My paper1 seeks to explore the ways in which Eteocles’ doom is anticipated in the words and manner of the choros. The free women who form the choros, in a city under siege, fear enslavement and assault. Inevitably, at the approach of an enemy, they also fear rape. It is the expression of their fear that Eteocles finds contrary; it takes place in public and their words reveal both an aversion to marriage, that institution indispensable to polis economics, and (naturally) a dislike of warfare, from which they expect negative consequences only. In this tragedy rape, marriage and death are equated. Furthermore, the women articulate their fears in an uncontrolled form – lamentation.2In the real Athenian polis (where the Seven was performed) the two virtues most important in political life were soldierly abilities and skill in public speaking, and Aeschylus well understood that a militarist democracy required male monopoly of public speech. Women were perceived as actually unfit to participate in political life and public speech by women was therefore subversive in itself. I quote from Aristotle Politics:3
...ὁ δέ μή δυνάμενος κοίνωνείν ή μηδέν δεόμενος δί’ αύτάρκείαν ούθέν μέρος πόλεως, ωστε ή θηρίον ή θεος.
Whoever is incapable of participating or through self–sufficiency requires nothing is no part of the polis, whether beast or god.
(1253a, 27–8)
The heroic Thebes depicted in the Seven is not a developed polis such as historic Athens was in the fifth century but its social arrangements rest on the kind of beliefs that informed the economic and political mores of Athens. Doubts concerning women’s loyalty to the values of the polis are reflected not only in Eteocles’ remarks4 but also in the messenger’s passing characterizations of the enemy as feminine (see p.153). Some of what the choros says is in some senses surprising as the play was written by a male tragedian and performed by men but the idea of my paper is that women’s expression of fear performs two functions in this tragedy – to represent women generally as politically subversive and to provide a context for the exposition of tensions in the real polis at Athens, and (secondly) to create from the parodos onwards a subtle impression of similarity between Eteocles and the choros of women so that the women’s fear of rape prefigures and predicts the emotional collapse and death of Eteocles. I start with the first stasimon of the Seven, lines 287–368. Eteocles departs on a masculine errand and the song begins:
μέλεί, φόβωί δ’ ούχ ύπνώσσέί κέαρ,
I attend, but through fear my heart does not sleep.
The women lack confidence in Eteocles’ ability to save them. They believe that masculine aggression is the cause of violence:
προς ανδρός δ’ άνήρ [ ] δορί καίνετοα
Man by man [ ] is killed with a spear (347)
They deplore the waste that warfare brings and the devastation of natural resources:
παντοδαπός δέ καρπός χαμάδίς πεσών
άλγύνεί κύρησαν πίκραν δώμα θαλαμηπόλων,
πολλα δ’ άκρίτόφύρτος
γας δόσίς ούτίδανοίς
έν ροθίοίς φορεΐταν
Fruit of every kind falling to the ground
distresses the assigned home of harsh housekeepers 5
and many a gift of earth is born along
mixed–up in worthless streams. (358–62)
Such goings on are an inversion of the proper appreciation normally shown to the earth by Greeks and the use of certain words suggests that the women recognise a reckless irreligiosity in the actions of warring men:6 χραίνέταί, pollutes (342); μαίνομένοίς, maddened (343); μίαίνων έύσέβέίαν, defiling piety (344). The song therefore suggests the immorality of war per se. I note that Eteocles has earlier expressed sentiments comparable to the women’s in his opening references to Theban autochthony and the kindliness of mother earth (16–20). The women fear that the fall of the city is inevitable and they imagine their own fate: τί γένωμαί; what will become of me? (297). They picture the city as a captured woman,7 spear-booty, slave, and identify themselves with it (321–32). By their own protestations they are forced to accept a definition of themselves as victims; for them as women warfare lacks the interesting power of bestowing τίμη (honour) and social position. Later in the tragedy they question the concept of τίμή altogether (772) – as well as the morality of accumulated wealth, which is distinct from natural abundance: άνδρων άλφήστάν I ολβος άγάν πάχυνθείς, toofattened prosperity of gain–seeking men (770–1).
The choros’s emphasis on their virginity incidentally indicates that as unmarried women they have not yet undergone the transition from πάρθενοί to γυνάΐκες, maidens to women.8 Undoubtedly the Seven concerns issues of citizenship and, given women’s lack of proper status as citizens,9 the question seems to arise of whom the gods of the city can be expected to protect. In the parodos the women call on all the gods in their fear – including (notably) Artemis the ever–chaste, goddess of the wild (146–7) – but at 258 Eteocles, fearful of bad omens, objects to the manner of their supplications:
πάλίνστομείς άυ θίγγάνουσ’ άγάλμάτων;
Do you speak words of ill omen again as you touch the images?
He tells them rather to ‘paean an ololuge’(268) and/or retire indoors. Ibelieve this indicates his desire to control their passion and encapsulate it in male-ordered ritual.10 Robert Parker (forthcoming) has pointed out that the Seven Against Thebes is a ‘model case’ of a tragedy where the civic gods – addressed as θεοί πολίτάί, (citizen gods 253) stand by their city. Eteocles and his family are destroyed but Thebes (and the women) are saved.
Being enslaved of course includes being raped.11 Cassandra, for example, was raped by Aias at the fall of Troy and then taken to be Agamemnon’s concubine (Aesch. Agamemnon 1226). The women are not already married (110, 171); they consider mothers different from themselves (350). And they regard rape as similar to marriage. In Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women where the issue is unwelcome marriage the herald tries to drag the women by their hair and threatens to tear their clothes, and there are parallel references to both these types of assault in the Seven12 – but here the comparison is of rape to marriage.13 The choros sing
πολλά γάρ, ευτε πτολίς δάμάσθήί,
ε ε, δυστυχή τε πράσσεί,
άλλος δ’ άλλον άγεί, φονεύ-
εί, τά δε πυρφορεν
For many unfortunate things, alas alas,
a city undergoes when it is captured.
