Editing Seven Against Thebes (play)

{{Short description|Ancient Greek tragedy by Aeschylus}}
{{about|the play by [[Aeschylus]]|the Seven champions who fought a war against Thebes|Seven against Thebes}}
{{Infobox play
| name = Seven Against Thebes
| image = Seven against Thebes Getty Villa 92.AE.86.jpg
| caption = Capaneus scales the city wall of [[Thebes (Greece)|Thebes]], [[Campanian vase painting|Campanian]] red-figure [[Neck-amphora]] attributed to the Caivano Painter, ca. 340 BC, [[J. Paul Getty Museum]] (92.AE.86).<ref>[[J. Paul Getty Museum]] [http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/15176/attributed-to-caivano-painter-campanian-neck-amphora-greek-south-italian-about-340-bc/ 92.AE.86].</ref>
| writer = [[Aeschylus]]
| chorus = [[Thebes, Greece|Theban]] Women
| characters = [[Eteocles]]<br />[[Antigone]]<br />[[Ismene]]<br/>Messenger<br />Herald
| setting = Citadel of Thebes
}}

'''''Seven Against Thebes''''' ({{langx|grc|Ἑπτὰ ἐπὶ Θήβας}}, ''Hepta epi Thēbas''; {{Langx|la|Septem contra Thebas}}) is the third play in an Oedipus-themed trilogy produced by [[Aeschylus]] in 467 BC. The trilogy is sometimes referred to as the '''''Oedipodea'''''.<ref name=smyth/> It concerns the battle between an [[Argive]] army, led by seven champions including [[Polynices]] who were called the [[Seven against Thebes]], and the army of [[Ancient Thebes (Boeotia)|Thebes]] led by [[Eteocles]] and his supporters. The trilogy won the first prize at the Athens [[City Dionysia]]. The trilogy's first two plays, ''Laius'' and ''Oedipus'', as well as the [[satyr play]] ''Sphinx'', are [[Lost literary work|no longer extant]].

==Background==
When [[Oedipus]], King of Thebes, realized he had married his own mother and had two sons and two daughters with her, he blinded himself and cursed his sons to divide their inheritance (the kingdom) by the sword. The two sons, [[Eteocles]] and [[Polynices]], in order to avoid bloodshed, agreed to rule Thebes in alternate years. After the first year, Eteocles refused to step down, leading Polynices to raise an army of Argives (captained by the eponymous Seven) to take Thebes by force. This is where [[Aeschylus]]' tragedy starts.

== Plot summary ==
''Seven Against Thebes'' features little action; instead, the bulk of the play consists of rich dialogues between the citizens of Thebes and their king Eteocles regarding the threat of the hostile army before their gates. Dialogues show aspects of Eteocles' character. There is also a lengthy description of each of the seven captains that lead the Argive army against the seven gates of the city of Thebes as well as the devices on their respective shields. Eteocles, in turn, announces which Theban commanders he will send against each Argive attacker. Finally, the commander of the troops before the seventh gate is revealed to be Polynices, the brother of the king. Then Eteocles remembers and refers to the curse of their father Oedipus.<ref>Eteocles simply mentions a curse, which the chorus state in full at 785ff.</ref> Eteocles resolves to meet and fight his brother in person before the seventh gate and exits. Following a choral ode, a messenger enters, announcing that the attackers have been repelled but that Eteocles and Polynices have killed each other in battle. Their bodies are brought on stage, and the chorus mourns them.

Due to the popularity of [[Sophocles]]' play ''[[Antigone (Sophocles)|Antigone]]'', the ending of ''Seven Against Thebes'' was rewritten about fifty years after Aeschylus' death.<ref>Aeschylus. ''Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, Seven Against Thebes, The Persians''. Philip Vellacott's Introduction, pp.7–19.  Penguin Classics.</ref> While Aeschylus wrote his play to end with somber mourning for the dead brothers, it now contains an ending that serves as a lead-in of sorts to Sophocles' play: a messenger appears, announcing a prohibition against burying Polynices; his sister [[Antigone]], however, announces her intention to defy this edict.

The seven attackers and defenders in the play are:

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:center"
! # !! Attacker !! Defender
|-
|1 || [[Tydeus]] || [[Melanippus]]
|-
|2 || [[Capaneus]] || [[Polyphontes]]
|-
|3 || [[Eteoclus]] || [[Megareus of Thebes|Megareus]]
|-
|4 ||[[Hippomedon (Seven against Thebes)|Hippomedon]]||[[Hyperbius]]
|-
|5 || [[Parthenopaeus]] || [[Actor (mythology)|Actor]]
|-
|6 || [[Amphiaraus]] || Lasthenes
|-
|7 || [[Polynices]] || [[Eteocles]]
|-
|}

==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]],<ref>"There is no reason to suppose that the tale was not based on historical fact" ''Cambridge Ancient History'' II (1978:168), noted by Burkert 1992:107n.</ref> when in the ''[[Iliad]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s [[Catalogue of Ships]] only the remnant ''Hypothebai'' ("Lower Town") subsists on the ruins of Thebes. Yet archaeologists have been hard put to locate seven gates in "seven-gated Thebes":<ref>Burkert 1993:107-08 briefly surveys the attempts, with bibliography.</ref> 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 [[Amphiareion of Oropos|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 [[Eteokles]] the brother of Polyneikes, appears to be the almost desperate invention of a faltering poet"<ref>Burkert 1993:108.</ref> 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 [[Greek underworld|Underworld]]; Burkert draws parallels in an Akkadian epic text, the story of [[Erra (god)|Erra]] the plague god, and the Seven (''Sibitti''), called upon to destroy mankind, but who withdraw from Babylon at the last moment. 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 2: "But each seized his opponent by the forelock and thrust his sword into his side so that all fell together."

