Seven Against Thebes

Aeschylus

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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!
Eteocles
  1. When you invoke the gods, do not be ill-advised. For Obedience is