Ismene
Poor sister, if things have come to this, what would I
[40]
profit by loosening or tightening this knot?
Antigone
Consider whether you will share the toil and the task.
Ismene
What are you hazarding? What do you intend?
Antigone
Will you join your hand to mine in order to lift his corpse?
Ismene
You plan to bury him—when it is forbidden to the city?
Antigone
[45]
Yes, he is my brother, and yours too, even if you wish it otherwise. I will never be convicted of betraying him.
Ismene
Hard girl! Even when Creon has forbidden it?
Antigone
No, he has no right to keep me from my own.
Ismene
Ah, no! Think, sister, how our father
[50]
perished in hatred and infamy, when, because of the crimes that he himself detected, he smashed both his eyes with self-blinding hand; then his mother-wife, two names in one, with a twisted noose destroyed her life;
[55]
lastly, our two brothers in a single day, both unhappy murderers of their own flesh and blood, worked with mutual hands their common doom. And now we, in turn—we two who have been left all alone—consider how much more miserably we will be destroyed, if in defiance of the law
[60]
we transgress against an autocrat's decree or his powers. No, we must remember, first, that ours is a woman's nature, and accordingly not suited to battles against men; and next, that we are ruled by the more powerful, so that we must obey in these things and in things even more stinging.
[65]
I, therefore, will ask those below for pardon, since I am forced to this, and will obey those who have come to authority. It is foolish to do what is fruitless.
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Sophocles. The Antigone of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1891.
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