Phoenissae
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
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Creon
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Ah me! what shall I do? Am I to mourn with tears myself or my city, which has a cloud around it as if it went through Acheron? My son has died for his country, bringing glory to his name, but grievous woe to me.
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His body I have just now taken from the dragon’s rocky lair and sadly carried the self-slain victim here in my arms; and the house is filled with weeping; but now I have come for my sister Jocasta, age seeking age, that she may bathe my child’s corpse and lay it out.
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For those who are not dead must reverence the god below by paying honor to the dead.
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Chorus Leader
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Your sister, Creon, has gone out, and her daughter Antigone went with her.
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Creon
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Where did she go? What happened? Tell me.
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Chorus Leader
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She heard that her sons were about to engage in single combat for the royal house.
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Creon
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What do you mean? In my tenderness to my dead son, I was not able to learn this.
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Chorus Leader
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It is some time, Creon, since your sister’s departure,
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and I expect the struggle for life and death is already decided by the sons of Oedipus.
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Creon
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Alas! I see a sign there, the gloomy look and face of the messenger coming to tell us the whole matter.
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Messenger
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Ah, woe is me! What story can I tell, what lament can I make?
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Creon
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We are lost; your opening words have no fair appearance.
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Messenger
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Ah, woe is me! I say again; for I am bringing great horrors.
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Creon
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In addition to the other sorrowful deeds. What is your tale?
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Messenger
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Your sister’s sons are now no more, Creon.
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Creon
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Alas! you have a great tale of woe for me and the city.
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O house of Oedipus, have you heard these tidings of sons slain by the same fate?
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Chorus Leader
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A tale to make it weep, if it were endowed with sense.
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Creon
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Oh! most grievous stroke of fate! :Alas for my sorrows! Oh, alas!
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Messenger
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If you only know the sorrows other than those!
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Creon
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How can they be more hard to bear than these?
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Messenger
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Your sister has died, with her two sons.
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Chorus
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Loudly, loudly raise the wail, and with white hands strike upon your heads!
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Creon
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Oh, wretched Jocasta! what an end to life and marriage you have found the riddling of the Sphinx! Tell me how her two sons accomplished the bloody deed,
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the struggle caused by the curse of Oedipus.
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Messenger
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Of our successes before the towers you know, for the walls are not far away so as to prevent your learning each event as it occurred. Now when they,
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the young sons of the old Oedipus, had adorned themselves in their bronze armor, they went and took their stand between the armies, chieftains both and two generals for the contest and the single combat. Then Polyneices, turning his eyes towards Argos, lifted up a prayer:
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O Lady Hera, for I am yours, since I have married the daughter of Adrastus and dwell in your land, grant that I may slay my brother, and give my right hand, which is set against him, the victory, stained with his blood. Asking for a shameful crown, to kill his brother.
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And tears came to the eyes of many at their sad fate, and men looked at one another, casting their glances round.
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But Eteocles, looking towards the temple of Pallas with the golden shield, prayed: Daughter of Zeus, grant that this arm may launch the spear of victory
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against my brother’s breast and slay him who has come to sack my country.
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When the Tuscan trumpet, like a torch, blew the signal for the bloody battle, they darted wildly against one another;
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like boars whetting their savage tusks, they joined battle, their beards wet with foam. They kept shooting out their spears, but crouched beneath their shields to let the steel glance off in vain; but if either saw the other’s eye above the rim,
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he would aim his lance there, eager to outwit him with the point.
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But both kept such careful outlook through the spy-holes in their shields, that their weapons found nothing to do; while from the onlookers far more than the combatants trickled the sweat caused by terror for their friends.
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Eteocles, in kicking aside a stone that rolled beneath his tread, exposed a limb outside his shield, and Polyneices, seeing a chance of dealing him a blow, aimed at it, and the Argive shaft passed through his leg;
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the Danaid army, one and all, cried out for joy. And the wounded man, seeing Polyneices’ shoulder bare in this effort, plunged his spear with all his might into his breast, restoring gladness to the citizens of Thebes, though he broke off the spear-head.
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And so, at a loss for a weapon, he retreated step by step, till catching up a splintered rock he let it fly and broke the other’s spear in the middle; and now the combat was equal, for each had lost his lance.
