A little knowledge of the fable or the tragedy of Aeschylus, you suspect who the one might have been.
But the other six?
What were their names?
Who were they and what happened?
The one you - I imagine - imagine is obviously Polyneices, the man for whose sake the campaign against Thebes was carried out by the Argives. The son of Oedipus, who together with Eteocles, his brother, had agreed to change places on the throne every year, since their father had exiled himself, crippled and blind. Eteocles did not keep the agreement and so Polyneices marched against him, along with six other generals, in what Aeschylus would immortalize as the "Seven on Thebes".
But the rest of the heroes, who -almost- all died in front of the seven gates of Thebes, and it took the mediation of the Athenians to be buried, who were they? Did they have equally interesting stories?
Probably so, and we start with that of their king.
Inactive
King of Argos and sole survivor of the campaign. When his father was murdered by his relative Amphiaraus, Adrastus fled to his grandfather Polybus, king of Sicyon, and when he died, he himself sat on his throne. But when Amphiaraos took Adrastus' sister as his wife, the two men found each other, and Adrastus returned to Argos as king.
Adrastus took part in the campaign against Thebes, obliged to do so as the father-in-law of Polyneices. But how did he come to give him his daughter?
The king of Argos had either had a dream or an oracle had warned him that his two daughters would marry a boar and a lion respectively. When, therefore, one day Polyneices, who had a lion on his shield, the emblem of Thebes, and Tydeus, who had a boar, the emblem of Calydona, arrived at his palace, he understood that the signs spoke of them.
The first, the son of Oedipus, had been banished by Eteocles, and Tydeus had been banished by his countrymen because he had killed two of his cousins according to one version or an uncle while hunting, according to another version.
So Adrastus married them to his two daughters, Argea and Diipyli, and promised them that with his army, he would restore their thrones to them. And he would start with Polyneikis.
But the siege of Thebes did not go so well, and all the generals were killed. He was saved only by Arion's winged horse.
Ten years later, wanting to avenge his defeat, he persuaded the children of his dead generals to campaign again against Thebes. This time, the so-called "Epigoni" would succeed, they would take over the city, now having only one prominent dead in their ranks:the son of Adrastus, Aegialeus.
The now old king will die on his return to Megara, because of his deep sorrow.
Tydeas
Son of the king of the ancient city of Calydon, which was in Aetolia, who found himself in Argos in the manner we have seen, and married the king's daughter. From his marriage, one of the fiercest Greek warriors, Diomedes, was born.
During the campaign against Thebes, although he distinguished himself for his bravery, in some battle he was mortally wounded by the Theban hero, Melanippus.
But Athena, who admired Tydeus, wanted to grant him immortality, so she asked Zeus to do her a favor. But at the last moment, the brutality of Tydeus would change her mind.
When Amphiaraos cut off the head of the man who had wounded him so badly, Melanippus, and offered it to Tydeus just before he passed out, he ate his brains. Athena was disgusted by this act and took back her original thought, leaving him to follow his fate in Hades.
Kapaneas
Argive hero, nephew of Adrastus, notorious for his strength, his physique but also his arrogance. During the siege of Thebes, when he captured the part of the wall on which he was fighting, he asked for a ladder to climb to the top of it. When he reached the top, he boasted that now not even Zeus could stop him, causing a bolt of lightning to come in response out of nowhere and kill him.
Many centuries later, Dante mentions him in the Divine Comedy, describing how he met him in hell, in the company of other blasphemers, eternally tormented. He saw him lying prone on a plain of burning sand, continuing to curse Zeus, as "a pagan he continued to ignore the existence of the true God."
Hippomedon
Also nephew of Adrastus, of gigantic stature and tremendous strength. On his shield he had the monstrous Typhoon spewing fire from his nostrils, the one born by the Earth to avenge the Olympian Gods for the deaths of the Titans.
During the battle in front of the seven gates, he was killed by Ismarus, the son of Astacus. According to another version of the myth, in the battle he fought to retrieve the body of the dead Tydeus, he killed Krineus, son of the god Pan and the nymph Ismene, daughter of the river god Ismenos. So when Hippomedon stepped into the river, Ismenos raised the water level to drown him. However, Hippomedon begged not to die this way, and Zeus managed to convince the river god not to drown him. But as soon as Hippomedon came out of the river, he was attacked and killed instantly.
Virginopean
According to the local Argean myth he was the brother of Adrastus, but according to the most widespread myth of antiquity, he was the son of Atalanta and Hippomenes or Meleager or even the god Ares.
Atalanti, in order to hide the fact that she was no longer a virgin, abandoned him while still a baby on a mountain in Arcadia. There a shepherd found him and brought him up together with Telefos, the illegitimate child of Herakles, who had also been abandoned on the mountain.
Later, Adrastus will persuade him to follow him in the campaign against Thebes, with the latter having the Sphinx as an emblem on his shield, in order to frighten the Thebans.
There are many versions of his death. The most common one wants Periklymenos, son of Poseidon, to kill him, while another one wants him to die at the hand of Aktor, all in front of the walls of Thebes.
Amfiaraos
Son of Oicles or even the god of divination himself, Apollo, and Hypermnestra, he was an Argive hero who knew well the art of divination, as well as medicine and pharmacology.
He banished Adrastus from Argos, but when he married his wife, he let him return and they reconciled. We said this before. What we have not said is how Amphiaraus, though a seer, though he had seen the failure of the campaign, agreed to take part.
How Polyneices persuaded Amphiaraus to follow him by bribing his wife is described by Diodorus the Siculus:
Polyneices also tried to persuade the seer Amphiaraos to campaign with them against Thebes. And because he did not agree, because he knew in advance that he would be killed if he participated in the campaign, they say that Polyneices gave the wife of Amphiaraus the golden necklace that, according to mythology, Aphrodite gave to Armonia. And this to convince her husband to take part in the campaign.
At the time when Amphiaraus was quarreling with Adrastus about the kingship, they both agreed to assign Eriphyle to finally decide their differences. She was the wife of Amphiaraus and the sister of Adrastus. And when Eriphyle gave the victory to Adrastus and decided that her husband should take part in the campaign against the Thebans, then Amphiaraos, thinking that his wife had betrayed him, of course agreed to take part in the campaign, but he ordered his son of Alcmaeon after his death to kill Eriphyle.
Alcmaeon later, carrying out his father's order, killed his mother, but realizing that he had committed a cruel act, he was seized with rage.
Amphiaraos showed particular prowess in battle, but that didn't come to it either. The will of Zeus was that the city should not fall. Thus, after Eteocles and Polyneices killed each other, Amphiaraos found himself running to save his life from the Thebans.
During his retreat he reached the banks of the Ismenos, where he was overtaken by Polyklymenos. Zeus, however, did not want to see Amphiaraus dead either, so he threw another lightning bolt that opened a great gap in the earth, into which Amphiaraus, his charioteer, Vaton, the chariot and his horses fell. Then Zeus made him immortal, and since then the ancient Greeks worshiped him as a god.
When Pausanias passed by, they still pointed to the place where the hero disappeared on the banks of the Ismenus. It was even said that in the place of the chasm, an enclosure was later built with pillars on which birds never went to sit, but neither did sheep or oxen come near to graze.
The oracle of Amfiaraos, which was later created in Oropos, was one of the most famous in Greece and beyond. Herodotus mentions that ambassadors of Croesus, the king of the Lydians, once arrived at the oracle in order to "find out" whether they should campaign against the Persians.