Antigone

Sophocles

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

  1. bringing this girl who was caught giving burial honors to the dead. This time there was no casting of lots. No, this piece of luck has fallen to me, and me alone. And now, my king, as it pleases you, take her yourself, question her and convict her. But justice would see me
  2. released free and clear from this trouble.
Creon
  1. Your prisoner here—how and where did you take her?
Guard
  1. She was burying the man. You know all there is to tell.
Creon
  1. Are you clear and sure about what you are saying?
Guard
  1. I am. I saw her burying the corpse that you
  2. had forbidden to bury. Is that plain and sufficient?
Creon
  1. And how was she observed? How taken in the act?
Guard
  1. It happened like this. When we had come to the place with those fierce threats of yours still in our ears, we swept away all the dust that covered
  2. the corpse and bared the damp body well. We then sat down on the brow of the hill to windward, fleeing the smell from him, lest it strike us. Each man was wide awake and kept his neighbor alert with torrents of threats, if any one should be careless of this task.
  3. So time passed, until the disk of the sun stood bright in mid-sky and the heat began to burn. And then suddenly a whirlwind lifted from the earth a storm of dust, a trouble in the sky, and it filled the plain, marring all the foliage of its woods.
  4. Soon the wide air was choked with it. We closed our eyes, and endured the plague from the gods. When, after a long while, this storm had passed, the girl was seen, and she wailed aloud with the sharp cry of a grieving bird, as when inside her empty
  5. nest she sees the bed stripped of its nestlings. So she, too, when she saw the corpse bare, broke into a cry of lamentation and cursed with harsh curses those who had done it. Immediately she took thirsty dust in her hands,
  6. and from a pitcher of beaten bronze held high she crowned the dead with thrice-poured libations. We rushed forward when we saw it, and at once closed upon our quarry, who was not at all dismayed. We then charged her with her past and present doings,
  7. but she made no denial of anything—at once to my joy and to my pain. For to have escaped from trouble one’s self gives the greatest joy, but it stings to lead friends to evil. Naturally, though, all such things are
  8. of less account to me than my own safety.
Creon
  1. You, you with your face bent to the ground, do you admit, or deny that you did this?
Antigone
  1. I declare it and make no denial.
Creon
  1. You can take yourself wherever you please,
  2. free and clear of a heavy charge.Exit Guard.