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.