Aeschylus (Copleston)/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES.
The story of Thebes and its sieges was one of the most favourite themes of the Greek poets from the earliest times. The many old chronicles in verse which recorded different parts of the history formed a continuous series, second only in popularity to that Trojan series of which the 'Iliad' was the centre. In the uncritical language of the early Greeks, all these were attributed to Homer, and to a few other names—for they are little more; so that when we are told that Æschylus called his own tragedies only scraps from the great banquet of Homer, it is not to the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' alone, but to this large collection of poetical chronicles, that we must suppose him to refer. But the dramatist cannot deal with the history of whole cities; his subjects are individuals or families. Out of all the noble names which were connected with the Theban story, the fancy of the Greek tragedians dwelt most fondly on the fate of the unhappy house of Œdipus. The terrible story is well known.
Laius the king (so runs the legend) cast out his son Œdipus that he might die, because an oracle had foretold that the child should kill his father. But Laius did not so avoid his fate, for the child was preserved by a shepherd, and became a man; and meeting Laius one day on a road he slew him unwittingly, and came to Thebes. He saved the city from the ravaging Sphinx by guessing her riddle about the life of man, and so became king of Thebes, and husband of the late king's wife—his own mother. But at last the gods brought it about that all the truth should be revealed to this unhappy king; and when he heard it, he put out his own eyes in his despair. Afterwards his sons Eteocles and Polynices, wishing that so horrible a thing should be forgotten, shut up their father in a prison; and he in his anger cursed them, and prayed that they might divide the kingdom between them by the sword.
So they, fearing lest the gods should fulfil that prayer, determined to reign in turn, each for a year. Eteocles, as the elder, reigned first, and at the end of the time agreed on, Polynices came and asked for the sceptre; but Eteocles refused, and clung resolutely to his throne, and sent him away empty. Then Polynices went away, and came to Argos, and married the daughter of King Adrastus, and persuaded him to help him with an army to recover his kingdom. So Adrastus gave him a great host, and he came against the Thebans. And six other captains led the host with him, and he was the seventh; and each led a division against one of the seven gates.
In the besieged city the scene is now laid. Before us rises the citadel, and the citizens—among whom enters Eteocles himself—are gathering in the square beneath. Here is a picturesque scene to begin with. Such openings are favourites in our own operas; and the reader will remember how effective they are rendered by variety of dresses, and the signs of different trades—by rapid motion, and the hum of many voices. These gay pictures are fit introductions to a modern opera; but the serious tragedy of Athens requires a more solemn opening. Moreover, the square of a Greek city would not supply so highly coloured, so harlequin-like a scene; nor would the taste of a Greek audience appreciate it. They prefer the beautiful to the picturesque. Our Theban citizens come in with more order, and less animation; their dresses are graceful in their folds, and rich in their simple colours; and their grouping on the stage is formal and systematic, instead of studiously disordered. We are to remember that they represent the dignity of a great people, and are there not to amuse or excite us, but to enact a solemn scene in the history of a very serious world.
The Athenian audience is always interested in a crowd. Every citizen is a politician, and delights in comparing other constitutions with his own; so that when a popular assembly in any shape comes before his eyes he is eagerly on the watch for indications of the degree of freedom which they possess, and for illustrations of his own political theories. This curiosity is consulted in the opening words of Eteocles, who begins by stating the necessity of watchfulness on the part of a ruler, the helmsman of the state, since his position is both responsible and thankless. Prosperity, he says, is attributed to the gods, while for disasters the king is always held guilty. Much the same sentiment is expressed by an English writer:—
"Among misfortunes that dissension brings
This not the least is, that belongs to kings:
If wars go well, each to a part lays claim;
If ill, then kings, not subjects, bear the blame."