One person leads away another,
murders, sets fire to things. (338–41)
The Greek given here as captured is δαμασθηί (from δαμα?, tame, marry)14 and One person leads away another translates αλλος δ’ αλλον αγέί.15 αγέίν is used in Greek of enslavement. It is also a verb used of Greek weddings.16 The correlation between slavery and marriage17developed by the choros in the first stasimon suggests an antipathy to marriage even by consent.18 The comparison of rape to marriage is sustained at lines 365–8.
...ώς
δύσμένούς ύπέρτέρού
έλπίς έστί νύκτέρον τέλος μολέίν,
παγκλαύτων αλγέων έπίρροθον.
But a triumphant enemy’s is the hope
that night–time consummation will come,
giving aid against their tearful sorrows. (365–8)19
The journey from their homes referred to at 335 not only describes the way in which the women will be dragged away as slaves but also refers to Greek weddings, since the removal of the bride from the home of her childhood to the marital οίκος (household) was an important part of the wedding ritual.
κλαύτόν δ’ αρτίτρόφοίς ωμοδρόπως
νομίμων προπαροίθέν δίαμέίψαί
δωματων στυγέραν όδόν.20
It is a sad thing for maidens just of age plucked raw
before the marriage rites to complete
the hateful journey from their homes. (333–5)
The hateful journey will happen before the maidens are prepared for it – before any marriage rites have taken place instead of afterwards, and accordingly they remark that the dead are better off (cf. Aesch. Supp. 160 and 465). In Greek tradition girls who died unmarried were buried in their wedding clothes and imagined as brides of Hades (Alexiou 1974, 195). Young men who died unmarried were also sometimes buried in wedding clothes.21 The allusion to Iliad I 3 at line 322 in this context associates rape and marriage with the deaths of men in battle.22 Later I will note that the shield of Polyneices carries bridal imagery. And like the choros, Eteocles also shows resistance to the very notion of marriage (187–8). David Kovacs (1980, 57) has written that both kin–murder and incest are symptomatic of an over-insistence on familial ties and an underevaluation of marriage. Perhaps the sexual misfortunes of Oedipus contributed to Eteocles’ aversion to women (187–8, 195, 712). Oedipus’ father Laius’ rape of the boy Chrysippus may have been alluded to in the lost first two plays of the Labdacid trilogy, a point I will return to presently.
Lines 351–5 make clear the choros’s opinion of men:
άρπάγάί δε δίάδρομάν ομάίμονες·
ξυμβολεΐ φερων φεροντί
κάί κενος κενον κάλεΐ
ξυννομον θελων εχείν,
ουτε μείον ουτ’ ΐσον λελίμμενος·
The running groups of pillagers are brothers;
one loaded man meets another
and the empty calls upon the empty,
wishing to have a partner,
desiring neither less nor equal.
Translators seem to agree that άρπαγαί means pillagers, but άρπάγή is Greek for rape:23 the roving bands of rapists are all brothers. They share the same power over women. όμαίμονες (brothers) is often metaphorical (Hutchinson 1985, 100). The empty calls upon the empty, wishing to have a partner: this is usually taken to mean that the soldiers will pair off and loot the city together – but ξύννομος (partner) is used elsewhere of paramours and wives.24 Lines 351–5 therefore explicitly express the choros’s fear of rape. And in another layer of meaning the terms brothers and partner anticipate Eteocles’ discovery of Polyneices’ direct role in the attack – they are brothers who frighten the women and threaten the city.
An emotional poetical performance is not only appropriate to the tragic form but also natural in the circumstances; both the parodos and the first stasimon are influenced by the practice of lamentation. The general tone of the first stasimon after line 322 is one of elegaic regret abounding with phrases reminiscent of the formulae of lamentation, perhaps more than we can tell since the oral traditions of the ancient Greeks are lost. Between 245 and 264 Eteocles and the women communicate in stichomythia, often a prelude to laments in tragedy, and the choroi themselves are sung antiphonally in the manner of laments. There was an ancient tradition of laments for fallen cities:25 at 322 Thebes is lamented like a dead maiden about to be cast into Hades. In the Iliad Andromache’s lament for Hector whilst he yet lives (VI 500) assumes without doubt that he will be killed and that Troy will fall. Here the choros reveal panicky expectation of Eteocles’ defeat and the fall of Thebes. The first stasimon contains elements of a lament-in-advance for Thebes; it is an eloquent sad exposition of the choros’s feelings. Small wonder that Eteocles wants the women indoors. In his commands to them to go inside he prompts the audience to recollections of Iliad VI 490–3 where Hector speaks to Andromache with similar intent. And in their behaviour the choros are like Andromache (see p. 150). Lamentation was particularly associated with women – whence Eteocles’ resolution no more to lament at lines 656–7:
ἀλλ’ ούτέ κλαίέίν ούτ’ όδύρέσθαί πρέπέί,
μή καί τέκνωθηί δύσφορωτέρος γόος.
But it is fitting neither to weep nor to lament
lest also be begotten lamentation yet harder to bear.
Nevertheless the passionate speech immediately following – the crisis and turning point of the play – contains topoi characteristic of the lament: for example, address by name, reproaches and a review of a person’s life. In performing a lament Eteocles of course resembles the women. Lamentation as a means of expression dealt not only with death but also with other transitions and crises. When Telemachus leaves home in the Odyssey Penelope laments (Odyssey IV 718–20). In particular, laments were performed at weddings. Margaret Alexiou (1974, 118–22) has recorded in modern Greek tradition the singing of laments for brides as they cross the thresholds of their fathers’ houses. The family bids farewell to the bride in a lament similar to laments for the dead, and the bride replies with complaints like those of the dead. Alexiou26 quotes the song of a bride at the arrival of the priest:
–Σέρνέ μέ κί ας κλαίω,
κί α κλαί? ποίο πέίρόζω;
–Σέρνέ μέ κί ας κλαίω κίόλας.
