Under the Sign of the Shield

A study of the last drama of Aeschylus' trilogy concerned with the fortunes of the house of Laius that ends with the story of Oedipus' sons the enemy brothers who self-destruct in mutual fratricide but thereby save the besieged city of Thebes. The book's findings however far exceed these limits to explore the relationships between language and kinship as between family and city self and society and Greek ideas about the nature of human development and identity.