From such as those I draw my own unhappy life;

  And now I go to dwell with them, unwedded and

  accursed.

  O brother,* through an evil marriage you were slain;

  and I

  870

  Live—but your dead hand destroys me.

  CHORUS. Such loyalty is a holy thing.

  Yet none that holds authority

  Can brook disobedience, O my child.

  Your self-willed pride has been your ruin.

  Epode

  ANTIGONE. Unwept, unwedded and unbefriended,

  Alone, pitilessly used,

  Now they drag me to death.

  Never again, O thou Sun in the heavens,

  May I look on thy holy radiance!

  880

  Such is my fate, and no one laments it;

  No friend is here to mourn me.

  CREON [speaks]. Enough of this! If tears and

  lamentations

  Could stave off death they would go on for ever.

  Take her away at once, and wall her up

  Inside a cavern, as I have commanded,

  And leave her there, alone, in solitude.

  Her home shall be her tomb; there she may live

  Or die, as she may choose: my hands are clean;

  But she shall live no more among the living.

  890

  ANTIGONE [speaks]. O grave, my bridal-chamber,

  everlasting

  Prison within a rock: now I must go

  To join my own, those many who have died

  And whom Persephone* has welcomed home;

  And now to me, the last of all, so young,

  Death comes, so cruelly. And yet I go

  In the sure hope that you will welcome me,

  Father, and you, my mother; you, my brother.*

  For when you died* it was my hands that washed

  900

  And dressed you, laid you in your graves, and

  poured

  The last libations. Now, because to you,

  Polyneices, I have given burial,

  To me they give a recompense like this!

  Yet what I did,* the wise will all approve.

  For had I lost a son, or lost a husband,

  Never would I have ventured such an act

  Against the city’s will. And wherefore so?

  My husband dead, I might have found another;

  Another son from him, if I had lost

  910

  A son. But since my mother and my father

  Have both gone to the grave, there can be none

  Henceforth that I can ever call my brother.

  It was for this I paid you such an honour,

  Dear Polyneices, and in Creon’s eyes

  Thus wantonly and gravely have offended.

  So with rude hands he drags me to my death.

  No chanted wedding-hymn, no bridal-joy,

  No tender care of children can be mine;

  But like an outcast, and without a friend,

  They take me to the cavernous home of death.

  920

  What ordinance of the gods have I transgressed?

  Why should I look to Heaven any more

  For help, or seek an ally among men?

  If this is what the gods approve, why then,

  When I am dead I shall discern my fault;

  If theirs the sin, may they endure a doom

  No worse than mine, so wantonly inflicted!

  CHORUS. Still from the same quarter the same wild

  winds

  Blow fiercely, and shake her stubborn soul.

  930

  CREON. And therefore, for this, these men shall have

  cause,

  Bitter cause, to lament their tardiness.

  CHORUS. I fear these words bring us closer yet

  To the verge of death.*

  CREON. I have nothing to say, no comfort to give:

  The sentence is passed, and the end is here.

  ANTIGONE. O city of Thebes where my fathers dwelt,

  O gods of our race,

  Now at last their hands are upon me!

  You princes of Thebes, O look upon me,

  940

  The last that remain of a line of kings!

  How savagely impious men use me,

  For keeping a law that is holy.

  [Exit ANTIGONE, under guard, CREON remains

  Strophe 1

  CHORUS. There was one in days of old who was

  imprisoned

  In a chamber like a grave, within a tower:

  Fair Danae,* who in darkness was held, and never

  saw the pure daylight.

  Yet she too, O my child, was of an ancient line,

  Entrusted with divine seed* that had come in shower

  of gold.

  950

  Mysterious, overmastering, is the power of Fate.

  From this, nor wealth nor force of arms

  Nor strong encircling city-walls

  Nor storm-tossed ship can give deliverance.

  Antistrophe 1

  Close bondage was ordained by Dionysus

  For one who in a frenzy had denied

  His godhead: in a cavern Lycurgus,* for his sin, was

  imprisoned.

  In such wise did his madness bear a bitter fruit,

  960

  Which withered in a dungeon. So he learned it was a

  god

  He had ventured in his blindness to revile and taunt.

  The sacred dances he had tried

  To quell, and end the Bacchic rite,

  Offending all the tuneful Muses.*

  Strophe 2

  There is a town by the rocks where a sea meets

  another sea,

  Two black rocks by the Bosphorus, near the

  Thracian coast,

  Salmydessus;* and there a wife had been spurned,

  970

  Held close in bitter constraint.*

  Then upon both her children

  A blinding wound fell from her cruel rival:

  With shuttle in hand she smote the open eyes with

  sharp

  And blood-stained point, and brought to Phineus’

  Two sons a darkness that cried for vengeance.*

  Antistrophe 2

  In bitter grief and despair they bewailed their unhappy

  lot,

  Children born to a mother whose marriage proved

  accursed.

