The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Aeschylus · a tragedy for performance · about 1,078 lines in the standard numbering · Athens, City Dionysia, 467 BC, first prize, the third play of a connected tetralogy of which it alone survives · scored on Aeschylus’ Greek as transmitted, its disputed close included, read from knowledge; no text in hand, Greek quoted only where its words are certain, in transliteration, with Sommerstein’s Loeb for sense
Mode
Tragedy of a ruler and a curse: a siege play whose middle is a sequence of paired speeches in which description becomes decision
Mythos
The house of Laius under the curse; the brothers who divide the inheritance by the sword; the city’s myths painted on the attackers’ shields; Justice claimed by the one who comes home in arms
Phase
Three movements and a disputed close: the city under siege to about line 374; the shield scene, about 375 to 676, seven pairs of speeches; the curse fulfilled, the messenger’s report and the lament, to about 1004; then the herald’s decree and Antigone’s defiance, from about 1005
Presentation
Drama for the City Dionysia, the third play of a tetralogy (Laius, Oedipus, Seven Against Thebes and the satyr play Sphinx), of which only this play survives; a ruler, a scout, a messenger and a chorus of Theban women
Register
From the ship of state and a ruler’s contempt for panic, through boast set on boast at the gates and a seer’s cold refusal of any emblem, to the recognition at the seventh gate and the lament over two brothers
Scale
One city on one day of siege, with three generations of its royal house, its gods addressed by name and its earth, which gives each brother a grave
Governing Proposition
An Argive army stands at the seven gates of Thebes, and one of its champions is Polynices, the brother of the king. Eteocles governs the frightened city with reason: a scout describes each attacker and the device on his shield, and Eteocles names a Theban to meet him, gate by gate, until the seventh attacker is his brother and the only defender left is himself. The city is saved; both brothers are dead, each holding as much of the land as a grave. The wager of the play is that a man may choose rightly by every rule of his office and still choose what the curse on his house requires, and that the saving of the city and the ruin of the house can be one event.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The play was produced at the City Dionysia of 467 BC and won first prize. It was the third play of a connected tetralogy: Laius, Oedipus, Seven Against Thebes, and the satyr play Sphinx. Only the Seven survives. What the first two plays showed, the disobedience of Laius and the curse of Oedipus on his sons, now reaches the audience only as this play remembers it, and the play leans on them. It is scored as it stands, the surviving text for performance, about 1,078 lines in the standard numbering.
It opens on a ruler and a city under siege. Eteocles, son of Oedipus, speaks as reason, and his figure for the city is a ship. A scout reports the Argive army at the gates. Then the chorus enter, the women of Thebes, and they are in panic. The parodos is a siege heard by those who cannot see it: the din of chariots, the shaken spears and the stones on the walls arrive as sound before sense, and the sounds carry the siege into the song.
Eteocles rebukes them. He has contempt for their terror, and he means to manage fear as he manages the walls. The movement runs to about line 374, a third of the play, and it runs long on one point: the women’s terror and his contempt are stated and restated. It is the slackest stretch of the play. But it sets the terms: the ruler as reason, the city as a body that feels, and between them the question of what a man who governs by reason will do when reason runs out.
Movement II
The middle of the play, from about line 375 to 676, some 28 per cent of it, is the shield scene. It is seven pairs of speeches. In each the scout describes an Argive champion at one of the seven gates and the device on his shield, and Eteocles names a Theban to meet him. Nothing is shown; the whole middle of the play is two men speaking of things unseen. Each pair is a sound decision, and each advances the one question the play exists to answer: who will stand at the seventh gate.
The pairs are varied in length and temper, and the boasts are built from the devices. Eteocles’ replies turn each device against its bearer: Tydeus’ night sky becomes his own night of death, and Capaneus’ torch meets the fire of Zeus. The devices are the city’s mythology turned into weapons. At the fourth gate Typhon is set against Zeus, the war of the gods fought again on a wall. The Sphinx returns on the shield of Parthenopaeus to the city she once preyed on.
The Capaneus and Hippomedon speeches are boast set on boast, and they are among the play’s heights of dread. But the scene is also a school. It teaches the audience to read signs, the scout’s eyes giving the image and Eteocles’ mind giving its meaning, and it teaches them in time for the sign that matters. The order of the gates is the order of fate’s approach. Each assignment, made as if freely, leaves fewer gates and fewer men.
