Antigone

Sophocles

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

  1. it rolls up the black sand from the depths, and the wind-beaten headlands that front the blows of the storm give out a mournful roar.
Chorus
  1. I see that the ancient sorrows of the house of the Labdacids
  2. are heaped upon the sorrows of the dead. Each generation does not set its race free, but some god hurls it down and the race has no release. For now that dazzling ray of hope that had been spread
  3. over the last roots in the house of Oedipus—that hope, in its turn, the blood-stained dust of the gods infernal and mindlessness in speech and frenzy at the mind cuts down.
Chorus
  1. Your power, great Zeus—what human overstepping can check it? Yours is power that neither Sleep, the all-ensnaring, nor the untiring months of the gods can defeat. Unaged through time,
  2. you rule by your power and dwell thereby in the brilliant splendor of Olympus. And through the future, both near and distant, as through the past, shall this law prevail: nothing that is vast comes to the life of mortals without ruin.
Chorus
  1. See how that hope whose wanderings are so wide truly is a benefit to many men, but to an equal number it is a false lure of light-headed desires. The deception comes to one who is wholly unawares until he burns his foot on a hot fire.
  2. For with wisdom did someone once reveal the maxim, now famous, that evil at one time or another seems good, to him whose mind a god leads to ruin.
  3. But for the briefest moment such a man fares free of destruction.
Enter Haemon.
Chorus
  1. But here is Haemon, the last of your offspring. Does he come grieving for the doom of Antigone, his promised bride,
  2. and bitter for the deceived hope of their marriage?
Creon
  1. We will soon know better than seers could tell us.—My son, can it be that after hearing the final judgment concerning your betrothed, you have come in rage against your father? Or do I have your loyalty, act how I may?
Haemon
  1. Father, I am yours, and you keep me upright with precepts good for me—precepts I shall follow. No marriage will be deemed by me more important than your good guidance.
Creon
  1. Yes, my son, this is the spirit you should maintain in your heart—to stand behind your father’s will in all things. It is for this that men pray: to sire and raise in their homes children who are obedient, that they may requite their father’s enemy with evil and honor his friend, just as their father does.
  2. But the man who begets unhelpful children—what would you say that he has sown except miseries for himself and abundant exultation for his enemies? Never, then, my son, banish your reason for pleasure on account of a woman,
  3. knowing that this embrace soon becomes cold and brittle—an evil woman to share your bed and home. For what wound could strike deeper than a false friend? No, spit her out as if she were an enemy, let her go find a husband in Hades.
  4. For since I caught her alone of all the city in open defiance, I will not make myself a liar to my city. I will kill her. So let her call on Zeus who protects kindred blood. If I am to foster my own kin to spurn order,
  5. surely I will do the same for outsiders. For whoever shows his excellence in the case of his own household will be found righteous in his city as well. But if anyone oversteps and does violence to the laws, or thinks to dictate to those in power,
  6. such a one will never win praise from me. No, whomever the city may appoint, that man must be obeyed in matters small and great and in matters just and unjust. And I would feel confident that such a man would be a fine ruler no less than a good and willing subject,
  7. and that beneath a hail of spears he would stand his ground where posted, a loyal and brave comrade in the battle line. But there is no evil worse than disobedience. This destroys cities; this overturns homes; this breaks