Antigone
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 3: The Antigone. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891.
- launched at you, archer-like, in my anger. They fly true—you cannot run from their burning sting. Boy, lead me home, so that he may launch his rage against younger men, and learn to keep a quieter tongue
- and a better mind within his breast than he now bears.Exit Teiresias.
- The man is gone, my king, leaving dire prophecies behind. And for all the time that I have had this hair on my head, now white, once dark, I know that he has never been a false prophet to our city.
- I, too, know it well, and my mind is troubled. To yield is terrible, but, to resist, to strike my pride with ruin—this, too, inspires terror.
- The moment, Creon, requires that you reason wisely.
- What should I do, then? Speak, and I will obey.
- Go and free the girl from her hollowed chamber. Then raise a tomb for the unburied dead.
- And you recommend this? You think that I should yield?
- Yes, my king, and with all possible speed. For harms sent from the gods swiftly cut short the follies of men.
- Ah, it is a struggle, but I depart from my heart’s resolve and obey. We must not wage vain wars with necessity.
- Go, do these things and do not leave their performance to others.
- Right away I will go. Go, go, my servants, each and all of you! Take axes in your hands,
- and hurry to that place there in view! But since my judgment has taken this turn, I will be there to set her free, as I myself confined her. I am held by the fear that it is best to keep the established laws to life’s very end.
- God of many names, glory of the Cadmeian bride and offspring of loud-thundering Zeus, you who watch over far-famed Italy and reign
- in the valleys of Eleusinian Deo where all find welcome! O Bacchus, denizen of Thebes, the mother-city of your Bacchants, dweller by the wet stream of Ismenus on the soil
- of the sowing of the savage dragon’s teeth!
- The smoky glare of torches sees you above the cliffs of the twin peaks, where the Corycian nymphs move inspired by your godhead,
- and Castalia’s stream sees you, too. The ivy-mantled slopes of Nysa’s hills and the shore green with many-clustered vines send you, when accompanied by the cries of your divine words,
- you visit the avenues of Thebes.
- Thebes of all cities you hold foremost in honor, together with your lightning-struck mother.