Women and War From the Theban Cycle to Greek Tragedy

Louise Bruit Zaidman If war is proclaimed as a man’s business in the classical Greek city-­state, it may be
necessary to look beyond the repeated association between men and war to see how, most notably in Greek
drama, playwrights use the figure of war in their tragedies in order to explore the great conflicts faced by both
the city in question and its ruling families, conflicts in which ­women play a part that extends beyond their
recognized role in the final scenes. To demonstrate the importance of w ­omen in Athenian tragedies centered
on war, and specifically the Theban tragedies, I analyze the respective places of both the men and the ­women
who figure in two tragedies directly inspired by the Theban cycle of myths, as well as the complex history of
Thebes and the ill-­starred ­family of the city’s founder, Cadmus. These two Theban tragedies, Aeschylus’s
Seven against Thebes and Euripi­des’s Phoenissae, supply abundant evidence for scholars examining the
differences between the sexes;1 the “model of femininity” furnished by the genre of tragedy;2 “tragic” ­women
and gender relations;3 and even “feminine discourse” and its ambiguities.4 Many other studies have viewed
these individual tragedies from a variety of ­different perspectives.5 My purpose h ­ ere is to look at the two
tragedies together, from the perspective of war, to see how this par­tic­u­lar angle illuminates the repre­sen­ta­tion
of the ­women who appear in the plays and how it clarifies their roles vis-­à-­v is the men to whom they are
bound, both in the city and within the compass of f­amily relations.

From Epic to Tragedy In classical lit­erature, w ­omen do not technically make war (although they are certainly
capable of d ­oing so), but our sources attest that w ­omen could involve 6 themselves in war without fighting
on the battlefield. ­Women could be the cause of war, its purpose, or its medium. Herodotus opens his
histories by recalling, in

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chapters one through five, the traditions in which the kidnappings of individual ­women launched a series of
wars between the Greeks and barbarians. The Persians, he said, attributed to the Phoenicians the initial
responsibility for the first conflict, due to the abduction from Argos of Io, dau­gh­ter of Inachus. They then
blamed the Greeks for stealing Europa from Tyre, and Medea from Colchis. These pre­ce­dents, Herodotus
claims, greatly influenced the Trojan prince Alexander, better known as Paris, son of King Priam, to regard
himself as authorized to kidnap a Greek ­woman, Helen. Herodotus does not endorse ­either the conduct of the
Phoenicians or that of the Persians; indeed, he asserts that Croesus, King of Lydia, was the first to have
unjustly attacked the Greeks (Hdt. 1.1–5). Yet he portrays the vengeance of a ­woman, the beautiful wife of
Candaules, as having caused the Lydian throne to pass, with l­ittle or no re­sis­tance, from the Heraclid dynasty
to Gyges, of the Mermnad dynasty. In the Iliad, ­women—­from Helen, who is the immediate cause of the
Trojan conflict, to Chryseis, the involuntary source of Achilles’s wrath—­who are all performers in their own
way, and more often than not victims as well, are at the heart of the war.7 A world of w ­omen—­slaves and
concubines who ­were formerly wives and female f­amily members of kings and priests—­live in the tents of
warriors and serve them as required, foreshadowing the fates of Troy’s female population. ­Later works that
continue the narrative of Homer tell the fates of the Trojan ­women who ­were taken into slavery, from Hecuba
to Andromache, particularly in the tragedies that relate what happened ­a fter the Greeks returned home.
Along with Homer’s narrative about Troy and the stories about the Trojan War (“for fair-­haired Helen,” as
Hesiod writes in Works and Days 165), another epic tradition brings together the story of Thebes and the
successive sieges that threatened its safety, sieges launched by Argos and its kings. This tradition
encompasses the history of Cadmus and his descendants; the story of the city’s foundation; the story of
Oedipus and his sons-­turned-­enemies; the story of the seven leaders who raised arms against the walls and
w ­ere scattered by the city’s protectors; then the story of the revenge taken by their sons, the Epigoni; as well
as tales, possibly epics, from which a few scraps remain, known as Oedipus, Thebaid, Epigoni, Alcmaeon.
What place did w ­omen occupy in this tradition? What roles did w ­omen play in those never-­ending wars?
These stories inspired, among other literary works, the Athenian tragedies that enable us t­oday to get a
sense of ­women’s roles, although we must resist the temptation to reconstruct these lost epics through the
tragedies to which they gave rise.8 Not only are the Laius and Oedipus (which preceded Aeschylus’s Seven
against Thebes) lost,

84 Louise Bruit Zaidman

but also Aeschylus’s Epigoni and ­Women of Argos; an Alcmaeon by Sophocles; and, from Euripides, two
plays named Alcmaeon, one titled Antigone and another Antiope.9 The epic subject ­matter that figures in
these Athenian tragedies was familiar to spectators acquainted with the Homeric epics, the works of such
early logographers as Hellanicus and Pherecydes, and the lyric poem by Stesichorus on a fragment of
papyrus (Campbell 2006, 136–43). Sculptures on monuments, paintings, statues, and vases also treated this
subject m ­atter, but l­ittle of this evidence remains. Pausanias mentions the throne of Amycles, built in
approximately 530 BCE by Bathycles of Magnesia, onto which the gods w ­ere seen bringing their pre­sents to
the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia; a few cups and amphoras survive that depict Cadmus in d ­ifferent
episodes from his adven10 tures. According to the references and the sparse fragments that still exist,11 the
Thebaid retold the curse of Oedipus’s sons; the exile of Polynices, who brought the necklace and robe of
Harmonia with him; Polynices’s marriage to Argeia, dau­gh­ter of Adrastus; the preparations for the expedition
against Thebes; and the recruitment of seven leaders, with their accompanying army. The siege of Thebes
and the battles around the city came next in the narrative. The assault on the ramparts was marked by the
death of Capaneus, struck down by Zeus, and by the single combat between the sons of Oedipus; the other
Argive leaders ­were killed in the course of the Thebans’ victorious attack. Melanippus slew Mecisteus and
Tydeus, brother and son-­in-­law of Adrastus, before being killed by Amphiaraus; Amphiaraus then disappears,
engulfed by the earth; Adrastus flees, saved by his h ­orse Arion. We also know the lines of Hesiod’s Works
and Days in which the poet, speaking of the fourth race of men, establishes a parallel between the two wars
and the two sieges, one at Thebes and the other at Troy (Hes. Works 156–65): Αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῦτο γένος
κατὰ γαῖα κάλυψεν, αὖτις ἔτ’ ἄλλο τέταρτον ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ Ζεὺς Κρονίδης ποίησε, δικαιότερον καὶ
ἄρειον, ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, οἳ καλέονται ἡμίθεοι, προτέρη γενεὴ κατ’ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν. 160 καὶ τοὺς
μὲν πόλεμός τε κακὸς καὶ φύλοπις αἰνὴ τοὺς μὲν ὑφ’ ἑπταπύλῳ Θήβῃ, Καδμηίδι γαίῃ, ὤλεσε μαρναμένους
μήλων ἕνεκ’ Οἰδιπόδαο, τοὺς δὲ καὶ ἐν νήεσσιν ὑπὲρ μέγα λαῖτμα θαλάσσης ἐς Τροίην ἀγαγὼν Ἑλένης ἕνεκ’
ἠυκόμοιο. 165

