The Best Translation of The Seven Against Thebes
The Seven Against Thebes was written in Ancient Greek. 3 recommended editions, ranked — with Gröblé’s verdict on which to read first.
David Grene
University of Chicago Press · 2013
Grene from the complete Greek tragedies delivers the shield-by-shield catalogue with real martial pressure. The inevitability that builds toward Eteocles and Polyneices killing each other is the whole point, and Grene lets it build.
Every recommended edition, compared
Sommerstein's Loeb sets the play in its Theban-cycle context, with notes on how Aeschylus's lost trilogy fed into Sophocles. Facing-page Greek, careful scholarship, the apparatus close readers want.
Anthony Hecht is a major English poet, and Helen Bacon a serious classicist, so this is a rare poet-plus-scholar combo. The verse has weight Grene's prose doesn't, and the introduction reads the play as ritual.
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Reading The Seven Against Thebes in translation
The Seven Against Thebes was written in Ancient Greek, so unless you read Ancient Greek, the translator decides the book you actually experience — its register, its pace, how it sounds read aloud. Two editions of the same work can feel like different books.
The ranking above is Gröblé’s: one reader’s verdict on which English gets you closest, not a publisher’s blurb. Start with the top pick; reach for the others when you want a different angle on the original.