Antigone

Sophocles

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

  1. Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man.
  2. This power spans the sea, even when it surges white before the gales of the south-wind, and makes a path under swells that threaten to engulf him. Earth, too, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied,
  3. he wears away to his own ends, turning the soil with the offspring of horses as the plows weave to and fro year after year.
Chorus
  1. The light-hearted tribe of birds
  2. and the clans of wild beasts and the sea-brood of the deep he snares in the meshes of his twisted nets, and he leads them captive, very-skilled man. He masters by his arts
  3. the beast who dwells in the wilds and roams the hills. He tames the shaggy-maned horse, putting the yoke upon its neck, and tames the tireless mountain bull.
Chorus
  1. Speech and thought fast as the
  2. wind and the moods that give order to a city he has taught himself, and how to flee the arrows of the inhospitable frost under clear skies and the arrows of the storming rain.
  3. He has resource for everything. Lacking resource in nothing he strides towards what must come. From Death alone he shall procure no escape, but from baffling diseases he has devised flights.
Chorus
  1. Possessing resourceful skill, a subtlety beyond expectation he moves now to evil, now to good. When he honors the laws of the land and the justice of the gods to which he is bound by oath,
  2. his city prospers. But banned from his city is he who, thanks to his rashness, couples with disgrace. Never may he share my home,
  3. never think my thoughts, who does these things!
Enter the Guard, on the spectators’ left, leading in Antigone.
Chorus
  1. What marvel sent by the gods is this?—I am bewildered! I know her. How can I deny that this girl is Antigone? O unhappy child
  2. of your unhappy father, of Oedipus! What can this mean? What! Surely they are not bringing you captive for disobeying the King’s laws and being caught in lunacy?
Guard
  1. Here is she, the one who did the deed.
  2. We caught this one burying him. Where is Creon?
Enter Creon from the palace.
Chorus
  1. There, he is coming from the house again at our need.
Creon
  1. What is it? What has happened that makes my coming timely?
Guard
  1. My king, there is nothing that a man can rightly swear he will not do. For second thought belies one’s first intent.
  2. I could have vowed that I would not ever come here again, because of your threats by which I had just been storm-tossed. But since this joy that exceeds and oversteps my hopes can be compared in fulness to no other pleasure, I am back—though it is contrary to my sworn oath—