CLYTEMNESTRA [within]. Ah . . . ! So many

  Murderers, and not a single friend!

  ELECTRA. Someone inside is screaming. Do you hear it?

  CHORUS. I heard.....It makes me shudder; it is fearful.

  CLYTEMNESTRA. Aegisthus! O where are you? They will kill me!

  ELECTRA. There, yet another scream!

  CLYTEMNESTRA.

  My son, my son!

  1410

  Take pity on your mother!

  ELECTRA.

  You had none

  For him, nor for his father!

  CHORUS [sings]. O my city! Ill-starred race of our

  kings!

  So many years a doom has lain on you:

  Now it is passing away.

  CLYTEMNESTRA. Ah! . . . They have struck me!

  ELECTRA. Strike her again, if you have strength enough!

  CLYTEMNESTRA. Another blow!

  ELECTRA.

  Pray God there’ll be a third,

  And that one for Aegisthus!

  CHORUS [sings]. The cry for vengeance is at work; the

  dead are stirring.

  Those who were killed of old now

  1420

  Drink in return the blood of those who killed

  them.

  CHORUS [speaks]. See, they are coming, and the blood-

  stained arm

  Drips sacrifice of death. It was deserved.

  Enter ORESTES and PYLADES

  ELECTRA. How is it with you both?

  ORESTES.

  All’s well, within

  The palace, if Apollo’s oracle was well.

  ELECTRA. Then she is dead?

  ORESTES. No longer need you fear

  Your mother’s insolence and cruelty. *

  CHORUS. Be silent! I can see Aegisthus coming. ELECTRA. Stand back, Orestes.

  ORESTES.

  Are you sure you see

  1430

  him?

  ELECTRA. Yes, he is coming from the town. He smiles;

  We have him in our hands.

  CHORUS [sings]. Back to the doorway quickly! One

  Task is accomplished; may the second prosper

  too!

  ORESTES. It will. No fear of that.

  ELECTRA.

  Then, to your station.

  ORESTES. I go at once.

  ELECTRA.

  And leave the rest to me.

  [ORESTES and PYLADES enter the palace

  CHORUS [sings]. Speak some gentle words to him

  That he may fall, unawares,

  1440

  Into the retribution that awaits him.

  Enter AEGISTHUS

  AEGISTHUS. They tell me that some men have come from Phokis

  With news about Orestes; dead, they say,

  Killed in a chariot-race. Where are these men?

  Will someone tell me? [To ELECTRA.] YOU! Yes, you should know;*

  It will have special interest for you!

  ELECTRA. I know. Of course I know. I loved my brother;

  How then should I make little of his death?

  AEGISTHUS. Then tell me where these men are to be found.

  1450

  ELECTRA. In there.

  They’ve won their way to Clytemnestra’s heart.

  AEGISTHUS. And is it true that they have brought this message?

  ELECTRA. More than the message: they brought Orestes too.

  AEGISTHUS. What, is the very body to be seen?

  ELECTRA. It is; I do not envy you the sight.

  AEGISTHUS. Our meetings have not always been so pleasant!

  ELECTRA. If this proves to your liking, you are welcome.

  AEGISTHUS. I bid you all keep silence. Let the doors

  Be opened.

  The palace doors open to disclose ORESTES and

  PYLADES, standing over the shrouded body of

  CLYTEMNESTRA

  Citizens of Argos, look!

  If there is any who had hopes in him,

  1460

  That hope lies shattered. Look upon this body

  And learn that I am master—or the weight

  Of my strong arm will make him learn the lesson.

  ELECTRA. I need no teaching; I have learned, at last,

  That I must live at peace with those that rule.

  AEGISTHUS. Zeus! Here is one laid low, before our eyes,

  By the angry gods—and may no Nemesis

  Attend my words, or I unsay them.—Now,

  Turn back the shroud, and let me see the face.

  It was a kinsman, and I too must mourn.

  ORESTES. This you should do; it is for you, not me,

  1470

  To look upon this face and take farewell.

  AEGISTHUS. It is indeed for me, and I will do it.—

  Call Clytemnestra, if she is at hand.

  ORESTES. She is not far away; look straight before you.

  [AEGISTHUS takes the shroud from the face

  AEGISTHUS. God! What is this?

  ORESTES.

  Some stranger,

  frightening you?

