Seven Against Thebes

Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes was the last tragedy of a trilogy about the myths of King Labdacus’s descendants: Laius, Oedipus, and Oedipus’s sons, Eteocles and Polynices. The myths of Thebes were extremely familiar in ancient Greece and appeared often in early Greek literature, including epics, lyrics, and dramas. There were different versions of the myths of Thebes (as with all Greek myths), but the overall outlines remained largely consistent.

Thebes was the principal city of the central Greek region of Boeotia. The mythology of the city usually began with its foundation by Cadmus, a prince from the Levant who had traveled west in search of his lost sister (or, in some versions, niece) Europa. Failing in his quest, Cadmus settled down at a site designated by the gods and founded a city there: the city of Thebes. Cadmus and his descendants continued to rule Thebes for several generations of the city’s mythical history. Many myths were told about Cadmus and his descendants. One grandson of Cadmus was Actaeon, who was transformed into a stag when he stumbled on the goddess Artemis in her bath. Another grandson of Cadmus was Pentheus, who was destroyed when he refused to worship the new god Dionysus (himself a grandson of Cadmus).

Labdacus, another mythical king of Thebes, was also a descendant of Cadmus. Labdacus’s descendants—the Labdacids—had the misfortune of incurring the anger of the gods; how exactly they did so is not clear in all sources, but the misfortune of the Labdacids was often represented as hereditary. Laius, Labdacus’s son, ruled Thebes after his father’s death. He and his wife, Jocasta, learned from an oracle that they must not have a son, for if they did, he would kill his father. When Jocasta gave birth to a son, Laius therefore left him in the wilderness to die. However, the baby boy was rescued and raised in Corinth.

Years later, when Oedipus had grown up, he met the aged Laius at a crossroads. The two fought and Oedipus killed Laius, not realizing that the man he killed was his father. He then defeated the Sphinx, then terrorizing the city of Thebes, by solving its riddle. The grateful Thebans made Oedipus their new king, and the recently widowed Jocasta married the newcomer, with neither of them realizing that he was her long-lost son. In most versions, Oedipus and Jocasta had four children together: two boys named Eteocles and Polynices, and two girls named Antigone and Ismene (in other versions, these children were born to Oedipus by another woman).

Only much later did Oedipus discover the truth: that he was in fact the son of Laius and Jocasta, and that he had thus killed his father and married his mother. What happened next varies depending on the source. In some accounts, Oedipus blinded himself and went into exile; in others, he continued to rule; in others still, he abdicated the throne but remained in Thebes. In most versions, Jocasta died by suicide, either soon after learning the truth (as in Sophocles’s Oedipus the King) or much later (as in Euripides’s Phoenician Women).

The hereditary misfortune of the Labdacids continued into the generation of Oedipus’s offspring, with Oedipus’s sons, Eteocles and Polynices, quarreling over the throne. In most accounts, the quarrel arose after Oedipus placed a curse on his sons, though what inspired him to place this curse varies depending on the source. In many versions, Eteocles and Polynices agreed to share the throne, ruling in alternating years. When Eteocles’s year was over, he reneged on the deal and would not hand over the throne to his brother. The cheated Polynices traveled south to Argos and convinced the king there, Adrastus, to provide him with an army to conquer Thebes. This is where Aeschylus’s play begins.

The army of Adrastus and Polynices is led by seven heroes (including Adrastus and Polynices), the so-called “Seven Against Thebes.” These heroes lay siege to the city. In a fierce battle, each of the seven heroes attacks one of the seven gates of Thebes. The Thebans manage to defeat all seven heroes, with Eteocles and Polynices killing each other in single combat. Of the Seven Against Thebes, only Adrastus escapes with his life.

The myths of Thebes did not end there. The aftermath of the war led to further struggles, including an internal struggle between the new king, Creon (Jocasta’s brother), and Oedipus’s daughter Antigone. Their struggle was famously dramatized in Sophocles’s tragedy Antigone. Moreover, even though the city was saved from the seven heroes, it was fated to be destroyed a generation later by the sons of the seven, known as “the Epigoni.”

The myths of the Labdacids played an important role in classical literature before and after Aeschylus. There is evidence of early Greek epic poems about the struggle between Oedipus’s sons, as well as the later war of the Epigoni (the epics themselves are now lost). There are surviving tragedies on the Oedipus myths by the Greek dramatists Sophocles (Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus) and Euripides (Phoenician Women), as well as by the Roman dramatist Seneca (Oedipus and Phoenician Women). The Roman poet Statius wrote an epic on the Seven Against Thebes, the Thebaid, in the first century CE.