Seven Against Thebes

The war of the seven heroes against Thebes, as imagined in Aeschylus’s play, reflects elements of both classical and epic Homeric warfare. On the one hand, archaeological evidence shows that Greek warriors often had devices painted on their shields during the Classical Period (during which Aeschylus lived). On the other hand, the play suggests that the war is going to be decided not by the armies of Thebes and Argos but rather by a few picked champions from each side who fight a series of single-combat duels in the fashion of Homer’s heroes.

The “Shield Scene” of the second episode is probably the most famous in the play. In it, the Messenger describes the shield devices of the enemy warriors at each of the seven gates to Eteocles. Each shield device represents a specific threat to the city that Eteocles seeks to neutralize (See: Symbols & Motifs). The hero Capaneus, for instance, who is stationed at the second gate, bears a shield showing a naked man with a torch while boasting that not even Zeus can stop him from conquering the city. Against him, Eteocles sends Polyphontes, “a man of fiery spirit” (448) who can combat the torch of Capaneus’s shield and who, unlike Capaneus, respects the gods. Similarly, when faced with the Typhon device of Hippomedon’s shield, Eteocles sends Hyperbius to fight him, since Hyperbius’s shield device is Zeus, Typhon’s destroyer: “According to the logic of the emblems,” says Eteocles, “Zeus on Hyperbius’ shield should be our savior” (519-20).

The well-known Classical scholar Froma Zeitlin has argued that the Shield Scene should be interpreted in terms of triadic sequences (Under the Sign of the Shield, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009, 33-106). The first three shield devices, for example, represent the history and development of the human world, with Tydeus’s shield (showing the moon and stars) representing the origins of humanity from celestial seeds, Capaneus’s shield (showing a naked, torch-bearing warrior) representing the discovery of fire, and Eteoclus’s shield (showing a man scaling a ladder) representing more advanced technology. The next three shields (not counting the shield of Amphiaraus, which conspicuously lacks a device) likewise follow a historical progression: Typhon, shown on Hippomedon’s shield, represents the cosmos as it was before the Olympian gods consolidated their power; the Sphinx, shown on Parthenopaeus’s shield, represents the early history of Thebes; and Polynices’s “new-made” (642) shield bears an image that represents the current conflict. The triadic structure also features in the inscriptions on the shields, three of which bear inscriptions.

Throughout the Shield Scene, the boastfulness, injustice, and savagery of the attackers is contrasted with the justice of the defenders. The animalistic Tydeus, for example, menaces “like serpents’ hiss at noonday” (381); Capaneus’s threats “breathe inhuman arrogance” (425); Parthenopaeus advances “with a Gorgon look” (527). Capaneus in particular actually utters blasphemy against the gods. Amphiaraus alone stands apart, conspicuously bearing a shield without a device and even chiding the brutal Tydeus and Polynices. Amphiaraus serves only to call attention to the shortcomings of his allies, whose boasts and arrogance are all empty in the end: Each of the seven will be destroyed by the champions Thebes will send forth.

As problematic as the seven are, the defenders are not without guilt themselves. Eteocles in particular had previously wronged his brother, and indeed this is exactly why Polynices decided to wage war against Thebes in the first place. Eteocles conveniently ignores his role in bringing about the war, focusing instead on the conflict of Human Agency Versus Divine Forces that led him to his fate. When he finds out that it is his brother, Polynices, who awaits him at the seventh gate, Eteocles’s first words are an invocation of “Our family, the family of Oedipus, / by the gods maddened, by them greatly hated” (653-54), invoking The Hereditary Nature of Family Misfortune. To Eteocles, the battle between him and Polynices is, on one level, the fulfillment of their father’s curse, and to the Chorus, similarly, the anger of the gods has marred three generations of the descendants of Labdacus (Laius, Oedipus, and now Oedipus’s sons).

Nevertheless, the role of the gods does not represent a simple denial of human agency. Eteocles actively chooses to go and fight against Polynices, even though “There are enough Cadmeans / to grapple with the Argives” (679-80), as the Chorus tells him. Eteocles’s actions become overdetermined, that is, explained by divine forces as well as human agency. The fratricidal battle between Eteocles and Polynices, who are about to “die with mutual hand / mutually slaughtering” (733-34), becomes the play’s most horrifying testament to The Horrors of War.