  AEGISTHUS. Who are you, that have got me in your clutches

  For my destruction?

  ORESTES.

  Have you not seen already?

  Someone you thought was dead is still alive.

  AEGISTHUS. Ah. . . . Now I understand.—You, who speak,

  1480

  You are Orestes!

  ORESTES. You could read the future

  So well,* yet were so blind.

  AEGISTHUS.

  Ah. . . . You have come

  To kill me! Give me time, a little time,

  To speak.

  ELECTRA., No by the gods, Orestes! No

  Long speech from him! No, not a single word!

  He’s face to face with death; there’s nothing gained

  In gaining time. Kill him at once! And when

  You’ve killed him, throw the body out of sight,

  And let him have the funeral he deserves.

  Animals shall eat him! Nothing less than this

  Will compensate for all that he has done.

  1490

  ORESTES. Sir, come with me into the house; this is

  No time for talk. My business is your life.

  AEGISTHUS. Why to the house? If you are not ashamed

  At what you do, then do it openly.

  ORESTES. You shall not order me. Go in, and die

  On the same spot on which you killed my father.

  AEGISTHUS. This house of Atreus* must, it seems, behold

  Death upon death, those now and those to come.* ORESTES. It will see yours; so much I can foresee.

  AEGISTHUS. You did not get this foresight from your

  1500

  father!

  ORESTES. You have too much to say; the time is passing.

  Go!

  AEGISTHUS. Lead the way.

  ORESTES. You must go before me.

  AEGISTHUS. That I may not escape you?

  ORESTES. That you may not

  Be killed where you would choose. You shall taste all

  The bitterness of death.—If retribution

  Were swift and certain, and the lawless man

  Paid with his life, there would be fewer villains.

  [Exeunt ORESTES, PYLADES, ELECTRA, AEGISTHUS

  CHORUS [chants]. Children of Atreus, now at last

  Your sufferings are ended. You have won

  Your own deliverance; now once more

  Is the line of your fathers restored.

  1510

  EXPLANATORY NOTES

  ANTIGONE

  3 Creon: he is not named in the Greek, which here designates him simply stratēgos, ‘general’.

  The enemy: the Greek says ‘the Argive army’, the troops Polyneices, one of Antigone and Ismene’s two brothers, had raised in support of his cause.

  That none shall bury him: lines 1080–4, indicate that burial was refused to all the Argive dead. Antigone is concentrating on the corpse which concerns her personally. Denial of burial was an outrage; according to Iliad 23. 71, the souls of the dead refused to allow the unburied to join their company.

  4 public stoning: a punishment associated particularly with treachery.

  his own hands... destroyed herself: Ismene summarizes the appalling events recounted at much greater length by the messenger in Oedipus the King, see pp. 90–2, with one important difference. In Antigone Sophocles assumes a version of the myth in which Oedipus had died ‘hated and scorned’, whereas in Oedipus the King it is left unclear how and when he is to die. See further below, note to p. 97.

  5 the dead: the Greek says ‘those beneath the earth’, although Ismene is presumably including the unburied Polyneices.

  The sacred laws: archaic socio-religious rules also described as the ‘unwritten laws’, the ‘ancestral laws’, and the ‘common laws of Greece’. They protected the relationships between family members, between hosts and guests, and between the living and the dead. They are often articulated negatively as taboos on intra-familial murder, incest, murder of guest or host, and disrespect towards the dead.

  6 of seven gates: a traditional epithet of Thebes (Odyssey 11. 263).

  Dirke: the name of a river running to the west of Thebes, named after the wife of Zethus, an early co-ruler of the city with his brother Amphion.

  6 a snow-white shield: Argive soldiers were traditionally imagined bearing shields painted white. This may have arisen from a confusion of the toponym ‘Argos’ with the adjective argos, ‘white’.

  He: the generalized Argive soldier.

  in Polyneices’ | Fierce quarrel: in the Greek there is a play on the word for ‘quarrel’ (neikos), which supplied the latter part of Polyneices’ name Polu-neikēs, ’much-quarrelling’.

  like some eagle: the figure equating Polyneices and his army with a predatory bird descending on Thebes is continued into the antistrophe.

  7 the sons of a Dragon: the Thebans. Cadmus, the mythical founder of Thebes and the dynasty ending in Antigone and Ismene, was thought to have slain a dragon and sown its teeth in the earth, from which sprang a harvest of ‘sown men’, the ancestors of the Theban aristocracy. The image of a dragon and an eagle in combat was traditional in Greek epic poetry (Iliad 12. 201).

