Book 11

11. After great-souled Capaneus had spent the frenzies of an unjust valour and breathed out the bolt he had taken in, and the path of the avenging flame had marked the walls, having attended his far fall to earth: the victor Jupiter sets in order with his right hand the shaken strokes of his blows, and brings back the sky and the day with his face. The gods give thanks, as though, wearied, he panted from the battles of Phlegra and had pressed smoking Aetna upon Enceladus. He lies clasping the fragments of the torn tower, grim still to see, and leaving deeds to be remembered by the nations and not unpraised even by the Thunderer himself. As great as the violator of Apollo's mother is stretched in Avernus; the very birds shudder, if ever from his deep breast they emerge, and they gaze at the immense limbs of him as he lies, while the wretched fibres grow into their fodder: so, cast there, he weighs upon the earth and burns the hostile fields and the plain that pants with celestial sulphur, Thebes breathes again, and from the temples the fallen ranks rise; now there is an end to vows and an end to their last laments, and the mothers dared to set down their children.

But wandering flight rolled the Achaeans straggling over the field. No longer are the enemy squadrons or mortal iron feared: before all eyes is the wrath of Jove, for all their arms blaze with fear and their helmets thunder, and they think Jupiter himself pursues them and sets fires against the fleeing. The Agenorean soldier presses on, and uses the tumult of the sky: as when through the Massylian fields a lion has broken the untamed kings of the herd with his great jaws and goes off content; then close at hand the harsh bears, then the greedy wolves come, and, their rage relaxed, they lick, degenerate, the wounds of another's prey. Here Eurymedon presses on, with rustic dread upon his arms, rustic weapons in his hand, and his father's way of stirring tumults: Pan was his sire; here Alatreus, a boy, surpasses in his attempts his tender years and matches his youthful father: happy both, but more fortunate is he whom it gladdens to have begotten; nor now is it easy to tell apart which arms ring louder, from which arm the spear flies farther.

The rampart is crowded with the dense swarm of the fleeing, what turns do you roll, Gradivus? Just now they were scaling the walls of Cadmus: now the Pelasgians defend their own dwellings! As the clouds come back, as with the south winds blowing about the field bends down by turns, as in the white whirlpool now the tide uncovers the thirsty sands, now clothes them. Far and wide the Tirynthian band breathes its last, the offspring that copied the spoils of the god; grim from the stars mourns Amphitryon's son, to see in blood the Nemean hides and the like clubs and the like quivers. On the iron-bound height of an Argive tower there stood Enyeus, peerless with the war-trumpet of Mars favouring him, the encourager; but then he was giving the wretched a useful signal and counselling flight and safe retreats into the camp: when a sudden wound came down from the slanting air, and his left hand was held to his ear, catching the sound that pressed it, just as it was; now his spirit flees into the empty breezes, now his cold lips are silent, the trumpet alone finished the song.

And now Tisiphone, mistress of crimes and practiced in the blood of a twofold race, seeks to mock the fraternal war in the line of battle: nor does she trust herself enough for so great a contest, unless she rouse her companion Megaera from her infernal seat and her kindred snakes to the battle, therefore she withdraws afar into an empty valley, and digs the ground with her Stygian sword, and absent murmurs into the earth a name and — an unmistakable sign to the Elysian realms — lifts a horned serpent from her hair with a long hiss: that leader of the dark-blue locks, at whose sound forthwith all the earth and the sea and the pole shuddered, and the father looked back again to the fires of Aetna, she receives the sound; by chance she stood then closest to her parent, while in all the assembly of Dis Capaneus is praised and she cherishes the shade marked out by the Stygian streams, forthwith, the mass of the earth broken open, beneath the stars she stood, the dead exult, and as much as the deep darkness thinned out, so much did the light recede. Her black sister receives her and, clasping her right hand, speaks:

'Thus far, sister, I have been able to bear the dread commands of our Stygian parent and the frenzies bidden me, alone above the earth and a victim meeting the world, while you restrain Elysium and the gentle shades. Nor is the reward of my delay ugly, nor my labours empty: all this, that the fields are wet, that the pools steam with blood, that the Lethaean bank rejoices in its countless swarm, is my strength, my glad insignia; but why do I speak of these? Let Mars have them, and let common Enyo boast them. You saw — surely it was plain among the Stygian shades — the leader foul with blood, his open jaws and his face wet with black gore: the wretch devours insatiably the head I gave him; just now indeed a dreadful crash came down to you from the stars: a sacred tempest pressed upon me, I, mingled in the frenzied arms of the man, was watching the wars of the gods and the great wraths of the bolt. But now — for I will speak it — with long toil my heart grows weary, sister, and my hands are slow; the nether yew dulls in the sky, and the too-many stars lull my unwonted snakes. You, in whom all the fury still is, and whose locks exult, fresh from the spring of Cocytus, grant me to join my strength, no accustomed lines nor wars of Mars do we prepare, but the brothers' — though kindly Faith and Piety resist, they shall be conquered — the brothers' swords must be drawn hand to hand, a great work! Let us ourselves be fitted with hatreds, ourselves with discordant arms. Why do you come so slow? Come, choose whose standards you will carry; both are easy and ours; but the doubtful crowd, and the addresses of the mother, and Antigone, coaxing with her prayers, I fear, lest a little they delay our counsels; even he himself, who was wont to weary us with his praying and to demand the avenging Furies of his eyes, is now a father: he is said now to weep alone, apart from all the company, for his own. And indeed I myself delay to burst into Thebes and the accustomed hearth; let the impious exile obey you, and drive on the Argive crime; let not mild Adrastus prevail, beware, nor the Lernaean folk delay him, go, and turn back, an enemy, to the alternating fights.'

