Eteocles

“ Eteocles opens the play with a speech which encourages the citizens to defend their town. A messenger hurries in telling how he left the besiegers casting lots to decide which of the seven gates of Thebes each should attack. Eteocles prays that the curse of his father may not destroy the town and leaves to arrange the defences. In his absence the Chorus of virgins sing a wild prayer to the gods to save them. Hearing this, the King returns to administer a vigorous reproof; he declares that their frenzied supplications fill the city with terrors, discouraging the fighting men. ”

“ With sin, a bitter fruit of murderous enmities!
Eteocles
Yea, my own father's fateful Curse proclaims—
A ghastly presence, and her eyes are dry—
Strike! honour is the prize, not life prolonged!
Chorus
Ah, be not urged of her! for none shall dare
To call thee coward, in thy throned estate!
Will not the Fury in her sable pall
Pass outward from these halls, what time the gods
Welcome a votive offering from our hands?
Eteocles
The gods! long since they hold us in contempt,
Scornful of gifts thus offered by the lost!
Why should we fawn and flinch away from doom? ”

“ Re-enter Eteocles.
Eteocles
Hark to my question, things detestable!
Is this aright and for the city's weal,
And helpful to our army thus beset,
That ye before the statues of our gods
Should fling yourselves, and scream and shriek your fears?
Immodest, uncontrolled! Be this my lot—
Never in troublous nor in peaceful days
To dwell with aught that wears a female form!
Where womankind has power, no man can house,
Where womankind feeds panic, ruin rules
Alike in house and city! ”

“ O Zeus, why do men assert the wisdom of the wretched human race? On thee we all depend, and all we do is only what thou listest. We thought our Argos irresistible, ourselves a young and lusty host, and so when Eteocles was for making terms, in spite of his fair offer we would not accept them, and so we perished. Then in their turn those foolish folk of Cadmus, to fortune raised, like some beggar with his newly-gotten wealth, waxed wanton, and, waxing so, were ruined in their turn. ”

“ Some envoy from the gods was sent to him,
Or opening earth engulfed him painlessly.
The old man died without disease or pang
To make us grieve for him; by miracle,
If ever man so died. Thinkst thou I dream?
I know not how to show thee that I wake.
ANTIGONE. Eteocles and Polynices, the unnatural brothers, having fallen by each other's hands, Creon is King of Thebes. To Eteocles, who had died in defence of the city, he awards honourable burial; Polynices, who had fallen in attacking the city, he dooms to lie unburied, a great dishonour and calamity in Hellenic opinion. ”

“ Eteocles
Ah, may they meet the doom they think to bring—
They and their impious vaunts—from those on high!
So should they sink, hurled down to deepest death!
This foe, at least, by thee Arcadian styled,
Is faced by one who bears no braggart sign,
But his hand sees to smite, where blows avail—
Actor, own brother to Hyperbius!
He will not let a boast without a blow
Stream through our gates and nourish our despair,
Nor give him way who on his hostile shield
Bears the brute image of the loathly Sphinx! ”

“ O thou true heart, O child of Oedipus,
Be not, in wrath, too like the man whose name
Murmurs an evil omen! 'Tis enough
That Cadmus' clan should strive with Argos' host,
For blood there is that can atone that stain!
But—brother upon brother dealing death—
Not time itself can expiate the sin!
Eteocles
If man find hurt, yet clasp his honour still,
'Tis well; the dead have honour, nought beside. ”

“ Beyond the gates to breathe it in thine ear.
ISMENE.
What is it? Some dark secret stirs thy breast.
ANTIGONE.
What but the thought of our two brothers dead,
The one by Creon graced with funeral rites,
The other disappointed? Eteocles
He hath consigned to earth (as fame reports)
With obsequies that use and wont ordain,
So gracing him among the dead below.
But Polyneices, a dishonored corse,
(So by report the royal edict runs)
No man may bury him or make lament—
Must leave him tombless and unwept, a feast
For kites to scent afar and swoop upon. ”

