Hecht and Bacon provide a brief history and summary of the play and the characters in this essay.

I

With some important exceptions, scholars and translators, from the nineteenth century onwards, have been virtually at one in their indifference to Seven Against Thebes; an indifference which has been deflected from time to time only into overt hostility and contempt. The play has been accused of being static, undramatic, ritualistic, guilty of an interpolated and debased text, archaic, and, in a word, boring. The present translators find themselves in profound disagreement with such assessments, and cherish a slight hope that the translation offered here which is also an interpretation, as any translation must be will help restore to the play some of the dramatic and literary interest it deserves to have even for those with no knowledge of Greek.

This translation has aimed at literal accuracy insofar as...