ABSTRACT
The play opens with Aethra, the mother of the Athenian leader Theseus, making offerings before the temple of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis. The rite she performs, the Proerosia, was intended to guarantee fertile sowing and bountiful harvests for Attica, sharing with the Mysteries a focus on rebirth and regeneration as reflected in the agricultural season. Aethra takes her position in a cancelled entry, surrounded by suppliant women from Argos, who ‘bind her’ to the altar with suppliant wands (32). They have come to plead that Athens intervene on their behalf and procure the corpses of their sons, the famous Seven against Thebes, who have been denied burial by the Thebans. In addition to the cluster of women around the altar, the Argive leader Adrastus lies prostrate before the entrance to the temple, and near him stands a secondary boys’ chorus representing the sons of the Seven.
