The seniority of Polyneikes in Aeschylus' Seven

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online

The Tangled Ways of Zeus: And Other Studies In and

Around Greek Tragedy
Alan H. Sommerstein

Print publication date: 2010

Print ISBN-13: 9780199568314
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2010
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199568314.001.0001

The seniority of Polyneikes in Aeschylus' Seven

Alan H. Sommerstein (Contributor Webpage)

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199568314.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter, noting that different versions of the story of Oedipus' sons Eteokles and
Polyneikes make different assumptions about their relative age, seeks evidence bearing
on this question in Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes. It finds that while Eteokles must be
very young, Polyneikes is described as bearded. This is confirmed by an engraved
Etruscan mirror showing the two brothers (names given) in the act of killing each other.
Polyneikes' seniority will be the main basis for the claim he makes to be rightfully entitled
to the Theban throne.
Keywords: Aeschylus, Thebes, Eteokles, Polyneikes, seniority, bearded

Which was Oedipus' elder son, Eteokles or Polyneikes? There are surprisingly few explicit
statements on the matter.1 The earliest come in tragedies of the last decade of the fifth

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The seniority of Polyneikes in Aeschylus' Seven

century, and they contradict each other. In Euripides' Phoinissai (712) Eteokles is the
elder; in Sophocles' Oedipus at Kolonos (3745, 12935, 1422) Polyneikes is. We cannot
tell from internal evidence whether one, both, or neither of these two versions is derived
from earlier tradition, since each is integrated with the plot of its own play. In Phoinissai
Eteokles' seniority is used (6976) to account for the fact that when the brothers agree
to rule Thebes in alternate years (a story not heard of before Euripides), Eteokles is
allowed to rule for the first year (at the end of which he refuses to surrender power). In
Oedipus at Kolonos Polyneikes, who claimed the automatic right to succeed to Oedipus'
throne as his elder son (12924), is bitterly resentful at having been ousted and
dishonoured by his younger brother, and this is one of the main reasons (14223) for his
refusal to heed Antigone's anguished plea to him not to destroy his family and city. Two
later literary or quasiliterary sources2 name Eteokles as the elder brother; as we shall
see, however, one artistic source tells a contrary tale.
(p.83) I wish to consider in this chapter what is implied in Aeschylus' Seven against
Thebes regarding the relative ages of the brothers. Nothing is said directly about the
matter by anyone in the play, but certain indications point clearly, I would argue, to the
conclusion that Aeschylus imagined Polyneikes as the older brother.
In the first place, while both brothers are (828),3 so [106] that their deaths
effectively extinguish the royal line (6901, 813, 8812, 95460),* they appear to differ in
their marital status. Eteokles is plainly an unmarried man. His wish never to be
(188, cf. 195) with women, parallel in form to the wish of Orestes never to have
a woman like Klytaimestra as his (Cho. 10056), implies that he is not
with any woman at present. The marriage of Polyneikes, on the other hand, is neither
affirmed nor denied in the play; but the role of Tydeus as instigator of the war (5715)
strongly suggests that the traditional story of the combat between him and Polyneikes,
resulting in Adrastos choosing them both as his sonsinlaw,4 is presupposed (indeed no
source explicitly leaves Polyneikes unmarried; and if Tydeus and Polyneikes were not
both Adrastos' sonsinlaw, some explanation would be badly needed of why one of them
should be urging Adrastos to launch an expedition to restore the other to his homeland).5
(p.84) Secondly, Eteokles must look young enough to be called (686) by a
chorus of women who, though it is some time since they called themselves
(10910, cf. 1712, 4545), must still be
wearing masks consistent with that designation. This strongly suggests that [107] he is
beardless, as e.g. Orestes normally is in fifthcentury art; 6 Polyneikes, on the other hand,
is specifically stated in the text to be bearded (666). Hence when the two brothers, one in
death, are brought on stage (848ff.), there will be one conspicuous difference between
them. They will be wearing similar armour, they have similar wounds (887), they are
similarly mourned; but one has a beard and the other does not. Their quarrel has ended
with the assignment of equal lots of Theban land to each (72733, 81619, 90614); but
one of the corpses that will be taken to be buried in those lots bears a highly visible sign
to remind us that in one important respect they were unequal.
This deduction from the text of Seven finds remarkable confirmation from a precious
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The seniority of Polyneikes in Aeschylus' Seven

