Seven Against Thebes

Aeschylus

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

  1. And yet any victory, even a cowardly one, is nonetheless held in honor by God.
Eteocles
  1. A soldier must not embrace that maxim.
Chorus
  1. But are you willing to harvest the blood of your own brother?
Eteocles
  1. When it is the gods who give you evils, you cannot flee them. Exit.
Chorus
  1. I shudder in terror at the goddess who lays ruin to homes, a goddess unlike other divinities, who is an unerring omen of evil to come. I shudder that the Erinys invoked by the father’s prayer will fulfil the over-wrathful
  2. curses that Oedipus spoke in madness. This strife that will destroy his sons drives the Erinys to fulfillment.
Chorus
  1. A stranger distributes their inheritance, a Chalybian immigrant from Scythia, a bitter divider of wealth,
  2. savage-hearted iron that apportions land for them to dwell in, as much as they can occupy in death when they have lost their share in these wide plains.
Chorus
  1. But when both have died, each killing