Drag me away though I am weeping.
If I weep, whom do I harm?
Drag me away, though I weep still.
And in one wedding lament the bride resists altogether:
–Kρύψέ μέ, μανα, κρύψέ μέ, να μη μέ παρη ο ξένος.
Hide me mother, hide me, so the stranger cannot take me.
The women’s use of the lament as a form in effect supports the wedding imagery within their song, in particular the metaphor of reluctant brides.
In allowing the women of the Seven to express their fear of rape the lament as a form also provides them with a means of expressing their solidarity with each other, and this in itself points to female lamentation as a subversive activity since the economic and political structures of the (developed) polis required the confinement of women in the isolation of private households.27 A review of the repressive nature of Solonic and other funeral legislation is outside the scope of this paper. The choros’s expressions of fear in the Seven are therefore suggestive of political disaffection. This is important not only because a portrayal of women as subversive vindicates and colludes with male analysis and treatment of women in the real Athenian polis but also because it indicates that the Seven is not primarily an attempt to represent or recreate the feelings of threatened women on behalf of women. The Seven may have drawn on memories of the Persian invasion, and undoubtedly Aeschylus was sympathetic to the plight of women in war, but women’s fear of rape is used in the Seven to serve the twin purposes of signalling the problematic nature of women’s presence in the polis and of supporting the tragic development of the male protagonist. Lamentation – the choros’s suffering – is a μηχάαή, a device to enhance the emotional engagement of the audience with Eteocles, (male) person both χρηστος (good, Aristotle Poetics 1454a 17) and worthy of pity (Heath 1987, 82). Furthermore the subversive manner in which the women express their fear reinforces an impression of feminine influence in the approaching downfall of Eteocles (194). I note in passing that Eteocles’ ancestral Fury is (of course) female. Later I will mention the idea of a correlation between the women and the enemy Argives in connection with certain characteristics of the enemy. Eteocles, helmsman of the ship of state, looking in annoyance upon the maenadic women clearly subscribes to the wellknown Greek theory of complete oppositeness of the sexes – but the tragedy as a whole explores the dialectics of sex in a context of Dionysiac gender blending.
As spectacle the choros in its disarray contrasts utterly with Eteocles but Aeschylus from the very first creates a subtle resemblance that allows Eteocles’ death to be viewed as the fulfilment of the fears that the women voice on their own behalf. The terrified choros, visually in opposition to Eteocles’ confident self-command, in fact employs an occasional ‘male’ turn of speech – but of their sporadic use of an epic register I will only here note that in several places they allude to the Iliad, sourcebook of manly discourse.28 The cross-over of speech patterns is signalled early on by Eteocles’ command to the women to ‘paean an ololuge’ (269). A paean was the male equivalent of the female ololuge. The choros’ female supporting role in fact becomes more controlled in speech as the tragedy progresses. In this they resemble Tecmessa in Sophocles’ Aias who becomes more self-assertive and in effect swaps certain gender characteristics with her husband.29 Nevertheless in the Seven it remains on the whole the part of the choros to react to male deeds and the speech of men, whether it be the messenger’s descriptions or the dispositions of Eteocles, and the great lament at the end (spurious or not) provides a finale of female reaction to male affairs – reflecting still the balance of power that has prevailed throughout.
In the case of Eteocles I believe that both choros within the action and audience looking on are intended to be increasingly aware of an inward struggle to repress what were considered (by Athenians) ‘female’ emotions.30 On this subject I wish to remark that Dionysos arrived at Thebes in the time of Eteocles’ own ancestor Cadmus. The opening words of the Seven (spoken by Eteocles) are an emphatic reminder of the earlier history of Thebes: Kαδμού πολίταί, Citizens of Cadmus (1). In Euripides’ Bacchae (perhaps based on Dionysiac tragedies of Aeschylus now lost 31) Cadmus welcomed the new god and willingly went to dance with him on the mountain (180–9).Thebes was thenceforth a centre of Dionysiac influence. In the Seven the women’s maenadism is quickly established by their resemblance to Andromache in the sixth book of the Iliad, that is to say by their absence from home, their uncontrolled behaviour and their laments.32 Unlike Andromache (who supports her husband in practical ways) the women in the Seven are regarded as useless emotional encumbrances and dangerous irritants. Aeschylus not only noted the maenadism of Andromache but reworked the whole idea of besieged maenadic women in a tragic context, evoking a major fear of the polis – rebellious women. In their appearance and actions the actors of the choros may have resembled a θίασος, an inspired throng.33 In Euripides’ Phoenician Women Antigone’s lament for her brothers is explicitly maenadic (1485–1539 esp. 1489 βόκχα νέκύων, bacchant of the dead). Alexiou (1974, 29) quotes the historical outrage of a Church father at hired mourners ‘dancing and preserving the image of Bacchic women’. It seems therefore that the choros’s movements may resemble the characteristic practices of women mourning as much in the parodos and the first stasimon as in the final great dirge:
ἓτέύξα τύμβωί μέλος
θύίας
A thyiad I make a melody at the tomb... (835–6)34
The Argive attack does not bring about ‘female’ emotions of cowardice and fear in Eteocles – quite the opposite – but the presence of the frightened women is a contaminant, an assault upon his composure as well as a bad influence on other citizens (254).35 It is Eteocles’ desire to save unsullied his image as helmsman of the ship of state that forces him to guard his equilibrium, and the peculiar history of his family makes him shrink from symptoms of maenadic behaviour in women. Of course he finds in himself a response to the emotions of the choros but – like Pentheus in the Bacchae – he resists. I would like here also briefly to suggest that the depiction of Eteocles is of a type recognisable amongst the categories of Greek medical analysis. He is a melancholic.
