 | Polinices |  |
SCENE THE SECOND.
Eteocles, Jocasta, Antigone.Ete.
Behold, at last, that Polinices comes;
He comes, who so exclusively engrosses
A mother's partial, fond solicitude.
Not as he went from Thebes shalt thou behold him,
Alone, an exile, and a wanderer;
Not as he saw me on that day return
To claim from him the covenanted throne.
He returns to us with a proud array
Of powerful enemies: in arms he seeks
From his own brother the ancestral sceptre:
Anxious and ready he displays himself
To burn to ashes these paternal walls,
These sacred temples, and these household gods,
This palace, in which, first, the breath of life,
An infant, he inhaled; this, that contains
His father, and his mother, and his brethren,
And all that he should hold most dear and sacred.
He hath thus sacrilegiously referred
All law, all hope, all reason, to the sword.
Joc.
Then true is the report? Oh, Heavens, in arms
To his paternal soil!
Ete.
He has forsworn
The Theban name; he is become an Argive.
To him his daughter hath Adrastes given,
And he will give him Thebes. From yon high tower,
If thou art disposed to see it, go, and witness
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Thou wilt from thence, e'en on our lands, behold
His gaudy banners floating on the breeze,
And, with arm'd strangers, see the outstretched plain,
As by a bursting torrent, overwhelmed.
Joc.
Have I not often told thee, that to this
By dint of force thou drov'st him? ...
Ete.
Of my brother
The first assailant thou shalt not behold me:
I only shall secure the walls of Thebes.
Ant.
He quarrels not with Thebes. He seeks alone
To gain by arms a throne to prayers denied.
Ete.
Commands, they were not prayers. Opprobrious,
Unjust commands, which I refused to obey.
And I, assuredly not used to obedience,
Possess the throne. Since he will have it so,
Himself absolves me from the plighted faith.
The abominable tie that he has formed
With the enemies of Thebes, has, of itself,
All antecedent covenants dissolved.
Joc.
He is my son, in spite of what he has done.
Such I esteem him; and moreover hope
To make him yet esteem thee as a brother.
I mean forthwith his fury to confront,
And meet him on the plain. Meantime do thou ...
| Polinices | |