The Chorus has shifted its address from Ares to Zeus, whom it now invokes to rid Thebes of Ares. The prayer is perplexing; in addition to the fact that war does not confront the Thebans, making Ares a strange choice on which to focus blame, the Thebans invoke Zeus to wield his thunderbolt against another god, to unleash a war among gods, fighting fire with fire in what can only result in a massively destructive conflagration that will consume far more than its intended object, much as seems to be occurring in the audience’s world, in which Spartan military expeditions annually lay waste to the farmlands around Athens while plague lays waste to the population sheltering within Athens’ walls. The Chorus’s imagery of all-out war on both divine and mortal plains suggests that the waste to which Attica is being subjected is the manifestation of a contest involving into which the immortals have already been drawn. If the twin blights of war and plague striking Athens might be the consequences of the gods’ invocation by any city, whether Thebes, Sparta, or Athens itself, to intervene in mortal conflict, would it not behoove Athens to halt the conflict now engaging mortals and immortals alike to seek the gods’ assistance in suing for peace? [Mi] [Mw] [Dnc]