Antigone

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 406 sections

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and their birth from their mother stripped of her marriage. But she traced her descent from the ancient line of the Erechtheids, and in far-distant caves she was raised amidst her father’s gusts. She was the child of Boreas,
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running swift as horses over the steep hills, a daughter of gods. Yet she, too, was assailed by the long-lived Fates, my child.
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Princes of Thebes, we have come on a shared journey, two scouting the way by the eyes of one.
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For this is the method of travel for the blind, using a guide.
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What is it, old Teiresias? What is your news?
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I will tell you. You, obey the seer.
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It was not my habit before, at any rate, to stand apart from your will.
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Therefore you captained this city on an upright course.
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I have felt and can attest your benefits.
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Realize that once more now you are poised on fortune’s razor-edge.
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What do you mean? I shudder to hear you!
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You will understand, when you hear the signs revealed by my art. As I took my place on my old seat of augury
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where all birds regularly gather for me, I heard an unintelligible voice among them: they were screaming in dire frenzy that made their language foreign to me. I realized that they were ripping each other with their talons, murderously—the rush of their wings did not lack meaning.
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Quickly, in fear, I tried burnt-sacrifice on a duly-kindled altar, but from my offerings Hephaestus did not blaze. Instead juice that had sweated from the thigh-flesh trickled out onto the embers and smoked and sputtered;
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the gall was scattered high up in the air; and the streaming thighs lay bared of the fat that had been wrapped around them. Such was the failure of the rites that yielded no sign, as I learned from this boy. For he is my guide, as I am guide to others.
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And it is your will that is the source of the sickness now afflicting the city. For the altars of our city and our hearths have one and all been tainted by the birds and dogs with the carrion taken from the sadly fallen son of Oedipus. And so the gods no more accept prayer and sacrifice at our hands,
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or the burning of thigh-meat, nor does any bird sound out clear signs in its shrill cries, for they have tasted the fatness of a slain man’s blood. Think, therefore, on these things, my son. All men are liable to err.
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But when an error is made, that man is no longer unwise or unblessed who heals the evil into which he has fallen and does not remain stubborn. Self-will, we know, invites the charge of foolishness. Concede the claim of the dead. Do not kick at the fallen.
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What prowess is it to kill the dead all over again? I have considered for your good, and what I advise is good. The sweetest thing is to learn from a good advisor when his advice is to your profit.
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Old man, you all shoot your arrows at me, like archers at their mark, and I am not safe
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even from the plottings of the seer’s divine art, but by their tribe I have long been bought and sold and made their merchandise. Turn your profits, make your deals for the white gold of Sardis and the gold of India, if it pleases you, but you shall not cover that man with a grave,
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not even if the eagles of Zeus wish to snatch and carry him to be devoured at the god’s throne. No, not even then, for fear of that defilement will I permit his burial, since I know with certainty that no mortal has the power to defile the gods.
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But even the exceedingly clever, old Teiresias, falls with a shameful fall, when they couch shameful thoughts in fine phrasing for profit’s sake.
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Alas! Does any man know, does any consider—
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What is this? What universal truth are you announcing?
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—by how much the most precious of our possessions is the power to reason wisely?
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By as much, I think, as senselessness is the greatest affliction.
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Yet you came into being full of that disease.
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I have no desire to trade insults with the seer.
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Yet that is what you do in saying that I prophesy falsely.
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Yes, for the prophet-clan was ever fond of money.
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And the race sprung from tyrants loves shameful gain.
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Do you know that you ramble so about your king?
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I am aware, since through me you have saved this city.
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You are a wise seer, but fond of doing injustice.
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You will stir me to utter the dire secret in my soul.
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Out with it! But only if it is not for gain that you speak it.
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Indeed, I think I speak without mention of gain—where you are concerned.
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Be certain that you will not trade in my will.
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Then know, yes, know it well! You will not live through many more
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courses of the sun’s swift chariot, before you will give in return one sprung from your own loins, a corpse in requital for corpses. For you have thrust below one of those of the upper air and irreverently lodged a living soul in the grave,
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while you detain in this world that which belongs to the infernal gods, a corpse unburied, unmourned, unholy. In the dead you have no part, nor do the gods above, but in this you do them violence. For these crimes the avenging destroyers,
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the Furies of Hades and of the gods, lie in ambush for you, waiting to seize you in these same sufferings. And look closely if I tell you this with a silvered palm. A time not long to be delayed will reveal in your house wailing over men and over women.
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All the cities are stirred up in hostility, whose mangled corpses the dogs, or the wild beasts or some winged bird buried, carrying an unholy stench to the city that held each man’s hearth. There, now, are arrows for your heart, since you provoke me,
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launched at you, archer-like, in my anger. They fly true—you cannot run from their burning sting. Boy, lead me home, so that he may launch his rage against younger men, and learn to keep a quieter tongue
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and a better mind within his breast than he now bears. Exit Teiresias.