Having so divided their tasks, the sisters went their separate ways: as Notus and Boreas from the twin poles of the world, this one fed on Rhipaean snow, this one on Libyan sands, stir wars: the rivers cry out, the seas, the clouds, the woods, and now the ruins lie open; the farmers bewail their losses, and yet they pity the sailors caught upon the sea. When the father, high on the summit of Olympus, saw those two defiling the day, and Hyperion's trembling orb suffused with stains, he begins thus with a grim face: 'I have seen the arms-bearing frenzies, as far as right allowed, dwellers of heaven, and the lawful battle-lines, though one man entered upon impious war and dared to fall by my right hand, now an unspeakable match and a combat unknown to the wretched lands draws near: take away your eyes! Let them dare those things with the gods absent, and be hidden from Jove; enough to have seen the banquets of Tantalus and the guilty altars of Lycaon and Mycenae leading the swift stars to the pole. Now even the day must be troubled: receive, earth, evil clouds, and let the poles withdraw: it is resolved to spare the world and my heavenly ones; at least let not the stars of the kindly maiden, nor the brothers of Leda, see such things.' So the almighty father, and he took away their sight from the guilty fields, and the earth lacked the sweet clear sky.

And now the maiden, child of Erebus, traces Polynices' course through the Argive cohorts, and finds it close beneath the gates, uncertain whether by death or by unjust flight he should go out, and omens had troubled his doubtful senses: he had seen, while in the dark night he wandered the rampart, sick of counsel and turning over his last cares, the torn image of his wife Argia with a mournful torch — there are portents of the gods, thus she was making ready to go, to carry such brands to her husband! — therefore as he asked what way, what grief, why the mournful tokens, she had only wept, and with her hand had turned away the silent fires, he knows his mind has seen a horror; for from where would she come from Mycenae, and the wife, unlooked-for, approach the rampart? But he feels the warnings of fate and the funerals near, and fears to feel them, when indeed the Dira of opened Acheron, plying her lash three times, touched his breastplate, he burns, helpless in spirit, and not so much to sit upon the throne as to commit crime and slaughter, and amid the blood of his pierced brother to breathe his last, does he desire, and suddenly he addresses Adrastus:

'Late indeed, the last surviving of the allies and of the Argive race, I undertake counsels, father, when affairs are already in straits; then was the time, when the blood of the Achaeans was whole, to go forth of my own will and take up my proper fight, not to expose the flower of the Danaan people and the venerable souls of kings, that I might put upon my head a lamentable honour for so many cities; since the rough season of valour has passed, now at least let it be right to pay what I have deserved; for you know, father-in-law, though you hide deep your wounds and respect the broken shame of your son-in-law: I am that man who drove you, ruling peace and pious laws — unhappy I, and would I had been given as a guest to other cities! — an exile from your country and kingdom — but at last exact the penalty: my brother to the final war — why do you shudder? it is decreed and fixed — I summon; cease to delay, nor will you be able, not if my black mother and my wretched sisters fall into the midst of arms, not if my father himself stand against me as I rush to war and thrust his quenched orbs upon my helmet, shall I fail. Or shall I drink whatever of Inachian blood remains, and even now make use of your deaths? I saw the chasms of the earth burst open for my sake, and did not enter; I saw Tydeus lifeless and made him guilty; undefended Tegea demands me back, her king, and my bereaved mother howls for me in the Parrhasian caves, I myself could neither climb the banks of Ismenos, while Hippomedon made the pools bloody, nor the Tyrian towers, while it thundered, and share the frenzies with you, Capaneus, what so great fear for the light have I? But I shall pay worthy recompense. Let them gather, wherever each is, the Pelasgian wives and mothers and aged fathers, whose joys I plucked so many and whose homes I bereaved: I run against my brother, what is there beyond? Let them watch, and with their vows demand Eteocles the victor. And now farewell, my wife, and farewell, sweet Mycenae! But you, dear father-in-law — for not all the blame of my woes is mine, and the gods are with me, and the guilty Fates — be gentle to my ashes, and when after this battle I am snatched by the birds, cover me from my brother and bring my urn back home — this only — and join your daughter in a better marriage.'