Aeschylus’ use of medical notions has been noted elsewhere.36 In the pseudo-Aristotelean Problems (30 954a 32) the melancholy are mad, clever and sensual. We know of a belief (reflected in Aristotle: Lucas 1968, 178) that melancholics had prophetic dreams:
ἄγάν δ’ άλήθείς ενυπνίων φάντάσμάτων
ὄψείς, πάτρωίων χρήμάτων δάτήρίοί.
Too true the sights of visions that appear in sleep,
dividing my father’s possessions. (710–11)
The gloomy resignation of these words is also melancholic. According to Hippocrates of Kos melancholia is an excess of black bile in the body (Diseases I 30).37 The choros sing:
ωμοδάκής σ’ άγάν ίμερος εξοτρυ-
νεί...
Too raw-biting
is the desire that urges you... (692–3)
Raw-biting translates ωμοδάκής. In Philos. Gym. 54 ωμος is used of a person suffering from indigestion. It is therefore a word that may also have had medical connotations in Aeschylean times. Of course the main resonances of ωμοδάκής are Dionysiac, but I note Ruth Padel’s detailed discussion of female σπλάγχνά (splanchna, insides) and dark liquid, and the vulnerability of σπλάγχνά to both emotions and divine invasion (1983, 10–12). In other words, Eteocles may be supposed to have certain physiological susceptibilities in common with women. At 237–8 he warns the women of the choros of the effect of their behaviour on others:
άλλ’ ως πολίτάς μή κάκοσπλάγχνους τίθήίς
ευκήλος ίσθί μήδ’ άγάν υπερφοβου.
But so that you do not make the citizens cowards (κάκοσπλάγχνους)
be calm and not too overfearful.
When, therefore, Eteocles bursts into uncontrolled cries at 653 it is not a surprise. In fact, the first lines of the Seven might also be a programmatic hint of the whole agenda of the tragedy:
Kάδμού πολίταί, λέγέίν τα καίρία
ὄστίς φύλασσέί πραγος έν πρύμνηί πόλέως
οἴακα νωμων, βλέφαρα μη κοίμων ύπνωί.
Citizens of Cadmus, he must speak to the point
who guiding the rudder in the stern
guards the city’s affairs,
not lulling his eyelids in sleep. (1–3)
In other words, Eteocles believes that he must not give way to the kinds of weakness displayed by others in dangerous situations. His metaphor expresses the courage and steadfastness of a good statesman, whereas the women’s spiritual sleeplessness of line 288 is due to fear. And in addition the opening of the Seven augurs at once Eteocles’ own fear of maenadism: the man who is in charge of the city must be articulate and must not succumb (like a woman) to Dionysiac trance.38 References in the Seven to ships and sailors in general allude (I believe) to the shipboard associations of Dionysos himself.39 However, in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysos (familiar to Athenians) it is the helmsman who surrounded by rascally pirates alone extends the proper treatment to the god. The tragedy’s opening subtly signals Eteocles’ predisposition to the very thing he fears – Dionysiac influence. The political interest of the Seven therefore rests in part on a brilliantly crafted impression of what might be called maenadic tendencies in Eteocles. Like Pentheus Eteocles goes outside the city to die. Since he leaves the city in a kinkilling frenzy he is brought to his death by Dionysos (Seaford 1994, 348). The reference to Tydeus at 498 – θύίας ως, like a thyiad 40 – has already evoked the idea of Dionysiac frenzy and desire for blood, presaging the maenadic going forth to battle of Eteocles. As he leaves he is epicene, androgynous, his exemplary ἀνδρέία (manliness) that sends him out to fight paralleled within him by maenadism that makes women leave their looms (Eurip. Bacchae 33). The pervading notion of Dionysiac gender mixing clarifies an overlooked but obvious facet of meaning in Eteocles’ famously puzzling phrase at line 197:
ανηρ γύνη τέ χωτί των μέταίχμίον
...be he man or woman or what is in between...
As I indicated above, Eteocles’ discomfort and anger and his desire to repress the choros arise not only from concern about the effects of their emotions on himself and others, but also from his subconscious equation of the women with the Argive enemies outside the city. This is an outrageous perspective, wholly insensitive to the women’s fears, but it is on its simplest level in keeping with Greek identification of women with the wild, the uncivilised Beyond – an idea exploited in full by Aeschylus. In lines 245–54, for example, the choros’s references to sound seem almost to draw the enemy into the city, progressing steadily inwards from the snorts of approaching horses to the very persons of Eteocles and the women themselves.41 Furthermore, one of the functions of the Redenpaare (Paired Speeches) or Deployment scene (375–676) of the Seven is to map a series of links between the choros inside Thebes and the Argives outside, identifying an explicitly female aspect of the enemy. In contrast to the Theban champions, chosen for their stalwart manliness, certain Argives mingle with their barbaric ferocity maenadic characteristics and in the case of Tydeus, a symbol of reproduction – αάνσελήνος, full moon (389).42 In short, the Redenpaare bestow upon Eteocles’ distrust of women an authorial ratification. I will not enumerate the maenadic features of Tydeus et al., but in a brief glance at the Redenpaare I will mention below only Amphiaraus and Polyneices before concluding. Of Parthenopaeus (Maiden One) I merely say that he resembles the choros in part because of his mother Atalanta’s resistance to marriage and domestication.