piece of artistic testimony. An engraved bronze Etruscan handmirror from Vulci, of the
early fourth century,7 depicts two warriors, each grasping the right shoulder of the
other and about to deliver a fatal swordthrust to the left breast (cf. Seven 88890 '
).8 One of the warriors has a
beard, the other has none. And both figures are labelled with names: the bearded man is
PHULNICE, the beardless one EVTUCLE. The only known earlier evidence for the
brothers being distinguished in this particular way is that which we have found in Seven
against Thebes, and it is hardly an extravagant suggestion that this iconographic pattern
derives ulti (p.85) mately from that famous play,9 [108] whether via lost Attic pictorial
representations or via a production in Italy.10
From the moment when we first learn of the brothers' deaths, the text of Seven is almost
obsessive in its insistence on the symmetry between them. Whenever they are referred
to, either the reference is to the pair collectively 11 or else words relating to one brother
are immediately followed by similar words relating to the other; 12 the only distinction
between them ever mentioned in this section of the play is that Polyneikes had been in
exile.13 Why should Aeschylus, while preserving verbal symmetry so carefully, have
made such a striking breach in visual symmetry, if not to keep it before our minds that
Polyneikes is the elder brother? His seniority must thus be of significance for the
understanding of the playand doubtless for the same reason that makes seniority
important in the Euripidean and Sophoclean plays, namely for the bearing it has on the
brothers' dispute.
Polyneikes claims that right (and hence the goddess Dike) is on his side in the quarrel
(6448); this claim is contemptuously dismissed by Eteokles (66271), but the upright
prophet Amphiaraos by implication agrees with Polyneikes (584) though insisting that no
claim of right entitles him to make war on his own city. The nature of the claim is not made
explicit, but if it is (1) justified and (2) related to Polyneikes' seniority, it can only be that,
as in Sophocles, he holds that this seniority entitles him to the kingship of Thebes (which,
unlike Oedipus' material possessions, cannot be split between the brothers; the story of
its being held on a timeshare basis was (p.86) probably unknown to Aeschylus, and in
any case would require, if anything, that Eteokles should be the senior brother as in
Euripides).
And now we can observe one thing more. Into Eteokles' savage [109] denunciation of his
brother, in which he affirms with a crushing accumulation of negatives that at no time in
his life has Polyneikes had anything to do with Dike (6649), is slipped a phrase that
undermines his whole argument: Dike never inclined her countenance to him when he
was born, or when he was growing, or in his adolescence, or when his beard grew (666).
It is precisely because his beard has grown (whereas Eteokles', as we can see for
ourselves, has not) that Polyneikes' claim against his brother (though not against Thebes)
is countenanced by Dike. This is of course not the only revealing slip in this speech of
Eteokles': later he will claim the sanction of Dike ( ;) for
facing Polyneikes in single combat ruler against ruler, brother against brother, enemy
against enemy (6725), as if the second of these three phrases, like the first and third,

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The seniority of Polyneikes in Aeschylus' Seven

were the most natural and proper thing in the world.
It may well be asked: if the seniority of Polyneikes is so important to Seven, why is it not
mentioned explicitly at an early stage, as in Euripides and Sophocles? The first indication
of it, and that only an indirect one, comes when the play is already twothirds over; 14 and
not till the bodies are brought on, at line 848, will it become apparent to every spectator
that Polyneikes is the elder. This is not how a dramatist brings a new and vital fact to the
notice of his audience. We may deduce, therefore, that the fact was not new to them. It is
possible that the seniority of Polyneikes was firmly established in tradition, but it is
unlikely, given the preponderance of literary evidence already noted on the other side.15
More probably there (p.87) had been mention of the brothers' [110] relative ages in
Oedipus, the play that preceded Seven; perhaps e.g. Eteokles in that play had expressed
resentment at his brother's claim that seniority gave him the right to be head of the oikos
and ruler of Thebes when Oedipus should die.16 When the rights and wrongs of the
brothers' quarrel come back on to the agenda in Seven 576ff., the audience will have
recalled that earlier scene, and thus will have understood the significance of the
seemingly casual mention of Polyneikes' beard at Seven 666. At any rate, for Aeschylus,
Polyneikes was the elder brother and Eteokles a usurperbut for all that, Eteokles, who
had the support of, and was defending, the polis of Thebes (cf. perhaps Soph. OC 1298
), deservedly won the victory for Thebes while just as deservedly
perishing himself as Polyneikes did. And in the end they will lie side by side, equal in
everythingexcept that Polyneikes will take to his grave the visible evidence of his
maturer manhood.17

Addenda
p. 83while it is true that in Seven it is consistently assumed that the deaths of the
brothers effectively extinguish the royal line, the passage that explicitly calls them
is probably spurious; see Chapter 4 above.
p. 85 n. 10add Taplin (2007: esp. 515); but his material does not include anything that
clearly relates to Seven.
p. 85 n. 12I should not have said that virtually all modern editors assume a lacuna
when the (then) two most recent, Hutchinson (1985) and West (1990a), deleted
as a glossas indeed now does Sommerstein (2008). Several
manuscripts (including the oldest, M) have these words only in the margin, and some
others omit them entirely.
Notes:
(1) I ignore witnesses (e.g. Pherekydes FGrH 3 F 95) who merely list Eteokles' name
before Polyneikes' (or vice versa) without any explicit reference to relative ages, since in
such cases there is no certainty that the brothers are being named in order of seniority.
See, however, n. 15 below.
(2) D.S. 4.65.1; A Iliad 4.376; the firstnamed is clearly dependent on Euripides.