They were dissolving into tears, as when, spring returned, the Bistonian snows grow warm, and the huge Haemus is lowered, and Rhodope sinks into narrow streams, and the old man had begun to soothe the raging one with gentle address: the bloody Fury cut short his words with new terror, and the swift-footed horse and the fatal arms, forthwith, having taken on the face of Inachian Phereclus, she offered, and shut out the faithful voices with the helmet. And besides: 'Break off the delays, let us hasten! And they say he is approaching the gates.' So she overcame all things, and seizing him flung him upon the horse; he flies over the open plain, pale, and looks round at the goddess' shadow pressing him.

The Tyrian leader, deeming he had disarmed the Danaans, was bearing sacrifices, in vain, to Jove for the bolt, as was due, nor was the heavenly father or any of the gods at these altars, but evil Tisiphone, inserted among the trembling ministers, stands near, and forestalls the vows for the infernal Thunderer. 'Highest of the gods, for to you the origin of my Thebes — though unspeakable Argos and harsh Juno may envy it — is owed, ever since you, a ravisher, along the Sidonian shores troubled the dances, deigning to be pressed by our maiden's back and falsely to bellow through the calm waves! Nor is it a vain belief that you again won a Cadmean marriage and burst, too much, into the Tyrian household: at last, I say, gracious, you look back at your kinsmen and your beloved walls, and as their champion you thunder; as if the royal court of your own heaven were assailed, so for our high towers we saw you driving the clouds, and glad we recognize the kindly bolt and the fires our forefathers heard. Receive now the flocks and the great heaps of incense and the vowed male; but to render worthy thanks is no mortal work; let our Bacchus and Alcides vie to repay you, for them you keep these walls.' He had spoken: but a black fire leaped onto his face and cheeks, and snatching the diadem from his hair burned it. Then the fierce bull before the stroke stains the shrines with foam, and bursts from the midst of those who bar it, in tumult, carrying off the altars with its maddened horn. The servants scatter, and the soothsayer consoles the king, he himself, ill-emboldened, orders the rite to be renewed and performed, and with a feigned face presses down his great fears, as when the Tirynthian felt the fire wrapped about his bones and the Oetaean garments closing upon his limbs, yet bore on the vows begun and the incense poured, hard still and patient of his evil; soon, compelled, he groaned aloud, and victorious Nessus rages through his vitals.

A messenger, his breast in suspense from his breathless course, Aepytus, his post at the gate abandoned, makes for the king and pants out this, scarcely understood in his alarm: 'Break off your pious worship and the untimely rites of the gods, ruler: your brother presses on all the walls about, and assails the delays of the gates with rein and spears, demanding you by name, again and again, you alone for battle.' Behind, the mournful companions weep, and each groans at his words, and the army murmurs back with clashing arms, he cries: 'Now was the time, best father of the gods! What did Capaneus deserve?' Troubled, the king shuddered with deep hatreds, and yet rejoiced amid his wrath. So when the ruling bullock, after the leisure of the exiled bull, has caught with the top of his ear the hostile bellowing and recognized the threats, he stands seething with great wrath before the herd and breathes out his courage with burning foam, now grim cleaving the earth with his foot, now the air with his horns; the field shudders, and the trembling valleys await the battle.