The Argives’ use of words on their shields is especially interesting since writing is not a skill familiar to the heroes in the Iliad43 and therefore in the Seven it represents a later (male) form of word-control in a heroic setting. In historical times letters were used on Greek shields to identify their city or owner, and sometimes shields in paintings carried statements (Hutchinson 1985, 106), but it seems that Aeschylus particularly developed the idea of shields with words as well as emblems. Eteocles’ unhesitating reversal of the first five Argive devices contributes to the impression that for him control of other people includes control of their use of words. Oratorical prowess is displayed by Eteocles in the Redenpaare as an essential part of his generalship and the idea of the Argives bringing misfortune on themselves by their incautious use of words is reminiscent of his earlier objections to the behaviour of the women. Boastful words on shields can only be described as a peculiarly masculine form of communication. But the shield of Amphiaraus is blank.
Amphiaraus, mighty seer, refuses to carry vaunting words or to associate himself with the aggressive aims of Polyneices’ campaign, which he believes is unholy and not a fit subject for epic (581). His protestations to Tydeus and Polyneices in effect query the value of fighting for its own sake and bespeak a higher sense of what is honourable. In his underevaluation of battle lust he resembles the choros, and (unlike the first five Argives) he also has much in common with Eteocles above and beyond being involved in the circumstances of a siege. He displays the ‘male’ virtues of rationality and eloquence valued by Eteocles in himself. He is conspicuously pious amongst the immoderate Argives, a man σωφρονέστατον (568 most modest)44 in the company of others less moral than himself. Eteocles actually adapts his favourite political image to describe Amphiaraus, the Dionysiac shipboard idea of a single sensible member of a crew (602–4). Furthermore Amphiaraus is different from the other Argive champions in combining an interpretative role with his willingness to fight, and the oracular character of his speech also forms a link with Eteocles since Eteocles’ task in interpreting the Argive shields is like that of a priest who interprets oracles, or a seer reading animal splanchna at a divination. Prophetic vision is often in Greek associated with women or with ‘female’ states of mind. Like Eteocles after 653, Amphiaraus’ fate is death with insight and his pervading consciousness of supernatural influence on the lives of mortals rings true with the man who exclaims:
ω θέομανές τέ καί θέων μέγα στύγος,
ω πανδακρύτον αμόν ωίδίπού γένος·
O god-maddened and great abomination of the gods,
O my unhappy family of Oedipus! (653–4)
Aeschylus chose not to mention in the Seven that Amphiaraus was at Thebes only because his wife Eriphyle was bribed by Polyneices (Odyssey XV 247). This is both so that the correlation between Amphiaraus and the unmarried Eteocles should not be weakened and so that Amphiaraus should not be in antithesis to what is female. Amphiaraus is described by the messenger in terms reproductive and like women he is associated with fertility. If Eteocles sympathizes with the pious heroism of Amphiaraus and is in tune with his analytical bent, he also takes up the messenger’s use of reproductive imagery. Yet it is not Amphiaraus’s body which is fertile and productive, but his intellect. The messenger says:
βαθέίαν αλοκα δία φρένός καρπούμένος,
έξ ης τα κέδνα βλαστανέί βόύλέύματα.
Reaping his mind’s deep furrow
from which the trusty counsels sprout (593–4)
Reproductive capacity, difficult to control in women, becomes an image describing a virtue prized in men. And Eteocles certainly revels in his own intellect. Amphiaraus therefore has much in common with Eteocles and Eteocles is able to sympathize and identify with a figure who is in some senses of ambiguous gender. Yet in Eteocles’ use of reproductive imagery there is another element, the idea of perverted yield. He says:
...κάρπος ου κομίστεος.
άτής άρουρά θάνάτον εκκάρπίζετάί·
...no fruit can be gathered.
The field of infatuation has death as its produce. (600–1)
and
άλλ’ οίδεν ως σφε χρή τελευτήσάί μάχήί,
εί κάρπος εστάί θεσφάτοίσί Ʌοξίου·
But he knows that he must meet his end in battle,
if there is to be fruit for Loxias’ oracles. (617–18)
Baleful associations of harvesting are of course a topos of lamentation (Alexiou 1974, 195).The idea of perverted yield has been personified in Eteocles himself all along. Eteocles and Polyneices are the results of perverted reproduction, Oedipus’ begetting of children in his own mother’s womb (1032). The use of reproductive imagery prepares for the announcement of the seventh attacker. Amphiaraus is matched with Lasthenes (least described of the Thebans) and Eteocles is left to fight the seventh and last Argive champion, the one person who really mirrors him, of precisely his own descent and peculiar background Polyneices.
In the messenger’s description of Eteocles’ brother the earlier choral theme of marriage is again taken up. Polyneices’ shield is replete with bridal imagery:
εχεί δε κάίνοπήγες ευκυκλον σάκος
δίπλουν τε σήμά προσμεμήχάνήμενον·
χρυσήλάτον γάρ άνδρά τευχήστήν ίδείν
άγεί γυνή τίς σωφρονως ήγουμενή·
Δίκή δ’ άρ’ είνάί φήσίν, ως τά γράμμάτά
λεγεί· “κάτάξω δ’ άνδρά τονδε, κάί πολίν
εξεί πάτρωίάν δωμάτων τ’ επίστροφάς.”
He has moreover a newly-constructed round shield
and a double device wrought upon it;
for a woman leads a man,
a warrior of beaten gold to look on,
leading him modestly.