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The seniority of Polyneikes in Aeschylus' Seven

(3) Outside tragedy, on the other hand, it is normally assumed that both brothers left
sons behind them. Polyneikes' son Thersandros certainly figured in the Cyclic Epigonoi,
for the next poem in the Cycle, the Kypria, told of his death at the hands of Telephos in
the course of the Achaians' attack on Teuthrania (Proklos Epit.Kypr. 48 Davies <= Kypria
Arg. 7 West>); in the fifth century cf. Pind. Ol. 2.43 and the Epigonoi monument set up
by the Argives at Delphi (Paus. 10.10.4). Laodamas, the son of Eteokles, for his part, is
regularly assumed to have been king of Thebes when the Epigonoi attacked the city (e.g.
Hdt. 5.61; Paus. 9.5.13, 9.8.6, 9.9.5; [Apollod.] Bibl. 3.7.3; T Iliad 4.406), and Ion of Chios
(PMG 740) portrayed him as having Antigone and Ismene burnt to death in the temple of
Hera (when and under what circumstances we do not know). It is curious that no
surviving source identifies Laodamas' mother, but there is no reason to doubt that he
was born in wedlock; this indeed is virtually presupposed by the tradition reflected in
Paus. 1.39.2, 9.10.3, according to which Laodamas became king when a young child,
immediately upon his father's death, and Kreon acted as regent for him.
(4) Eur. Supp. 13150, Phoin. 40825.
(5) Similarly Gantz (1993: 509): Aischylos' Hepta presumably understands the same
basic events [including the marriages of Polyneikes and Tydeus], since Adrastosand
Tydeus arepart of the expedition with Polyneikesand no explanation of their presence
is considered necessary.
(6) For full discussion, and illustration of most relevant representations, seePrag (1985).
(7) London, BM, Br. 621 (LIMC s.v. Eteokles #17), from Vulci. A similar
bearded/beardless pairing appears, without names, in two later Etruscan representations
of the brothers dying, Oxford Ashm. 1965.359 (carnelian scarab, 3rd c., LIMC ibid. #25)
and Siena Mus. Arch. 731 (alabaster urn, first half of 2nd c., LIMC ibid. #34).
(8) Contrast the quite different account of the brothers' deaths in Euripides (Phoin.
140722): Eteokles, surprising Polyneikes by the Thessalian trick of a momentary
feigned retreat, stabs him through the navel, and he falls; then, as Eteokles is bending
over the supposed corpse to strip it, Polyneikes with his last strength thrusts his sword
into his brother's liver.
(9) Famous among the western Greeks too, as witness the praise of it by Gorgias (fr. 24
DK).
(10) For the latter possibility cf. Taplin (1993: 1229),* though Etruscan material does not
come within his purview.
(11) 80519, 82639, 8456, 84950, 875960 passim, 10004.
(12) So constantly in 96192. At 9989 the transmitted text has
without any corresponding apostrophe to Polyneikes, but
virtually all modern editors assume a lacuna, and it would be all too easy for a line or two
to drop out in a passage in which almost every line begins with .*
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The seniority of Polyneikes in Aeschylus' Seven

(13) 979, 991; also 981 if (V ? K: cett.) is the correct reading.
(14) To be sure, we know before then that Polyneikes has a claim of right which
Amphiaraos considers valid, but we have no way of knowing what the claim is based on.
(15) There are faint indications that the tradition before Aeschylus was divided on the
question of seniority. On the one hand, the one narrative we have that is both explicit on
the matter and independent of surviving tragedy, that in A Iliad 4.376, makes Eteokles
the senior (and Hellanikos, in the late fifth century, may have done so too: see Jacoby on
FGrH 4 F 98, noting that Hellanikos makes Eteokles propose a division of Oedipus'
inheritance and arguing that such an initiative would naturally come from the elder
brother). On the other hand, in the cyclic Thebais (fr. 2 Davies <= West>) Oedipus is said
to have cursed both his sons because of an improper action committed by Polyneikes
alone, as if Polyneikes had been acting on his brother's behalf as well as his own, and
Davies (1989: 25) has suggested that this may indicate that our epicregarded
[Polyneikes] as the elder brother. It has even been speculated (Mastronarde 1994: 27
n. 3) that the brothers were originally twins: (Seven 849, cf. 7812) might
conceivably be a distant echo of such a tradition.
(16) In classical Athens, seniority among brothers was not normally of significance in
inheritance law (they would either divide their father's estate equally or else leave it
undivided and own it jointly), but it could become so if there was a dispute over an
asset which could neither be divided nor shared, especially over marriage with an
epiklros. Thus in Menander's Aspis, when the supposed death of Kleostratos leaves his
sister as an epiklros, her elderly and avaricious uncle Smikrines claims that he has a
prior legal right to take her in marriage ahead of his younger brother Chairestratos
(Aspis 1413, 1857, 2546), and the rest of the family, though desperate to prevent the
marriage, do not dispute this claim but instead first try to compromise, offering to
renounce all claim to Kleostratos' property in return for being allowed to find the girl a
more suitable husband (2619), and then, when this offer is refused, commence an
intrigue designed to outwit Smikrines by dangling before him the bait of another
epiklros with a much larger estate.
(17) This chapter was originally published in Museum Criticum 30/31 (1995/6) 10510. I
am most grateful to Pacini Editore for giving permission for its republication.

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