­Women and Wa 85

When the earth covered up this race, Zeus, Cronus’s son, made another one in turn upon the bounteous
earth, a fourth one, more just and superior, the godly race of men-­heroes, who are called demigods, the
generation before our own upon the boundless earth. Evil war and dread ­battle destroyed these, some ­under
seven-­gated Thebes in the land of Cadmus while they fought for the sake of Oedipus’s sheep, ­others brought
in boats over the great gulf of the sea to Troy for the sake of fair-­haired Helen.

Thus, by Hesiod’s time there existed a body of myths, to which Homer also refers, surrounding the history of
Thebes. These may have consisted of one or more epics treating the heroes of what was to be called the
“Theban cycle.” ­Women’s names and destinies have survived ­either in the epics themselves or through l­ater
references. Thus there is Epicaste, the wife of Laius and mo­t her-­wife of Oedipus, who is also known as
Jocasta or by another name; Eriphyle, who goes back to the epic of the Epigoni; Manto, the dau­gh­ter of
Tiresias, whom Euripides, in one of his lost tragedies, designated as the wife of Alcmaeon.12 If the Iliad
resounds with memories of Theban deeds when it relates the adventures and combat of Diomedes and refers
to his f­ather Tydeus,13 the Odyssey engages even more closely with the Theban heroes and heroines.
Odysseus’s descent into the underworld (Od. 2.225–332), known as the nekuia, in effect provides the
opportunity for an encounter with the entire throng of queens and princesses about to parade in front of the
hero. More than one of these w ­ omen comes from the Theban mythic cycle. Among them is Antiope, dau­gh­ter
of the river-­god Asopus. She conceived twin sons from Zeus, who w ­ere named Amphion and Zethos, “the
first found­ers of Thebes of seven gates, which they fitted with towers” (οἳπρῶτοι Θήβης ἕδος ἔκτισαν
ἑπταπύλοιο, Od. 11.263). These words find an echo in the mouth of Antigone in Euripides’s Phoenissae (117,
145), when she evokes the stone walls of the Theban city as the “work of Amphion,” who must protect the
Theban citizens against the war that knocks at its door, and mentions the tomb of Zethos before the ramparts.
Odysseus also encounters Megara, “the dau­gh­ter of the arrogant Creon,” who wed Heracles and will be her
husband’s first victim in Euripides’s Madness of Heracles. Odysseus then sees Oedipus’s mo­t her (Od.
11.271–80): μητέρα τ’ Οἰδιπόδαο ἴδον, καλὴν Ἐπικάστην, ἣ μέγα ἔργον ἔρεξεν ἀϊδρείῃσι νόοιο γημαμένη ᾧ υἷϊ·
ὁ δ’ ὃν πατέρ’ ἐξεναρίξας γῆμεν· ἄφαρ δ’ ἀνάπυστα θεοὶ θέσαν ἀνθρώποισιν. ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ἐν Θήβῃ πολυηράτῳ
ἄλγεα πάσχων 275

86 Louise Bruit Zaidman

Καδμείων ἤνασσε θεῶν ὀλοὰς διὰ βουλάς· ἡ δ’ ἔβη εἰς Ἀΐδαο πυλάρταο κρατεροῖο, ἁψαμένη βρόχον αἰπὺν
ἀφ’ ὑψηλοῖο μελάθρου ᾧ ἄχεϊ σχομένη· τῷ δ’ ἄλγεα κάλλιπ’ ὀπίσσω πολλὰ μάλ’, ὅσσα τε μητρὸς ἐρινύες
ἐκτελέουσι. 280 The mo­t her of Oedipodes, fair Epicaste, who wrought a monstrous deed in ignorance of
mind, in that she wedded her own son, and he, when he had slain his own ­father, wedded her, and
straightway the gods made these things known among the men. Howbeit he abode as lord of the Cadmeans
in lovely Thebe, suffering woes through the baneful counsels of the gods, but she went down to the ­house of
Hades, the strong warder. She made fast a noose on high from a lofty beam, overpowered by her sorrow, but
for him she left ­behind woes full many, even all that the Avengers of a mo­t her bring to pass.

Homer speaks of Epicaste’s suicide, but nothing is said about Oedipus’s self-­blinding; nor is there any
mention of the children born of his u ­nion with Epicaste. On the contrary, the passage evokes the continuity of
his reign at Thebes and his longevity; and the Iliadic reference to his funeral games again looks to this (Il.
23.674–84).14 The listing ends with “hateful Eriphyle, who took precious gold as the price of the life of her
own lord” (στυγερήν τ᾽ Ἐριφύλην, / ἣ χρυσὸν φίλου ἀνδρὸς ἐδέξατο τιμήεντα, Od. 11.326–7). These heroines
appear in the Theban tragedies written for the Athenian theater. For some of them, only the name of a lost
tragedy remains: Antiope, Eriphyle. O ­thers haunt the preserved texts of the tragedians. I now turn to the
perspective that these extant tragedies offer on the mythic history of Thebes and the role that these tragic
heroines play in them, focusing on the context of the war facing the city.

