Seven Against Thebes

Aeschylus

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

  1. Then with hands so fraternal did they each kill the other together?
Messenger
  1. Yes, so all too equal was their destiny to them both. All alone, in truth, it consumes the ill-fated family. We have cause in this for joy and tears—
  2. the one because the city fares well, the other because the leaders, the two generals, have divided the whole of their property with hammered Scythian steel. They will possess only that land they take in burial, swept away as they were in accordance with their father’s curses.
  3. The city is saved, but through their mutual murder the earth has drunk the blood of the two kings born of the same seed.Exit.
Chorus
  1. O great Zeus and the divine powers that guard our city, you who indeed protect these walls of Cadmus,
  2. should I rejoice and shout in triumph for the unharmed safety of the city, or should I lament our leaders in war,
  3. now wretched, ill-fated and childless? Indeed, in exact accordance with their name and as men of much strife, they have perished through their impious intent.
Chorus
  1. O black curse on the family, Oedipus’ curse, now brought to fulfillment! A chill of horror falls about my heart.
  2. In frenzy like a maenad I make my song for the grave as I hear of their corpses dripping with blood, how they died through the workings of cruel fate. This song of the spear, sung to the flute, is indeed born of an ill omen.[*](This passage has also been taken to deprecate as inauspicious the previous ode (720 ff.) because it was sung during the combat of the brothers: It was for a tomb I framed my song when, inspired by frenzy, I heard (prophetically) . . . Ill-omened, indeed, the contest of the spear to such an accompaniment.)