And she declares herself Justice,
as the inscription tells: ‘I will bring this man,
and he will have his father’s city
and dwell in his house.’ (642–8)
The figure of Justice, a woman, leads (ἂγέί) the warrior Polyneices; in Greek marriage the woman was led by the man.45 This inversion both reinforces the mood of gender reversal in the tragedy and points (again) to the dangers women present. The idea of dangerous women has already been writ large in the descriptions of the sphinx on the shield of Parthenopaeus, where much is made of the beast without who seeks to come within (556–61). The Theban champion Actor is chosen by Eteocles to despatch the sphinx – but Eteocles fails to counter Polyneices’ shield as he counters the shield of Parthenopaeus. The word καταξω, I will bring (647) appears in golden letters. Cameron (1970, 108) has noted that Eteocles fails to sieze upon its common meaning, escort to Hades,46 fails in fact to ‘turn the omen’ at all. But the word is also suggestive of wedding ritual, especially in view of the Hadean associations of Greek marriage. The themes of the first stasimon, marriage and subjugation, recur on Polyneices’ shield. In a reversal of the usual procedure the man Polyneices is pictured as one being given έπίστροφάς (648), the ability to frequent the house – like a wife.47 Polyneices is figured as a warrior wrought in gold; Greek brides wore brilliant saffron (Aesch. Agam. 239; Cunningham 1984, 9) and golden jewellery.48 Eteocles has previously equated the women of the choros with the enemy – and he now discovers that the leader of the Argive attack proposes to be led into Thebes by a woman, γύνή (645).49Justice – a concept lauded in the Athenian polis – is depicted in female form and the words on the shield are reported in direct speech:
And she declares herself Justice,
as the inscription tells: etc.
Female subversiveness of speech in this tragedy culminates in the announcements of the figure of Justice on Polyneices’ shield. The simple meaning of Polyneices’ shield is that he will be a triumphant warrior led by Justice. And he prays that if he does not kill Eteocles he will banish him (643–8), though in the Seven as we have it Polyneices himself is the one who remains an outsider, even after his death:
τούτού δ’ αδέλφόν τόνδέ ωολύνέίκούς νέκρόν
έξω βαλέίν αθαπτον
It is a woman who resolves to bury him. Exile from home was a shameful punishment – and, incidentally, exile from home was a punishment inflicted on all Greek women at marriage.50 The very idea that Polyneices might banish Eteocles in revenge for his own banishment throws doubt on the ἁνδρείά (manliness) of Eteocles according to Greek codes of masculinity attested elsewhere, for example in the works of Tyrtaeus.51 Furthermore, Polyneices seeks to appropriate for himself the virtue of δικαιοσυνή (righteousness). Thus he casts himself in a dominant role vis à vis Eteocles, and this brings me to my concluding remarks.
I would like to suggest that Eteocles’ death at the hands of Polyneices can be regarded metaphorically as a form of violation, providing a climactic fulfilment and proper closure for the predictions of the choros. After all, Eteocles’ family is famously incestuous and bizarre. If such an idea has been implanted in the audience’s mind by the preceding poetry and action of the tragedy, its sense of horror at the double fratricide would be enhanced. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Clytemnestra’s murder of her husband is made more dreadful by her description of it in terms of sexual violence and perverted fertility (Agam. 1388–92). At lines 679–82 and 737–8 the choros of the Seven warn of the bad case of pollution that brotherly murder would cause precisely because it would not be normal death in battle. The rape of Chrysippus by Laius may have figured or been alluded to in the two lost dramas of the Labdacid trilogy52 – perhaps as a typically Aeschylean introduction of a theme that later recurs. Presumably the Redenpaare have whittled away the Theban champions one by one as they departed for their gates, leaving Eteocles alone with the women to listen to the messenger’s last announcement. And when Eteocles calls for his greaves at 675–6 the significance of an arming scene on stage (if such there is)53 is immediately clear. Eteocles is dressing himself to die. Given the Hadean associations of marriage in this tragedy and in Greek tradition perhaps he is like a bride who dresses for her wedding. Pentheus in Dionysiac wise went dressed as a woman to a sacrificial death. On Polyneices’ shield Polyneices the warrior is also Polyneices the bride and indeed he meets his death in the same manner as Eteocles and at the same time. At line 888 we discover that the brothers have been stricken through their left sides, a detail perhaps peculiar to Aeschylus, since it is not repeated in either Euripides’ Phoenissae or Statius’ Thebaid. The left side of the body was regarded as the female side (Lloyd 1966, 48). During the course of the Seven, that is to say with the realization of the closeness of the involvement of Polyneices, it becomes clear that Thebes is in fact a disputed κληρος ( inheritance). Eteocles declares that Oedipus’ curse tells him of gain (κέρδος) as well as death (697). We know from Athenian oratory that property disputes were often either caused or solved by marriage, and we know that marriage itself arose as a system for the accumulation and maintenance of private property, with the dowry system acting in Athens as a retrieval mechanism for a woman’s paternal family since the dowry returned with her if she were divorced (Schaps 1979, 10–12). Oracular language in the Seven speaks of Eteocles and Polyneices in terms of property:
ξένος δέ κληρούς έπίνωμαί
Xόλύβος Σκύθ̙ν αποίκος,
κτέανών χρηματοδαίτας
πίκρός, ώμόφρών σίδαρος
And the Chalybian stranger, emigrant from Scythia,
is apportioning their shares,
a bitter divider of possessions,
raw-minded iron. (727–30)
Rape, marriage and death are therefore consistently interconnected and equated throughout this tragedy. Emotions are evoked in the audience by means of choral song as the action – simple in terms of event – advances towards the death of the protagonist. But at the same time the portrayal of women fearful at the prospect of rape is a dramatic device for the exposition of political tensions between male and female as well as a means of exploring the dialectics of gender. If the choros’s expressions of fear perform the functions I have tried to indicate in this paper, it seems that in the Seven women are unfairly made to condemn themselves as dangerous.