Only the Englishman says nothing about the gods. However, it is ill-omened to speak of disaster, so Eteocles goes on to pray that all such calamity may be kept from Thebes by Zeus the Averter. We, who are in the poet's secret, know that the ill omen is not to be so lightly put aside. The king calls on all, young and old, to come to the aid of the state, and pay to their native earth the debt due to her for their nurture. This claim of the mother-land is very touchingly urged. "Defend," he says,
"This land, your common parent,
And dearest nurse, who on her fost'ring soil
Upheld with bounteous care your infant steps,
And trained you to this service, that your hands
For her defence might lift the faithful shield."[1]
This childlike attachment to the native soil, the simplest basis of patriotism, has been generally exchanged among civilised nations for love of one's countrymen, or loyalty to the king—or has been supplanted by philosophical theories about nationality; but even now it is curious to notice how, when a nation is strongly and deeply moved, the old simple ideas crop up again, and we see theory and loyalty comparatively weak motives by the side of love for the waters of the Rhine, or the sacred soil of France. The old world-worn nation becomes a child again in the violence of its passion. Cicero appeals—half poetically it is true, but very beautifully—to the same feelings, when he is claiming for the state the services of its members in peace as well as war. "Our country has not given us birth and reared us without expecting from us in return some 'nurture-fee'; she did not mean only to make herself the slave of our convenience, and furnish us with a safe shelter to be idle in, a quiet spot for our repose: she gave us birth and nurture that she might engage our best energies and talents in her own service, allowing us to use for our own private ends so much, and so much only, as might not be needed for her own." And so says Ben Jonson;
"She is our common mother, and doth claim
The prime part of us."
"From their firm base to rend
These walls, and lay their ramparts in the dust;
Or, dying, with their warm blood steep this earth."
And they were casting lots, when he left, for their several stations. He urges on Eteocles, as "prudent helmsman"[2] of the state, the duty of guarding the towers, for already
"All in arms the Argive host comes on,
Involved in dust, and from the snorting steeds
The thick foam falls, and whitens all the fields.
Even now the waves of war roar o'er the plain."
The scout returns to his post; and after a brief appeal to the protection of the gods, the king also leaves the scene to attend to the defences, and the stage is for a moment empty. Then the Chorus enters—a band of Theban maidens, who are going in solemn procession to offer their supplications at the altars of the gods. They enter the orchestra at once, and deploy the ranks of their little battalions, like the Egyptian Suppliants in a former play. Their song presents a wonderful intermingling of the various tones which befit the inhabitants of a besieged and panic-stricken city. Fear is the predominant emotion; but from time to time martial chords break out through the uncertain strain, as they describe the sound and aspect of the attacking force; and from time to time the music sinks into the tenderest notes of pathos, as the maidens call for help on each god and goddess in turn. First they call on Mars, as god of war, to look upon his own city, which once he held so dear, on all the gods who love Thebes—
"And all ye powers whose guardian care
Protects these walls, this favoured land,
O hear these pious, suppliant strains;
Propitious aid us, aid a virgin band,
And save us from the victor's chains!"
Then they appeal to Zeus, in whose hands are all events, and to his warlike offspring, Pallas, and great Poseidon, lord of the horse and the ocean, and Venus, the mother of their race. They cry to Apollo, and Artemis the goddess of the dreadful bow, and queenly Juno; beseeching them in turn, by the crash of shields, and the noise of crested warriors, and clang of bits ringing out slaughter—by the seven champions at the gates—by the heavy rumbling of chariots, and the showers of stones that rage against the battlements—to rout these alien hosts and save the sacred city.
But the prayers of maidens, beautiful as they are, are not thought the best means for nerving the energy of the citizens and promoting the defence. Eteocles, returning, rebukes them in no measured terms; and, as a man might who was hampered by the weakness of women in the moment of emergency, he launches out into stern condemnation of the sex—
"Nor in misfortune, nor in dear success,
Be woman my associate; if her power
Bears sway, her insolence exceeds all bounds;
But if she fears, woe to that house and city.
······
War is no female province, but the scene
For men: hence; home, nor spread your mischiefs here!"
