Seven Against Thebes

1Chorus Oh come all you gods who guard our city and its land! See this suppliant band of maidens praying to be saved from slavery. A torrent of men, their helmet plumes tossing, crashes around the city, sped on by the blasts of Ares. No! Father Zeus, all-accomplishing, fend from us altogether capture at the hands of the enemy. The Argives encircle the citadel of Cadmus. Terror of their weapons of war shakes us, as the bridles in the horse’s jaws rattle the sound of death. Seven bold captains, conspicuous among the army in spear-wielding harnesses, at the seven gates take their stand each according to his lot.

1Chorus Pallas, Zeus-born power delighting in battle, prove yourself the savior of the city! And you, lord of steeds, ruler of the deep, Poseidon, with your fish-striking weapon grant us release from our fears, grant us release! You too, Ares—pity us!—guard the city named for Cadmus and make evident your closeness†to us! And Cypris, you who are the first mother of our race, defend us who are sprung from your blood. We come to you, crying out in prayers for your divine ears. And you, Apollo, lord of the Wolf,†be a wolf to the enemy force and give them groan for groan! You too, maiden child of Leto, ready your bow!

2Chorus Ah! Ah! I hear the rattle of chariots encircling the town. O lady Hera! The hubs are creaking beneath the axles’ load. Beloved Artemis! The air rages at the shaking of spears! What is happening to our city? What will the future bring? And where does God finally lead us?

2Chorus Ah! Ah! A hail of stones strikes our battlements from afar. O beloved Apollo! There is the clang of bronze-bound shields at the gates. O son of Zeus, in whom dwells the sacred power to decide in battle war’s outcome! And you, blessed queen Onca,†on behalf of the city, defend your seven- gated home!

3Chorus 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 to an alien-tongued army. Hear us, hear, as is right, the prayers we maidens offer with outstretched hands.

3Chorus Beloved spirits, 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. Remember, I beg, our city’s worship, rich in sacrifice..

1Chorus Dear son of Oedipus, I grew afraid when I heard the clatter of the crashing chariots, 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 Well, then, has a helmsman ever found a way to safety by fleeing from stern to prow, when his ship is foundering in high seas?

1Chorus 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 that they spread their protection over the city. Eteocles 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.

2Chorus Never so long as I live may this divine assembly abandon us, nor may I live to see the city overrun and the army seizing it with hostile fire! Eteocles When you invoke the gods, do not be ill-advised. For Obedience is the mother of Success, wife of Salvation—as the saying goes.

2Chorus So she is, but the power of god is supreme, and often in bad times it raises the helpless man out of harsh misery even when stormclouds are lowering over his eyes. Eteocles It is the man’s duty to offer victims and sacrifices to the gods when they test their enemy; your duty is to be silent and to remain inside the house.

3Chorus By the will of the gods we inhabit an unconquered city, and the rampart withstands the enemy throng. What indignation makes you resent this? Eteocles I do not begrudge your honor of the divine race; but lest you make the citizens cowardly, be calm and do not be overly fearful.

3Chorus When I heard the strange and jumbled clashes, I came in trembling fear to this citadel, our seat of worship. Eteocles If, then, you hear that men are dying or wounded, do not seize on the news with loud wailing. For this is the food of Ares, human blood.

1Chorus I heed him, but through terror my heart finds no repose. Anxieties border upon my heart and kindle my fear of the army surrounding our walls, as a trembling dove fears for her children in the nest because of snakes that are dangerous bed-fellows. For against our fortifications some are advancing with all their men, all in formation. Ah, what will become of me? Others are hurling jagged boulders at the citizens on all sides. O Gods born of Zeus, by every means rescue our city and people, sprung from Cadmus!

1Chorus What more fertile plain will you find in place of ours, if you abandon to the enemy this deep-soiled land and the water of Dirce which is the most nourishing of the streams that earth-encircling Poseidon and Tethys’ children pour forth? Therefore, divine guardians of the city, hurl murderous destruction on the men outside our walls and panic that makes them throw away their weapons, and so win glory for these citizens. Defend the city and remain in possession of your home and throne in answer to our shrill, wailing prayers!

2Chorus It is a great cause for grief to hurl a primeval city to Hades in this way, quarry and slave of the spear, ravaged shamefully in the dusty ashes by an Argive man through divine will. And grief, too, to let the women be led away captive—ah me!—young and old, dragged by the hair, like horses, with their cloaks torn off them. A city, emptied, shouts out as the human booty perishes with mingled cries. A heavy fate, indeed, my fear anticipates.