Movement III
At the sixth gate stands Amphiaraus, the seer, a just man in an unjust army. His shield has no device, “ou gar dokein aristos all’ einai thelei”
“for he wishes not to seem the best but to be it” (592). He foresees his own grave in enemy earth. Among six boasts and six emblems he is the one plain shield, and the scene sets him apart by that absence. It is the cold grandeur of the play: a man who knows where his road ends and walks it without display.
Then the seventh. The attacker at the last gate is Polynices, and on his shield is painted Dike, Justice herself. The sign must be read against its bearer, and Eteocles reads it: he must decide whether Justice ever stood with his brother. And he sees the whole: “ō theomanes te kai theōn mega stygos”
“O god-maddened, and greatly hated by the gods” (about 653). The assignments have left him the one gate left. He will go himself.
The chorus plead with him not to go. Their pleas show that the choice is his. Whether he changes at this line or was always the man of the curse has been argued for generations, and the question has not closed; the desk reads the turn as a law kept, not a law changed. He chose rightly by every rule of his office, and he chose what the curse required. Both descriptions are true, and the play gives them in a single turn.
Movement IV
When he has gone, the chorus sing of the curse: of Laius’ disobedience, of the Erinys, of the house across three generations. The house myth of the two lost plays comes here, in retrospect. The song names a stranger who divides the inheritance: the iron, come from Scythia, which gives each brother his allotment, as much of the land as a grave. The inheritance the brothers fought over is divided at last. Here the lyric rises again.
A messenger comes. The city is saved, and both brothers are dead, each by the other’s hand. The two reports are one event: what saves the city ends its royal house. The ship of state from the opening returns in the city saved at the end, and the managed fear has been managed, at the price the ruler paid. The names carry the myth: Polynices, “much strife”; Eteocles, “true glory”. The play uses them.
The lament follows, over two brothers in one grave. It turns on itself more than it advances, and it is lower than the scenes before it. But it closes the lyric frame: terror before the shield scene, mourning after it, the city’s body around the ruler’s reason. The play’s three movements end here, at about line 1004, and the earth is both mother and grave.
Movement V
The text as transmitted does not end there. From about line 1005 a herald announces a decree against burying Polynices, and Antigone defies it; the chorus divides. Most editors since the nineteenth century take this close as a later addition, made under the influence of Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Phoenician Women, and judge the earlier entry of Antigone and Ismene the same way; the question is contested, and the direction of influence with the Antigone story is disputed. Under the desk’s rule that what was built onto a work in its life is part of that work, the close is scored with the play and charged where it costs.
It costs on four axes. It opens a new action, burial and defiance, that the play has not prepared and does not resolve; it changes the form’s question at the last minute; it brings in a council never mentioned before and an Antigone who answers another play; and it is the main reason the text’s form is charged on survival. It is about a fourteenth of the whole, and the charge is in proportion. The play is not scored as the reconstruction it might once have been.
The rest of its survival is strong. It was one of the three plays of Aeschylus read in the Byzantine schools, with Prometheus Bound and the Persians, and it came down in many manuscripts, the Medicean at their head, with scholia. Aristophanes’ Aeschylus boasts of it as a drama “Areōs meston”
“full of Ares” (Frogs 1021). Euripides answered it in the Phoenician Women, and the Theban tradition runs through it to Statius and Racine. It is staged far less than the Oresteia, and read mostly for one scene; that scene is a man arranging his own death while doing his duty, seven gates long.
