Antigone

Sophocles

Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 3: The Antigone. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891.

  1. Why not? Has not Creon destined our brothers, the one to honored burial, the other to unburied shame? Eteocles, they say, with due observance of right and custom, he has laid in the earth
  2. for his honor among the dead below. As for the poor corpse of Polyneices, however, they say that an edict has been published to the townsmen that no one shall bury him or mourn him, but instead leave him unwept, unentombed, for the birds a pleasing store
  3. as they look to satisfy their hunger. Such, it is said, is the edict that the good Creon has laid down for you and for me—yes, for me—and it is said that he is coming here to proclaim it for the certain knowledge of those who do not already know. They say that he does not conduct this business lightly,
  4. but whoever performs any of these rites, for him the fate appointed is death by public stoning among the entire city. This is how things stand for you, and so you will soon show your nature, whether you are noble-minded, or the corrupt daughter of a noble line.
Ismene
  1. Poor sister, if things have come to this, what would I
  2. profit by loosening or tightening this knot?
Antigone
  1. Consider whether you will share the toil and the task.
Ismene
  1. What are you hazarding? What do you intend?
Antigone
  1. Will you join your hand to mine in order to lift his corpse?
Ismene
  1. You plan to bury him—when it is forbidden to the city?
Antigone
  1. Yes, he is my brother, and yours too, even if you wish it otherwise. I will never be convicted of betraying him.
Ismene
  1. Hard girl! Even when Creon has forbidden it?
Antigone
  1. No, he has no right to keep me from my own.
Ismene
  1. Ah, no! Think, sister, how our father
  2. perished in hatred and infamy, when, because of the crimes that he himself detected, he smashed both his eyes with self-blinding hand; then his mother-wife, two names in one, with a twisted noose destroyed her life;
  3. lastly, our two brothers in a single day, both unhappy murderers of their own flesh and blood, worked with mutual hands their common doom. And now we, in turn—we two who have been left all alone—consider how much more miserably we will be destroyed, if in defiance of the law
  4. we transgress against an autocrat’s decree or his powers. No, we must remember, first, that ours is a woman’s nature, and accordingly not suited to battles against men; and next, that we are ruled by the more powerful, so that we must obey in these things and in things even more stinging.