He was further handicapped by his choice of a subject.[547] The Theban legend is unsuitable for epic treatment for more reasons than one. In the first place the story is unpleasant from beginning to end. Horror accumulates on horror, crime on crime, and there are but three characters which evoke our sympathy, Oedipus, Jocasta, and Antigone. These characters play only subsidiary parts in the story of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, round which the Theban epic turns. The central characters are almost of necessity the odious brothers Eteocles and Polynices: Oedipus appears only to curse his sons. Antigone and Jocasta come upon the scene only towards the close in a brief and futile attempt to reconcile the brothers. The deeds and deaths of the Argive chiefs may relieve the horror and at times excite our sympathy, but we cannot get away from the fact that the story is ultimately one of almost bestial fratricidal strife, darkened by the awful shadow of the woes of the house of Labdacus. The old Greek epic assigned great importance to the character of Amphiaraus[548] persuaded by his false wife, Eriphyla, to go forth on the enterprise that should be his doom; it has even been suggested that he formed the central character of the poem. If this suggestion be true--and its truth is exceedingly doubtful--we are confronted with what was in reality only a false shift, the diversion of the interest from the main issues of the story to a side issue. The _Iliad_ cannot be quoted in his defence; there we have an episode of a ten years' siege, which in itself possesses genuine unity and interest. But the Theban epic comprises the whole story of the expedition of the seven chieftains, and it is idle to make Amphiaraus the central figure. In any case the prominence given to the fortunes of the house of Labdacus by the great Greek dramatists, and the genius with which they brought out the genuinely dramatic issues of the legend, had made it impossible for after-comers to take any save the Labdacidae for the chief actors in their story. And so from Antimachus onward Polynices and Eteocles are the tragic figures of the epic.
To give unity to this story all our attention must be concentrated on Thebes. The enlistment of Adrastus in the cause of Polynices must be described, and following this the gathering of the hosts of Argos. But when once the Argive demands are rejected by Thebes, the poet's chief aim must be to get his army to Thebes with all speed, and set it in battle array against the enemy. Once at Thebes, there is plenty of room for tragic power and stirring narrative. First comes the ineffectual attempt of Jocasta to reconcile her scarce human sons; then comes the battle, with the gradual overthrow of the chieftains of Argos, the turning of the scale of battle in favour of Thebes by the sacrifice of Menoeceus, and last the crowning combat between the brothers. There, from the artistic standpoint, the story finds its ending. It could never have been other than forbidding, but it need not have lacked power. Unfortunately, precedent did not allow the story to end there. The Thebans forbid burial to the Argive dead; Antigone transgresses the edict by burying her brother Polynices, and finds death the reward of her piety; Theseus and the Athenians come to Adrastus' aid, defeat the Thebans, and bury the Argive dead, while as a sop to Argive feeling they are promised their revenge in after years, when the children of the dead have grown to man's estate. If it were felt that the deadly struggle between the two brothers closed the epic on a note of unrelieved gloom and horror, there was perhaps something to be said for introducing the story of Antigone's self-sacrifice, and closing on a note of tragic beauty. Unhappily, the story of Antigone involved the introduction of material sufficient for one, if not two fresh epics in the legend of the Athenian War and the triumphant return of Argos to the conflict. Antimachus[549] fell into the snare. His vast _Thebais_ told the whole story from the arrival of Polynices at Argos to the victory of the Epigoni. Nor was he content with this alone, but must needs clog the action of his poem with long descriptions of the gathering of the host at Argos, and of their adventures on the march to Thebes. And so it came about that he consumed twenty-four books in getting his heroes to Thebes!