“ As the drama develops, however, they gradually assume a loftier tone; the words of expostulation addressed by them to Eteocles are full of piety and wisdom: when, therefore, one half of the Chorus follow, with Antigone, the body of Polyneikes, and the other half, with Ismene, that of Eteocles, we may understand that the poet intended thus to recognise the equal sacredness of the principles respectively represented by the sisters, namely, allegiance to the holy tie of kindred-blood, and fealty to the State—the object, in Greek civilization, of the most ardent patriotism. ”

“ Good Eteocles, too, lies under the band of fate, but seeks not to avert the doom. “Stern, uncompromising, he will meet the man he must slay, by whom he must himself fall.” The inexorable destiny of Æschylus was to Sophocles and Plato an ordering of the divine will. ”

“ Students who are curious to appreciate the value attached by the Greeks themselves to the several elements implicit in the notion of domestic Até, should attentively peruse the longer of the two arguments to the Seven against Thebes, while the play itself sets forth more energetically than any other the terrible lesson of the Æschylean Nemesis. The protagonist Eteocles is a curse-intoxicated man, driven by the doom of his race and by the imprecations of his father on a dreadful shoal of fate. He walks open-eyed to meet his destiny—to slay his brother and be slain. ”

“ Then they crouched, each covered with his shield, and holding his spear in his hand, if by chance his enemy should give occasion to smite him; and if one showed so much as an eye above the rim of his shield the other would strike at him. But after a while King Eteocles slipped upon a stone that was under his foot, and uncovered his leg, at which straightway Polynices took aim with his spear, piercing the skin. And the men of Argos shouted to see it. But so doing he laid his own shoulder bare, and King Eteocles gave him a wound in the breast; and then the men of Thebes shouted for joy. ”

“ But their friends on either side as they passed by encouraging them with words, thus spoke. "Polynices, it rests with thee to erect the statue of Jove, emblem of victory, and to confer a glorious fame on Argos." But to Eteocles on the other hand; "Now thou fightest for the state, now if thou come off victorious, thou art in possession of the sceptre." These things they said exhorting them to the combat. ”

“ Eteocles and Polyneices, sons of Œdipus, quarreled with each other about the inheritance of their father’s kingdom. Eteocles having gained possession of it, Polyneices brought up the famous seven kings, his allies, against Thebes, and fell in battle there by his brother’s hand, whom he also killed. ”

“ Were not that grace of gods? ay, ay—methinks,
When cities fall, the gods go forth from them!
Chorus
Ah, let me die, or ever I behold
⁠The gods go forth, in conflagration dire!
The foemen's rush and raid, and all our hold
⁠Wrapt in the burning fire!
Eteocles
Cry not on Heaven, in impotent debate! ”

“ ETEOCLES.
Let men with sacrifice and augury
Approach the gods, when comes the tug of war;
Maids must be silent and abide within.
CHORUS.
By grace of the gods we hold it, a city untamed of the spear,
And the battlement wards from the wall the foe and his aspect of fear!
What need of displeasure herein?
ETEOCLES.
Ay, pay thy vows to Heaven; I grudge them not,
But—so thou strike no fear into our men—
Have calm at heart, nor be too much afraid. ”

“ But when he learned what he had wrought unwittingly, he fell into despair, and the queen slew herself. But before Oedipus died, he laid a curse upon his male children, Eteocles and Polynices, that they should make even division of the kingdom by the sword; and it fell out even so, for the two brothers strove together for the inheritance, and Polynices brought an army, from Argos, against Eteocles; and the brothers fought, and fell each by the other's hand, and the curse was fulfilled.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Eteocles. ”

“ Eteocles, here represented as the younger, drove out Polynices, and seized the throne; Polynices takes refuge at Argos, where he prepares war against the usurper: an oracle declares that success shall be with that party which Oedipus joins, and a mysterious blessing is pronounced on the land which contains his bones. Thus, the possession of this wild tool of fate—raised up in age to a dread and ghastly consequence—becomes the argument of the play, as his death must become the catastrophe. It is the deep and fierce revenge of Oedipus that makes the passion of the whole. ”

