His Theban trilogy consisted of the Laïus, the Oedipus, and the Seven against Thebes 4. Aeschylus is the carliest author who refers to the edict against burial, and he is also the first who tells of Antigone's resolve. If Creon's edict, then, was an Attic invention, it may be conjectured that Antigone's resolve to defy the edict was also the conception of an Attic poet. It served to contrast Theban vindictiveness with Athenian humanity for it was Theseus who ultimately buried the Argives at Eleusis. The refusal of burial was evidently an Attic addition to the story. Similarly Pausanias records a Theban legend that the corpse of Polyneices was burned on the same pyre with that of Eteocles, and that the very flames refused to mingle 3. He speaks of the seven funeral pyres provided at Thebes for the seven divisions of the Argive army 2. Antigone's heroism presupposes a legend that burial had been refused to Polyneices. The sisters Antigone and Ismene are not mentioned by Earliest trace of the story. There is some ground for thinking that the subject-though not the treatment-was suggested by Aeschylus. The priority of the Antigone admits of a probable explanation, which is not without interest. But the order of composition was, Antigone, Tyrannus, Coloneus and the first was separated from the last by perhaps more than thirty years of the poet's life. The Oedipus Tyrannus is concerned with the fall of the Theban king the Coloneus, with the close of his life and the Antigone, with a later episode in the fortunes of his children.
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