  980

  Yet she came of a race of ancient kings,*

  Her sire the offspring of gods.*

  Reared in a distant country,*

  Among her fierce, northern father’s tempests,

  She went, a Boread, swift as horses, over the lofty

  Mountains.* Yet not even she was

  Safe against the long-lived Fates, my daughter.

  Enter TEIRESIAS, led by a boy

  TEIRESIAS. My lords, I share my journey with this boy

  Whose eyes must see for both; for so the blind

  Must move abroad, with one to guide their steps.

  990

  CREON. Why, what is this? Why are you here,

  Teiresias?

  TEIRESIAS. I will explain; you will do well to listen.

  CREON. Have I not always followed your good counsel?

  TEIRESIAS. You have; therefore we have been guided

  well.

  CREON. I have had much experience of your wisdom.

  TEIRESIAS. Then think: once more you tread the razor’s

  edge.

  CREON. You make me tremble! What is it you mean?

  TEIRESIAS. What divination has revealed to me,

  That I will tell you. To my ancient seat

  Of augury* I went, where all the birds

  1000

  Foregather. There I sat, and heard a clamour

  Strange and unnatural—birds screaming in rage.

  I knew that they were tearing at each other

  With murderous claws: the beating of their wings

  Meant nothing less than that; and I was frightened.

  I made a blazing fire upon the altar

  And offered sacrifice:* it would not burn;

  The melting fat oozed out upon the embers

  And smoked and bubbled; high into the air

  The bladder spirted gall, and from the bones

  1010

  The fatty meat slid off and left them bare.

  Such omens, baffling, indistinct, I learned

  From him who guides me,* as I am guide to others.

  Sickness has come upon us, and the cause

  Is you: our altars and our sacred hearths

  Are all polluted by the dogs and birds

  That have been gorging on the fallen body

  Of Polyneices. Therefore heaven will not

  Accept from us our prayers, no fire will burn

  1020

  Our offerings, nor will birds give out clear sounds,

  For they are glutted with the blood of men.

  Be warned, my son. No man alive is free

  From error, but the wise and prudent man

  When he has fallen into evil courses

  Does not persist, but tries to find amendment.

  It is the stubborn man who is the fool.

  Yield to the dead, forbear to strike the fallen;

  To slay the slain, is that a deed of valour?

  1030

  Your good is what I seek; and that instruction

  Is best that comes from wisdom, and brings profit.

  CREON. Sir, all of you, like bowmen at a target,

  Let fly your shafts at me. Now they have turned

  Even diviners on me! By that tribe

  I am bought and sold and stowed away on board.

  Go, make your profits, drive your trade

  In Lydian silver* or in Indian gold,

  But him you shall not bury in a tomb,

  No, not though Zeus’ own eagles* eat the corpse

  1040

  And bear the carrion to their master’s throne:

  Not even so, for fear of that defilement,

  Will I permit his burial—for well I know

  That mortal man can not defile the gods.

  But, old Teiresias, even the cleverest men

  Fall shamefully when for a little money

  They use fair words to mask their villainy.

  TEIRESIAS. Does any man reflect, does any know . . .

  CREON. Know what? Why do you preach at me like

  this?

  TEIRESIAS. How much the greatest blessing is good

  counsel?

  1050

  CREON. As much, I think, as folly is his plague.

  TEIRESIAS. Yet with this plague you are yourself

  infected.

  CREON. I will not bandy words with any prophet.

  TEIRESIAS. And yet you say my prophecies are

  dishonest!

  CREON. Prophets have always been too fond of gold.

  TEIRESIAS. And tyrants, of the shameful use of power.

  CREON. You know it is your King of whom you speak?

  TEIRESIAS. King of the land I saved from mortal

  danger.*

  CREON. A clever prophet—but an evil one.

  TEIRESIAS. You’ll rouse me to awaken my dark secret.

  1060

  CREON. Awaken it, but do not speak for money.

  TEIRESIAS. And do you think that I am come to that?

  CREON. You shall not buy and sell my policy.

  TEIRESIAS. Then I will tell you this: you will not live

  Through many circuits of the racing sun

  Before you give a child of your own body

  To make amends for murder, death for death;

  Because you have thrust down within the earth

  One who should walk upon it,* and have lodged

  A living soul dishonourably in a tomb;

  And impiously have kept upon the earth

  1070

  Unburied and unblest one who belongs

  Neither to you nor to the upper gods

  But to the gods below, who are despoiled

  By you. Therefore the gods arouse against you