The Theban Tragedies What the Theban tragedies have in common is their close interweaving of foreign wars
and fratricidal war, as if the Athenian discourse wanted to exorcise the ghost of civil war by staging it at the
gates of an “anti-­Athens.” Froma Zeitlin has brilliantly expounded the argument for this interpretation of these
plays.15 Starting from the central theme of the two wars, foreign and civil (namely, fraternal war, or στάσις), I
explore a few tragedies in which this type of war plays a central role, considering how these Greek tragedies
draw on the cyclic material and develop, among other topics, the thematic ele­ment of w ­omen in or facing
war. Many tragedies offer pertinent examples, such as Euripides’s Suppliant

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­omen, but in this chapter I limit them to Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes and W Euripides’s Phoenissae,
both of which represent the war against Thebes by the Argives, led by Adrastus and his son-­in-­law Polynices,
that brings about the “reciprocal murder” of Oedipus’s two sons and the victory of Thebes. Their subject ­-
matter is the same, but its treatment is intentionally shifted, with Euripides, on several all-­im­por­tant issues,
clearly making e­ither a counterargument to or reversing the point of view presented by his pre­de­ces­sor.
Defining the role that the w ­omen play in this story “full of sound and fury” permits an assessment of their
relationship to the male heroes and an examination of the positions that the playwrights assign to these ­-
women, both within their families and in the city to which they are bound. Seven against Thebes: Eteocles and
the Chorus of Theban W ­omen Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes stages a dialogue between the female
chorus, composed of ­women from Thebes (a secured place ­under siege) and Eteocles, its king—­a dialogue
that constitutes the largest portion of the tragedy. The dialogue is interrupted by the messenger who serves as
the eyes of the king outside the city, where the defense of the city’s seven gates is being prepared. ­After
Eteocles’s final exit, with him determined to confront his brother at the seventh gate, the chorus remains alone
on stage to lament the death of Oedipus’s sons.16 Three movements in this tragedy serve to define the
relationship between the king and the chorus. In the first, the ­women’s prayers and the supplications that they
address to the gods of the city defy the imperious ­orders of Eteocles, who wants to reduce the w ­ omen to
silence. In the second movement, the “shields scene,” the female chorus unites with the king regarding his
choices for the defense of the city. In the third part, the female chorus calls out to Eteocles and tries to
convince him not to confront his brother. Their first and third encounters, owing to their length and the moment
at which the ­women intervene, constitute two strategically im­por­tant dramatic moments (at lines 182–286,
653–710, respectively), one before the long shields scene, and the other in the continuation of that scene,
before Eteocles leaves to enter combat and meet his death. Symmetrically arranged in relation to the central
scene, where the dialog is about war and heroic confrontation, these two tête-­à-­têtes form a byplay and, in a
way, reverse the relationship between Eteocles and the chorus. Two speeches interconnect with and respond
to one another over the course of the tragedy. The first is that of the city’s leader, whose opening words are a
proclamation to the “­people of Cadmus” (Κάδμου πολῖται, 1). Eteocles calls the young and the old—­the only
men who are not already beneath the ramparts—to

88 Louise Bruit Zaidman

combat (5–10). From line 182 onward he noisily reacts to the immobilizing fear of the ­women, first by or­ga­niz­-
ing the city’s defense and galvanizing its energies in the shields scene and, from line 375 onward, by raising
before the spectators’ imagination the heroes called to fight at the seven gates. The w ­omen speak from
another point of view and from a d ­ifferent side of war. They appear at first in the role of potential victims,
condemned to passive waiting. They are preyed upon by fear, at the mercy of the noises that besiege the city.
The ­women, however, will soon assume an active role: first by their prayers, in an effort to mobilize the gods
in f­avor of the city, and then by their attempt to influence the final decision of Eteocles. In the parados, which
precedes the entrance of Eteocles at line 182, the voice of the w ­omen is at first only a long upwelling of fear,
responding to the the echoes of the b ­attle cries and rumors that reach them: “I cry for great, fearful
sufferings!” (θρεῦμαι φοβερὰ μεγάλ̕ ἄχη, 78). From this point of view, the entrance of the chorus seems to
establish Eteocles as “a good ship’s captain” (ναὸς κεδνὸς οἰακοστρόφος, 62). But, beginning with line 92, the
chorus very quickly chooses a ritual response to this situation of distress and terror: they turn ­toward the gods
and implore them through supplication, the only means available to avoid “vain wails” (99).17 Up on the
mound where the statues of the city’s gods stand, the chorus goes from one divinity to the other, fastening
themselves to the statues by their veils and garlands, performing a gesture that is depicted in numerous
images on vases and exhibited in other dramatic contexts. The “suppliant maidens” in Aeschylus’s
eponymous tragedy, on the advice of Danaus, sit on the altar of the Argive gods, supplicant branches in hand,
and it is through their per­for­mance of this rite that the king recognizes the Greeks beneath their foreign garb.
Gestures by the mothers that Euripides also chose to call “Suppliants” seem to correspond to this action: the
branches they hold form a link with the “sacred altars of the Two Goddesses” and the mo­t her of Theseus,
around whom they are kneeling. In both cases, these acts serve to urge the king of Argos, and then Theseus,
to protect the suppliants against their attackers, in the name of “hospitable Zeus.” In the Seven, it is the gods
of the city who are directly involved in protecting the ­women and the community against the disasters of war
(110– 80). But Eteocles, having returned to the stage, brutally wants to impose silence on the Theban chorus,
reproaching them for occupying a civic space reserved for men and making a public demonstration of their
contagious panic (230–2). The chorus’s recourse to ritual supplication, however, is precisely their way of
fighting against the panic for which Eteocles reproaches them. The voice of the ­women in the Seven resounds
like an anonymous feminine voice of the city

