How Antigone drew on The Seven Against Thebes
A documented line of influence: Sophocles demonstrably engaged Aeschylus’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Seven Against Thebes
Aeschylus · 467 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Antigone
Sophocles · 441 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
8/10
On Antigone’s page
- Antigone opens on the aftermath of the battle Aeschylus dramatized in The Seven Against Thebes
- The brothers' mutual slaughter — the climax of Aeschylus's play — is Sophocles's starting premise; he assumes you already know how they died
- Reading the Seven first puts you in the seat of Sophocles's original audience, who carried Aeschylus's version into the theater with them
On The Seven Against Thebes’s page
- Aeschylus ends his play exactly where Sophocles begins his
- The Seven Against Thebes closes on Eteocles and Polynices dead by each other's hand — the corpses Antigone will fight to bury
- Sophocles picks up the Theban story right at this hinge, counting on an audience that still remembered Aeschylus's recent, famous staging