Notes
1 I would like to thank David Harvey and Richard Seaford for kindly reading this paper and commenting on it.
2 Marriage and lamentation were particular foci of Athenian legislation from the time of Solon. The Solonian law of the έπίκληρος (heiress), for example, in effect defined women as vehicles for the passing of property between men.
3 From the fourth century. Cf. Aristotle Politics 1254b 13–16.
4 At 190 he describes frightened women as an evil for both home and city.
5 The harsh housekeepers are soldiers taking their share of spoils (Hutchinson 1985, 101).
6 Cf. Aesch. Agam. 527, 649.
7 Cf. Iliad XVI 100; Odyssey XIII.388; Homeric Hymn to Demeter 151; Hesiod Shield of Heracles 105. For Thebes as part of Persephone’s bridal dower see Farnell 1907, III 126.
8 Kearns 1990, 337; Sourvinou-Inwood 1987, 138.
9 See Loraux 1984, 128–9 for the status of Athenian women.
10 This desire on the part of Eteocles is parallelled in fifth century Athens by the state appropriation of funerary practice for political purposes.
11 Cf. Iliad IX 131–4.
12 Cf. 328 and Aesch. Supplices 909; 329 and Aesch. Supplices 904; Eurip.Helen 116.
13 Cf. Eurip. Helen 190.
14 πόλίν...άδάμάτον, city...unconquered (233). Cf. Aesch. Supplices 153 άγάμον άδάμάτον εκφυγείν, unwed, unvanquished to escape; Bacchylides XI 84 ?ροίτου άδάμάτοί θυγάτρες, maiden daughters of Proitos.
15 ἂλλον is masculine but it includes women. Cf. 326 ἂγεσθάί.
16 Cf. συνάγε 756; άγάγες Aesch. Prometheus 560; άγεν Homeric Hymn to Demeter 81 – where Persephone is taken away by arrangement with her father (30), like a bride. LS&J cite examples of ἂγείν in the middle for marriage; see Willink 1986, 126 concerning ἂλοχον ἂγεταί of a new bride (Eurip. Orestes 248).
17 Cf. for example, Aesch. Supplices 335; Eurip. Medea 233, etc.
18 For elements of abduction in Greek wedding ritual, see Seaford 1987, 112 and Sourvinou-Inwood 1987, 139.
19 The night’s consummation is like that of a wedding but it is for a triumphant enemy instead of a husband.
20 Reading στυγεράν ὀδòν (hateful journey) with Hutchinson rather than δωμάτων στυγερων ὀδòν (threshold of their hateful homes) with Page.
21 For a modern instance of this practice see Holst–Warhaft 1992, 67.
22 [Achilles’ wrath] sent many mighty souls of heroes to Hades (“Aϊδί προΐάψεν).
23 άρπάγή means rape in the sense of seizure, but the consequences of being seized were rape: ‘ άρπάζείν is the usual term for the abduction of women’ (Fraenkel 1950, II 270 and cf. Herodotus I.3.1).
24 Aesch. Persae 704; Soph. Elektra 600.
25 Cf. Aesch. Persae 249–52; Alexiou 1974, 83–90.
26 I reproduce Alexiou’s translations.
27 Eurip. Hippolytus 649–50; Plutarch Solon 21. 5–7. For female lamentation as an expression of shared suffering in modern Greece see Holst–Warhaft 1992, 48.
28 For example 294 (Iliad II 308); 300 (Iliad IV 518); 316–17 (Iliad XVI 84); 322 (Iliad I 3). See also Hutchinson 1985, 89–90.
29 On the advice of the seer Calchas (Soph. Aias 750) the messenger recommends that Aias should be confined to the tent (υπό σκηναισι 754 but spoken of like a house, δώμα πάκτου, close up the house) – like a woman he should stay at home. And it is after this that Tecmessa boldly leaves the vicinity of the tent and goes to search the shore (810–12). At 651 Aias announces that he has become womanish; cf. Trachiniae 1075 where Heracles is in his misery discovered a woman. The subsequent description of Heracles’ pains is (I believe) a description of labour pains.
30 For ἂνανδρος (unmanly) as a feared reproach see Willink 1986, 208 and cf. Eurip. Erec. Fragments 360, 28–9 and 362, 34.
31 See Dodds 1960, xxix–xxxiii.
32 Andromache as maenad: Seaford 1994, 330–8.
33 For dance and music as mimesis in Plato and Aristotle, see Heath 1987,141 n. 36.
34 See note 40.
35 Cf. the maenads’ ability to affect their surroundings at Eurip. Bacchae 726–7.
36 Fraenkel 1950 III, 502, 687, 702.
37 Cf. Aesch. Choephoroi 183–4 κάμοι προσέστη καρδιά κλυδώνιον I χολής, a wave of bile stands before my heart and 413–4 σπλáγχνα δέ μοι κελαινουται πρòς ππος κλυουσα. My inwards darken as I hear his speech. ‘Gross excess of black bile leads to stark madness, but a moderate superfluity causes some degree of instability and sensuality such as are associated with the artistic temperament’ (Lucas 1968, 284). Cf. the verbal creativity of Eteocles in this tragedy and see Aristotle Poetics 1454b 11–15.
38 Dionysos as god of wine brings sleep (Eurip. Bacchae 282). Furthermore, Pentheus goes to his death with wits distracted by the god (ibid. 850–1).
39 Tα Kαταγωγία (Katagogia), the festival of Dionysos’ return to Athens, is thought to have been part of the City Dionysia. Many vase paintings depict processions with Dionysos in a ship-car (Pickard–Cambridge 1968, 12).
40 Thyiads were inspired nymphs who followed Dionysos (Schol.min. Iliad VI 21 in Campbell 1988, 438).
41 ιππικών φρυαγμάτων, snorting of horses (245); κυκλουμννων, we are surrounded (247); έν πυλαις, at the gates (249); πυργώματα, towers (251); μή με δουλείας τυχειν, let me not become a slave (253).
