteocles learns from the Scout who will attack each of the seven gates, and at each gate except the last he names a defender. At the seventh gate Polynices himself will attack, and Eteocles decides to meet his brother there. Both brothers die by each other’s hands, Thebes is saved, but the ancient curse has ended the line of Laius.

Date and Historical Background

According to the ancient introduction (hypothesis) to the play, Seven Against Thebes was produced in 467 BC, in the archonship of Theagenides, as the third play of a connected trilogy with Laius and Oedipus, followed by the satyr play Sphinx, and it won the first prize. The other plays and the satyr play are lost. The ancient hypothesis does not name the festival. The trilogy is sometimes called the Oedipodea.

The play was well known in antiquity. In Aristophanes’ Frogs, Aeschylus boasts of having written “a drama full of Ares”, which made every man who saw it eager to be warlike (Frogs 1021–1022), and when Dionysus asks which play, he answers “the Seven Against Thebes”; Dionysus replies that it made the Thebans braver in war (Frogs 1023–1024).

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Eteocles, the king of Thebes, son of Oedipus
• A Theban Scout (Messenger)
• The Chorus of Theban girls
• Antigone and Ismene, sisters of Eteocles and Polynices (they appear in the final lament, from line 861)
• A Herald, who appears only in the final scene (lines 1011–1084), which many editors regard as a later addition

Setting

The play is set in Thebes, on the citadel, where Eteocles addresses the citizens (lines 1–38) and later receives the Scout’s reports.

Summary of Seven Against Thebes

Prologue

Eteocles opens the play with a speech to the citizens of Cadmus (lines 1–38). As ruler he must speak to the point: if disaster comes, the blame will fall on him, and if all goes well, the credit will go to the gods. Every man, young and old, is to defend the city, the altars of the gods and their children and their mother earth. He has sent out a scout to find out the movements of the enemy (lines 36–37), and now the Scout arrives (lines 39–68). He reports that seven fierce captains have sacrificed a bull over a black-bound shield and, touching the blood of the bull with their hands, have sworn by Ares, Enyo and Phobos to sack the city of the Cadmeans or to die and mingle their blood with the land (lines 42–48). They have hung keepsakes for their parents on the chariot of Adrastus, weeping, and they are casting lots to see who will lead his company against which gate (lines 49–56). Eteocles is to choose the best men in the city for each gate and wait no longer (lines 57–68). Eteocles prays to Zeus, Earth, the gods of the city, and the Curse (Ara), his father’s mighty Erinys, not to uproot the city and not to let it be enslaved (lines 69–77).

The play does not itself tell why the Argive army is outside Thebes. According to Apollodorus (Library 3.6.1), Eteocles and Polynices had agreed to rule in alternate years. Some said that Polynices ruled first and handed the kingdom over after a year; others that Eteocles ruled first and would not hand it over. Banished from Thebes, Polynices went to Argos, where he raised the army.

Parodos (Entrance Song)

As Eteocles leaves, a Chorus of Theban girls enters in a state of terror (lines 78–180). They hear the noise of the enemy approaching, the rattle of chariots and the clash of shields, and they sing in fear of the dust and the sound (lines 78–107). They call on the gods one by one to protect the city (lines 108–165), and the song ends with a prayer to the gods of the city to stay and defend the land and the seven gates (lines 166–180).

First Episode

Eteocles returns and is furious at the sound of their wailing (lines 181–202). “You intolerable creatures,” he asks them, is this how the city is saved? He declares that he would never live with the female sex, in bad times or good: in prosperity a woman is insufferably bold, and in fear she is a still greater trouble to house and city (lines 187–190). He accuses the girls of spreading panic among the citizens, and says that if anyone disobeys him, man or woman, the penalty will be stoning (lines 196–199). Matters outside belong to men, and the women should stay inside (lines 200–201). After a brief exchange of single lines (stichomythia, lines 203–263), the Chorus agrees to be silent, and Eteocles tells them to pray in better fashion, that the gods may be their allies, and himself vows to dedicate to the gods the spoils of the enemy (lines 264–286).

When Eteocles leaves, the Chorus sings its first stasimon (lines 287–368). They obey, but fear keeps their hearts awake, and they sing of the enemy at the walls, the stones thrown by the defenders, and their fear that the city will be taken and the women led away as slaves.

Second Episode

The second episode (lines 369–719), known as the Shield Scene, makes up the central part of the play. It consists of the Scout’s speeches naming each of the seven Argive leaders, who stands at which gate, and what device is on his shield, and Eteocles’ answers naming the defender whom he sets against him. The Chorus interrupts with prayers.