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Then clutching their sword-hilts
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they closed, and round and round, with shields clashing, they fought a wild battle. And Eteocles introduced the crafty Thessalian trick, having some knowledge of it from his association with that country. Disengaging himself from the immediate contest,
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he drew back his left foot but kept his eye closely on the pit of the other’s stomach from a distance; then advancing his right foot he plunged the weapon through his navel and fixed it in his spine. Down fell Polyneices, dripping with blood,
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ribs and belly contracting in his agony. But the other, thinking his victory now complete, threw down his sword and began to despoil him, wholly intent on that, without a thought for himself. And this indeed tripped him up; for Polyneices, who had fallen first, was still faintly breathing,
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and having in his grievous fall kept his sword, he made a last effort and drove it through the heart of Eteocles. They both lie there, fallen side by side, biting the dust with their teeth, and they have not decided the mastery.
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Chorus Leader
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Ah, ah, how I mourn for your sorrows, Oedipus! The god, it seems, has fulfilled those curses of yours.
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Messenger
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Now hear what further woes succeeded. Just as her two sons had fallen and lay dying, their wretched mother came on the scene,
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her daughter with her, in great haste. When she saw their mortal wounds, she wailed: O my sons, the help I bring is too late. And throwing herself on each in turn she wept and mourned, sorrowing over all her toil in nursing them, and their sister, by her side, mourned also:
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Supporters of your mother’ s age, dearest brothers, leaving me forlorn, unwed! Then lord Eteocles with one deep dying gasp, hearing his mother, laid on her his clammy hand,
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and though he could not say a word, his moistened eye was eloquent to prove his love. And Polyneices was still breathing, and seeing his sister and his old mother he said: Mother, our end has come; I pity you
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and my sister Antigone and my dead brother. For I loved him though he became my enemy, I loved him in spite of all. Bury me, mother, and you, my sister, in my native land; pacify the city’s wrath that l may get at least that much
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of my own fatherland, although I lost my home. With your hand, mother, close my eyes—he himself places her fingers on the lids—and farewell; for already the darkness wraps me round.
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So both at once breathed out their life of sorrow.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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. Exit Messenger.
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Chorus
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No longer do the misfortunes of this house extend to hearsay only; three corpses of the slain lie here at the palace for all to see; by one common death they have drawn their lot, a life of darkness.
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Antigone
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I do not veil my tender cheek shaded with curls, nor do I feel shame, from maiden modesty, at the dark red beneath my eyes, the blush upon my face, as I hurry on, in bacchic revelry for the dead,
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casting from my hair its mantle and letting my delicate saffron robe fly loose, a tearful escort to the dead. Ah me!
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Oh, Polyneices! you were rightly named, after all; woe to you, Thebes!
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Your strife—not strife, but murder on murder— has brought the house of Oedipus to ruin with dire and grim bloodshed. What harmonious or tuneful wailing can I summon,
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for my tears, my tears, oh, my home! oh, my home! as I bear these three kindred bodies, my mother and her sons, a welcome sight to the Fury? She destroyed the house of Oedipus, root and branch,
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when his shrewdness solved the Sphinx’s unsolvable song and killed that savage singer. Alas for you, father! What other Hellene or barbarian,
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what mortal from a noble line ever endured the anguish of such visible afflictions?
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Ah! poor girl, how piteous is your cry!
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What bird, perched on the high-leaved branches of oak or pine, will come to mourn with me, left motherless? With cries of woe,
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I lament before it comes the piteous lonely life, that I shall live for the rest of time, in streaming tears. On which of these
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shall I throw my offerings first, plucking the hair from my head? on the breast of the mother that suckled me, or beside the ghastly death-wounds of my brothers’ corpses?
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Oh, oh! Oedipus, my old father with sightless eyes, leave your house, reveal the misery of your life, you who have cast a mist of darkness over your eyes and
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draw out a weary existence within the house. Do you hear, you who are wandering with old step across the court, or sleeping on your wretched pallet couch?