42 See Eurip. Iph.Aul. 717 for marriage at the time of the full moon. In Sappho Fragment 96 the full moon brings the fertile dew. Hadzisteliou-Price (1978, 132) suggests that the moon-shaped cakes in Plato Comicus Fr. 188 KA (Phaon) may resemble female anatomy.
43 The only reference to writing in the Iliad is at VI 168–9.
44 Cf. Eteocles’ own words at 186 and see Eurip. Bacchae 1002.
45 See note 16 and illustrations of vase paintings in Oakley and Sinos 1993. Polyneices was able to draw on Argive support for his claim on Thebes because he went away to Argos and there married the daughter of Adrastus.
46 Farnell (1907, III 65 337) cites a ritual of the Kαταγώγια (Katagogia) celebrating the descent of Persephone to Hades. Cf. Eurip. Alcestis 26. For the Dionysiac associations of κατάξω see note 39.
47 This is Hutchinson’s translation of έπιστροφάς. He cites Eurip. Helen 440 (Hutchinson 1985, 147). Cf. also Aesch. Agamemnon 972.
48 For brides’ adornments Oakley and Sinos (1993, 19) cite Pandora’s στεφάνην χρυσέην, golden crown and ὂρμους χρυσείους, necklaces of gold in Hesiod Theogony 578 and Works and Days 74. Cf. Eurip. Medea 1159-62; Eurip. Hecuba 151-2 for which Collard (1991, 139) quotes a scholiast: Polyxena is decked ‘for sacrifice, like a bride’; Eurip. Alcestis 160. Nastes went to war dressed in gold like a girl and was killed by Achilles (Iliad II 872).
49 γυνή means woman or wife. At 662 Eteocles calls Justice the maiden daughter of Zeus -her more usual status (ή δέ τε παρθένος Δίκη, Δίòς έκγεγαυ ΐά, and there is maiden Justice, offspring of Zeus. Hesiod Works and Days 256). ξυνοΰσα, join with (671), has marital connotations.
50 Part of Greek wedding ritual was the burning of the wheels of the cart that took the bride to her husband’s home. For women’s feelings see Sophocles Tereus Fragment 583.
51 Tyrtaeus Fragments 6–7. Cf. Iliad IX 63–4.
52 Hutchinson 1985, xxiii; Mastronade 1994, 36.
53 Mastronade 1994, 370.
Bibliography
Alexiou, M.
| 1974 | The ritual lament in Greek tradition, Cambridge. |
Austin, C.
| 1968 | Nova Fragmenta Euripidea in Papyris Reperta, Berlin. |
Cameron, H.D.
| 1970 | ‘The power of words in the Seven Against Thebes’, TAPA 101, 95118. |
Campbell, D.A.
| 1988 | Greek Lyric II, Loeb Classical Library, London. |
Collard, C.
| 1991 | Euripides: Hecuba, Warminster. |
Cunningham, M.L.
| 1984 | ‘Aeschylus Agamemnon 231–247’, BICS 31, 9–12. |
Dodds, E.R.
| 1960 | Euripides Bacchae, Oxford. |
Farnell, L.R.
| 1907 | The Cults of the Greek States III, Oxford. |
Fraenkel, E.
| 1950 | Aeschylus Agamemnon, Oxford. |
Hadzisteliou–Price, T.
| 1978 | Kourotrophos. Cults and Representations of the Greek Nursing Deities, Leiden. |
Heath, M.
| 1987 | The Poetics of Greek Tragedy, London. |
Holst–Warhaft, G.
| 1992 | Dangerous Voices. Women’s Laments and Greek Literature, London. |
Hutchinson, G.O.
| 1985 | Aeschylus Septem Contra Thebas, Oxford. |
| 1990 | ‘Saving the city’, in The Greek City from Homer to Alexander, ed. O. Murray and S. Price, Oxford. |
Kovacs, P.D.
| 1980 | The Andromache of Euripides – Interpretation, Cuico. |
Lloyd, G.E.R.
| 1966 | Polarity and Analogy. Two types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought, Cambridge. |
Loraux, N.
| 1984 | Les enfants d’Athéna. Idées athéniennes sur la citoyenneté et la division des sexes, Paris. Lucas, D.W. |
| 1968 | Aristotle Politics, Oxford. |
Mastronade, D.J.
| 1994 | Euripides Phoenissae, Cambridge. |
Oakley, J.H. and Sinos R.H.
| 1993 | The Wedding in Ancient Athens, Wisconsin. |
Padel, R.
| 1983 | ‘Women: a model for possession by Greek daemons’, in A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt, Images of Greek women in antiquity, London. |
Page, D.
| 1972 | Aeschyli Septem Quae Supersunt Tragoediae, Oxford. |
Parker, R.
| (forthcoming) | ‘Gods cruel and kind: tragic and civic theology’, in C.B.R. Pelling and C. Sourvinou–Inwood (eds.) Tragedy and the Historian,Oxford. |
Pickard–Cambridge, A.
| 1968 | The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd edn revised (first edn 1953), Oxford. |
Schaps, D.M.
| 1979 | Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece, Edinburgh. |
Seaford, R.A.S.
| 1987 | ‘The Tragic Wedding’, JHS 107, 106–30. |
| 1994 | Reciprocity and Ritual – Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City–State, Oxford. |
Sourvinou–Inwood, C.
| 1987 | ‘A series of erotic pursuits: images and meanings’, JHS 107, 131–53. |
Taplin, O.
| 1977 | The Stagecraft of Aeschylus. The Dramatic Use of Exits and Entrances in Greek Tragedy, Oxford. |
Willink, C.W.
| 1986 | Euripides Orestes, Oxford. |