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Chorus of Theban Elders

Eros, undefeated in battle,

Eros, who falls upon possessions,

who, in the soft cheeks of a young girl,

stays the night vigil,

who traverses over seas 785

and among pastoral dwellings,

you none of the immortals can escape,

none of the day-long mortals, and

he who has you is maddened. 790
 

You wrest the minds of even the just

aside to injustice, to their destruction.

You have incited this quarrel

among blood kin.

Desire radiant from the eyelids 795

of a well-bedded bride prevails,

companion in rule with the gods' great

ordinances. She against whom none may battle,

the goddess Aphrodite, plays her games.800
 

[Antigone enters from the house, escorted by Creon's slaves (885).]
 

Coryphaeus

Now, by this time, even I myself am carried

outside the ordinances of the gods at seeing this.

I am no longer able to stanch the streams of tears,

when I see Antigone here approaching

the bridal-chambers that give rest to all.805
 

Antigone

See me, citizens of my paternal land,

walking my last

road and beholding my last

light of the sun--

never again. But Hades,810

the all-provider of rest, leads me living

to Acheron's⁽⁹⁴⁾ shore,

without a share of wedding

hymns. No song

at my wedding sang out for me,815

but I shall wed Acheron.
 

Coryphaeus

Therefore, without renown and praise,⁽⁹⁵⁾

you are departing for the recesses of the dead,

neither struck by wasting diseases

nor obtaining the wages of the sword.820

But under your own law, alive, alone and unique

of mortals, you will descend to Hades.
 

Antigone

I heard that she perished most sorrowfully,

the Phrygian guest,

daughter of Tantalus, on the peak825

of Mt. Sipylus, whom a rocky

growth like tenacious ivy subdued.⁽⁹⁶⁾

Rain and snow,

it is the talk of men,

never leave her as she pines away.830

Beneath her overhanging cliffs always weeping,

she moistens her valleys.⁽⁹⁷⁾ Very like

her, the deity beds me.
 

Coryphaeus

No, she is a god begotten of god,

and we are mortals born to die.835

And yet, it is a great thing for a dead woman to hear

that she obtains a portion with the god-like

while alive and, afterwards, while dead.
 

Antigone

O me, I am mocked.

Why, by the gods of our fathers, why

do you abuse⁽⁹⁸⁾ me, when I have not gone840

but am in plain sight before you?

O city and its men

of many possessions,

iô, Dircaean springs

and precinct of Thebes rich in chariots,845

at least I possess thee⁽⁹⁹⁾ as witnesses

to how unwept by philoi and by what laws⁽¹⁰⁰⁾

am I going to the rock-entombed vault

of my unprecedented mound.

Iô, wretched me, a corpse850

among people and not among corpses,

a metic,⁽¹⁰¹⁾ not among the living, and not among the dead.
 

Coryphaeus

Advancing to the limit of daring,

you struck the high throne

of Justice, child, hard.855

You are paying, perhaps, for your father's prize.⁽¹⁰²⁾
 

Antigone

You have touched the most

painful thoughts for me

of my father's thrice-plowed lament

and of all

our fate860

for the renowned children of Labdacus.

Oh, maternal ruinous delusions of beds

and the incestuous sleepings

of my ill-fated mother with my father,865

from such people wretched me was born.

To them, accursed and unmarried,

here I am going, a metic.

Iô, brother, by attaining ill-

fated marriages,870

dead though you be, you slew me still alive.
 

Coryphaeus

There is some piety in being pious,

but power, for him who cares for power,

proves nowhere to be transgressed.

Your self-knowing temper destroyed you.875
 

Antigone

Without laments, without philoi, without wedding

hymns, I am led in misery

along the road made ready.

No longer for miserable me is it right

to see the eye of this holy torch.880

My own destiny, unwept by tears,

no one of philoi laments.
 

Creon [To the slaves.]

Do you not know that, instead of dying, not one person

would stop pouring out songs and wailing, if allowed?

Will you not lead her off as quickly as you can885

enfold her in a roofed tomb, as I have ordered.

Leave her alone and deserted, whether she may

die or be entombed in such an enclosure alive.

The fact is that we are pure in the matter of this maiden.

In any case, she will be deprived of her metic status up here.890
 

Antigone

O tomb, O wedding chamber, O hollowed

abode ever guarding,⁽¹⁰³⁾ where I am walking

to my own, the greatest number of whom has perished,

and Persephassa⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ has received among the dead.

Last of them, I, and by far in the most evil way,895

I am going down before my life's measure has expired.

In arriving there, I nourish the hope, of course,

that I will come philê to father and especially philê to you,

mother, and philê to you, brother-head,

since all of you in death with my own hand900

I washed and dressed, and gave

liquid offerings at your tomb. Now, Polyneices,

for laying out your body, I win such things as these.

And yet, I honored you for those thinking rightly.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾

Not even if I were the mother of children,905

not if my husband were dead and rotting on me,

would I take up this task in violence of the citizens.

For the sake of what law⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ do I say this?

A husband dead, there would be another for me,

and a child from another man, if I lost this one, 910

but with mother and father both hidden in the house of Hades,

there is no brother who would be produced, ever.

I honored you before all by such

a law, and to Creon this seems to be doing wrong

and to be daring terrible things, O brother-head.915

Now he takes me by the hand⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ and is leading

me away, unbedded, unhymned and ungraced

by a share of bridal coupling and nurturing a child,

but in this way deserted of philoi and ill-fated.

I am going alive into the hollowed abodes of the dead.920

Having transgressed what justice of deities?

Why should I in such misery look further to the gods?

What ally of those who are allies should I look to, seeing

that, by acting piously, I have come to possess impiety?

If this should be good and beautiful before the gods,925

then I would realize my mistake after suffering my doom.

But if these men are doing wrong, may they suffer no more

evils than they themselves do unjustly to me.
 

Coryphaeus

Still, the same blasts of the same winds

of her essence are holding her fast930
 

Creon

For this reason, those who are leading her

will be sorry for their slowness.
 

Antigone

O me, this word has come

very close to death.
 

Creon

I offer no consolation at all to take heart that 935

these arrangements will not be executed as proposed.
 

Antigone

O paternal city of the land of Thebes

and ancestral gods,

I am being led away. I delay no longer.

Look, magnates of Thebes,940

at the sole and last one of the royal line,

at what I suffer from what sort of men,

having piously rendered piety.
 

[Antigone is being led away by Creon's slaves but must remain within earshot of the elders' ode, since they address her directly. Creon remains on stage.]
 

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