ABSTRACT
All the surviving tragedies of Aeschylus deal with war and its aftermath. His Seven against Thebes represents the siege of the city by an invading army and the development and conclusion of that mythological war. The war dramatized in Seven against Thebes is between the sons of Oedipus: Are Eteocles, who is in control of the kingdom of Thebes, and the exiled brother Polynices, who has made a powerful alliance with another Greek kingdom and has raised an army to attack Thebes in the hope of regaining the throne. At the end of Aeschylus' tragedy the city is saved, but the princes, the sons of Oedipus, have died, slain by each other's hands. The death of the princes thus mires what should have been a time of celebration for the city's salvation, and lamentation over their dead bodies forms the focus of the play's conclusion.
