Seven Against Thebes

Aeschylus

Aeschylus, Volume 1. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1922.

  1. defend your seven- gated home!
Chorus
  1. All-powerful divinities, you gods and goddesses who wield the power to guard the towers of our land, do not betray our city that now toils under the spear
  2. to an alien-tongued army. Hear us, hear, as is right, the prayers we maidens offer with outstretched hands.
Chorus
  1. Beloved spirits,
  2. encompass the city to deliver it from ruin and show that you love it. Consider the people’s offerings, and as you consider, help us.
  3. Remember, I beg, our city’s worship, rich in sacrifice..
Eteocles
  1. You intolerable things! I ask you, is this the best way to save the city? Does it hearten our army here besieged,
  2. when you fall before the images of the gods that guard the city and shout and shriek—behavior that moderate people despise? May I never share my home with the female race, neither in time of evil nor in pleasant prosperity! When things go well for her, her boldness is unbearable,
  3. but when she is afraid, she is an even greater evil for home and city. So now your cries as you rushed here and there in panicked flight have rattled the citizens into dispirited cowardice. The cause of the enemy outside our gates is excellently strengthened by your behavior, while we inside are ruined by our own people.
  4. This is the sort of trouble you will have if you dwell with women. Now if anyone fails to obey my authority—whether man or woman or something in between—a sentence of death will be decreed for him and by no means whatsoever will he escape destruction by stoning at the people’s hands.
  5. It is for the man to take care of business outside the house; let no woman make decrees in those matters. Keep inside and do no harm! Do you hear me or not? Am I speaking to the deaf?
Chorus
  1. Dear son of Oedipus, I grew afraid when I heard the clatter of the crashing chariots,
  2. when the hubs screamed as they whirled around the wheel, and when I heard the sound of the steering gear, fire-forged bits, in the horses’ mouths.
Eteocles
  1. Well, then, has a helmsman ever found a way to safety by fleeing from stern to prow,
  2. when his ship is foundering in high seas?
Chorus
  1. But trusting in the gods I came in haste to their ancient statues, when the deadly blizzard of falling stones thundered against the gates. Just then I set out in fear to pray to the Blessed Ones
  2. that they spread their protection over the city.
Eteocles
  1. Pray that the rampart withstand the enemy spear. Yes, the outcome is in the gods’ hands—but then, it is said that the gods of a captured city abandon it.
Chorus
  1. Never so long as I live may this divine assembly abandon us,
  2. nor may I live to see the city overrun and the army seizing it with hostile fire!