How Oedipus Rex 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
Oedipus Rex
Sophocles · c. 429 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
7/10
On Oedipus Rex’s page
- The Theban stage was Aeschylus's before it was Sophocles's — Seven Against Thebes (467 BCE) predates Oedipus Rex by nearly forty years
- Sophocles drew on Aeschylus's Theban plays in shaping his own cycle; reading the elder version first shows you the inherited material he was reworking
- The earlier treatment of the doomed house behind Sophocles's masterpiece
On The Seven Against Thebes’s page
- Aeschylus got to the Theban material first — Seven Against Thebes (467 BCE) stands a generation ahead of Oedipus Rex (429 BCE)
- Scholarly consensus counts Aeschylus's four Theban plays, this among them, among the sources Sophocles drew on for his own Theban cycle
- The elder tragedian's Thebes is the ground Sophocles built his on