“ Eteocles, on the contrary, who is on the patriotic and popular side of defending Thebes from foreign attack, is drawn a hard and cruel despot, who defends his case by the bold assertion that he now holds the throne, that none but a fool would resign so great a prize, and who dies in silence. ”

“ ETEOCLES, in Greek legend, king of Thebes, son of Oedipus and Jocasta (Iocaste) . After their father had been driven out of the country, he and his brother Polyneices agreed to reign alternately for a year. Eteocles, however, refused to keep the agreement, and Polyneices fled to Adrastus, king of Argos, whom he persuaded to undertake the famous expedition against Thebes on his behalf. The two brothers met in single combat, and both were slain. The Theban rulers decreed that only Eteocles should receive the honour of burial, but the decree was set at naught by Antigone (q.v.) ”

“ Perhaps the daring, practically atheistic, character of Eteocles; the battle-fever that burns and thrills through the play; the pathetic terror of the Chorus—may have given it favour, in Athenian eyes, as the work of a poet who—though recently (468 B.C.) defeated in the dramatic contest by the young Sophocles—was yet present to tell, not by mere report, the tale of Marathon and Salamis. Or the preceding plays, the Laius and the Oedipus, may have been of such high merit as to make up for defects observable in the one that still survives. ”

“ And the two brothers quarrelled, and Eteocles, the younger, drove forth Polyneikes, and made himself king. And Polyneikes betook himself to Argos, and took the king's daughter there in marriage, and gathered a great army wherewith to restore himself to the kingdom. And it chanced that Antigone and Œdipus came to Athens, where Theseus was then king, than whom no man in Hellas was braver or more just. ”

“ That which made Eteocles and Polyneices [14] what they were was nothing else but this—their judgement about a throne, and their judgement about exile, namely, that one was the greatest of evils, the other the greatest of goods. 30And this is the nature of every being, to pursue the good and to flee from the evil; and to consider the man who robs us of the one and invests us with the other as an enemy and an aggressor, even though he be a brother, even though he be a son, even though he be a father; for nothing is closer kin to us than our good. ”

“ Now drift the race of Laius, with full sail,
Abhorred by Phœbus, down Cocytus’ stream!
ANTISTROPHE IV.
Chorus.
Let not ravening rage consume thee!
Bitter fruit thy wrath will bear;
Sate thy hunger with the thousands,
But of brother’s blood beware!
Eteocles.
The Curse must work its will: and thus it speaks,
Watching beside me with dry tearless eyes,
Death is thy only gain, and death to-day
Is better than to-morrow!n38
STROPHE V.
Chorus.
Save thy life: the wise will praise thee;
To the gods with incense come,
And the storm-clad black Erinnys
Passes by thy holy home.
Eteocles. ”

“ Eteocles having gotten possession of the throne of Thebes, deprived his brother Polynices of his share; but he having come as an exile to Argos, married the daughter of the king Adrastus; but ambitious of returning to his country, and having persuaded his father-in-law, he assembled a great army for Thebes against his brother. His mother Jocasta made him come into the city, under sanction of a truce, and first confer with his brother respecting the empire. ”

“ Now the entrance of actors preceded that of the chorus. If one actor came alone he had to introduce himself, as Eteocles does in the Seven: “If we succeed, the credit belongs to heaven; but if we fail, Eteocles alone will loudly be assailed throughout the town.” If two actors enter together at the beginning of the play they may by alternately addressing each other by name make their identity clear to the audience, as Cratus and Hephaestus do in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. Moreover, before his exit Cratus calls Prometheus, whom he has helped to nail to the rocky background, by name (vs. 85) . ”

“ In the Seven against Thebes, the description of the upright Amphiaraus, who wished, not to seem, but to be, the best; the wise general, from whose mind, as from the deep furrows of a well-ploughed field, noble counsels proceed; was universally applied by the Athenian people to Aristides, and was doubtless intended by Æschylus for him. Then the complaint of Eteocles, that this just and temperate man, associated with impetuous companions, must share their ruin, expresses the disapprobation felt by Æschylus of the dispositions of other leaders of the Greeks and Athenians ”