Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/346

324 the operation of the curse pronounced by Œdipus against his two sons, and yet proceeds to its fulfilment. The stasimon of the chorus which follows plainly recognizes the wrath and curse of Œdipus as the cause of all the calamities which threaten the Thebans. This dark side of the destiny of Thebes had not been revealed in the previous part of the drama, although Eteocles had once before declared his fear of the woes which this curse might bring upon Thebes (v. 70). Soon afterwards arrives the account of the preservation of the city, but with the reciprocal slaughter of the brothers. The two sisters, Antigone and Ismene, now appear upon the stage; and, with the chorus, sing a lament for the dead; which is very striking from the blunt ingenuity and melancholy wit with which Æschylus has contrived to paint in the strongest colours the calamities and perversities of human life. At the conclusion, the two sisters separate from the chorus; inasmuch as Antigone declares her intention to bury her brother Polynices, against the command of the senate of Thebes, which had just been proclaimed.

§ 7. This concluding scene therefore points as distinctly as the end of the Choëphorœ to the subject of a new piece, which was doubtless "the Eleusinians." This drama appears to have turned upon the burial of the Argive heroes slain before the gates of Thebes; which burial was carried into execution by Theseus with the Athenians, against the will of the Thebans, and in the territory of Eleusis. It is manifest that the fate of Antigone (who, following her own impulse, had buried her brother, and either suffered or was to suffer death in consequence) was closely connected with this subject. But neither the plan nor the prevailing ideas of this last drama of the trilogy can be gathered from the few fragments of it which remain.

The connexion of the Seven against Thebes with a preceding piece is less evident, in the same way that the Choëphorœ points forward far more distinctly to the Eumenides than it points backward to the Agamemnon. But since we perceive in the extant trilogy that Æschylus was accustomed to develope completely all the essential parts of a mythological series, it cannot be doubted that the Seven against Thebes was preceded by some drama with which it was connected. The subject of this drama should not, however, be sought, with some critics, in the fables respecting the expedition of the Argive heroes; for they do not form the centre about which this tragic composition revolves, but are a vast foreign power breaking in upon the destinies of Thebes. It should rather be sought in the earlier fortunes of the royal family of Thebes. If we consider the great effect produced in "the Seven against Thebes"