The mythic theme passed into [[Etruscan culture]]: a fifth-century [[Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum|bronze mirrorback]]<ref>Illustrated in [[Larissa Bonfante]] and [[Judith Swaddling]], ''Etruscan Myths'' (Series The Legendary Past, University of Texas/ British Museum) 2006, fig. 9 p. 22.</ref> is inscribed with Fulnice (Polynices) and Evtucle (Eteocles) running at one another with drawn swords. A particularly gruesome detail from the battle, in which Tydeus gnawed on the living brain of Melanippos in the course of the siege, also appears, in a sculpted terracotta relief from a temple at [[Pyrgi]], ca. 470–460 BC.<ref>Relief in the Museo Etrusco, [[Villa Giulia]], Rome, illustrated in Bonfante and Swaddling, fig. 10 p. 23, and p. 58.</ref>

[[File:Eteocles and Polynices - Project Gutenberg eText 14994.png|thumbnail|right|300px|[[Eteocles]] and [[Polynices]] being carried away, dead, after the Battle of Thebes, by [[Alfred John Church]]]]

The [[Epigoni]], the sons of the [[Seven against Thebes]], were the mythic theme of the second war of Thebes, which occurred ten years after their fathers had fought in the first war of Thebes.

==''Laius'', ''Oedipus'' and ''The Sphinx''==
Of the other two plays that made up the trilogy that included ''Seven Against Thebes'', ''Laius'' and ''Oedipus'', and of its [[satyr play]] ''The Sphinx'', few fragments have survived.  The only fragment definitively assigned to ''Oedipus'' is a line translated by [[Herbert Weir Smyth]] as "We were coming on our journey to the place from which three highways part in the branching roads, where we crossed the junction of the triple roads at [[Potniae]]."<ref name=smyth>{{cite book|title=Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides, Fragments|author=Smyth, H.W.|author-link=Herbert Weir Smyth|pages=437–438|year=1930|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=0-674-99161-3}}</ref>  The only two fragments definitively assigned to ''The Sphinx'' were translated by Smyth as "For the stranger a garland, an ancient crown, the best of bonds, as [[Prometheus]] said," and "The Sphinx, the Watch-dog that presideth over evil days."<ref>{{cite book|title=Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides, Fragments|author=Smyth, H.W.|author-link=Herbert Weir Smyth|pages=460–461|year=1930|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=0-674-99161-3}}</ref>

==Critical reception==
Translators David Grene and Richmond Lattimore wrote that "the rise of [[Romanticism#Germany|German Romanticism]], and the consequent resurgence of enthusiasm for Aeschylus' archaic style and more direct and simple [[dramaturgy]]," resulted in the elevation of ''Seven Against Thebes'' as an early masterpiece of Western drama.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zpNDUYAjfpIC|title=Aeschylus I: The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliant Maidens, Prometheus Bound|page=68|author=Aeschylus|translator1-last=Grene|translator1-first=David|translator2-last=Lattimore|translator2-first=Richmond|publisher=University of Chicago Press|date=2013|isbn=978-0226311456}}</ref> From the nineteenth century onwards, however, it has not generally been regarded as among the tragedian's major works. Translators [[Anthony Hecht]] and [[Helen H. Bacon]] wrote that the play "has been accused of being static, undramatic, ritualistic, guilty of an interpolated and debased text, archaic, and in a word, boring," though they themselves disagree with such a description.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hNbSHj97mLUC|title=Seven Against Thebes|page=3|author=Aeschylus|translator1-last=Hecht|translator1-first=Anthony|translator2-last=Bacon|translator2-first=Helen S.|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=1991|isbn=0198020155}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Lille Stesichorus]], a papyrus fragment of the Theban myth by the lyric poet [[Stesichorus]]
* ''[[Thebaid (Latin poem)|Thebaid]]'', an epic poem depicting the same battle by the Roman author [[Statius]], published {{circa}} 91–92 AD.

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==Translations==
* [[Robert Potter (translator)|Robert Potter]], 1777 - verse: [[iarchive:bim_eighteenth-century_the-tragedies-of-schylu_aeschylus_1777/page/140/|full text]]
* [[Anna Swanwick]], 1886 - verse: [[wikisource:Dramas_of_Aeschylus_(Swanwick)/Seven_against_Thebes|full text]]
* [[Arthur S. Way|A. S. Way]], 1906 – verse
* [[E. D. A. Morshead]], 1908 – verse: [http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/seventhebes.html on-line text]
* [[Edwyn Bevan]], 1912 – [https://archive.org/details/sevenagainsttheb00aescuoft ''verse'']
* G. M. Cookson, 1922 – verse
* [[Herbert Weir Smyth]], 1922 – prose: [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=aesch.+seven+5 full text]
* [[David Grene]], 1956 – verse
* [[Philip Vellacott]], 1961 – verse
* [[Helen H. Bacon]] and [[Anthony Hecht]], 1973 - verse
* Will Power, 2001 – verse, lyric
* George Theodoridis, 2010, prose: [http://bacchicstage.wordpress.com/aeschylus-2/seven-against-thebes/ full text]
* [[Ian C. Johnston]], 2012, verse: [http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/aeschylus/sevenagainstthebeshtml.html full text]

==References==
*[[Walter Burkert|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.

==External links==
{{Wikisource|Seven against Thebes}}
{{commons category|Seven against Thebes}}
* [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0013 ''Seven Against Thebes'']
* {{librivox book | title=Seven against thebes | author=Aeschylus}}

{{Aeschylus Plays}}
{{Theban Kings}}
{{Oedipus}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Plays based on classical mythology]]
[[Category:Plays by Aeschylus]]
[[Category:Plays set in ancient Greece]]
[[Category:Seven against Thebes]]