The Greek had not that chivabous respect for women which would insure the condemnation, by a modern audience, of such a sentiment; and, on the other hand, their sense of proportion was offended by anything approaching to forwardness on a woman's part, or any interference with the offices of men. Their estimate of "women's work" is best expressed by the words which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles: "That woman is most laudable whose name is least heard among men either for praise or blame." In the last lines, however, Eteocles goes beyond the general Greek sentiment and practice. Both Homer and Virgil represent the matrons of a beleaguered town as going in procession to the temples, to entreat for their countrymen the protection of the gods; and in all civilised countries the rule has to some extent been recognised, that "men must work and women must weep." And the king soon modifies his prohibition. He orders the women to leave the shrines, but to continue their prayers in quiet by themselves, where the sound of their grief may not increase the panic.
"My charge shall be at our seven gates to fix
Six of our bravest youth, myself the seventh,
In dreadful opposition to the foe."
In obedience to the king's command, the band of maidens begin their prayers afresh. The first tones are soft and feminine, and exhibit, in their expressions of fear, that delicate perception of a particular phase of emotion and wonderful command of words for its description, which, even in this early period, distinguishes the Greek writers. "Care and fear," the maiden says, "keep all rest from my heart; pressing on my inmost soul comes a crowd of anxieties, that kindles there a burning dread."
"And as the trembling dove, whose fears
Keep watch in her uneasy bow'r,
Thinks in each rustling leaf she hears
The serpent gliding to devour,
I tremble at each sullen sound
Of clashing arms, that roars around:
With all their troops, with all their powers,
Fierce they advance to storm our towers;
Now hurtling in the darkened sky
What does my cruel fate prepare!
Rude batt'ring stones incessant fly,
And all the missive storm of war."
Half familiarly they argue with the gods. "Where will ye find," they say, "a better home?" If the city is taken, it will be because the gods have left it, as the king said earlier in the play. "The gods, 'tis said, desert a conquered town." Then they must go forth—these gods who have dwelt so long in Thebes, and gotten their shrines and favourite haunts there—they must go out to seek some other resting-place, some vacant spot unoccupied by deities, desolate, and cherished by no devoted worshippers. Gods, like men, have homes which they get to love; they cling to the people who have been kind to them, and feel uneasy in a strange abode.
"Ah, to what fairer, richer plain,
Your radiant presence will you deign,
These fields abandoned to the foes,
Through whose crisped shades and smiling meads,
Jocundly warbling as she goes,
Dirce her liquid treasures leads,
And boasts that Tethys never gave,
Nor all her nymphs, a purer wave!"
Then they plead the antiquity of their city. It would be sad for so venerable a city to be cast down to Hades, and for its daughters to be dragged like horses, by their hair, through the streets, with their robes torn from about them. The cruel outrages offered to women are the most prominent feature in ancient descriptions of the sufferings of a captured town. The other features are vividly described:—
"From house to house, from street to street,
The crashing flames roar round and meet;
Each way the fiery deluge preys,
And girds us with the circling blaze.
The brave that 'midst these dire alarms
For their lost country greatly dare,
And fired with vengeance rush to arms,
Fall victims to the blood-stained spear.
The bleeding babe, with innocent cries,
Drops from his mother's breast, and dies.
See rapine rushes, bent on prey,
His hasty step brooks no delay;
The spoiler, loaded with his store,
Envious the loaded spoiler views;
Disdains another should have more,
And his insatiate toil renews.
Thick on the earth the rich spoil lies;
For the rude plunderers' restless-rolling tide,
Their worthless numbers waving wide,
Drop in their wild haste many a glitt'ring prize."
The chorus is brought to an end by the return of the messenger, who is now able to give a full account of the seven champions who are leading the attack. The portion of the play which follows is occupied entirely with the description of the combatants who are to meet at each gate. It combines three elements—an epic, a tragic, and a scenic.
It is a grand epic muster-roll: heroes and arms and warlike challenges are described with the pomp and circumstance of the Homeric story; as graphic as Scott, as solemn as Milton.
