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So both at once breathed out their life of sorrow.
[1455]
But when their mother saw this sad event, in her overmastering grief she snatched a sword from the dead, and did a fearful deed; for she drove the steel right through her throat, and there she lies, dead with those she loved so well, her arms thrown round them both.
[1460]
The army sprang to their feet and fell to wrangling, we maintaining that victory rested with my master, they with theirs; and there was strife among the generals, some holding that Polyneices gave the first wound with his spear, others that, as both were dead, victory rested with neither.
[1465]
Meanwhile Antigone crept away from the army. They rushed to their weapons, but by some lucky forethought the people of Cadmus had sat down under arms; and by a sudden attack we surprised the Argive army before it was fully equipped.
[1470]
Not one withstood our onset, and they filled the plain with fugitives, while blood was streaming from the countless dead our spears had slain. When victory had crowned our warfare, some set up an image of Zeus as a trophy, others were stripping the Argive dead of their shields
[1475]
and sending their spoils inside the battlements; and others with Antigone are bringing the dead here for their friends to mourn. So for the city, the result of this struggle hovers between the two extremes of good and evil fortune.The messenger goes out.
Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 2. The Phoenissae, translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.
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