­Women and Wa 89

against the hero who embodies its po­liti­cal existence. At the height of his irritation, Eteocles, in one phrase,
condemns the w ­hole of the female race: “Zeus, what a race you’ve given us for com­pany, these w ­omen!”
(ὦ Ζεῦ, γυναικῶν οἷον ὤπασας γένος, 256). The chorus’s leader responds: “A wretched one—­just like men
when their city is captured” (μοχθηρόν, ὥσπερ ἄνδρας ὧν ἁλῷ πόλις, 257). The only useful intervention
Eteocles attributes to them is their support for the promise of sacrifice that will accompany victory by
launching the sacred cry (ὀλολυγμός, 268) in advance, accompanied by the Paean (the cry of victory), both of
which are destined to sustain the boldness of the combatants.18 This equality of the suffering for both men
and ­women as a result of war, established by the chorus leader, echoes again in the female chorus’s long
evocation of the capture of the city (321–68). The issue does not merely involve the distress of the w ­omen; it
addresses the defeat of an entire city and the destruction both of its population, from warriors to infants, and
its resources: πρὸς ἀνδρὸς δ’ ἀνὴρ / δόρει καίνεται· . . . ​/ βλαχαὶ δ’ αἱματόεσσαι / τῶν ἐπιμαστιδίων /
ἀρτιτρεφεῖς βρέμονται (“Man is slain by man with the spear . . . ​Loud, bloody screams rise from infants fresh
from the nourishing breast,” 346–50). Nevertheless, the role of the chorus in the central shields scene quickly
deflects the picture of the chorus’s ­women that Eteocles has sought to portray (375–651). The king’s
messenger describes, one by one, the images on the shields of the Argive assailants, each posted before one
of Thebes’s seven gates. The besiegers are named, one ­a fter the other, and Eteocles, facing each of them
individually, designates a Theban champion to confront him. Eteocles uses self-­control and the law in
opposition to the insolence and pride of the assailants—­rendered explicit by the patterns represented on their
shields—­and to their arrogance and scorn for the gods, which condemn them. The context is one of epic war,
where the champions confront each other individually, and the designated heroes have names that must have
been familiar to Aeschylus’s spectators. Thus Melanippus is matched against Tydeus, whom Aeschylus
designates as one of the “Spartan warriors spared by Ares.” This detail recalls the legend of Thebes’s
founding by Cadmus in a version of the Thebaid retold by Pherecydes (Pausanias 11.18.1). There,
Melanippus killed Tydeus before he himself is slain by Amphiaraus. The interventions by the chorus, which
give a rhythm to the seven parallel discourses of the messenger and Eteocles in this scene, illustrate the
place of the ­women in war that is equally foreign and fratricidal. ­A fter each of Eteocles’s seven speeches,
where he designates which Theban warrior will oppose which par­tic­u ­lar Argive leader (symbolized by his
shield), the chorus asks the gods to

90 Louise Bruit Zaidman

support that chosen champion. The ­women of the chorus, won over by the assurance of their leader, begin by
expressing unity with her through their bellicose tone, sanctioning each of the king’s decisions through their
approbation and the echo of their prayer. In the face of the e­nemy, now clearly identified by name and shield,
it is no longer fear that speaks, and the lengthy scene shows the city bound together for the defense of the
land ­under the expected protection of the gods. But when, at last, the messenger describes the seventh gate
and announces that it will be besieged by Polynices, ­everything changes. The messenger departs, leaving
Eteocles alone to make this final choice of a champion. When he announces that he will confront his brother,
the chorus’s leader, abandoning a lyrical style, tries to convince him to change his mind (Aesch. Septem 679–
82): ἀλλ ̍ ἄνδρας Α ̕ ργείοισι Καδμείους ἅλις 680 ἐς χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν· αἷμα γὰρ καθάρσιον. ἀνδροῖν δ ̕ ὁμαίμοιν
θάνατος ὧδ ̕ αὐτοκτόνος, οὐκ ἔστι γῆρας τοῦδε τοῦ μιάσματος. There are enough Cadmean men to go to ­-
battle with the Argives; such blood purifies itself. But the death of two men of the same blood killing each
other—­that pollution can never grow old.

These verses summarize the heart of the tragedy. The ­women, moving beyond their fear and apprehension,
have performed a sacred mobilization for the salvation of their city. They even used “righ­teous prayer”
(δικαίαις λιταῖς) to call for death for their enemies. Now, however, they try to stop Eteocles, who is about to
commit an irreparable pollution (miasma) by spilling the blood of a brother. Their prayers will be in vain.
Disregarding the chorus’s advice, Eteocles throws himself into fulfilling the curse Oedipus pronounced on his
sons. Although Thebes is saved, Eteocles—in confronting and killing his brother Polynices—­meets his own
preordained death. Henceforth, as Apollo had declared, the descendants of Laius will be wiped out. It is left to
the w ­omen to start singing the funeral lament that is owed to the mortal remains of Eteocles and Polynices.
The ­women, who successively are potential victims, then supplicants, and then reasonable interlocutors of
their Theban leader who will be destroyed by the paternal curse, represent a collective voice, taking part in
the defense of the city. Phoenissae: Euripides’s Gaze Euripides, although beginning from the same mythic
material, systematically seems to oppose Aeschylus in his method of treating not only the story of the

