Polyneices

So Polyneices went to Argos and married into the family of Adrastus, and having collected a numerous force of Argives is leading them here;

Still I trust my mother, and at the same time mistrust her, the one who persuaded me to come here under truce.

I have made my points, mother, without stringing together words to entangle you, but urging a fair case, I think, in the judgment of the wise and the simple.

The corpse—some one has just given it burial and disappeared after sprinkling thirsty dust on the flesh and performing the other rites that piety demands.

But as for his brother, Polyneices, I mean, who on his return from exile wanted to burn to the ground the city of his fathers and his race’s gods, and wanted to feed on kindred blood and lead the remnant into slavery—it has been proclaimed to the city that no one shall give him funeral honors or lamentation, but all must leave him unburied and a sight of shame, with his body there for birds and dogs to eat.

Has not Creon destined our brothers, the one to honored burial, the other to unburied shame?

And the younger son has stripped the elder, Polyneices, of the throne, and has driven him from his fatherland.

For then neither would he who now holds the scepter and the throne survive, nor would the exile ever return;

They say a man—not from your city, yet of your race—has somehow thrown himself down, as a suppliant, at our altar of Poseidon, where I was sacrificing when I first set out here.

But Telephus comes to its defence and kills Thersander, the son of Polyneices, and is himself wounded by Achilles.