The tragic element is twofold. First, through all the messenger's description of arms and shields, runs the idea of the moral conflict that is to be waged at the same time between moderation and boastfulness, between patriotism and fury; a part and type of the conflict which the Greek and the artist are always waging against the Oriental and the savage. Secondly,—and this is its main purpose in the play,—the description of the several champions of the foe, each in turn calling for a Theban to oppose him, leads up gradually to the last pair, when Polynices, the brother of the king, and most daring of the assailants, can be opposed by none but by the king himself. As one chief after another is named, we tremble to feel that it will soon come to this ill-fated pair, and we know what the issue will be,—
"How each will slay his brother at a blow,"—
and how their fall will "leave the land accurst," a legacy of new troubles for the unhappy house of Œdipus.
Besides these, the passage has a scenic element. It is a remarkable instance of that stately regularity which we have noticed before. The messenger and the king stand together on the stage, and the Chorus is arrayed in the orchestra. The messenger describes an Argive champion; the king, in reply, describes the Theban whom he will send against him; the Chorus utters a short prayer for the success of the native champion. This is repeated seven times; the seventh being distinguished by the addition of some discussion between the three speakers, and ending in a much longer choric ode. Each of the Argive heroes is known by the cognisance on his shield, like the knights of medieval chivalry.
The first foe is Tydeus.
"Already near the Prœtian gate in arms
Stands Tydeus raging; for the prophet's voice
Forbids his foot to pass Ismenus' stream,
The victims not propitious: at the pass
Furious, and eager for the fight, the chief,
Fierce as the dragon when the mid-day sun
Calls forth his glowing terrors, raves aloud,
Reviles the sage as forming tim'rous league
With war and fate. Frowning he speaks, and shakes
The dark crest streaming o'er his shaded helm
In triple wave; whilst dreadful ring around
The brazen bosses of his shield, impressed
With this proud argument. A sable sky
Burning with stars; and in the midst, full-orbed,
A silver moon, the eye of night, o'er all
Awful in beauty pours her peerless light.
Clad in these proud habiliments, he stands
Close to the river's margin, and with shouts
Demands the war, like an impatient steed,
That pants upon the foaming curb, and waits
With fiery expectation the known signal,
Swift at the trumpet's sound to burst away.
What equal chief wilt thou appoint against him?"
So speaks the soldier, and Eteocles replies:—
"This military pride, it moves not me.
The gorgeous blazonry of arms, the crest
High waving o'er the helm, the roaring boss,
Harmless without the spear, imprint no wound.
The sable night, spangled with golden stars,
On his proud shield impressed, perchance may prove
A gloomy presage. Should the shade of night
Fall on his dying eyes, the boastful charge
May to the bearer be deemed ominous,
And be the prophet of his own destruction.
Against his rage the son of Astacus,
That breathes deliberate valour, at that gate
Will I appoint commander; bent on deeds
Of glory, but a votary at the shrine
Of modesty, he scorns the arrogant vaunt
As base, but bids brave actions speak his worth.
The flower of that bold stem, which from the ground
Rose armed, and fell not in the deathful fight,
Is Menalippus; him his parent earth
Claims as her own, and in her natural right
Calls him to guard her from the hostile spear;
But the brave deed the die of war decides."
Then the Chorus follows, with its prayer:—
"Go then, my guardian hero, go;
And may each fav'ring god with bright success
Thy gen'rous valour bless;
For at thy country's dear command
Thou arm'st thy righteous hand,
To pour her vengeance on the foe.
Yet my sad heart must sigh,
When on the blood-empurpled ground,
Gored with many a gaping wound,
I see my dearest friends expiring lie."
At the Electra gates stands Capaneus, the impious, who openly defies both gods and men. He laughs at the thunderbolts of heaven, and will take the city, he says, "whether Zeus will or no." His cognisance is a flaming torch, and his motto, "I will burn the city." Against him is set the fiery Polyphontes; and the Chorus prays that the heaven's lightning which he defies may fall and blast him; as, indeed, it did.