­Women and Wa 91

war but also the role of the w ­omen.19 While, in the Seven, the only member of the γένος of Laius to occupy
the stage was Eteocles, in the Phoenissae the entire incestuous f­amily is there: the two bro­t h­ers together,
then Eteocles and Creon, and, to close the tragedy, Oedipus, who survives ­after the deaths of his two sons.
As for the ­women, Jocasta opens the play, followed by Antigone, who assumes Jocasta’s role a­fter the
latter’s suicide following the death of her sons. The chorus, as in the Seven, is composed of ­women. But, far
from being Thebans, they are distant relatives and empathetic spectators from outside the city. They pre­sent
themselves as kindred to the Thebans, via their distant ancestors, and through that connection they
sympathize with the Thebans’ suffering. The chorus, coming from Phoenicia, represented as the native land of
Cadmus, is si­mul­ta­neously supportive and foreign. They are spoils of war and, as such, are on their way to
Delphi as offerings destined for Apollo. In the city where these w ­omen are trapped by the siege, they are the
living manifestations of the memory of a race, and, according to their contrapuntal song, witnesses to divine
will and power. Step by step and strophe a­fter strophe, they intermingle with the pre­sent threats, as well as
with the elements of the mythic story of the city and of the race of Cadmus, descendant of Io, “the horned
ancestor.” The chorus twice describes Io by this epithet, which recalls her tribulations as the lover of Zeus.
The entire significance of the play’s pre­sent action comes from this perspective, offering both a temporal and
mythic depth that informs the chorus’s point of view and abundantly evokes the Theban epic tradition.20 In a
manner altogether ­different from that of the Seven, Euripides’s Phoenissae gives voice to the two ­women who
play a decisive role in the structure of the tragedy—­Jocasta and Antigone—as well as to the female chorus.
These two characters, the mo­t her and the dau­gh­ter, are both narrowly and differently implicated in the
ongoing conflict, and they are pre­sent in nearly all of the scenes. The role that Euripides assigns to them
constitutes an innovation to the traditional story and heavily underscores the significance of their
intervention.21 It is they who open the tragedy: Jocasta, in the prologue, by recalling the story of Cadmus’s
lineage and the curse that weighs on the life of Oedipus and his descendants; and Antigone, in her dialogue
with the paedagogus, by describing, from the height of the palace’s terrace, the appearance of the army that
besieges the city. Both of these ­women, in their own way, play an active role in the events that accompany a
war matching Thebans defenders against their Argive attackers. Jocasta, who knows the destiny of her sons,
will do e­verything she can to try to interrupt the conflict in progress. Acting as a queen, and assuming the
authority of a commander-­in-­chief, she imposes a truce to force her two sons to hold a final meeting that she
hopes will lead to a negotiation. From

92 Louise Bruit Zaidman

the very first moment, Eteocles refuses the wish of Polynices—­presented h ­ere as the victim of an unjust
exile, quite ­different from his portrayal by Aeschylus— to assume the kingship ­after a year and instead wants
to maintain his power at all costs; indeed, Eteocles is ready to risk it all. Opposing him is Jocasta, who speaks
in the voice of wisdom and defends the reign of Equality, though in vain.22 t h e f e m a l e c h a r ac t e r s: jo
c a sta The appearance of Jocasta in the prologue, relating the story about Cadmus’s lineage, distinguishes
her from the character in the Odyssey. There Odysseus sees her in the nekuia episode, u ­ nder the name of
Epicaste, who “made fast a noose on high from a lofty beam, overpowered by her sorrow” (ἁψαμένη βρόχον
αἰπὺν ἀφ' ὑφηλοῖο μελάθρου, / ᾧ ἄχει σχομένη, Od. 11.278–9). This is the same image found in Sophocles’s
Oedipus: “And there, we had before us the spectacle of a w ­oman hung, tied to the knots of a bed floating in
air” (οὗ δὴ κρεμαστὴν τὴν γυναῖκ᾽ εἰσείδομεν, / πλεκταῖσιν αἰώραισιν ἐμπεπλεγμένην, 1263–4). Euripides
wanted Jocasta to survive the misfortune connected with the degradation of Oedipus, who is shut up in the
palace and will only appear in the final scene, where he discovers the culmination of the curse and the deaths
of both Jocasta and her sons. Jocasta finds herself at the intersection of the two royal Theban lineages: the
dau­gh­ter of Meneceus, a descendant of the Spartoi, and the wife of Laius, son of Labdacus, a descendant of
Cadmus. At the opening of the tragedy, she alone bears the weight imposed by the destiny of the two races
merged in her, whose history she recalls at length. Oedipus seems nothing more to her than a distant ghost,
locked away in the palace. By using the third person, she speaks of his u ­ nion with her as an impersonal
event, as if incest pertained to a character other than herself: γαμεῖ δὲ τὴν τεκοῦσαν οὐκ εἰδὼς τάλας / οὐδ’ ἡ
τεκοῦσα παιδὶ συγκοιμωμένη (“The wretch, unknowing, wedded with his mo­ther; nor did she know she
bedded with her son,” 53–4). The Jocasta of the Phoenissae focuses on the part of herself that gave birth to
the children of Oedipus. The threat that weighs on Eteocles and Polynices seems to suppress all other
preoccupations. A long scene brings the mo­t her and her sons together. At first, Jocasta embraces Polynices
for a long time, to tell him of her maternal love; she wears mourning garments for him, because of his exile.23
Next comes the brutal encounter of the two bro­th­ers, who tear each other apart verbally, in the presence of
their mo­ther, before separating on a promise of death: ἐλπίδες δ’ οὔπω καθεύδουσ’, αἷς πέποιθα σὺν θεοῖς /
τόνδ’ ἀποκτείνας κρατήσειν τῆσδε Θηβαίας χθονός (“But I

