278
The Seven against Thebes.
Apollo, our dear Lord!
With clang of brass-bound shields our gates resound.
†Zeus only can accord 150
With righteous issue that the strife be crowned.
O Onca,[1] here enthroned, blest Deity,
Do thou protect our seven-gated town.
Strophe III.
O ye all-puissant powers,
Dread guardians of our towers,
Of either sex, oh hear us, nor betray
A city toiling 'neath the spear,
- ↑ Our poet cannot have mistaken the names borne by the gates of Thebes in his own day; but two of them, Oncan and Borrhæan, differ from the names as given by Pausanias some four centuries later. Pausanias has the four names, Proitid, Electran, Neïtan and Homoloid, in common with Æschylus; but besides, he has the Ogygian, the Crenæan, and the Hypistai (supreme), or gates of Supreme Jupiter, who had a temple near them. Æschylus informs us that Athena had a temple near the Oncan gates; probably she was hence locally entitled Oncan Athena. Oncan was thought to be a Phœnician epithet introduced into Thebes by Cadmos. We can only guess that they were the gates called Ogygian (ancient) in the time of Pausanias. Onca, as a Hebrew word, cannot be confidently interpreted; but it may belong to the same root as Anak, a celebrated family of giants. Æschylus does not name the seventh gate, which may have been the Hypistan. It is quite possible that Borrhæan (or Borrheian, in some editions) meant simply the north gate, and was a secondary appellation. We have Βοῤῥας (ἄνεμος), with double ρ, in Thucydides.
I am indebted for the above note to my friend Professor Newman.
