Herald
I forbid you to act thus in violation of the city.
Antigone
I forbid you to make useless proclamations to me.
Herald
[1050]
And yet a citizenry that has escaped evil can be harsh.
Antigone
Let it be harsh! This man will not be unburied.
Herald
What! Will you honor with burial a man whom the city detests?
Antigone
For a long time now the gods have ceased to hold him in honor.
Herald
No, he was honored until he put this land in jeopardy.
Antigone
[1055]
He suffered evil and gave evil in return.
Herald
But this act was against all the citizens, not only one man.
Antigone
Discord is the last of the gods to close an argument. I will bury him. Put an end to your big talk.
Herald
Well then, follow your own rash plan, but I forbid it.Exit.
Chorus
Ah, misery!
[1060]
O Erinyes, far-famed destroyers of families, goddesses of death who have thus laid ruin to the family of Oedipus, digging it up from the roots! What will happen to me? What should I do? What plan shall I devise? How can I have the heart neither to weep for you
[1065]
nor escort you to your tomb? But I am afraid and turn away in terror of the citizens. You, at least, Eteocles, will have many mourners, while he, wretched man, departs without lamentation
[1070]
and has a dirge sung only by one sister. Now who could comply with that?
First Half-Chorus
Let the city take action or not take action against those who lament for Polynices. We, at all events, will go and
[1075]
bury him with her, following the funeral procession. For this grief is shared by all our race, and the city approves as just different things at different times.
Second Half-Chorus
We will go with this other corpse, as the city and justice, too, approves.
[1080]
For after the blessed gods and powerful Zeus, he it was who saved the city of the Cadmeans from being capsized and flooded by a wave of foreign men—he beyond all others.Exeunt omnes.
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Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. 1. Seven Against Thebes. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926.
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