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Επτά επί Θήβας

The Seven against Thebes is a mythic narrative that finds its classic statement in the play by Aeschylus (467 BCE) concerning the battle between the Seven led by Polynices, traditional Theban enemies, and the army of Thebes headed by Eteocles and his supporters. This same story is told in Euripides' Phoenician Women (ca 409 BCE).

An early telling was contained in the lost Greek Thebaid, an early epic poem that was regarded as forming part of a Theban Cycle, which discerning critics by the fifth century no longer attributed to Homer. Fragments of its text survive as quotes.

Plot summary

When Oedipus stepped down as King of Thebes, he gave the kingdom to his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, who agreed to alternate the throne every year.^[1] After the first year, Eteocles refused to step down and Polynices attacked Thebes with his supporters (the eponymous Seven). The two brothers killed each other in single combat. Their maternal uncle, King Creon, who had ascended to the throne of Thebes, decreed that Polynices, "who came back from exile, and sought to consume utterly with fire the city of his fathers," is not to be buried: "touching this man, it hath been proclaimed to our people that none shall grace him with sepulture or lament, but leave him unburied, a corpse for birds and dogs to eat, a ghastly sight of shame."

Due to the popularity of Sophocles's Antigone, the ending of Seven Against Thebes was rewritten about fifty years after Aeschylus's death.^[2] Where the play (and the trilogy of which it is the last volume) was meant to end with somber mourning for the dead brothers, it instead contains the ending as follows:

Antigone, their sister, defied the order, (explaining that "I owe a longer allegiance to the dead than to the living: in that world I shall abide for ever") but was caught. Creon decreed that she was to be buried alive, even though she was betrothed to his son, Haemon. He declares "'Tis Death that shall stay these bridals for me." The gods, through the blind prophet Tiresias, expressed their disapproval of Creon's decision ("one begotten of thine own loins shall have been given by thee, a corpse for corpses; because thou hast thrust children of the sunlight to the shades, and ruthlessly lodged a living soul in the grave"), which convinced him to rescind his order, and he went to bury Polynices. However, Antigone had already hanged herself rather than starve to death. When Creon arrived at the tomb, his son, Haemon, attacked him in a grief-stricken craze before killing himself. When Creon's wife, Eurydice, was informed of his suicide she, too, took her own life.

Also during this battle, Capaneus was killed by a lightning bolt from Zeus as punishment for his arrogance. His wife, Evadne, threw herself on his funeral pyre. Also, Megareus killed himself because Tiresias prophesied that the voluntary death of a Theban would save Thebes.

The mythic content

The mytheme of the "outlandish" and "savage" Seven who threatened the city has traditionally seemed to be based on Bronze Age history in the generation before the Trojan War,^[3] when in the Iliad's Catalogue of Ships only the remnant Hypothebai subsists on the ruins. Yet archaeologists have been hard put to locate seven gates in "seven-gated Thebes":^[4]In 1891 Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff declared that the seven gates existed only for symmetry with the seven assailants, whose very names vary: some have their own identity, like Amphiaraus the seer, "who had his sanctuary and his cult afterwards... Others appear as stock figures to fill out the list," Burkert remarks. "To call one of them Eteoklos, vis-à-vis Eteoklos the brother of Polyneikes, appears to be the almost desperate invention of a faltering poet"^[5] Burkert follows a suggestion made by Ernest Howald in 1939 that the Seven are pure myth led by Adrastos (the "inescapable") on his magic horse, seven demons of the Underworld; Burkert draws parallels in an Akkadian epic text, the story of Erra the plague god, and the Seven (Sibitti), called upon to destroy mankind, but who withdraw from Babylon at the last. The city is saved when the brothers simultaneously run each other through. Burkert adduces a ninth-century relief from Tell Halaf which would exactly illustrate a text from II Samuel 7: "But each seized his opponent by the forelock and thrust his sword into his side so that all fell together".

Eteocles and Polynices being carried away, dead, after the Battle of Thebes, by Alfred Church

The Seven Against Thebes were

1. Adrastus
2. Amphiaraus
3. Capaneus
4. Hippomedon
5. Parthenopeus
6. Polynices
7. Tydeus

Allies:

1. Eteoclus and Mecisteus. Some sources, however, state that Eteoclus and Mecisteus were in fact two of the seven, and that Tydeus and Polynices were allies. This is due to the fact that both Tydeus and Polynices were foreigners. However, Polyneices was the cause of the entire conflict, and Tydeus performed acts of valour far surpassing Eteoclus and Mecisteus. Either way, all nine men were present (and killed) in the battle, save Adrastus.

The defenders of Thebes included

1. Creon
2. Megareus
3. Poriclymenus
4. Melanippus
5. Polyphontes
6. Hyperbius
7. Actor
8. Lasthenes

See also Epigoni, the mythic theme of the Second War of Thebes

Notes

References

• Burkert, Walter 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age "Seven against Thebes" pp 106-14. Burkert draws parallels between Greek and Ancient Near Eastern materials. Notes and bibliography.

Translations

• A. S. Way, 1906 - verse
• E. D. A. Morshead, 1908 - verse: on-line text
• G. M. Cookson, 1922 - verse
• Herbert Weir Smyth, 1922 - prose: full text
• David Grene, 1956 - verse
• Philip Vellacott, 1961 - verse

	Plays by Aeschylus The Persians | Seven Against Thebes | The Suppliants | Agamemnon | The Libation Bearers | The Eumenides | Prometheus Bound (spurious)

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