Nor do the companions of the kingdom fail: 'Let him batter the walls in vain.' 'But shall he dare so far, his strength broken?' 'It is a wretched madness to press upon danger, and not to weigh fears and to hate what is safe.' 'Stay here, trusting in your throne, we will repel the enemy, bid us make war.' So the crowd nearest him; but blazing, lo, Creon was at hand, in grief, and about to speak all things with the freedom of war: Menoeceus burns his fierce heart; no rest for the father, he both seeks him and holds him; he beholds him breathing rivers of blood from his breast and forever falling from the savage tower. When he saw Eteocles doubtful and delaying the fight: 'You will go,' he says, 'nor will we any longer endure unavenged you, worst of men, both brother and leader, mighty in the funerals and the tears of your country, guilty of the Furies and of the war. Enough have we paid for your perjuries to the unjust gods. A city heavy with arms and wealth and lately crowded with citizens, as a plague cast down from heaven or a hostile land, you have drained, and yet, lofty, overshadow its emptiness? The people fail you for your service: these the ground bears, wanting fire; these the native river has already carried down to the sea; these search for limbs, those tend their anxious wounds, give back, come, to the wretched their brothers and sons and fathers, give back their men to the fields and the homes! Where is mighty Hypseus and neighbouring Dryas, where the arms of resounding Phocis and the Euboean leaders? Yet the equal lot of war bore them to the shades: but you — for shame! — a victim of the kingdom, a victim, son, you lie, like dumb blood from the herd, ah me! by the first-fruits of the altars and by a duly accursed rite poured out and bidden to die; and will that man delay further, nor now at least, summoned by hostile Mars, take his stand? Or does profane Tiresias bid another go to the battles, and again weave his oracles into my groans? For what but Haemon, the only one, remains to me, wretched? Bid him go forth, and you sit here a spectator from the high tower! Why do you growl savagely and look back at your servile cohort? These wish you to go, these to pay the penalty; your very mother and your very sisters hate you. Against you your blazing brother threatens iron and death and assails the impious bars of the gates, and do you not hear?' So the father, gnashing, and boils with wretched wrath. He at this: 'You do not deceive,' he says, 'nor do your son's glorious fates move you: to chant and to boast of those was fitting for a father, but hope hides beneath your tears, hope and hidden longing lurks in these words: you set forth funerals before me with insane prayer, and press me in vain, as one nearest to an empty hall, not so will Fortune have left the Sidonian city, that the sceptre should fall to you, most unworthy of so great a son. Nor is the present revenge hard for me; but arms, arms first, servants! Let the brothers meet in battle, Creon wishes to ease his groans: gain your fury; when I am victor, you shall pay for all.' So for a little he put off the quarrel, and the sword which his anger already offered, he checked. As a serpent, struck by a shepherd's uncertain wound, rears in a coil and gathers from its whole body the long venom into its mouth; if a little the foe, going wide, has turned his path, the threats fall and the swollen neck sinks in vain, and it drinks the wraths of its own poison itself.

But the mother, when, frantic, she first dreaded the rumour of the deadly lot — nor did she believe it slowly — went with her hair torn and her face, and her breast bare and bloody, mindful neither of sex nor of seemliness: as the Penthean mother climbed the heights of the maddened mountain, about to bring the promised head to savage Lyaeus. Not her companions, not the dutiful steps of her daughter have equal power to bear it: only her last grief gives the wretched woman strength, and her bloodless years grow fierce with mourning. And now the leader was fastening the ornament of his helmet, now the savage points, and was looking out for his horse, glad and undismayed at the war-trumpets and the clarions, when suddenly the great mother appeared, and he himself paled with fear, and the whole company of servants, and the armour-bearer drew back the offered spear. 'What madness? Whence again does the renewed Fury of the kingdom rise up? Will you yourselves too, after all, you yourselves stand hand to hand? Is it so little to have led the twin cohorts and commanded the crime? Where then will the victor return? Into this bosom? O happy darkness of my grim husband long ago! You pay the penalty, wicked eyes; is this the day to be watched? Whither, savage one, do you turn your threatening face? Why does your countenance change with alternating pallor and flush, and why do your set teeth grind out evil murmurs? Wretched me, you will conquer! But first you must needs make trial of these arms at home: I will stand on the very threshold of the gate, an unlucky omen and a monstrous image of crimes. This grey hair, these breasts, accursed one, you must trample, and through your mother's womb this steed must be driven, spare me: why do you thrust me off, set against your hilt and shield? I did not against you sanction deadly vows to the Stygian gods, nor with blind mouth ask the Erinyes. Hear your wretched mother: your mother, savage one, prays you, not your father; add delay to crime, and measure what you dare, but your brother batters the walls and stirs impious war against you. For no mother, no sister stands in his way as he goes; all things beg you, here we all lament, but there scarcely one, Adrastus, dissuades the fight, or perhaps commands it: do you leave your ancestral thresholds and gods and go from our embraces against your brother?'

But from the other side, by stealth, amid the opposing tumult, Antigone stole her steps — nor did chaste virginity hold her back — and flies, raging, to surmount the height of the Ogygian wall; an aged companion clings to her as she goes, Actor, who would not endure to the topmost citadel, and when from afar she hesitated a little at the arms she saw, and recognized — horror! — him assailing the roofs with javelins and proud voice, first she fills all with great lamentation, and from the walls, as if about to descend, speaks out: 'Hold your weapons in your hand and look a little back at this tower, brother, and turn your bristling crests upon my eyes, do you recognize your enemies? Is it thus we demand the yearly compact and the faith? These the complaints, this the good cause of a modest exile? By the Argive household gods, my brother, through you — for to the Tyrians there is now no honour — and by whatever in that home is sweet, lower your spirit: lo, both the throngs of the race beg you, and both the lines; she begs you, Antigone, devoted to the woes of her own and suspected by the king, and your sister at least, hard one; loosen your face and your grim cheeks; let it be granted perhaps for the last time to know the features I love and to see whether at these laments you weep; him already with suppliant groan the mother breaks, and is said to be letting fall the drawn sword: are you still brave for me? For me, who weep your exiles and wanderings night and day, and have so often soothed for you our father, even now swelling with wrath? With what charge do you free your brother? Surely he broke faith and the fixed treaties, he is the guilty one, savage to his own; yet, lo, summoned, he does not come.' At these words the fury had begun a little to grow faint, though the Erinys clamoured and resisted; now his hand is lowered, now slowly he turns the reins, now he is silent; the groans burst forth, and the helmet confesses his tears; his wraths grow dull, and alike to depart guilty and to have come shames him: when suddenly, the mother thrust back, the Fury flung Eteocles forth through the broken gates, crying: 'I come, and only this, that you called me first, I begrudge; do not chide the delay, the mother gripped my heavy arms; ah, my country, O most uncertain land of kings, now surely you shall belong to the victor!' nor more gently he at last said: 'You know, savage one, your faith, and come down to fair ground? O now for the first time, after a long while, my brother, meet me: these are the laws, these the only treaties that remain.' So he, looking hostile at his brother; for he burns in his deep heart, that countless comrades, that a royal helmet, and a steed spread with purple, that a shield gleams tawny with metal, though he himself is not dishonoured in his arms, nor shining with a common cloak: Argia herself had wrought the work in Maeonian fashion, and with skilled thumb had joined golden threads to the purple web.

