University of Virginia Library

THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES

[1]

“Your pleasure—of the friend as of the foe—
Is one with mine, O Creon.”

[2]

Nothing is there more marvelous than man!
Driven by southern storms he sails amidst
The wild white water of the wintry sea,
And through the thunder of engulfing waves;
And Earth—unceasing monarch of the gods—
He furrows, and the plows go back and forth,
And turn the broken mold year after year.
He traps and captures—all inventive man!—
The light birds and the creatures of the wild,
And in his nets the fishes of the sea;
He trains the tenants of the fields and hills,
And brings beneath the neck-encircling yoke
The rough-maned horse and the wild mountain bull.

[3]

“—money is the most accursed thing
That man has ever made; it strikes down cities
And scatters families; it leads away
Good souls of men to foul accomplishments
And teaches them the practice of all guile
And all iniquity.”

[4]

Strophe II

Unsatisfactory

[And language has he learned and wind-swift thought]
And speech and soaring wisdom has he learned,
With human measures and a way to shun
The sharp and painful arrows of the frost.
Full of resource, of all the future brings,

This is the part that sticks me more than all the rest.

Resourceless meets he nothing; Death alone
He never shall escape; but he has found
[A cure] for life's unyielding maladies. [a cure].

Antistrophe II

GUARD
Here is the guilty one that buried him—
We seized her in the work.—But where is Creon?

CHORUS
Returning from the palace—in good time
To meet your opportunity.

CREON
What is this?
I come to meet whose opportunity?

GUARD
O King, 'tis not for any man to say
What things he will not do; for second thoughts
Belie the first resolve. I could have sworn
That I should never come this way again
But slowly, for your threats; yet am I here
(For joy without our expectation
Has none to match it) spite of my past vow,
Leading this maiden whom we found at work
Over the dead man's grave. No shaken lot
Is this, but still my own good fortune—mine,
And only mine.—And now, O King, I pray you,
Take her and question her, and do with her
According to your will. But I am free,
And justly clear of this unhappy crime.

CREON
'Tis she you bring! and how? Whence do you bring her.

GUARD
She buried Polynices; you know all
There is to know.

CREON
Is this truth you tell me?

GUARD
I saw this maiden burying the corpse
Against your order. Do I speak straight words?

CREON
And how was she discovered? and how taken?

GUARD
'Twas thus: In terror of your fearful threat,
As soon as we were there we swept away
The dust that hid the corpse; and having stripped
The body, damp with death, we placed ourselves
High on a windward hill to shun the stench;
And there we waited, busily alert
With hard reproach for any man of us
Who made a sign to shirk. So the time passed
Until the noonday sun stood overhead,
Burning with his heat—when suddenly
There came an awful whirlwind out of heaven
That filled the plain and all the mighty air
And vexed the woodland with unwholesome dust.
This god-sent plague we suffered with closed eyes;
And when it ceased, after a weary time,
We saw this maiden coming; and she cried
With a quick bitter wailing, like a bird
Over an empty nest. So grieved she then,
When she beheld the body lying bare,
And called down imprecations upon those
Who wrought the deed; and straightway did she bring
Dry dust in her own hands, and from an urn
Well shaped of brass and lifted high in air,
Thrice did she crown him with poured offerings.
When we saw this we rushed at once upon her
And seized her, unappalled at our approach;
And when we there accused her of this crime
And of the first as well, she made no sign,
Nor uttered any word in her defense.
At once a pleasure and a pain to me
Was this: for, though it be a pleasant thing
To make one's own way out of jeopardy,
Painful it is to send another there.
But then all this was naturally less
To me than my own safety.

CREON
(To Antigone)
Tell me, you
With your head bowed to earth, if you confess
Or you deny that you have done this thing.

ANTIGONE
Yes, I confess.

[Mss. note] It would hardly be kindness to Sophocles to reproduce an Attic redundancy in a language that won't stand it.

CREON
(To Guard)
You may go where you will,
Acquitted of this heavy charge.—(To Antigone) But you
Will tell me, and that briefly, did you know
The proclamation that made this forbidden?

ANTIGONE
I knew it, and why not—'Twas very plain.

CREON
And you have dared then to transgress the laws!

ANTIGONE
Yes, for the word was not of Jove at all;
Nor was it Justice, dwelling with the gods
Below the earth, that framed your government;
Nor did I think this edict you proclaimed
So strong that I could break the laws of heaven,
Unwritten and unchanging. For, O King,
They are not of today, nor yesterday
But for all time they are, and no man knows
Of their beginning. It was not for fear
Of any human will that I would pay
The gods my penalty—for I must die.
Well did I know that ere I ever heard
Your proclamation; and if I die now,
Before my time, so much I count my gain;
For whosoever lives as I have lived,
In many sorrows, will by dying reap
His best reward. Therefore to meet my fate
The pain is nothing; but if I had left
The child of my own mother to lie dead
Without a mound above him—that indeed
Were sorrow; but there is no sorrow now.
And if by chance you still declare
What I have done to be a foolish thing
Then I am charged with folly by a fool.