­Women and Wa 93

still have hope that somehow if the gods are on my side I shall kill him and be master of this our Theban land,”
634–5). This is an impious and sacrilegious prayer that links the two themes of war against the city and
internecine war. For Jocasta, the war that threatens Thebes si­mul­ta­neously menaces all that remains for her:
her two sons and her daughters, including Antigone, whom she named. Jocasta is a w ­ oman ready to fight to
the finish against the war, to fight the death threat not only against her sons but also against her city. When
she learns from the messenger about the duel that is being or­ga­nized, she prepares herself for this new b ­-
attle and asks Antigone’s help in leading her to the m ­iddle of the e­nemy lines. They arrive too late, however.
Jocasta stabs herself with a sword seized from between her two dead sons and lies down on their bodies.
Unlike the Jocasta of Sophocles, who chose a wife’s death and hung herself in “her nuptial chamber” (τὰ
νυμφικὰ / λέχη, 1242–3), Euripides’s Jocasta puts an end to her life on the battlefield, between the two
armies, by means of a virile weapon,24 an action that she had announced when leaving the stage to rejoin
her sons on the battlefield in a final attempt to prevent their deaths: θανοῦσι δ’ αὐτοῖς συνθανοῦσα κείσομαι (
(“But if they die, I’ll lie with them in death,” 1283). Her words are echoed by the two verses that conclude the
death scene of the sons and their mo­ther, which offers a b ­itter reunion of the two e­nemy bro­th­ers: ἐν δὲ
τοῖσι φιλτάτοις / θανοῦσα κεῖται περιβαλοῦσ’ ἀμφοῖν χέρας (“So now she lies among her own. In death her
arms are cast about them both,” 1458–9). t h e f e m a l e c h a r ac t e r s: a n t ig on e As opposed to
Jocasta, the two appearances of Antigone embody two ­different relationships with war. Antigone, in the first
scene of the Phoenissae (­a fter the prologue), contrasts with the character of Jocasta. Her second
appearance comes at the end of the tragedy, ­after Jocasta’s death, which Antigone describes to Oedipus.
Antigone’s character initially blends the timidity of a well-­reared young girl with curiosity about and fascination
with the military leaders and troops she views from a distance, standing on the lofty terrace of the palace. The
exodus of the tragedy, on the field of b ­attle, confronts her with blood and death. The battlefield, which was a
spectacle for her at first, becomes a direct confrontation with death and the fate reserved for her f­amily by the
gods. In the end it is Antigone who, claiming “I come as a bacchant, celebrating death” (αἰδομένα φέρομαι
βάκχα νεκύων, 1490), will lead the mourning for her bro­t h­ers and her mo­t her, before calling for Oedipus to
come outside the palace. The scene of Antigone observing the Argive army, which had been deployed in front
of the gates in the high Theban wall, has been rightly compared in detail

94 Louise Bruit Zaidman

with the famous scene of Helen on the walls of Troy, contemplating the Achaean army and responding to
questions about the Greek warriors from the older Trojan men standing next to her. Here again, however,
Euripides chooses a strategy of literary inversion.25 In the Iliad it is Helen who responds to Priam’s questions;
it is she who knows, and who names for Priam and the other elders, the warriors whom they designate. Thus
Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Ajax parade before their Trojan spectators in the Iliad (3.121–240). In the
Phoenissae, Antigone describes the warriors that she sees and asks the paedagogus their names,
accompanying his statements with her own judgments or appreciations. A feeling of fear follows her initial
impressions, which emphasized the splendor of the weapons. She identifies each of the leaders by means of
a brief description that underscores their threatening aspect and the monstrosity of their armaments, likened
to those of a g­iant (Hippomedon) or a semibarbarian (Tydeus). She calls down a curse of the gods upon
them, and then asks these deities for their protection in the name of all the Theban w ­omen threatened by
slavery. Nevertheless, she is also aware of the splendor and exoticism of their equipment, especially (from
lines 160 onward) those of her beloved brother in his golden armor: “how he shines in his golden arms ablaze
with the light of dawn!” (ὡς / ὅπλοισι χρυσέοισιν ἐκπρεπής . . . ​/ ἑώιοις ὅμοια φλεγέθων βολαῖς, 167–9). The
play’s second and most telling difference from the Homeric scene is by the former creating the largest possi­-
ble distance between the two female characters on stage. Euripides chooses as his interlocutor a young girl
who is curious but inexperienced, entrusted to the paedagogus by her mo­t her. Helen, on the other hand,
called by Iris to witness the impending combat between Paris and Menelaus from the top of the rampart,
knows all the actors who are waiting for the fight to begin, and it is in this capacity that she is questioned.
Instead of a shy, young girl whom the paedagogus hastens to shelter from prying glances, the wife of Paris
has access to a public voice, appearing before the council of the elders, who seek her advice as an
“expert.”26 Moreover, Euripides’s scene is a rewriting of Aeschylus’s great shield scene, from the intertextual
perspective of the tragic genre.27 Here Antigone, in effect, is made to play the role of Eteocles in Aeschylus’s
drama, where he is represented by the messenger, describing the ranks and features of the e­nemy army. In a
single stroke, Euripides thereby completely transforms the import of the scene. In the same way as her mo­-
ther opens the tragedy, Antigone closes it. Brought, against her wishes, onto the battlefield by her mo­ther, ­a
fter the death of her bro­th­ers and Jocasta, Antigone inherits her f­amily’s bloody fate. It is she who leads the
funeral pro­cession that carries the three cadavers beyond the eyes of the

