THE

SEVEN AGAINST THEBES.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

ETEOCLES.

A MESSENGER.

CHORUS OF THEBAN VIRGINS.
ISMENE.

ANTIGONE.

A HERALD.

SCENE. The Acropolis of Thebes.-Compare v. 227. ed. Blomf.

TIME. Early in the morning; the length of the action can scarcely be fixed with absolute certainty. It certainly did not exceed twelve hours.

The expedition of the Seven' against Thebes is fixed by sir I. Newton B. C. 928. Cf. his Chronology, p. 27. Blair carries it as far back as B. C. 1225: it "is the first instance of a league among Grecian princes, and of any thing approaching to regular war." Mitford, ch. i. §. 3.

ARGUMENT.

In the Seven before Thebes the king and the messenger, whose speeches occupy the greatest part of the piece, speak more in virtue of their office, than as interpreters of personal feeling. The description of the attack with which the city is threatened, and of the seven leaders who, like heaven-storming giants, have sworn its destruction, and who display their arrogance in the symbols borne on their shields, is an epic subject clothed in the pomp of tragedy. This long and highlyfinished preparation is of less value than the single agitating moment when Eteocles, who had hitherto displayed the utmost degree of prudence and firmness, and stationed a patriotic hero at each gate against one of the insolent enemies, as the seventh, the author of the whole mischief, Polynices is described to him, carried along by the furies of the paternal curse, insists on becoming himself the antagonist; and, notwithstanding all the entreaties of the Chorus, with the clear consciousness of inevitable ruin, rushes headlong to the fratricidal strife.

The war is in itself no subject for tragedy, and the poet hurries us rapidly from the ominous and important preparation to the determination: the city is saved, the two competitors for the throne fall by the hands of each other, and the whole is closed by their funeral dirge, in which a part is taken by the sisters and Chorus of Theban virgins.

It is remarkable that the resolution of Antigone to inter her brother, notwithstanding the prohibition, with which Sophocles opens his piece of that name, is woven into the conclusion of this, a circumstance which immediately connects it with a new developement as in the Choæphora. Vol. i. p. 110.