The Suppliants first performed in 423 BC

423 BC

Year 423 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Atratinus and Ambustus...

, is an ancient Greek play by Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

.

Background

After Oedipus

Oedipus

Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...

 leaves Thebes, his sons fight for control of it. Polyneices lays siege to Thebes against his brother Eteocles

Eteocles

In Greek mythology, Eteocles was a king of Thebes, the son of Oedipus and either Jocasta or Euryganeia. The name is from earlier *Etewoklewes , meaning "truly glorious". Tawaglawas is thought to be the Hittite rendition of the name. Oedipus killed his father Laius and married his mother without...

. Polyneices has married the daughter of Adrastus, King of Argos. And so Polyneices has on his side the Argive army, leaders of which help form the Seven Against Thebes

Seven Against Thebes

The Seven against Thebes is the third play in an Oedipus-themed trilogy produced by Aeschylus in 467 BC. The trilogy is sometimes referred to as the Oedipodea. It concerns the battle between an Argive army led by Polynices and the army of Thebes led by Eteocles and his supporters. The trilogy won...

. The invaders lose the battle, and Polyneices and Eteocles both die. Creon takes power in Thebes and decrees the invaders are not to be buried. The mothers of the dead seek someone to help reverse this, so their sons can be buried.

Story

The play begins with Adrastus and the Argive mothers seeking help from Aethra and her son Theseus

Theseus

For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...

 within the Temple of Demeter

Demeter

In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons . Her common surnames are Sito as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society...

. Theseus feels pity for them, and with the consent of the Athenian people decides to help. After it has become clear that Creon will not give up the bodies, the Athenian army must take them by force. In the end, the dead are finally laid to rest.

The same story had been mentioned years earlier in book 9 of The History

Histories (Herodotus)

The Histories of Herodotus is considered one of the seminal works of history in Western literature. Written from the 450s to the 420s BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that...

by Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

, in which the Athenians claimed the event as an example of their history of bravery.

Unburied Dead

Funeral rites are very important to people in ancient Greek literature. The Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

 contains scenes of people fighting over corpses, such as that of Patroclus

Patroclus

In Greek mythology, as recorded in the Iliad by Homer, Patroclus, or Patroklos , was the son of Menoetius, grandson of Actor, King of Opus, and was Achilles' beloved comrade and brother-in-arms....

. People are willing to fight and risk dying to obtain the bodies of the dead. The Suppliants takes this concept even farther, showing a whole city willing to wage war to retrieve the bodies of these strangers. The theme of not allowing the bodies of the dead to be buried occurs many times throughout ancient Greek literature. Examples include the body of Hector

Hector

In Greek mythology, Hectōr , or Hektōr, is a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War. As the first-born son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, a descendant of Dardanus, who lived under Mount Ida, and of Tros, the founder of Troy, he was a prince of the royal house and the...

 as portrayed in the Iliad, the body of Ajax as portrayed in the play Ajax

Ajax (Sophocles)

Sophocles's Ajax is a Greek tragedy written in the 5th century BC. The date of Ajax's first performance is unknown, but most scholars regard it as an early work, circa 450 - 430 B.C....

 by Sophocles

Sophocles

Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...

, and the children of Niobe

Niobe

Niobe was a daughter of Tantalus and of either Dione, the most frequently cited, or of Eurythemista or Euryanassa, and she was the sister of Pelops and Broteas, all of whom figure in Greek mythology....

. For what happens to the body of Polyneices, see the play Antigone

Antigone (Sophocles)

Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first...

 by Sophocles.

Translations

• Edward P. Coleridge, 1891 - prose: full text
• Arthur S. Way, 1912 - verse
• Frank Jones, 1958 - verse
• Rosanna Warren
  Rosanna Warren
  Rosanna Phelps Warren is an American poet and scholar.-Biography:Warren is the daughter of novelist, literary critic and Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren and writer Eleanor Clark. She graduated from Yale University in 1976, with a degree in painting, and then in 1980 received an MA from The...
  
  and Stephen Scully, 1995 - verse
• George Theodoridis, 2010 - prose, full text: http://bacchicstage.wordpress.com/