To the gates of Neis comes Eteoclus, who bears on his shield an armed man climbing a scaling-ladder, and round is written, "Not Mars himself shall beat me from the towers." Against him Megareus, son of Creon, is matched with little fear.
The giant Hippomedon attacks the gates of Pallas. Upon his vast shield appears a Typhon breathing out fire and smoke; and like one of the frenzied followers of Bacchus, he rushes shouting to the war. To face this foe Eteocles has two champions. First, Pallas herself, who,
"Holding near the gates
Her hallowed state, abhors his furious rage;"—
and, of mortal combatants, the bold Hyperbius, whose shield is a good omen of his success. For, as Hippomedon displays the Typhon, so
"Hyperbius bears
The majesty of Jove securely throned,
Grasping his flaming bolt, and who e'er saw
The Thund'rer vanquished? In the fellowship
Of friendly gods, the conquerors are with us,
They with the conquered; and with like event
These warriors shall engage. As Jove in fight
Subdued the fell Typhœus, so his form
Emblazoned on the shield shall guard Hyperbius."
Fifth, at the northern gates, a soft-cheeked youth is set—the girl-faced Parthenopæus, who has, none the less, the soul of a hero. His cognisance is no good omen for Thebes. It is the hateful Sphinx—the old enemy of the city—and she is represented as carrying a Theban in her clutches, and holding him up as a mark for the enemy's arrows. Against him goes Actor, who will not boast, but do; "and I doubt not," says the king, "that he will keep the hateful monster outside the city, only to draw a more furious attack upon the man who carries her."
The sixth chief is Amphiaraus, the prophet, who knew from the first the fate that awaited the expedition. Even now he is rebuking Polynices bitterly for leading foreign arms against his native land.
"How grateful to the gods must this deed be,
Glorious to hear, and in the roll of fame
Shining to distant ages, thus to lead
These foreign arms to waste thy bleeding country,
To raze those princely mansions where thy fathers,
Heroes and demigods, once held their seats!"
And for himself he says:—
"Prescient of fate I shall enrich this soil
Sunk in the hostile plain. But let us fight.
One thing at least is mine; I will not find
A vulgar or dishonourable death."
The warrior-prophet alone bears no device upon his broad shield, for he
"Wishes to be, not to appear, the best."[3]
Eteocles enlarges on the misery of the fate that makes a righteous man a companion of the wicked, and exposes him to a share in their punishment. Amphiaraus, the king thinks, will not engage at all; yet the veteran hero Lasthenes is sent out to face him.
And now comes the terrible part of the messenger's announcement:—
"The seventh bold chief—forgive me that I name
Thy brother, and relate the horrible vows,
The imprecations which his rage pours forth
Against the city; on fire to mount the walls,
And from their turrets to this land proclaim,
Rending its echoes with the song of war,
Captivity: to meet thee sword to sword,
Kill thee, then die upon thee."
His shield bears a golden figure of Justice, and the scroll—
"Yet once more to his country, and once more
To his paternal throne I will restore him."
Eteocles recognises the fulfilment of the imprecations uttered by Œdipus himself against his sons, but he determines unflinchingly to face the issue. Never was Justice, virgin child of Zeus, a teacher or friend of Polynices, and so his arrogant motto will not restore him.
"In this confiding I will meet his arms
In armèd opposition: who more fit?
Chief shall engage with chief, brother with brother,
And foe with foe. Haste, arm me for the fight;
Bring forth my greaves, my hauberk, my strong spear!"
The Theban maidens beg their king not to incur the inexpiable guilt of fratricide. Let Theban fight with Theban; that blood can be washed away,—
"But death of brothers by each other slain,
That stain no expiation can atone."
To their entreaties the king opposes the claims of honour, and he faces the curse with the courage of despair.
"No; since the god impels me, I will on.
And let the race by Laius, let them all
Abhorred of Phœbus, in this storm of fate
Sink down to deep Cocytus' dreary flood."