2Chorus It is a lamentable thing that modest girls should be plucked unripe, before the customary rites, and should make a loathsome journey from their homes. What? I declare that the dead will do better than the captives; for when a city is subdued—ah, ah!—many and miserable are its sufferings. Man drags off man, or kills, or sets fires; the whole city is defiled with smoke. Mad Ares storms, subduing the people and polluting reverence.

3Chorus Tumults swell through the town, and against it a towering net is advancing. Man falls before man beneath the spear. Sobs and wails over gore-covered babes, just nursed at their mothers’ breasts, resound. Rape and pillage of those fleeing through the city are the deeds of one’s own blood. Plunderer joins up with plunderer; the empty-handed calls to the empty-handed, wishing to have a partner, each greedy for neither less nor equal share. Reason exists for imagining what will come after this.

3Chorus The earth’s varied fruits, fallen to the ground, give pain, a bitter sight for the maid-servants. In jumbled confusion the abundant gifts of earth are carried away by reckless looting waves. Young women, enslaved, suffer a new evil: a bed of misery, prize of the conquering enemy’s spear, as though of a prospering husband— they can expect the coming of the nightly rite, which gives aid to tears and anguish!†

1Chorus May the gods grant success to our champion, since he rises up in a just cause, to battle for his city! But I shudder to watch the bloody deaths of men cut down for the sake of their own people. Scout Yes, may the gods so grant success to this man. Capaneus is stationed at the Electran gates, another giant of a man, greater than the one described before. But his boast is too proud for a mere human, and he makes terrifying threats against our battlements—which, I hope, chance will not fulfil! For he says he will utterly destroy the city with god’s will or without it, and that not even conflict with Zeus, though it should fall before him in the plain, will stand in his way. The god’s lightning and thunderbolts he compares to midday heat. For his shield’s symbol he has a man without armor bearing fire, and the torch, his weapon, blazes in his hands; and in golden letters he says I will burn the city. Against such a man make your dispatch—who will meet him in combat, who will stand firm without trembling before his boasts? Eteocles Here too gain follows with interest from gain.†The tongue proves in the end to be an unerring accuser of men’s wicked thoughts. Capaneus makes his threats, ready to act, irreverent toward the gods, and giving his tongue full exercise in wicked glee, he, though a mere mortal, sends a loud and swollen boast to Zeus in heaven. But I trust that the fire-bearing thunderbolt will justly come to him, and when it comes it will not be anything like the sun’s mid-day heat. And against him, even though he is a big talker, a man of fiery spirit, mighty Polyphontes, is stationed, a dependable sentinel with the good will of guardian Artemis and the other gods. Now tell me about another one allotted to other gates! Exit Polyphontes.

1Chorus Death to him who exults so arrogantly over the city! May the thunderbolt stop him before he leaps into my home and plunders me from my maiden chambers with his outrageous spear! Scout Now I will tell you about the man who next drew station at the gates. The third lot leaped out of the upturned bronze helmet for Eteoclus, to hurl his band against the Neistan gates. He whirls his horses as they snort through their bridles, eager to fall against the gate. Their muzzles whistle in a barbarian way, filled with the breath of their haughty nostrils. His shield is decorated in great style: an armored man climbs a ladder’s rungs to mount an enemy tower that he wants to destroy. This one, too, shouts in syllables of written letters that even Ares could not hurl him from the battlements. Send a dependable opponent against this man, too, to keep the yoke of slavery from our city. Eteocles I would send this man here, and with good fortune. Exit Megareus. Indeed, he has already been sent, his only boast in his hands, Megareus, Creon’s seed, of the race of the sown- men. He will not withdraw from the gate in fear of the thunder of the horses’ furious snorting; but either he will die and pay the earth the full price of his nurture, or will capture two men and the city on the shield, and then adorn his father’s house with the spoils. Tell me about another’s boasts and do not begrudge me the full tale!

