Read this if you…
- are Looking for more Oedipus family extended universe content
- like Brothers fighting each other plot
- want the missing plot piece between oedipus rex and antigone
Skip this if you…
- haven't already read oresteia to decide if you like aeschylus
The 
Take
Fun to see how first part is just talking about women freaking out and how he can’t focus, then all his champions defend Thebes but he and his brother kill each other, essentially directly preceding the events of Sophocles Antigone. The ismene Antigone dialog kinda cool too
The lineage through The Seven Against Thebes
- The Iliad by Homer. The Seven Against Thebes built on it. - The Theban war this play stages was already a memory inside the *Iliad* — Agamemnon recounts Tydeus's exploits at 4.372-400, and ruined Thebes lingers in Homer's Catalogue of Ships - Aeschylus drew his scout's description of Tydeus from those Homeric verses; the *Iliad* behind you shows where this tragedy quarried its heroes
- Antigone by Sophocles. The Seven Against Thebes shaped it. - Aeschylus ends his play exactly where Sophocles begins his - *The Seven Against Thebes* closes on Eteocles and Polynices dead by each other's hand — the corpses Antigone will fight to bury - Sophocles picks up the Theban story right at this hinge, counting on an audience that still remembered Aeschylus's recent, famous staging
- Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. The Seven Against Thebes shaped it. - Aeschylus got to the Theban material first — *Seven Against Thebes* (467 BCE) stands a generation ahead of *Oedipus Rex* (429 BCE) - Scholarly consensus counts Aeschylus's four Theban plays, this among them, among the sources Sophocles drew on for his own Theban cycle - The elder tragedian's Thebes is the ground Sophocles built his on
- Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles. The Seven Against Thebes shaped it. - Aeschylus dramatized the curse first — Eteocles and Polynices killing each other at Thebes, the doom on Oedipus's line made into theater - Sophocles writes the scene that sets that war in motion: Oedipus cursing his sons, Polynices arriving at Colonus to plead - *Oedipus at Colonus* re-engages the Theban story Aeschylus had already staged a half-century earlier, supplying the cause behind his catastrophe
Depicted in Art
The seven Argive chiefs raise their weapons over a sacrificed black bull, immersing their hands in its blood as they swear to take Thebes; lightning illuminates the night sky.
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson, 1800
The blind, white-bearded Oedipus thrusts out his arm to curse the cowering Polynices; Antigone and Ismene try to restrain him.
Henry Fuseli, 1786
Polynices presents the gold necklace of Harmonia to Eriphyle as a bribe so she will compel her husband Amphiaraus to join the doomed expedition.
-445
Antigone bends to sprinkle dust over Polynices's body as guards rush from the background to seize her.
Sébastien Norblin, 1825
Recommended Editions
David Grene
University of Chicago Press · 2013
Grene from the complete Greek tragedies delivers the shield-by-shield catalogue with real martial pressure. The inevitability that builds toward Eteocles and Polyneices killing each other is the whole point, and Grene lets it build.
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Notable Quotes
A city is the people; walls and ships are nothing without men living together.
- Aristophanes, Athenian comic playwright, c. 446–386 BCE: "My Seven Against Thebes. Every man who saw it fell in love with war."
- David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, Classicists and translators, The Complete Greek Tragedies (Univ. of Chicago Press): A resurgence of enthusiasm for Aeschylus's archaic style elevated the Seven Against Thebes as an early masterpiece of Western drama.
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