To any God for succour, or to call
On any friend for aid? For holiest deed
I bear this charge of rank unholiness.
If acts like these the Gods on high approve,
We, taught by pain, shall own that we have sinned;
But if these sin, [Looking at Creon,] I pray they suffer not
Worse evils than the wrongs they do to me.
Chor. Still do the same wild blasts
Vex her who standeth there.930
Creon. Therefore shall these her guards
Weep sore for this delay.
Chor. Ah me! this word of thine
Tells of death drawing nigh.
Creon. I cannot bid thee hope
For other end than this.
Antig. Ο citadel of Thebes, my native land,
Ye Gods of ancient days,
I go, and linger not.
Behold me, Ο ye senators of Thebes,940
The last, lone scion of the kingly race,
What things I suffer, and from whom they come,
Revering still the laws of reverence.
Stroph. I.
Chor. So did the form of Danae bear of old,[1]
In brazen palace hid,
To lose the light of heaven,
And in her tomb-like chamber was enclosed:
Yet she, Ο child, was noble in her race,
And well she stored the golden shower of Zeus.950
- ↑ As Antigone had gone back to the parallelisms of the past, so does the Chorus, finding in the first, at least, of the three examples that follow some topic of consolation. Danae, though shut up by her father Acrisios, received the golden shower of Zeus, and became the mother of the hero Perseus.