And now onto the dusty plain, the Furies urging them, they leap forth, and each one's companion goads and warns him. The Furies themselves hold the reins and the trappings, and adorn the gleaming arms with their hand, and increase the plumes with mingled serpents. There stands kindred crime upon the field, the huge war of a single womb, and the matched faces meet beneath the helmet, the standards quail, the trumpets fall silent, and the horns of Mars are stupefied; thrice from the black shores the greedy ruler thundered, and thrice shook the depths of the soil, and the very gods of arms fled: nowhere is glorious Virtue, Bellona quenched her torches, and from afar the trembling Mars snatched away his car, and the maiden warrior, grim with the Gorgon, withdrew, and in their stead the Stygian sisters came. The wretched crowd juts from the lofty roofs, all is wet with tears and from every citadel comes lamentation. Here the old men grieve to have lived, here with bare breast the mothers stand and forbid their little sons to watch, the Tartarean ruler himself even bids the Ogygian shades go forth through the unbarred gate to the kindred monstrosity. They settle upon their native mountains and with a mournful ring stain the day and rejoice that their crimes are surpassed.

When Adrastus heard that they were going to the contest with open goads, and that no shame now stood against the crime, he flies up and flings his reins into their midst, he indeed both great in his realms and venerable in age. But what among such men, to whom not even their own pledges are a care, is an outsider's honour? Yet he begs: 'Shall we then watch this crime, sons of Inachus and Tyrians? Where are the laws and the gods, where is war? Do not persist in your purpose, I entreat you, enemy — though, did this wrath allow it, you too are not far from me in blood — you, son-in-law, I both entreat and command; if so great is your longing for the sceptre, I lay aside the royal garb, go, possess Lerna and Argos alone!' No words of greater persuasion break the kindled men, nor stand against their efforts once undertaken, than the Scythian Pontus, rising with curved waves, ever forbade the Cyanean mountains to clash together, when he sees that his prayers have perished, and the horn-hoofed steeds poured to battle in twofold dust, and the thongs of the raging men tested upon their fingers, he flees, leaving all, the camp, the men, his son-in-law, Thebes, and drives Arion, turned against the yoke, as he warns of the fates: as, let down from his car after the prizes of the leftward lot, the guardian of the shades and the last heir of the world grew pale, coming into Tartarus when heaven was lost.

Yet Fortune did not indulge the fight, and delaying at the first crime, she halted and tarried a little. Twice the ways perished, vain; twice a kindly straying turned aside the horses driven hand to hand, and the spears, pure of the unspeakable blood, fell with slanting strokes, they tighten the reins with their hands, they press with savage spurs the undeserving steeds; and the venerable portent of the gods moves the twin squadrons, and they roll alternate murmurs, muttering: often the impulse is to renew the lines, to run forth and to set the whole war against the wretched pair.

