Antigone

Sophocles

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

  1. I will take her where the path is deserted, unvisited by men, and entomb her alive in a rocky vault,
  2. setting out a ration of food, but only as much as piety requires so that all the city may escape defilement. And praying there to Hades, the only god she worships, perhaps she will obtain immunity from death, or else will learn, at last, even this late,
  3. that it is fruitless labor to revere the dead.Exit Creon.
Chorus
  1. Love, the unconquered in battle, Love, you who descend upon riches, and watch the night through on a girl’s soft cheek,
  2. you roam over the sea and among the homes of men in the wilds. Neither can any immortal escape you,
  3. nor any man whose life lasts for a day. He who has known you is driven to madness.
Chorus
  1. You seize the minds of just men and drag them to injustice, to their ruin. You it is who have incited this conflict of men whose flesh and blood are one.
  2. But victory belongs to radiant Desire swelling from the eyes of the sweet-bedded bride. Desire sits enthroned in power beside the mighty laws.
  3. For in all this divine Aphrodite plays her irresistible game.
Enter Antigone under guard from the palace.
Chorus
  1. But now, witnessing this, I too am carried beyond the bounds of loyalty. The power fails me to keep back my streaming tears any longer, when I see Antigone making her way to the chamber where all are laid to rest,
  2. now her bridal chamber.
Antigone
  1. Citizens of my fatherland, see me setting out on my last journey, looking at my last sunlight,
  2. and never again. No, Hades who lays all to rest leads me living to Acheron’s shore, though I have not had my due portion of the chant that brings the bride, nor has any hymn been mine
  3. for the crowning of marriage. Instead the lord of Acheron will be my groom.
Chorus
  1. Then in glory and with praise you depart to that deep place of the dead, neither struck by wasting sickness,
  2. nor having won the wages of the sword. No, guided by your own laws and still alive, unlike any mortal before, you will descend to Hades.
Antigone
  1. I have heard with my own ears how our Phrygian guest, the daughter of Tantalus, perished