Act III · The Twelve
The spine is required, and its middle is the most necessary thing in it. Each of the seven pairs advances the one question the play exists to answer: who will stand at the seventh gate. The order of the gates is the order of fate’s approach, and Eteocles’ assignments, made as if freely, leave him the one gate left; remove a pair and the arithmetic of the curse fails. What is not required: the parodos and the rebuke that follows run long on one point, the women’s terror and his contempt; the lament turns on itself more than it advances; and the transmitted close, about a fourteenth of the whole, opens a new action the play has not prepared and does not resolve. That close is the main charge.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it holds: a man may choose rightly by every rule of his office and still choose what the curse on his house requires, and both descriptions of the act are true. Eteocles is the ruler as reason, with the ship of state, the managed fear and a counter for every device, until the scout names his brother; then he sees it whole, “ō theomanes te kai theōn mega stygos”
“O god-maddened, and greatly hated by the gods” (about 653), and goes, and the chorus’s pleas show the choice was his. Beside it: the public good and the family’s ruin are one event. Held off the top because the disclosure comes in a single turn, not worked through a life, and is not tested against a second case.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Height in two kinds. The dreadful: the parodos, where the din of chariots, the shaken spears and the stones on the walls arrive as sound before sense, so that the women hear the siege they cannot see; the Capaneus and Hippomedon speeches, boast set on boast; the seventh speech and Eteocles’ recognition, the play’s summit. The cold grandeur: Amphiaraus, the just man in an unjust army, who carries no device, because “ou gar dokein aristos all’ einai thelei”
“he wishes not to seem the best but to be it” (592), and who foresees his own grave in enemy earth. The stasimon on the curse and the iron that divides the inheritance rises again. Frequency is the charge: the opening third and the lament are lower.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Myth built, and built into the play’s machinery. The shield devices are the city’s mythology turned into weapons: Typhon against Zeus at the fourth gate is the war of the gods fought again on a wall; the Sphinx returns on Parthenopaeus’ shield to the city she once preyed on; Dike herself is painted on the brother’s shield, and Eteocles must decide whether Justice ever stood with Polynices. The inheritance the brothers fought over is divided at last by the iron, a stranger from Scythia, and each gets as much land as a grave. The names carry the myth, Polynices “much strife”, Eteocles “true glory”, and the play uses them. Held below the top because the house myth comes largely in retrospect, its first two plays lost.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The inheritance is epic, the Theban cycle and its lost Thebais, and the tragedy of Phrynichus and of the young Aeschylus himself. The turn: an epic catalogue of champions made into a dramatic engine, so that description is decision and the audience watches a man arrange his own death while doing his duty; and a protagonist whose character is the place where civic reason and inherited curse meet, a pattern Greek tragedy then made its own. The stake was real, for the whole middle of the play is two men speaking of things unseen. Held at 8.0 because the swerve is made within Aeschylus’ own form (paired speeches, a lyric frame, a trilogy) rather than against it, and the larger turns in his work are not here.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Change the form and the knowledge goes. The play knows that fate arrives through a sequence of reasonable acts, and it knows it by the sequence: seven pairs, each a sound decision, the seventh the only decision left. The devices teach the audience to read signs, so that when Polynices’ shield bears Dike the sign must be read against its bearer, as Eteocles reads it. The scout’s eyes and Eteocles’ interpretation divide the knowing between two voices, which is the play’s subject: what is seen, and what it means. The lyric frame, terror before and lament after, holds the city’s body around the ruler’s reason. Charged for the transmitted close, which changes the form’s question at the last minute, and for the slack opening.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Evidence rather than promise. The long modern argument over whether Eteocles changes character at the seventh gate or was always the man of the curse, which is the question of the play’s unity, has not closed. Froma Zeitlin’s Under the Sign of the Shield (1982) read the shield scene as a system of signs and opened it to a generation of reading. The textual question of the ending is itself a well, since it bears on the history of the Antigone myth. Held at 8.2 because the play has fewer layers than the Oresteia, and its readers return mostly to one scene.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The field is Attic tragedy in its first generation, with Homeric and cyclic epic and choral lyric behind it. The intrinsic force: the play fixed the brothers’ mutual killing as tragic matter, made the descriptive set piece a dramatic engine, and gave Athens the soldiers’ play that the Aeschylus of Aristophanes boasts of, a drama “Areōs meston”