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Oedipus
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Why, daughter,
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have you dragged me to the light by your piteous tears, supporting my blind footsteps, from the gloom of my bed-chamber, gray-haired, invisible as a phantom of the air, or as a spirit from the world below, or
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as a dream that flies?
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Antigone
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Father, there are tidings of sorrow for you to bear; no longer do your sons see the light, or your wife, who would always labor to tend your blind footsteps as with a staff.
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Alas for you, my father!
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Oedipus
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Alas for my sorrows! I may well groan and cry. Three lives! Tell me, child, by what fate they left the light.
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Antigone
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I do not say this to reproach or mock you, but in sadness: your own avenging curse, with all its load of swords and fire and ruthless war, came on your sons. Alas for you, my father!
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Oedipus
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Ah me!
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Oedipus
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My sons!
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Oedipus
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The evil fate of my sons is clear; but she, my poor wife, tell me, daughter, by what fate did she die?
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Antigone
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All saw her weep and heard her moan, as she rushed forth to carry to her sons her last appeal, a mother’s breast.
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But the mother found her sons at the Electran gate, in a meadow where the lotus blooms, fighting out their duel with spears, like lions in their lair, eager to wound each other,
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a murderous libation of blood already cold, owed to Hades, poured out by Ares. Then, taking from the dead a sword of hammered bronze, she plunged it in her flesh, and in sorrow for her sons fell with her arms around them. So the god who fulfills these sorrows has brought them all together on this day,
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father, for our house.
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Chorus Leader
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Today is the beginning of many troubles to the house of Oedipus; may he live to be more fortunate!
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Creon
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Cease now your lamentations; it is time we thought of
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their burial. Hear what I have to say, Oedipus. Eteocles, your son, left me to rule this land, by giving it as a dowry to Haemon with his marriage to your daughter Antigone. Therefore I will no longer allow you to dwell in this land;
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for Teiresias clearly said that the city would never prosper as long as you made your home here. So begone! And I say this not in insult, nor because I am your enemy, but from fear that some calamity will come upon the land, through those avenging fiends of yours.
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Oedipus
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O destiny! From the beginning, how you have created me wretched and unhappy, if any mortal ever was; for before I had left my mother’s womb and seen the light, Apollo foretold to Laius that I, then unborn, should become my father’s murderer; alas for me!
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So, as soon as I was born, the father who begot me tried to kill me, thinking me his enemy, for it was fated he should die at my hand; so he sent me unweaned to make a pitiful meal for beasts; I escaped from that— would that Cithaeron
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had sunk into hell’s yawning abyss, because it did not destroy me, but . . . Fate made me a slave in the service of Polybus. And I, poor wretch, after slaying my own father came to my mother’s bed, to her sorrow,
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and begot sons that were my brothers, whom I have destroyed, by bequeathing to them the legacy of curses I received from Laius. For I was not born so foolish, that I should have contrived these things against my own eyes and my children’s life, without some god.
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Let that pass. What am I, poor wretch, to do? Who now will be my guide and tend the blind man’s step? The one who is dead? If she were alive, I know well that she would. My pair of noble sons? But they are gone from me. But am I still so young myself that I can find a livelihood?
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Where? O Creon, why do you seek in this way to kill me utterly? For you will kill me, if you banish me from the land. Yet I will never twine my arms about your knees and seem a coward, for I would not betray my former nobility, no! not for all my ills.
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Creon
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You have spoken well, in refusing to touch my knees, but I could not allow you to dwell in the land. Of these dead, bear one at once to the palace; but the other, who came with strangers to sack his native town, the dead Polyneices,
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cast forth unburied beyond the borders of this land. To all the race of Cadmus shall this be proclaimed: Whoever is caught decking his corpse with wreaths or giving it burial, shall be requited with death. let him be unwept, unburied, a meal for birds.
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As for you, Antigone, leave your mourning for these lifeless three and go indoors, to lead your maiden life until to-morrow, when Haemon waits to marry you.
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Antigone
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O father, in what cruel misery are we plunged!
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For you I mourn more than for the dead; for in your woes you do not have something that is grievous and something not; but you were born wholly unfortunate, father. As for you, new-made king, I ask you, who do you insult my father with banishment?
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Why do you make laws over a helpless corpse?