Seven Against Thebes
Prior to the fifth century BC, the number and names of the "seven" champions is uncertain. The first certain reference to the number of champions being seven, along with a list of their names, occurs in Aeschylus' "Seven Against Thebes". Adrastus—although present at the battle—is not considered by Aeschylus to be one of the "Seven". The same list of names is given in Euripides' "The Suppliants", and Sophocles' "Oedipus at Colonus". However, Euripides gives a slightly different list in "The Phoenician Women", with Adrastus (instead of Eteoclus) as one of the Seven, and this list will be followed by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, the mythographers Apollodorus and Hyginus, and the Latin poet Statius. In "The Phoenician Women" and Apollodorus (as in the "Seven Against Thebes") each of the Seven is assigned to one of the seven gates of Thebes, with Adrastus being assigned the "Seventh" gate, in "The Phoenician Women", and the "Homoloidian" gate in Apollodorus.