­Women and Wa 95

spectators. It is she who summons Oedipus for a last appearance, and it is she who once more reports the
death of Jocasta, this time for him: χαλκόκροτον δὲ λαβοῦσα νεκρῶν πάρα φάσγανον εἴσω / σαρκὸς ἔβαψεν,
ἄχει δὲ τέκνων ἔπεσ’ ἀμφὶ νεκροῖσιν (“So taking the bronze-­hammered sword from the dead, she plunged it in
flesh, and in grief for her sons, she fell on her sons,” 1577–9). It is also Antigone who stands up to Creon and
the city’s prohibition against burying Polynices (1652). Euripides, reviving the inflexibly willed young girl
painted by Sophocles, chooses to let her live, so she can accompany her f­ather into the exile imposed by
Creon. The end of the tragedy is a long plaint, uttered by Antigone, on the death of Oedipus’s f­amily,
henceforth condemned to eternal solitude (1530). Thus it is she who will perform the duties of lamenting the
dead, an office that Creon wanted to entrust to his sister Jocasta over the death of his son Menoeceus. To
Antigone’s outcries will be added those of Oedipus, having come out of the palace to confirm the fulfillment of
the curses. ­Everything happens as if Antigone has burdened herself with the destiny of the two races, initially
borne by Jocasta in the prologue—­a heavy heritage passed down from mo­t her to dau­gh­ter. In the Seven, the
messenger’s last words are τοιαῦτα χαίρειν καὶ δακρύεσθαι πάρα (“We have to rejoice and to weep over,”
815), referring to both the victory of Thebes and the death of the two bro­t h­ers. Through the mediation of the
female chorus members leading the mourning, it is the city in its entirety that mourns the two kings, deploring
the quarrel that pushed them to destroy each other and leaving the responsibility for it to paternal ἀραί (894).
The terms used to refer to the city (πόλις, 900) alternate with those that mean the home (δόμοισι, 895) and
the race (γένος) of Oedipus. In the Phoenissae, only Antigone leads the mourning and escorts the bodies of
her bro­t h­ers and her mo­t her, thus strongly accentuating the mourning of Oedipus’s οἶκος and the vengeance
of the Erinyes. Antigone cries over her plight and the life awaiting her before calling on her ­father to participate
in the lamentations and to remind him that he himself awakened “the ferocious demon” (ἀλάστωρ, 1556)
against him. Oedipus appears on stage, a weakened and pitiful old man, who regrets his curses against his
sons and mourns his children and his wife. Men’s War and W ­omen’s War The Theban war is truly the work
of men, those brilliant warriors about to lose their lives before the gates of the city. As such, war has the right
to a noble story, which describes the splendid deeds and heroic deaths of those on all sides (1089– 198). Its
second story, in opposition to the first, tells of the impious duel between

96 Louise Bruit Zaidman

and lamentable deaths of Eteocles and Polynices, followed by Jocasta’s suicide (1356–460). Then, before the
ultimate victory by the Thebans, there is an anonymous b ­ attle, leading to a bloody defeat for the Argives,
whose dead fall by the thousands (1465–85). The duel of the two bro­t h­ers will not have sufficed for victory,
which is primarily due to the discreet, sacrificial suicide of Menoeceus: another inversion, since, for once, it is
not a young girl who gives her life for her country.28 The female characters introduced in the Phoenissae bear
witness to the tragic story of Oedipus and his sons. Against their own will, as the mo­t her, sister, and dau­gh­ter
of the condemned heroes, they are led into destruction or misfortune. Many situations seem to send them to
their destiny: a city poised to be captured, dead heroes in front of the city, a fratricidal duel. These ­women do
not yield without a fight, however, even when it seems in vain. By words and deeds, they fight to the end, ­until
the will of the gods imposes silence upon them, as Antigone’s last words in the Phoenissae attest: χάριν
ἀχάριτον ἐς θεοὺς διδοῦσα (“It would be no grace I should do the gods,” 1757), and to which Oedipus
answers: τὰς γὰρ ἐκ θεῶν ἀνάγκας θνητὸν ὄντα δεῖ φέρειν (“The constraint the gods lay on us we mortals
must all bear,” 1763). The w ­omen are witnesses to the mistakes and errors made by their sons, their ­father,
or their husband and try in vain to persuade them other­w ise. If the w ­omen are not victims following the
deaths of these men, they will instead lead the mourning and stay to witness the tragedy. The end of the οἶκος
of Oedipus and of his γένος in the Theban war shows what sort of disaster the conflict between the two bro­t h­-
ers nearly dragged the city into, and the heavy price paid for the victory that brought peace. Thebes is only
saved at the cost of the voluntary sacrifice of Menoeceus, however, so the h ­ouse of Creon also pays a hefty
toll. In this play, contrary to what happens in the tragedies of the Trojan cycle, war does not destroy the cities.
But destruction, both of the cities themselves and the lives that they contain, is always on war’s horizon. This
is what the chorus sings about in the Seven ­after Eteocles’s exit to post the warriors—of whom he will be the
seventh—at the gates of Thebes. Their prayer to the gods defending Thebes is followed by a precise and
concrete evocation of the pillage and annihilation that threaten the city and its inhabitants, from virgins to
infants, which not only concerns the female population, but the entire city. Both tragedies end with the impious
dual murder committed by the ­enemy bro­t h­ers and the destruction of the h ­ouse of Oedipus. War, from the
beginning, is at the heart of Thebes. The ground on which the city was built gave birth to the formidable
Spartan warriors; Cadmus, by killing the dragon and then

­Women and Wa 97

throwing a stone among the warriors, twice shed blood on Theban soil before establishing his city. If the gods
favored its birth and attended the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia, the dau­gh­ter of Ares and Aphrodite, at
the moment when the tragedy starts, they seem to abandon the city to the curses brought upon Oedipus and
his sons. The only outcome is the bloody solution suggested by Tiresias: the death of the last descendants of
the Spartoi will assure the victory of Thebes. As for Oedipus’s descendants, the old soothsayer abandons
them to their destiny, which was sealed ever since Laius defied Apollo’s order (Phoen. 867–8). The
Phoenissae was performed between 410 and 408 BCE, a­fter the oligarchic revolution and in the ­middle of
the Peloponnesian War, at a moment when the city of Athens was deeply affected by the threats posed by
foreign war and internal conflicts. In this context, Jocasta’s calls to her sons, inviting them to a dialogue and
reconciliation in the long scene that brings them together before the ­battle, could become especially
significant to the spectators. What follows is a lengthy praise of Equality, rather than Ambition (Eur. Phoen.
531–7): τί τῆς κακίστης δαιμόνων ἐφίεσαι Φιλοτιμίας, παῖ; μὴ σύ γ’· ἄδικος ἡ θεός·
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . κεῖνο κάλλιον, τέκνον, 535 Ἰσότητα τιμᾶν, ἣ φίλους ἀεὶ φίλοις πόλεις τε
πόλεσι συμμάχους τε συμμάχοις συνδεῖ· Why do you seek a­fter the goddess Ambition? The worst of all: this
goddess is Injustice . . . ​It’s better, child, to honor Equality who ties friends to friends, cities to cities, allies to
allies.