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The man is gone, my king, leaving dire prophecies behind. And for all the time that I have had this hair on my head, now white, once dark, I know that he has never been a false prophet to our city.
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I, too, know it well, and my mind is troubled. To yield is terrible, but, to resist, to strike my pride with ruin—this, too, inspires terror.
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The moment, Creon, requires that you reason wisely.
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What should I do, then? Speak, and I will obey.
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Go and free the girl from her hollowed chamber. Then raise a tomb for the unburied dead.
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And you recommend this? You think that I should yield?
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Yes, my king, and with all possible speed. For harms sent from the gods swiftly cut short the follies of men.
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Ah, it is a struggle, but I depart from my heart’s resolve and obey. We must not wage vain wars with necessity.
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Go, do these things and do not leave their performance to others.
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Right away I will go. Go, go, my servants, each and all of you! Take axes in your hands,
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and hurry to that place there in view! But since my judgment has taken this turn, I will be there to set her free, as I myself confined her. I am held by the fear that it is best to keep the established laws to life’s very end.
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God of many names, glory of the Cadmeian bride and offspring of loud-thundering Zeus, you who watch over far-famed Italy and reign
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in the valleys of Eleusinian Deo where all find welcome! O Bacchus, denizen of Thebes, the mother-city of your Bacchants, dweller by the wet stream of Ismenus on the soil
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of the sowing of the savage dragon’s teeth!
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The smoky glare of torches sees you above the cliffs of the twin peaks, where the Corycian nymphs move inspired by your godhead,
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and Castalia’s stream sees you, too. The ivy-mantled slopes of Nysa’s hills and the shore green with many-clustered vines send you, when accompanied by the cries of your divine words,
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you visit the avenues of Thebes.
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Thebes of all cities you hold foremost in honor, together with your lightning-struck mother.
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And now when the whole city is held subject to a violent plague, come, we ask, with purifying feet over steep Parnassus,
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or over the groaning straits!
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O Leader of the chorus of the stars whose breath is fire, overseer of the chants in the night, son begotten of Zeus,
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appear, my king, with your attendant Thyiads, who in night-long frenzy dance and sing you as Iacchus the Giver!
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Look, here is the King himself approaching, his hands grasping a monument plainly signing that his—if we may say it—and no one else’s,
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was the madness of this error.
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Ah, the blunders of an unthinking mind, blunders of rigidity, yielding death! Oh, you witnesses of the killers and the killed, both of one family!
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What misery arises from my reasonings! Haemon, you have died after a young life, youngest and last of my sons! O God! You have departed not by your foolishness, but by my own!
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Ah, how late you seem to see the right!
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God, I have mastered the bitter lesson! But then, then, I think, some god struck me on my head with a crushing weight, and drove me into savage paths,
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—ah!—and overthrew my joy to be trampled on! Ah, the labors men must toil through!
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My master, you have come, I think, like one whose hands are not empty, but who has a ready store: first, you carry that burden visible in your arms;
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second, you will soon look upon further sufferings inside your house.
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What worse suffering is still to follow upon these sufferings?
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Your wife is dead, true mother of that corpse, poor lady, by wounds newly cut.
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O harbor of Hades, hard to purify!
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Why, why do you ruin me? Herald of evil, of grief, what word do you say? Ah, you have done in a dead man anew! What are you saying, boy? What is this you report to me
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God no!—what new slaughter, my wife’s doom, is heaped upon this ruin?
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The sight is at hand. It is no longer hidden inside.
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Ah, misery!
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There I see a new, a second evil! What destiny, ah, what, can still await me? I have just now taken my son in my arms, and now I see another corpse before me!
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Oh, tormented mother! Oh, my son!
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By the altar, with a sharp-whetted sword, she struck until her eyes went slack and dark. Before that she bewailed the noble fate of Megareus who died earlier, and then the fate of this boy, and also, with her last breath,
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she called down evil fortune upon you, the slayer of her sons.
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Ah, no! I tremble with fear. Why does no one strike me full on my chest with a two-edged sword?
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I am miserable—ah—and bathed in miserable anguish!
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Yes, because you were accused of responsibility for both this son’s death, and the other’s, by her whose corpse you see.
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What was the manner of the violent deed by which she departed?
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Her own hand struck her to the heart upon learning her son’s sharply-lamented fate.
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Ah this guilt can never be fastened onto any other mortal so as to remove my own! It was I, yes, I, who killed you, I the wretch.
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I admit the truth. Lead me away, my servants, lead me from here with all haste, who am no more than a dead man!
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The course you recommend is to your gain, if there can be gain amidst evil. What is briefest is best, when trouble lies at your feet.
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Let it come, let it appear, that fairest of fates for me, that brings my final day,
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the fate supreme! Oh, let it come, so that I may never see tomorrow’s light!
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These things are in the future. We must see to present affairs.
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Fulfillment of these things rests in the hands where it should rest.

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.