The promised nuptial tie denied to me,

And the sweet care of children. Ill-starred maid!
Thus reft of friends I go, while yet alive,

Down to the cavernous chambers of the dead!
In what sort have I wronged the laws of heaven?
Ah! why, unhappy, must I still regard

The Gods-what aid invoke? when now I earn
The name of impious by my piety.

Then be it so if heaven approves these deeds,
My punishment shall prove to me my guilt;
But if the sin is theirs, may they not suffer
More sorrow than they wrongly wreak on me!

(Kreon comes forward again.)

CHORUS.

(Anapastic Movement.)

Blowing still from the self-same quarter the
Storm of the soul this maiden possesseth.

KREON.

For this, and for loitering thus by the way,
With weeping and wailing these guards shall atone.

ANTIGONE.

Ah me this announcement has come to mine ears, The near neighbour of death!

CHORUS.

No comfort I give for the confident hope
That this sentence will lack its fulfilment.

ANTIGONE.

Land of my fathers! city of Thebe!

Gods of my lineage!

καίτοι καὶ γενεᾷ τίμιος, ὦ παῖ, παῖ,

Ηδωνῶν βασιλεὺς, κερτομίοις οργαῖς,

ἐκ Διονύσου πετρώδει κατάφαρκτος ἐν δεσμῷ. 930

οὕτω τᾶς μανίας δεινὸν ἀποστάζει

εν

ἀνθηρόν τε μένος κεῖνος· ἐπέγνω † δὲ * δύαις

ψαύων τὸν θεὸν ἐν κερτομίοις γλώσσαις.

παύεσκε μὲν γὰρ ἐνθέους

γυναῖκας, εὔϊόν τε πῦρ, φιλαύλους το

935

They seize me-no longer I tarry!

See me, the only surviving branch of the
Princes of Thebe,

See what a doom, and from whom, is upon me,

Because I the holy have hallowed!

(Antigone is led away.)

X. FOURTH STASIMON.

CHORUS.

E'en Danaë's form endured to lose

In brass-clampt halls the light of heaven.

STROPHE I.

Concealed and pent was she in tomb-like chamber;

And yet, my child, my child,

From lineage high she came,

And husbanded the seed of Zeus,

Flowing in golden streams.

The power of destiny is mighty still!

Nor wealth nor war,

Nor tower on land, nor the black ships, sea-stricken, Can escape it.

ANTISTROPHE I.

He too, so keen in wrath, the son of Dryas,

Edonia's King, received the yoke,

Thanks to his taunting mood,

By Dionysus closed around with rocky bonds.

So mighty and so vigorous the strength

Of madness which distilled from him.

But sorrow taught him

It was a God his jeering tongue had mocked.

For he sought to let and hinder

The dames possessed by God,

And the Bacchanalian torches ;

ἠρέθιζε Μούσας.

παρὰ δὲ Κυανέων πελαγέων διδύμας αλὸς,

ἀκταὶ Βοσπόριαι, ἰδ' ὁ Θρηκῶν †[ἄξενος]

στρ. β'.

Σαλμύδησος, ἵν ̓ ἄγχιστος Ἄρης

δισσοῖσι Φινείδαις

εἶδεν ἀρατὸν ἕλκος,

τυφλωθὲν ἐξ ἀγρίας δάμαρτος,

ἀλαὸν ἀλαστόροισιν ὀμμάτων κύκλοις ἀραχθέν,

ἐγχέων * άτερθε,

χείρεσσι καὶ κερκίδων ἀκμαῖσι·

940

945

κατὰ δὲ τακόμενοι μέλεοι μελέαν πάθαν ἀντιστ. β'.

κλαῖον ματρὸς, ἔχοντες ἀνύμφευτον γονάν

ὁ δὲ σπέρμα μὲν ἀρχαιογόνων

†αὔδασ ̓ Ερεχθειδῶν,

τηλεπόροις δ ̓ ἐν ἄντροις

τράφη θυέλλῃσιν ἐν πατρῴαις

Βορεὰς ἅμιππος ὀρθόποδος ὑπὲρ πάγου θεῶν παῖς·

ἀλλὰ κἀπ ̓ ἐκείνα

Μοῖραι μακραίωνες ἔσχον, ὦ παῖ.

950

And much provoked the Muses of the flute.

STROPHE II.

By the Cyanean shoals, where two seas meet,

Are the Bosporian cliffs, and Salmydesus,
Where Thracians dwell, unkind to voyagers.

There Mars, the neighbour, saw the accursed wound,
Inflicted, blindness-bringing,

On the two sons of Phineus,

By his savage wife;

A wound sight-leasing to the ghostly eye-balls,
Stabbed without spears

By violent hands and with the shuttle's point.

ANTISTROPHE II.

Wasting away their mother's piteous sufferings,
Full piteously they bewailed,

Sprung as they were from one

In marriage most unblest.

But she, by line maternal, challenged her share

In the old honours of the Erechtheidæ.

And, Boreas-daughter, she was reared amid paternal gales,

In the deep-grottoed caverns;

Swift as the steed she clomb the precipices

Child of the deities was she,

But yet the everlasting Fates

O'ertook e'en her, my child.

(Teiresias enters led by a boy.)

XI. FIFTH EPISODE.

TEIRESIAS.

Nobles of Thebes, behold us here consorted,