The Chorus think that in calmer moments Eteocles will give up so wild a resolution; but his choice is deliberate, he sees the certain ruin, and goes out unhesitatingly to meet it.
The ode which follows strikes the key-note of the piece. The issue of the war is being determined at the seven gates, and meanwhile the Chorus express the anxiety of the spectators, and show how fully the past history of the royal house justifies the gloomiest apprehensions. We give the whole ode, as a good instance of the function of the Chorus in explaining the true moral significance of an event:—
"She comes, the fierce tremendous power,
And harrows up my soul with dread;
No gentle goddess, prompt to shower
Her blessings on some favoured head.
I know her now, the prophetess of ill,
And vengeance ratifies each word,
The votive fury, fiend abhorred,
The father's curses to fulfil.
Dreadful she comes, and with her brings
The brood of fate, that laps the blood of kings.
The rude barbarian, from the mines
Of Scythia, o'er the lots presides;
Ruthless to each his share assigns,
And the contested realm divides.
To each allots no wider a domain,
Than on the cold earth, as they lie,
Their breathless bodies occupy,
Regardless of an ampler reign.
Such narrow compass does the sword,
A cruel umpire, their high claims afford.
Conflicting thus in furious mood,
Should each by other's hand be slain,
Should the black fountain of their blood
Spout forth and drench the thirsty plain;
Who shall the solemn expiation pay?
Who with pure lavers cleanse the dead?
Miseries to miseries thus succeed,
And vengeance marks this house her prey,
Swift to chastise the first ill deed;
And the sons' sons in her deep fury bleed.
The first ill deed from Laius sprung;
Thrice from his shrine these words of fate
Awful the Pytliian Phœbus sung,
'Die childless, wouldst thou save the state.'
Urged by his friends, as round the free wine flows,
To Love's forbidden rites he flies.
By the son's hand the father dies,
He in the chaste ground, whence he rose,
Was bold to implant the deadly root,
And madness reared each baleful spreading shoot.
Wide o'er misfortune's surging tide
Billows succeeding billows spread;
Should one, its fury spent, subside,
Another lifts its boist'rous head,
And foams around the city's shattered prow.
But should the rough tempestuous wave
Force through our walls, too slight to save,
And lay the thin partition low,
Will not the flood's resistless sway
Sweep kings and people, town and realms away?
The dreadful curse pronounced of old
To vengeance rouses ruthless hate;
And slaughter, ranging uncontrolled,
Pursues the hideous work of fate.
Wrecked in the storm, the great, the brave, the wise,
Are sunk beneath the roaring tide.
Such was the chief, this city's pride,
Dear to each god in yon bright skies,
Whose prudence took our dead away,
The ravening monster gorged with human prey.
Where now the chief? his glories where?
Fallen, fallen. From the polluted bed
Indignant madness, wild despair,
And agonising grief succeed.
The light of heaven, himself, his sons, abhorred,
Darkling he feeds his gloomy rage,
Bids them, with many a curse, engage
And part their empire with the sword.
That curse now holds its unmoved state,
The furious fiend charged with the work of fate."
The messenger returns. The city has escaped the yoke of slavery; the boasts of the mighty are fallen; and the vessel of the state having sprung no leak under all the assaults of the wave, now rides in calm water. But sorrow is mingled with the general joy, for the royal brothers have fulfilled their father's curse; each has slain his brother, and with them is fallen the whole race of Laius.