This is the final arrangement:

• Proetid gates: Tydeus attacks, with a shield showing the starry sky and a bright full moon in the middle, the “eye of night” (lines 377–394). Eteocles answers with Melanippus, son of Astacus (lines 407–416).
• Electran gates: Capaneus attacks, a giant who threatens the walls and says that not even Zeus will stop him. His shield shows a naked man carrying fire, with the words in gold letters “I will burn the city” (lines 423–436). Eteocles answers with Polyphontes (lines 447–451).
• Neistan gates: Eteoclus attacks, whose shield shows an armed man climbing a ladder to an enemy tower, with the words that not even Ares could throw him from the walls (lines 457–469). Eteocles answers with Megareus, son of Creon (lines 473–480).
• Gates of Athena Onca: Hippomedon attacks, with a vast shield bearing Typhon, who breathes black smoke from his mouth, with a rim of coiling snakes (lines 486–500). Eteocles answers with Hyperbius, son of Oenops (lines 504–519).
• Boreas gates, beside the tomb of Amphion: Parthenopaeus attacks, an Arcadian youth newly bearded, whose shield shows the Sphinx carrying a Theban in her claws (lines 526–549). Eteocles answers with Actor, Hyperbius’ brother (lines 553–556).
• Homoloid gates: Amphiaraus attacks. He is the one wise and pious man among the seven; he reproaches Tydeus and Polynices for bringing the army, and his shield has no device, for he wishes to be good, not to seem so (lines 568–596). Eteocles answers with Lasthenes (lines 620–625).
• The seventh gate: Polynices attacks, who prays that he may either take the city or die killing his brother, and whose shield shows an armed man led by a woman who says she is Justice, with the words that she will bring him back and he will have the city and his father’s house (lines 631–652).

When he hears the name of his brother, Eteocles cries out at the fulfilment of his father’s curses (lines 653–657). He answers that Justice has never looked on Polynices since his birth, and it is not likely that she would be his ally now (lines 664–671). He will himself face him, ruler against ruler, brother against brother, enemy against enemy (lines 672–676).

The Chorus pleads with him: “do not go,” and warns that the pollution of kindred blood does not grow old (lines 677–719). Eteocles is adamant that if the gods send evil, no one can escape it (lines 702–719), and leaves for the gate.

In the second stasimon (lines 720–791) the Chorus uncovers the reason for their anxiety. Eteocles and Polynices are destined to be the last victims of the curse that Oedipus laid on his sons in anger, when he prayed that they would divide the inheritance with a foreign arbiter, a Chalybian, a settler from Scythia, with iron (lines 720–733). It also recalls that long ago Laius disobeyed Apollo, who had said three times at his Pythian oracle at the centre of the earth that the king would save the city if he died without children (lines 742–749).

Third Episode

In the third episode the Scout returns with news (lines 792–820). The city is safe: the boasts of the proud attackers have fallen, and six of the gates have been held, but at the seventh Apollo, who had long ago been angered by Laius’ folly, has fulfilled the old prophecy (lines 800–802). The two sons of Oedipus have died by each other’s hands (lines 804–820), so that the two kings have each a portion of the earth in burial (lines 816–819). The Chorus asks whether to rejoice at the city’s safety or to lament the leaders who have died childless (lines 821–831).

Exodos (Exit Song)

As the bodies of the two brothers are brought in, the Chorus sings a long lament (lines 832–1010). Antigone and Ismene enter, as the Chorus announces, to mourn their brothers (lines 861–874). The sisters and the Chorus mourn the two dead brothers and the work of the Erinys who has carried out Oedipus’ curse (lines 875–1010).

The play ends in the manuscripts with a further scene (lines 1011–1084), in which a Herald announces the decree of the city: Eteocles, who died defending Thebes, is to be buried with honour, but Polynices, who attacked it, is to be left unburied for the dogs to eat (lines 1011–1031). Antigone answers that she will bury her brother herself, whatever the city decides (lines 1032–1058), and the Chorus divides into two halves: one will go with Antigone and join in burying Polynices, the other will accompany the burial of Eteocles (lines 1072–1084). Many editors regard this scene as a later addition, written to link the play to Sophocles’ Antigone.

A Brief Analysis

As in the Oresteia, Aeschylus deals with the effects of a family curse, but Seven Against Thebes does not end, as the Eumenides does, with a solution: the house of Laius is destroyed, and the Chorus leaves the stage in lament (lines 832–1010). The second stasimon supplies the cause. Laius disobeyed the oracle that Apollo had given him three times, that if he died childless he would save the city (lines 742–749), and the punishment falls on his son, his grandsons and the whole house. The lost Laius and Oedipus presumably dealt with the earlier stages of this chain, though the lost plays cannot be known. Apollodorus (Library 3.5.8–9) tells the story of Oedipus and Jocasta in full.

Eteocles is shown as a competent and responsible leader, who gives orders, assigns the defenders, and hears the news about the enemy captains without fear (lines 1–38, 397–451). He is also a man who sees his doom: when the Scout names Polynices, he accepts that the curses of his father are being fulfilled and chooses to go to the seventh gate (lines 653–676). His quarrel with the Chorus, whom he scolds for fear and for disorder (lines 181–263), contrasts the king’s orders with the women’s prayers; at the end the Chorus laments both brothers.

Seven Against Thebes Sources

Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes (lines 1–1084); the ancient hypothesis to the play, for the date and the other plays of the trilogy; Aristophanes, Frogs 1021–1024; Apollodorus, Library 3.5.8–9 and 3.6.1. An English translation of the play can be read on Perseus (Seven Against Thebes).

See Also: Oresteia, Persians, Suppliants, Prometheus Bound