Behold a rivalry in sorrow! woe takes up the tale of woe; hark! thy servants beat their breasts. Come ye who join the mourners’ wail, come, O sympathetic band, to join the dance, which Hades honours; let theHartung proposes to read διὰ παρῆδος ὄνθχα τίθετε φόνιον, αἱματοῦτε χρόα τε λευκόν, but I have followed Paley’s text, which gives a possible meaning. pearly nail be stained red, as it rends your cheeks, let your skin be streaked with gore; for honours rendered to the dead are a creditReading κόσμος, which Hartung alters to κῆδος. to the living.

ChorusSorrow’s charm doth drive me wild, insatiate, painful, endless, even as the trickling stream that gushes from some steep rock’s face; for ’tis woman’s way to fall a-weeping o’er the cruel calamity of children dead. Ah me! would I could die and forget my anguish!

TheseusWhat is this lamentation that I hear, this beating of the breast, these dirges for the dead, with cries that echo from this shrine? How fluttering fear disquiets me, lest haply my mother have gotten some mischance, in quest of whom I come, for she hath been long absent from home. Ha! what now? A strange sight challenges my speech; I see my aged mother sitting at the altar and stranger dames are with her, who in various note proclaim their woe; from aged eyes the piteous tear is starting to the ground, their hair is shorn, their robes are not the robes of joy.What means it, mother? ’Tis thine to make it plain to me, mine to listen; yea, for I expect some tidings strange. AethraMy son, these are the mothers of those chieftains seven, who fell around the gates of Cadmus’ town. With suppliant boughs they keep me prisoner, as thou seest, in their midst.TheseusAnd who is yonder man, that moaneth piteously in the gateway?AethraAdrastus, they inform me, king of Argos.TheseusAre those his children, those boys who stand round him?AethraNot his, but the sons of the fallen slain.TheseusWhy are they come to us, with suppliant hand outstretched?AethraI know; but ’tis for them to tell their story, my son.TheseusTo thee, in thy mantle muffled, I address my inquiries; unveil thy head, let lamentation be, and speak; for naught can be achieved save through the utterance of thy tongue.Markland’s emendation περᾷς … ’ιών, is certainly tempting. Hartung adopts it; but Paley and Nauck, whom I have followed, retain the old reading πάρας … ’ιόν.AdrastusrisingVictorious prince of the Athenian realm, Theseus, to thee and to thy city I, a suppliant, come. TheseusWhat seekest thou? What need is thine?AdrastusDost know how I did lead an expedition to its ruin?