Antigone

Sophocles

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

  1. You have touched on my most bitter thought
  2. and moved my ever-renewed pity for my father and for the entire doom ordained for us, the famed house of Labdacus. Oh, the horrors of our mother’s bed! Oh, the slumbers of the wretched mother at the side
  3. of her own son, my own father! What manner of parents gave me my miserable being! It is to them that I go like this, accursed and unwed, to share their home.
  4. Ah, my brother, the marriage you made was doomed, and by dying you killed me still alive!
Chorus
  1. Your pious action shows a certain reverence, but an offence against power can no way be tolerated by him who has power in his keeping.
  2. Your self-willed disposition is what has destroyed you.
Antigone
  1. Unwept, unfriended, without marriage-song, I am led in misery on this journey that cannot be put off. No longer is it permitted me, unhappy girl,
  2. to look up at this sacred eye of the burning sun. But for my fate no tear is shed, no friend moans in sorrow.
Enter Creon.
Creon
  1. Do you not know that dirges and wailing before death would never be given up, if it were allowed to make them freely?
  2. Take her away—now! And when you have enshrouded her, as I proclaimed, in her covered tomb, leave her alone, deserted—let her decide whether she wishes to die or to live entombed in such a home. It makes no difference, since our hands are clean so far as regards this girl.
  3. But no matter what, she will be stripped of her home here above.
Antigone
  1. Tomb, bridal-chamber, deep-dug eternal prison where I go to find my own, whom in the greatest numbers destruction has seized and Persephone has welcomed among the dead!
  2. Last of them all and in by far the most shameful circumstances, I will descend, even before the fated term of my life is spent. But I cherish strong hopes that I will arrive welcome to my father, and pleasant to you, Mother, and welcome, dear brother, to you.
  3. For, when each of you died, with my own hands I washed and dressed you and poured drink-offerings at your graves. But now, Polyneices, it is for tending your corpse that I win such reward as this. And yet I honored you rightly, as the wise understand.
  4. Never, if I had been a mother of children, or if a husband had been rotting after death, would I have taken that burden upon myself in violation of the citizens’ will. For the sake of what law, you ask, do I say that? A husband lost, another might have been found,
  5. and if bereft of a child, there could be a second from some other man. But when father and mother are hidden in Hades, no brother could ever bloom for me again. Such was the law whereby I held you first in honor, but for that Creon judged me guilty of wrongdoing
  6. and of dreadful outrage, dear brother! And now he leads me thus in his hands’ strong grasp, when I have enjoyed no marriage bed or bridal song and have not received any portion of marriage or the nurture of children. But deserted by friends,
  7. in misery I go living to the hollow graves of the dead. What law of the gods have I transgressed? Why should I look to the gods anymore? What ally should I call out to, when by my reverence I have earned a name for irreverence?
  8. Well, then, if these events please the gods, once I have suffered my doom I will come to know my guilt. But if the guilt lies with my judges, I could wish for them no greater evils than they inflict unjustly on me.
Chorus
  1. Still the same tempest of the soul