Antigone

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 406 sections

690
For dread of your glance forbids the ordinary citizen to speak such words as would offend your ear. But I can hear these murmurs in the dark, how the city moans for this girl, saying: No woman ever merited death less—
695
none ever died so shamefully for deeds so glorious as hers, who, when her own brother had fallen in bloody battle, would not leave him unburied to be devoured by savage dogs, or by any bird. Does she not deserve to receive golden honor?
700
Such is the rumor shrouded in darkness that silently spreads. For me, father, no treasure is more precious than your prosperity. What, indeed, is a nobler ornament for children than the fair fame of a thriving father, or for a father than that of his children?
705
Do not, then, bear one mood only in yourself: do not think that your word and no other, must be right. For if any man thinks that he alone is wise—that in speech or in mind he has no peer—such a soul, when laid open, is always found empty.
710
No, even when a man is wise, it brings him no shame to learn many things, and not to be too rigid. You see how the trees that stand beside the torrential streams created by a winter storm yield to it and save their branches, while the stiff and rigid perish root and all?
715
And in the same way the pilot who keeps the sheet of his sail taut and never slackens it, upsets his boat, and voyages thereafter with his decking underwater. Father, give way and allow a change from your rage. For if even from me, a younger man, a worthy thought may be supplied,
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by far the best thing, I believe, would be for men to be all-wise by nature. Otherwise—since most often it does not turn out that way—it is good to learn in addition from those who advise you well.
724
My king, it is right, if he speaks something appropriate, that you should learn from him
725
and that you, in turn, Haemon, should learn from your father. On both sides there have been wise words.
726
Men of my age—are we, then, to be schooled in wisdom by men of his?
728
Not in anything that is not right. But if I am young, you should look to my conduct, not to my years.
730
Is it worthy conduct to honor disrupters?
731
I could not urge anyone to show respect for the wicked.
732
And is she not in the grasp of that disease?
733
All the people of this city of Thebes deny it.
734
Shall Thebes prescribe to me how I must rule?
735
See, there, how you have spoken so much like a child.
736
Am I to rule this land by the will of another than myself?
737
That is no city, which belongs to one man.
738
Does not the city by tradition belong to the man in power?
739
You would make a fine monarch in a desert.
740
This boy seems to be fighting on the side of the woman.
741
If you are a woman, for, to be sure, my concern is for you.
742
You traitor, attacking your father, accusing him!
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Because I see you making a mistake and committing injustice.
744
Am I making a mistake when I respect my own prerogatives?
745
Yes. You do not respect them, when you trample on the gods’ honors.
746
Polluted creature, submitting to a woman!
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You will never catch me submitting to shamelessness.
748
You do. Your every word, after all, pleads her case.
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And yours, and mine, and that of gods below.
750
You can never marry her, not while she is still alive.
751
Then she will die, and in death destroy another.
752
What! Does your audacity run to open threats?
753
How is it a threat to speak against empty plans?
754
You will regret your unwise instructions in wisdom.
755
If you were not my father, I would have called you insane.
756
You woman’s slave, do not try to cajole me.
757
Do you want to have your say and then have done without a reply?
758
Is that so? By Olympus above—know this well—you will have no joy for taunting me over and above your censures.
760
Bring out that hated thing, so that with him looking on she may die right now in her bridegroom’s presence and at his side!
762
No, not at my side will she die—do not ever imagine it. Nor shall you ever look at me and set eyes on my face again.
765
Indulge in your madness now with whomever of your friends can endure it. Exit Haemon.
766
The man is gone, King Creon, in anger and haste. A young mind is fierce when stung.
768
Let him do—no!—let him plan something more immense than befits a man. Farewell to him! Still he will not save these two girls from death.
770
Then the pair of them, you really intend to kill them both?
771
Not the one who did not put her hands to the burial. You are right.
772
And by what mode of death do you mean to kill the other?
773
I will take her where the path is deserted, unvisited by men, and entomb her alive in a rocky vault,
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setting out a ration of food, but only as much as piety requires so that all the city may escape defilement. And praying there to Hades, the only god she worships, perhaps she will obtain immunity from death, or else will learn, at last, even this late,
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that it is fruitless labor to revere the dead. Exit Creon.
1.781
Love, the unconquered in battle, Love, you who descend upon riches, and watch the night through on a girl’s soft cheek,
1.785
you roam over the sea and among the homes of men in the wilds. Neither can any immortal escape you,
1.790
nor any man whose life lasts for a day. He who has known you is driven to madness.
1.791
You seize the minds of just men and drag them to injustice, to their ruin. You it is who have incited this conflict of men whose flesh and blood are one.
1.795
But victory belongs to radiant Desire swelling from the eyes of the sweet-bedded bride. Desire sits enthroned in power beside the mighty laws.
