Failed Paean and Interrupted Ritual: Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes

Expectations about the genres of choral poetry are crucial in Seven against Thebes. This play stages a struggle between the desire of the chorus to sing and the attempts of Eteocles to silence or control them. The choral songs take two forms: fear and lament. The chorus members present fear and lament as spontaneous reactions, and oppose the order of Eteocles to channel their song into a different ritual, the paean, defined as ‘‘a beneficial sacred cry [ololugmon]' {268). The paean is ‘‘the male equivalent of ololugc'' the female ritual cry in sacrifices and celebrations and in requests for help {Hutchinson 1985, 87; cf. Kappel 1992, 81).

The chorus is composed not of male citizens but of Theban women, and their behavior is the opposite of the way male citizens should act, as Eteocles emphasizes. Whenever Eteocles is not on stage, the women of the chorus cannot control their fear {see 287 and 720). When news arrives that the battle is won, the chorus is faced with a dilemma: should they ‘‘rejoice and cry out” [apololuxo]' for the victory {825) or ‘‘weep [klauso] for the wretched and ill-fated army leaders” {828)? Crying aloud for victory would mean obeying the order of Eteocles at long last, after his death in the battle. Ultimately, however, the delayed paean is abandoned in favor of lament. The chorus is under the influence of a Dionysiac urge to mourn: ‘‘I prepared a song for the tomb, manic as a bacchant [thuias]' {835-36). They evoke the image of Charon’s boat, ‘‘on which Paean [or Apollo, according to different editors] does not set foot’’ {858). The play ends with one of the longest examples of antiphonal lament in tragedy. The chorus splits into two half-choruses; one leads the lament and the other responds, taking up the same words {‘‘unhappy,’’ 877; ‘‘unhappy indeed,’’ 879; see 931-32). In the final section {961-1004) the antiphonal sections become shorter and shorter; they diminish to a single line, or even single words, giving the sense of a final acceleration before the ending. Lament {goos) is presented by the women of the chorus as a self-referential speech act {autostonos, ‘‘lamenting for one self/coinciding with wailing’’), and as a spontaneous, uncontrollable reaction to their sorrows {autopemon, ‘‘for one’s own woes’’: 915-16).

The relationship between community and chorus becomes clear only in the end. In spite of the initial disapproval of Eteocles, the chorus members do not represent a negative female model. In the course of the play their insight into the future and their ability to understand the predicament of Eteocles proves in some ways superior to that of Eteocles himself (see esp. 686-708). Women were possibly present in the audience, and they could have legitimately identified with the chorus. The chorus is not the citizen body, but the chorus members do speak up for the city, and they guide the spectators in their perception of the play. The lyric forms chosen by the chorus legitimize their position within the drama and the city. The initial epirrhema presents them as subject to the leadership of the actor, and they accept their subordinate role; they remain silent during most of the drama. The chorus takes up the important role of concluding the play precisely because they fall into a speech genre, the lament for the dead, that is normally reserved to the female sex. The fight between paean and lament is decided by sexual appropriateness: gender determines genre. The female chorus members cannot force themselves to sing the male paean, and prefer the ‘‘spontaneous’’ lament.