Long since, offended by the lands and the assembly of the gods, Piety sat in a part of heaven turned away, not in the garb in which she was known before, not with serene face, but with her hair stripped of fillets, and the fraternal war, as an unhappy sister of the fighters or an anxious mother, she bewailed, and crying out against savage Jove and the guilty Fates, and that, the poles and the light abandoned, she would go down to Erebus and now preferred the Stygian household: 'Why,' she said, 'O Nature, leader of all, did you create me, to stand against the savage minds of living things and often of the gods? Nothing now have I among the peoples, nowhere is reverence for us, O fury, O men, and the dread arts of Prometheus! How well, after Pyrrha, the earth and the sea lay empty! Behold the mortal race!' she said, and watching her time, 'Let us try help,' she said, 'though I attempt it in vain.' And she leaped down from the pole, a snowy track beneath the black clouds, though mournful, follows the goddess' footsteps, scarcely had she stood upon the field, when the ranks began to grow gentle with sudden peace and to feel the crime; then their faces grow wet and their breasts, and a silent dread crept upon the brothers, wearing too feigned arms and a man's attire, 'Come on, go, resist, now these, now those,' she cries, 'who has sons and brothers at home, who has so great pledges . . . here too — is it not plain that the gods of their own accord pity? — their weapons fall, the horses falter, Chance itself resists.' She had somewhat moved the wavering pair, had not grim Tisiphone marked the deceits, and, swifter than heavenly fire, been there, upbraiding: 'Why do you set yourself against the daring of war, sluggish power, given over to peace? Yield, shameless one: ours is this field and ours the day; now too late you defend the guilty Thebes. Where were you then, when Bacchus stirred the wars and the orgies maddened the armed mothers? Or where were you sluggish, while the serpent of Mars drank the impious pools, while Cadmus ploughed, while the conquered Sphinx fell, while the father begged Oedipus, while by our torch Jocasta came into the chamber?' So she presses on, and, besides, upon her, shrinking from the sight even and drawing her modest face far back, she bears down with hissing snakes and threatens with torches; the goddess draws the cloak cast down over her eyes, and flees, to complain to the great Thunderer.

Then indeed their wraths were kindled with greater goads: arms please them, and the turned cohorts wish to watch, they renew the cruel crime; the impious king fits his weapon and first seizes the chance of the deadly spear. It, attempting a way through the middle orb of the shield, does not carry through the stroke and is mastered by the deep gold. Then the exile comes on and aloud prays his deadly prayer: 'Gods, whom Oedipus, his face gouged out, not in vain besought to set fire to crime, I ask no shameless vows: I will atone with my hands and cut open my own breast with the same iron, if only this man, dying, leave me holding the sceptre, and the lesser shade carry this grief with him.' The swift spear comes between the rider's thigh and the horse's flank, willing death to both; but the blow, the seated man's knee being slackened, was avoided; yet the spear-point, cheated of its vow, finds wounds in the slanting ribs. The steed rushes headlong, scorner of the tightened rein, and writes the reddening fields with a bloody circle. The exile exults, believing this his brother's gore: and he himself believes it through fear; and now the exile gives full rein to his haste, and blindly drives his eager course upon the wounded horse, the reins and hands and weapons are confounded, and with their steps thrown into confusion both plunge to the ground, as ships by night, which the cloudy south wind has entangled, break their oars and exchange their ropes, and after long struggling with the darkness and the storm and themselves, just as they were, sink together into the lowest deep: such is the face of the fight, they meet without order, without art, only with passion and wrath, and they discern the kindling hatreds through their helmets, and search out each other's faces with a bitter eye: no middle ground of earth, and their swords are entangled and their hands interlocked, and the alternating savage murmurs they catch as if they were war-trumpets or the signals of clarions. As when headlong wrath has driven, hand to hand, the lightning boars and raised their bristles in stiffened hair: their eyes tremble with fire, and their crescent jaws with the curved tusks ring; the hunter watches the fights from a near rock, patient, and counsels silence to his dogs: so greedily they rush together; not yet do they mingle deadly wounds, but the blood is begun, and the crime is done. Nor now is there need of the Furies; they only marvel and stand by, praising, and grieve that the frenzies of men can do more than theirs. Each, raging, longs for and aims at his brother's gore, and knows not that his own flows; at last the exile rushes in, and urging on his hand, whose wrath was stronger and crime more just, drove the sword deep into his brother's body, where the breastplate, badly now with its feathers, covers the lowest groin, he, not yet grieving, but terrified by the first chill of the iron, gathers his confused limbs behind his shield; soon, the wound understood, more and more sickly he pants, nor does he spare his retreating foe and rebukes him: 'Whither do you draw back your steps, brother? This is the rest weakened with sleep, this worn out by kingship, this the long rule beneath the shade! Limbs trained by exile and by needy fortunes you see; learn to bear arms, and not to trust in prosperity.'

So the wretched pair fight; there remained to the accursed leader a weary life and the last blood, and for a little while his steps could stand; but of his own will he falls, and prepares his last deceit in the midst now of death, the shout lifts up Cithaeron, and the brother, thinking he had conquered, raised his palms to heaven: 'It is well! I have not vowed in vain, I see the heavy eyes and the face swimming in death. Hither, someone, quickly, the sceptre and the ornament of his hair, while he sees.' Saying this, he moved his steps and his arms, as if about to bear the glory to the temples and to his exulting country, he longs even to despoil the arms; not yet with his hands' work done, that man kept his soul for avenging wraths. And when he felt the other standing over and bent above his breast, he secretly raises his sword and with hatred filled out the thin remnants of his failing life, and the sword, now glad of his fate, he left in his brother's heart. But that one: 'Are you alive, or does anger still survive, treacherous one, never to deserve the seats of rest? Hither with me to the shades! There too I shall demand the compact again, if only the Cnossian urn of the Agenorean judge stands, where it is given to punish kings.' Speaking no more he fell, and heavy with all his arms crushed his brother.