1.800
For in all this divine Aphrodite plays her irresistible game.
801
But now, witnessing this, I too am carried beyond the bounds of loyalty. The power fails me to keep back my streaming tears any longer, when I see Antigone making her way to the chamber where all are laid to rest,
805
now her bridal chamber.
1.806
Citizens of my fatherland, see me setting out on my last journey, looking at my last sunlight,
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and never again. No, Hades who lays all to rest leads me living to Acheron’s shore, though I have not had my due portion of the chant that brings the bride, nor has any hymn been mine
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for the crowning of marriage. Instead the lord of Acheron will be my groom.
817
Then in glory and with praise you depart to that deep place of the dead, neither struck by wasting sickness,
820
nor having won the wages of the sword. No, guided by your own laws and still alive, unlike any mortal before, you will descend to Hades.
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I have heard with my own ears how our Phrygian guest, the daughter of Tantalus, perished
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in so much suffering on steep Sipylus—how, like clinging ivy, the sprouting stone subdued her. And the rains, as men tell, do not leave her melting form, nor does the snow,
1.830
but beneath her weeping lids she dampens her collar. Most like hers is the god-sent fate that leads me to my rest.
834
Yet she was a goddess, as you know, and the offspring of gods,
835
while we are mortals and mortal-born. Still it is a great thing for a woman who has died to have it said of her that she shared the lot of the godlike in her life, and afterwards, in death.
2.839
Ah, you mock me! In the name of our fathers’ gods,
2.840
why do you not wait to abuse me until after I have gone, and not to my face, O my city, and you, her wealthy citizens? Ah, spring of Dirce, and you holy ground of Thebes whose chariots are many,
2.845
you, at least, will bear me witness how unwept by loved ones, and by what laws I go to the rock-closed prison of my unheard-of tomb! Ah, misery!
2.850
I have no home among men or with the shades, no home with the living or with the dead.
3.853
You have rushed headlong to the far limits of daring, and against the high throne of Justice
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you have fallen, my daughter, fallen heavily. But in this ordeal you are paying for some paternal crime.
2.858
You have touched on my most bitter thought
2.860
and moved my ever-renewed pity for my father and for the entire doom ordained for us, the famed house of Labdacus. Oh, the horrors of our mother’s bed! Oh, the slumbers of the wretched mother at the side
2.865
of her own son, my own father! What manner of parents gave me my miserable being! It is to them that I go like this, accursed and unwed, to share their home.
2.870
Ah, my brother, the marriage you made was doomed, and by dying you killed me still alive!
3.872
Your pious action shows a certain reverence, but an offence against power can no way be tolerated by him who has power in his keeping.
3.875
Your self-willed disposition is what has destroyed you.
876
Unwept, unfriended, without marriage-song, I am led in misery on this journey that cannot be put off. No longer is it permitted me, unhappy girl,
880
to look up at this sacred eye of the burning sun. But for my fate no tear is shed, no friend moans in sorrow.
929
Still the same tempest of the soul
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grips this girl with the same fierce gusts.
931
Then because of this her guards will have reason to lament their slowness.
933
Ah, no! That command verges close on death.
935
I cannot console you with any hope that your doom is not to be fulfilled in that way.
937
O city of my fathers, land of Thebes, and you gods, our ancestors! I am led away now; there is no more delay!
940
Look at me, you who are Thebes’ lords—look at the only remaining daughter of the house of your kings. See what I suffer, and at whose hands, because I revered reverence! Antigone is led away by the guards.
1.944
So too endured Danae in her beauty to change
1.945
the light of the sky for brass-bound walls, and in that chamber, both burial and bridal, she was held in strict confinement. And yet was she of esteemed lineage, my daughter,
1.950
and guarded a deposit of the seed of Zeus that had fallen in a golden rain. But dreadful is the mysterious power of fate—there is no deliverance from it by wealth or by war, by towered city, or dark, sea-beaten ships.
1.955
And Dryas’s son, the Edonian king swift to rage, was tamed in recompense for his frenzied insults, when, by the will of Dionysus, he was shut in a rocky prison. There the fierce and swelling force of his madness trickled away.
1.960
That man came to know the god whom in his frenzy he had provoked with mockeries. For he had sought to quell the god-inspired women and the Bacchanalian fire,
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and he angered the Muses who love the flute.
2.966
And by the waters of the Dark Rocks, the waters of the twofold sea, are the shores of Bosporus and the Thracian city Salmydessus,
2.970
where Ares, neighbor of that city, saw the accursed, blinding wound inflicted on the two sons of Phineus by his savage wife. It was a wound that brought darkness to the hollows, making them crave vengeance
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for the eyes she crushed with her bloody hands and with her shuttle for a dagger.
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Wasting away in their misery, they bewailed their miserable suffering

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0011.tlg002.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.