  With a fiery bolt: tradition made Zeus strike down with a thunderbolt the Argive leader Capaneus, the first to scale the Theban ramparts, who had delivered the ‘arrogant boast’ obliquely alluded to in line 127. The story was too familiar for Capaneus to need naming by Sophocles: he is often depicted in the visual arts falling from his ladder after being struck by lightning.

  possessed with frenzy: in the Greek Capaneus is explicitly likened to a maenad.

  the great War-god: Ares, the Greek god of martial violence. Thebes was one of the few Greek cities where Ares received an important cult; in myth he fathered both Harmonia whom Cadmus married and the dragon which Cadmus killed.

  Seven foemen: none of Polyneices’ six allies is mentioned by name in Sophocles’ Antigone. In Oedipus at Colonus they are catalogued as Amphiareus, Tydeus, Eteoclus, Hippomedon, Capaneus, and Parthenopaeus (1313-20). Their respective fates at the hands of Theban heroes is recounted fully in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes.

  Argive arms . . . temple of Zeus: after victory in battle it was established practice to honour the gods by fastening military spoils to temple walls. The Greek here explicitly honours Zeus in his capacity as Zeus tropaios, the god who causes a rout (trope) of the enemy.

  Victory: originally an offshoot of Athena, Victory (Nike) was conceptualized as a winged female deity.

  8 Theban Dionysus: For several reasons it is appropriate to suggest that the end of the battle be marked by a night-long celebration of Dionysus, the god of wine and dancing; he was an important deity at Thebes, particularly associated with nocturnal festivals (Euripides, Bacchae 486), and he led in his entourage Eirene, the divine personification of peace.

  Laius: previous king of Thebes, the son of Labdacus and father of Oedipus.

  with polluted sword: the weapons with which the brothers killed each other are described as polluted because a special pollution (miasma) attached to intra-familial murder.

  nearest kinship: Creon is only related to the sons of Oedipus by marriage, as the brother of their mother Iocasta. Sophocles chooses to present Polyneices and Eteocles as childless, ignoring alternative traditions which attributed sons to them (e.g. Herodotus 4. 147; 5. 61).

  9 To drink his kindred blood: imagery connected with anthropophagy was used traditionally in Greek poetry to denote extremes of hatred (e.g. Iliad 4. 35, Theognis 349). It is not to be taken literally.

  11 To avoid a curse: it was believed that guilt fell on anyone who passed a corpse without throwing earth upon it.

  hot iron . . . To walk through fire: the guard refers to archaic ordeals connected with the sanctioning of oaths.

  ‘We must report . . . We dare not hide it’: in the Greek there is no direct speech here.

  12 you shall be hanged Alive: evidence from slaves was believed to be more reliable if exacted under torture (see e.g. Isaeus 8. 12).

  13 Ox-team: the Greek actually says ‘mules’, believed to be superior to oxen for ploughing (Iliad 10. 352).

  14 If he observe Law: the Greek actually says ‘the laws of the land’, providing an important contrast with the divine law mentioned subsequently.

  an unlucky father: Sophocles explicitly names Oedipus here.

  16 this visitation: the Greek makes it clear that the guard believed that the whirlwind was sent by the gods.

  this offence and that: i.e. Antigone’s present and previous attempts to provide the corpse with burial.

  the Powers who rule among the dead: the Greek names Dikē, the divine personification of ‘Justice’, a daughter of Zeus.

  17 the laws of Heaven: see above, note to p. 5.

  closer still | Than all our family: the Greek says ‘closer to me in blood than anyone who worships Zeus at our family altar’.

  18 him: i.e. Eteocles.

  19 the god of Death: Hades, explicitly named in the Greek.

  21 O my dear Haemon . . . wrongs you!: the manuscripts attribute this line to Ismene. Nowhere else does Antigone name her fiancé .

  He is your son . . . from him: many editors attribute this line to the chorus.

  It is determined . . . she must die: some manuscripts attribute this line to Ismene.

  wind from Thrace: Boreas, the god of the north wind, was believed to live in Thrace, a country bordering on northern Greece approximately equivalent to the modern Bulgaria. See further below, note to p. 34.