“full of Ares” (Frogs 1021). Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: Euripides answered it in the Phoenician Women, where Eteocles will not name the champions at the gates; the Theban tradition runs through it to Statius’ Thebaid and Racine’s La Thébaïde; the shield ekphrasis entered the repertory of epic and tragedy. Held at 8.0: the reach is real, but it was the Oresteia and Prometheus that redirected the field.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Some two and a half millennia, the text whole and read without a break. It was one of the three plays of Aeschylus, with Prometheus Bound and the Persians, chosen for the Byzantine school selection, which is why it survives in many manuscripts, the Medicean at their head, with a tradition of scholia; it was known in antiquity well enough to be quoted and parodied. Charged on form for the close, which most editors take as an addition, and for an uncertain stretch of lyric; the play stands without the trilogy that gave it its first frame, a further and smaller charge. Charged on presence: it is read and staged far less than the Oresteia or Prometheus, in modern times mainly in the academy and in occasional revivals.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Judged on the Greek as far as it can be carried. The shield scene is a feat of construction: seven pairs varied in length and temper, the boasts built from the devices, the replies turning each device against its bearer, so that Tydeus’ night sky becomes his own night of death and Capaneus’ torch meets the fire of Zeus, and the sixth speech set apart by the absence of any device. The diction is Aeschylean: the compounds, the weight, the battle catalogue as music, and the parodos makes its sounds carry the siege. The ship of state at the opening returns in the city saved at the end. Charged: the static first movement, and the joinery of the close, which is not of the same hand or the same skill. Metre and music are neither credited nor charged.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Take the most distant elements: Eteocles’ cool order in the prologue and the brothers’ shared grave in the lament. One law governs both: the city’s good and the house’s curse run through the same acts, and what saves the one destroys the other. The devices, the seer, the iron stranger and the curse all obey it. The transmitted close breaks it: a herald from a council not mentioned before, a decree against burial, an Antigone who answers a play other than this one, and a chorus divided in a way its earlier stance does not prepare. Charged for that, and for the doubt whether the turn at the seventh gate is a law kept or a law changed; the desk reads it as kept.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Held within its scale, one play of about a thousand lines. The city at war: walls, gates, citizens, the women’s terror, the ruler’s management of fear. The family over three generations: Laius’ disobedience, Oedipus’ curse, the sons. The gods: the oracle, the Erinys, Zeus, Dike, the city’s gods addressed by name. The earth, as mother and as the grave allotted by the iron. These are held in one action. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve: labour, the household’s daily life and history beyond the myth are absent, and consciousness is given in one turn, not explored. The figure describes the form and the narrowness of the action; a short play is not marked down for being short.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.2 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.6, then The Made at 8.5. A text whole and continuously read for two and a half millennia, among the three plays of Aeschylus kept by the Byzantine schools; the city’s myths built into the machinery of the play as devices on the attackers’ shields, with Justice on the brother’s; and a shield scene of seven paired speeches, varied in length and temper, in which each reply turns a device against its bearer.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.6, held by what lies outside one city on one day of siege: labour, daily life and history beyond the myth, with consciousness given in one turn. Next, The Inevitable at 7.8, held by the repetitions of the first movement and by a transmitted close, about a fourteenth of the play, that opens an action it does not resolve. Among the gated axes, The Swerve and Pressure on Tradition at 8.0: a turn made within the playwright’s own form, and a reach real but smaller than the field’s redirection by his other work.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.3, The Made at 8.5, The Inner Law at 8.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 9.2 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.3, The Swerve at 8.0 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.0 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met (the lowest of the eleven axes it covers is The Inevitable at 7.8, against 7.5), and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.6. The aggregate, at 8.2, stands in any case below the summit’s 9.0.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Aeschylus’ Hepta epi Thēbas (Latin Septem contra Thebas), scored as the surviving Greek text for performance as transmitted in the medieval manuscripts, the Medicean (Laurentianus 32.9) at their head: about 1,078 lines in the standard numbering. The unit is the one play. It was the third play of a tetralogy produced at the City Dionysia of 467 BC, where it won first prize; Laius, Oedipus and the satyr play Sphinx are lost and are context only. The transmitted close (from about line 1005: the herald’s decree and Antigone’s defiance), and very probably the earlier entry of Antigone and Ismene, are judged by most editors since the nineteenth century to be a later addition; the question is contested. Under the desk’s rule that what was built onto a work in its life is part of that work, the close is scored with the play and charged on The Inevitable, The Living Form, The Inner Law and The Imperishable. No text was in hand, nothing was measured on a text, and no quotation was checked against a file. Every axis is judged on the Greek. Greek is quoted only where its words are certain, in transliteration, with an English rendering beneath that keeps close to the Greek; references are to the standard line numbers and are approximate where marked. Proportions are measured from the standard line ranges of the movements and are given only roughly. Translations · Alan Sommerstein’s Loeb (2008), close and current on the textual questions, for sense; Anthony Hecht and Helen Bacon’s Seven Against Thebes (1973), for the play as an English poem; David Grene’s version in the Chicago series, as a third. None is quoted, and no translation’s shortfall is charged to the play. The metre, sound and music of the lyrics are judged no further than scansion and report carry, and are neither credited nor charged beyond that. Matters that could not be verified are not given: the full order of the seven pairings and the names of the six Theban defenders, the words on Capaneus’ shield and the device of the third attacker, the Greek of the song’s line on the iron stranger, the metres of the parodos, the scholar with whom the argument over the play’s unity began, and whether Eteocles’ refusal in the Phoenician Women is a jibe at this scene.