This sorrow far outweighs the joy, at least with us, whose interest is mainly in the family of Œdipus. The rest of the play, accordingly, is full of lamentation till close upon the end, when Antigone, the sister of the dead brothers, claims our admiration; but even she, in announcing her heroic resolution, reminds us that there are still more woes in store for this devoted house. The Chorus chant a dirge, and while we listen to its music, a long procession of Theban citizens enters across the whole front of the stage, bearing the bodies of Eteocles and Polynices; after them come Antigone and Ismene her sister, with a long train of women wailing and lamenting. As the first mourners pass, the Chorus beat their breasts and heads with regular stroke in time to the music, which here assumes for a moment, without losing its sadness, the character of those strains by which the time was set for the rowers in an Athenian galley. They are echoing the beat of the oars in that ship of gloomy sanctity,
"Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,"
which is moving now over the waves of Acheron to the unseen land. Then the music changes to a distinct march, as Antigone and Ismene come with their procession of women, and take their places, as the men had done, upon the stage. The corpses of the two brothers are placed in front, and the women are grouped behind them in robes of mourning, and behind these again stand the multitude of Theban citizens. As we contemplate this grand tableau of sorrow, the Chorus, divided into two bands, express the general feeling. The varied music gives interest and beauty to words which in themselves are dull and monotonous. Repetition is characteristic of lamentation. The mourner has only one feeling to express, and cares little to find new words to express it; he gets little further than, "O my son, Absalom! O Absalom, my son, my son!" But the song ends with words of rest, though it is the rest of the exhausted storm.
"It falls, the royal house, it falls;
Ruin lords it o'er the walls,—
And the Furies howl around,
Notes of shrill, soul-piercing sound.
Slaughter reeking yet with gore,
Raises high each gate before,
Where they fought, and where they bled,
Trophies of the mighty dead;
And, the rival chief subdued,
Ceases from her work of blood."
Then Antigone and Ismene come forward, and take up their places, Antigone by the corpse of Polynices, and Ismene by that of Eteocles; and there, in short answering cries, lament for their dead brothers. Here we see the systematic wailing of those mourning women, "the women and the minstrels making a noise," whose services were and still are constantly employed in the East. The words are nothing—it is the series of sudden piercing cries that so forcibly expresses grief.
Here the actual subject of the play could end; but we are not only to be satiated with calamity, but to expect more; and, what is better, the weakness of all this wailing is to be relieved by the heroism of Antigone. A herald comes upon the scene, bringing the decree of the elders of the city with regard to the burial of the two brothers. Eteocles is to be carried to the tomb with all honour, as a hero and patriot; but Polynices, as an enemy of his country, is to be cast out, unburied, to the birds and to the dogs. Such is the decree of the Theban rulers. Antigone replies:—
"And to the Theban rulers I declare,
If none besides dare bury him, myself
Will do that office, heedless of the danger,
And think no shame to disobey the state,
Paying the last sad duties to a brother.
Nature has tender ties, and strangely joins
The offspring of the same unhappy mother
And the same wretched father. In this task
Shrink not, my soul, to share the ills he suffered,
Involuntary ills; and while life warms
This breast be bold to show a sister's love
To a dead brother! Shall the famished wolves
Fatten on him? Away with such a thought!"
In spite of the state's repeated prohibition she persists in her resolve, and goes out at once to perform it. This is the closing scene. The two corpses are carried out separately, Antigone and half the Chorus following that of Polynices; the other half, with Ismene, that of Eteocles.
"To those that wait the fate of Polynices
Let the state act its pleasure. We will go
Attend his funeral rites, and aid his sister
To place him in the earth. Such sorrows move
The common feelings of humanity;
And when the deed is just the state approves it."
Such are the words of Antigone and her friends. The other train reply:—
"And we with him, as justice and the state
Concur to call us. Next th' immortal gods
And Jove's high power this valiant youth came forth
The guardian of his country, and repelled
Th' assault of foreign foes, whose raging force
Rushed like a torrent threatening to o'erwhelm us."
- ↑ The translations throughout this play are from Potter.
- ↑ The reader will notice how constantly metaphors from naval life occur in the poets of the seafaring Athenians. The figure before us has become a commonplace in modern poetry. So Scott says of Pitt:—
"With Palinure's unaltered mood,
Firm at his dangerous post he stood;
Each call for needful rest repelled,
With dying hand the rudder held,
Till in his fall, with fateful sway,
The steerage of the realm gave way." - ↑ When the play was produced at Athens this line was recognised as a description of Aristides, the actor turning towards him as he sat in the theatre, and the whole audience applauding the application.