Jocasta will not save her sons, but, in this tragedy where the best of the Theban and Argive heroes—­a nd the
two armies that accompany them—­confront each other, and which ends with a double fratricide, it is
remarkable that Euripides makes Jocasta, a heroine crushed by the curse that follows her husband and her
sons, the sole carrier of a po­liti­cal message worthy of the demo­cratic city.29

Conclusion Both tragedies invite their audiences not to rely on too ­simple a division between feminine and
masculine in the context of the wars they introduce. If battles are indeed the prerogatives of the warriors, and
if Eteocles in the Seven proclaims

98 Louise Bruit Zaidman

loudly and strongly that ­women’s place is in the home, the relationship between the king and the chorus
change at the moment when Eteocles yields to the temptation of fraternal combat. Likewise, in the
Phoenissae, the w ­omen’s fighting stance, to which the playwright grants a decisive place in the structure of
his tragedy, responds to the warriors’ discourse and to the clash of arms. Jocasta first confronts the threat of
war by acting as a negotiator helping the city, and then does so again on the frontlines of the b ­attle, u ­ntil
her virile end with sword in hand. As for Antigone, in the space of a few hours she covers the daunting road of
life, beginning with her perch on the terrace, a lofty observation post where, as a curious and innocent young
girl, she viewed from afar the Argive champions. She was then led among the ranks of the combatants by
Jocasta and witnessed the bloody deaths of her bro­t h­ers and her mo­t her. A ­fter this horrifying experience,
she chooses to accompany Oedipus into exile, voluntarily turning her back on a the life in the heart of the city,
with a spouse whom Eteocles had chosen for her and is offered to her once again by Creon. Inexorably
caught up in the ruin of their ­family, these w ­omen are nonetheless presented by Euripides as playing an
active part in the game of destiny, even if they can in no way change the fate that overwhelms them and their
parents.30

notes 1. ​Loraux 1985a, 1985b, 1989, 1990; Zeitlin 1990. 2. ​Foley 1985, 2001. 3. ​McClure 1999. 4. ​Lardinois
and McClure 2001. 5. ​See, for example, Conacher 1967; Jouanna 1967; Rawson 1970; Vidal Naquet 1986.
Saïd 1985 also studies the structure of Euripides’s Phoenissae in contrast with that of Aeschylus’s Seven
against Thebes. 6. ​See, for example, several chapters in this volume, among them those by Georgoudi
(chapter 11); Hallett (chapter 14); Payen (chapter 12); Sebillotte-­Cuchet (chapter 13); and Sharrock
(chapter 9). See also Payen 2004. 7. ​See Nappi (chapter 2). 8. ​See Severyns 1928. 9. E ​ uripides’s
fragments have been edited and translated into French by Jouan and Van Looy (1998–2003), and into En­-
glish by Collard and Cropp (2008); see esp. Collard and Cropp 2008, vol. 1, with Alcmeon in Psophis and
Alcmeon in Corinth. 10. ​See Vian 1963. 11. ​For the epic deeds of the Thebans, see the editions of the
fragments by T. Allen 1912; Davies 1989; Severyns 1928: 211–44.

­Women and Wa 99

12. ​See Apollodorus 3.7.7 regarding Euripides’s lost play, Alcmaeon in Corinth. 13. ​See the Iliad, Books 5, 6,
9, 10, 11, and 14, where Diomedes declares to Odysseus that he is the son of “Tydeus, whom an enormous
tomb in Thebes holds” (Τυδέος, ὃν Θήβῃσι χυτὴ κατὰ γαῖα καλύπτει, Il. 14.114). 14. ​See Lobo 2008: 165–6;
Mastronarde 1994: 20–6. 15. S ​ ee Zeitlin 1986: 131: “Thebes, I will argue, provides the negative model of
Athens’ manifest image of itself with regard to its notions of the proper management of city, society, and self.”
16. ​Here I seek to complete and develop certain arguments in Bruit 1991. The abundant scholarly lit­erature
on this play includes Delcourt 1932; Foley 1993; Graf 1984; Lupas and Petre 1981; Schmitt-­Pantel 2009a.
See Vidal-­Naquet 1986: 121–8 on the confrontation between the chorus and Eteocles. 17. ​On the procedures
for supplication in ancient Greece, see Gould 1973. The translation of Seven against Thebes is by
Sommerstein 2008. 18. ​In Sophocles’s Trachiniae, the words ὀλολυγή and παιάν are both associated with
celebrating the victorious return by Heracles in the joyful and triumphant song (205–24) shouted by the young
­women who constitute the chorus. 19. ​This observation is already a point of departure in Saïd 1985. On the
heroic figures in the Phoenissae, see Aelion 1986 and a large number of other studies, including Alaux et al.
2007 (with bibliography); Foley 1985, 2001: 272–300 (on the mothers in Euripidean tragedy). 20. ​See
Calame 1997 for a comparison of one of Pindar’s Parthenaea with the choruses of Seven against Thebes and
Phoenissae. 21. ​See Mastronarde 1994; Nancy 2007. 22. ​On Jocasta’s failure, see Alaux 2007: esp. 106–9.
The translation of the Phoenissae is by Wyckoff 1959. 23. ​See Loraux 1990: 57–65, on “le pathos d’une
mère.” 24. ​On the “virile” death of Jocasta and the rupture with the tradition that it represents, see Loraux
1985a: 40–1. 25. ​See Fuhrer (chapter 3); Létoublon 2007: 28–9. 26. ​See Frontisi-­Ducroux 2009: 60–7;
Soares 1999: 30–4 (“aproveitamento tragico da teichoskopia homerica”). 27. ​Nancy 2007: 47. 28. ​On the
death of Menoeceus, see Loraux 1975: 65–8, 74; Sebillotte Cuchet 2004: 150–1. 29. ​See Nancy 2007: 48.
Mastronarde 2010: 210–11 chooses to place Euripides’s Jocasta between the Theseus of The Suppliants and
the Tiresias of The Bacchae, to illustrate the figure of the “optimistic rationalist,” as the dramatist sketches it.
30. ​The author and editors are grateful to Mary Cobb Wittroch and Judith P. Hallett for translating this chapter
from the original French into En­glish.