Go, savage souls, and pollute with your death the deadly Tartarus, and exhaust all the punishments of Erebus! And you, Stygian goddesses, now spare the woes of men: in all the lands and under every age let one day have seen this crime, and let the infamous prodigy fall out of mind for those to come, and let kings alone remember these battles.

But the father, the end of the crime discovered, burst forth from the deep darkness, and on the savage threshold brings out his imperfect death: each of his grey locks stands foul with old gore, and his hair, hard with blood, veils his frantic head; far within, his face and cheeks and the traces of his gouged-out light are squalid. The maiden meanwhile sustains the weight of his imposed left hand, his right rests on a staff, as if, his ship abandoned, the loathing ploughman of sluggish Avernus, hating the shades, should go forth to the upper world and trouble the sun and the pale stars, nor himself for long brave and patient of the upper air; meanwhile, the master long lacking, the work would grow greater, and the ages would wait upon all the banks: so he enters the field, and to his companion, lamenting his end, 'Lead me,' he says, 'to my sons and to their father, I pray, and cast me upon the fresh corpses!' The maiden delays, not knowing what he intends; arms, men, cars block the way and delay him, entangled, and amid the high carnage the old man's steps fail, and the pitiable guide labours, when the cry of the maiden showed the long-sought bodies, she lays him over all the cold limbs. Nor is there any voice for the old man: he lies and bellows over the bloody wounds, nor do the words long attempted follow, while he handles the helmets and seeks the hidden faces, at last the father, long mute, loosens his sighs:

'Do you, piety, slow, strike my mind after a long while? Is there beneath this heart any human gentleness? You conquer, O Nature, you conquer the wretched parent! Lo, I have groans, and tears creep along the dry wounds, and the impious hand follows into the soft beating of the breast, receive the due funeral rites of an unspeakable death, cruel ones, and too much mine! Nor is it allowed to know my sons and to fit my address to them; tell me, maiden, your suppliant, whom do I hold? With what honour now, savage as I am, shall I attend your funeral rites? O if my eyes, to be gouged again, would come back, and the power to rage upon faces in my wonted way! Alas the grief, alas the parent's prayers heard more than was just, and the evil entreaties! Who was that god who stood beside me as I prayed, and dictated to the Fates the words snatched too soon? That frenzy moved, and the Erinys, and the father, and the mother, and the kingdom, and the falling eyes; I in nothing: by Dis I swear and the sweet darkness and my innocent guide, so may I go down to Tartarus by a worthy death, nor let Laius flee me, an angry shade, ah me, what knots of brothers, what wounds I handle! Loosen, I pray, their hands, and at last part the hostile bonds, and now at least admit their father between them.' Having so lamented, little by little he had taken on the wraths of death, and was secretly seeking a weapon, did not his daughter forbid it; but Antigone with cautious hand had withdrawn the swords, the old man then rages: 'Where are the guilty weapons? Alas, Furies! Has all the iron gone into their bodies?' As he speaks, his weary companion lifts him and presses down her own dumb grief, glad to have bewailed her savage parent.

But long since, terrified by the clamour of the begun fight, the queen had brought from the inner chambers the well-known sword, the sword, the lamentable spoil of sceptre-bearing Laius. And having complained much to the gods and of her dreadful couch and of her son's furies and of her first husband's shade, she struggled with her right hand, and into her downturned breast scarcely the iron entered at last: the wound bursts through her aged veins, and the unhappy bed is hallowed with blood, collapsing over her, Ismene dried the stroke hissing in her slight breast with her tears and her hair, beating her breast: as in the Marathonian wood tearful Erigone, near the funeral of her slain father, her complaints spent, had now begun to loose the grim knot and, about to die, was binding the strong branches.

And now the glad hope of the two leaders that they had cheated the Amphionian state, and grudging Fortune had transferred the sceptre to another hand, and Creon held the laws of Cadmus. Wretched, alas, the end of the wars! For them the brothers had fought, and him both the Mavortian seed proclaim, and Menoeceus, given a little before for his country, reconciles to the peoples, and he climbs the throne of Aonia, fatal to tyrants, lamentable: ah, coaxing power and ill-counselling love of the sceptre! Will the examples of the former never cleave to the new? See, it pleases him to stand in the accursed place and to handle in his hand the bloody covering! What can you do, better Fortune? Now he begins to bend his father and to blot out Menoeceus with the kingdom given him. First, indeed, steeped in the savage ways of the court, as a sign and a sample of himself, he bids the Danaans be kept from the final fire, and left beneath the bare sky, the unhappy war and the sad shades without resting-places, soon, meeting at the threshold of the Ogygian gate Oedipus returning, he feared him a little, and confessing himself the lesser in silence, checked his ready anger; but he turns again to the king and, more boldly upbraiding the blind foe from afar, 'Go,' he says, 'an omen hateful to the victors, and turn away the Furies and purge the Theban walls by your departure! Your long hope is fulfilled: go, your sons lie dead. What vows now remain to you?' He shuddered at the rabid prompting, and his cheeks stood trembling as if at the sight of their squalor, and his old age withdrew, then he let his daughter and his staff fall from his hand, and, leaning on his wrath, breaks his voice from his swelling breast:

'Is there now leisure to rage, Creon? Just now, pitiable one, you have come into the treacherous kingdom and the place of our fortune, and is it now lawful for you to trample on the ruins of kings? Do you already bar the conquered from tombs, your allies from the walls? Bravo, you can worthily guard the sceptre of Thebes. This is your first day, but why, mad one, do you make new laws contrary? Why do you measure so great honours narrowly? You threaten exile. The timid harshness of kings is that! Why not greedily steep your savage swords at once? Believe me, you may; let a satellite come, eager to obey, and undismayed cut a neck that does not avoid him. Begin! Or do you wait until, bent low with suppliant hand, I be laid prostrate and seek the footsteps of a cruel master? But suppose you try, will you allow it? Do you threaten me any punishment, or think any fears remain? Do you bid me leave my dwelling? Heaven and earth I left of my own accord, and, cruel, turned my avenging hand back upon my face with none compelling me: what such thing can you bid me, hostile king? I flee and depart from the accursed seats; or does it matter where I carry my long funeral and my darkness? Let not every nation grant my prayer, how much of my country's earth, wretched, do I lie upon? But sweet Thebes! Of course here my origin is brighter, and better stars caress my face, here my mother and my sons; have and rule the Theban walls, with the omen under which Cadmus, under which Laius reigned, and I as well; so may you take your marriage chamber, so your faithful pledges, nor let it be your valour to escape fortune with your hand, but, caught, may you love the light. Enough have I sanctioned omens, lead, come, my daughter, far away; but why do I add you to my griefs? Give me, great king, a guide.' The pitiable Antigone feared to be left, and changes her prayers: 'By your happy kingdom, venerable Creon, and by the sacred shade of Menoeceus: grant pardon to the afflicted and forgive his proud words. This manner of speaking his long laments have made; nor is that fierce one so to you alone: thus he addresses the fates and the gods, hard in his grief, and gentle not even to me often; long since in his untamed breast there lives a wretched freedom and the harsh hope of a savage death. And now, lo, cunningly he provokes your wraths and longs for punishment; but you, I pray, may you possess the greater goods of empire, and, lofty, pass over the fallen, and reverence the great funerals of the former leaders, and he too, once exalted on the throne and fenced with arms, gave help to the wretched and justice, equal to the powerful and the suppliant; he who now, out of so great a host, has one companion, and was not yet an exile. Does this man stand against the fortunate? Against him do you go forth with hatred and the strength of the kingdom, drive him from your roofs? Or is it lest near the threshold, illustrious, he should groan and stray, untimely, among your vows? Lay aside your fear: removed far off from your court, he shall weep; I will subdue the upright one and teach him to serve, I will lead him from the assemblies and hide him in a lonely seat. He will be an exile. For what foreign walls will open to him as he migrates? Do you wish him to go to Argos and creep, squalid, into hostile Mycenae, and at the threshold of conquered Adrastus report the Aonian disasters, and the Theban king beg for slight help? What pleasure to spread open the crimes of a wretched race, what to display its shameful misfortunes? Hide, I pray, whatever we are, nor do we beg long gifts, Creon: pity the old man, and his mournful parent's shades here, I pray, here grant me to lay: surely it is allowed to bury Thebans.' So she prays and rolls upon the ground; her father leads her away and savagely threatens, indignant, the pardon, as a lion beneath a high rock, whom once, in his green prime, the woods and mountains trembled at, now sluggish and disarmed by long age, lies, yet his face is great and his old age not to be approached; and if a bellowing should come to his sunken ears, he rears and remembers himself, and groans at his loosened strength and that other lions reign in the fields.

Creon is bent by the speech, but yet the ruler does not grant all to the suppliant's tears, and cuts off part of the gift. 'You shall not,' he says, 'be kept far from your father's borders, so long as by your coming you do not defile the pious temples and homes. Let the haunts hold you, and your Cithaeron; and lo, this land is habitable for your shades, where the war and the twin races lie in blood.' So he speaks, and with the feigned assent of his companions and the groaning crowd, swelling, made for the royal threshold.

Meanwhile the routed Pelasgians abandon by stealth the deadly rampart; none has his own standards or his own leader: they go silent everywhere, and for a fair death embracing a dishonourable life and a shameful return. Night favours them and embraces the fugitives with welcome shadow.