2Chorus O champion of my home, I pray that this man will have good fortune, and that there will be bad fortune for his enemies. As they boast too much against the city in their frenzied mind, so, too, may Zeus the Requiter look on them in anger! Scout Another, the fourth, has the gate near Onca Athena and takes his stand with a shout, Hippomedon, tremendous in form and figure. I shuddered in fear as he spun a huge disk—the circle of his shield, I mean— I cannot deny it. The symbol-maker who put the design on his shield was no lowly craftsman: the symbol is Typhon, spitting out of his fire-breathing mouth a dark, thick smoke, the darting sister of fire. And the rim of the hollow-bellied shield is fastened all around with snaky braids. The warrior himself has raised the war-cry and, inspired by Ares he raves for battle like a maenad, with a look to inspire fear. We must put up a good defense against the assault of such a man, for already Rout is boasting of victory at the gate. Eteocles First Onca Pallas, who dwells near the city, close by the gate, and who loathes outrageousness in a man, will fend him off like a dangerous snake away from nestlings. Moreover, Hyperbius, Oenops’ trusty son, is chosen to match him, man to man, as he is eager to search out his fate in the crisis that chance has wrought—neither in form, nor spirit nor in the wielding of his arms does he bear reproach. Hermes†has appropriately pitted them against each other. For the man is hostile to the man he faces in battle, and the gods on their shields also meet as enemies. The one has fire-breathing Typhon, while father Zeus stands upright on Hyperbius’ shield, his lightening bolt aflame in his hand. And no one yet has seen Zeus conquered. Such then is the favor of the divine powers: we are with the victors, they with the vanquished, if Zeus in fact proves stronger in battle than Typhon. And it is likely that the mortal adversaries will fare as do their gods; and so, in accordance with the symbol, Zeus will be a savior for Hyperbius since he resides on his shield. Exit Hyperbius.

2Chorus I am sure that Zeus’ antagonist, since he has on his shield the unloved form of an earth-born deity, an image hated by both mortals and the long-lived gods, will drop his head in death before the gate. Scout Let it be so! Next I describe the fifth man who is stationed at the fifth, the Northern gate opposite the tomb of Amphion, Zeus’s son. He swears by his spear which, in his confidence, he holds more to be revered than a god and more precious than his eyes, that he will sack the city of the Cadmeans in spite of Zeus. He says this, the beautiful child of a mountain-bred mother—a warrior, half man, half boy, and his beard’s first growth is just now advancing on his cheeks, his youth in first bloom, thick, upspringing hair. But now he makes his advance with a savage heart and a terrifying look, not at all like the maidens he’s named for.†Nor does he take his stand at the gate unboasting, but wields our city’s shame on his bronze-forged shield, his body’s circular defence, on which the Sphinx who eats men raw is cleverly fastened with bolts, her body embossed and gleaming. She carries under her a single Cadmean, so that against this man chiefly our missiles will be hurled. He does not seem to have come to do any petty trading in the battle, nor to shame the making of his long journey—he is Parthenopaeus of Arcadia. Such is the man, and aiming to make full payment for the fine support given him in Argos, his adopted land, he now threatens our fortifications—may God not fulfil his threats! Eteocles If only they would get from the gods what they wish for, because of those unholy boasts of theirs, then surely they would perish in utter ruin and misery. There is a man for this one, too, whom you name an Arcadian, a man who does not boast, but who knows the thing to do— Actor, brother of him I named before. He will not allow words that lack deeds to overrun his gate and increase fear, nor will he let in a man who carries on his hostile shield the image of the ravenous, detested beast. That beast outside his shield will blame the man who carries her into the gate, when she has taken a heavy beating beneath the city’s walls. If the gods are willing, what I speak may prove true! Exit Actor.

3Chorus His words penetrate to my heart, my hair stands on end as I hear the loud threats of these loud-boasting, impious men. May the gods destroy them here in our land! Scout The sixth man I will name is of the highest moderation and a seer brave in combat, mighty Amphiaraus. Stationed at the Homoloid gate, he repeatedly rebukes mighty Tydeus with evil names Murderer, maker of unrest in the city, principal teacher of evils to the Argives, summoner of vengeance’s Curse, servant of Slaughter, counselor to Adrastus in these evil plans. And next, with eyes looking upward, he addressed your own brother, mighty Polynices who shares your blood, and called him by name, dwelling twice upon its latter part.†These were his words: Will such a deed as this be pleasing to the gods, fine to hear of and to relate to those in the future—that you sacked the city of your ancestors and your native gods and launched a foreign army against them? What justice is it to drain dry the font of your existence?†And how shall your fatherland, captured by the spear for the sake of your ambition, be won over to your cause? As for me, I will enrich this earth, a seer interred beneath enemy soil. Let us fight! I anticipate no dishonorable death. So the seer spoke as untroubled he held his all-bronze shield. No symbol was fixed to his shield’s circle. For he does not wish to appear the bravest, but to be the bravest, as he harvests the fruit of his mind’s deep furrow, where his careful resolutions grow. I advise you to send wise and brave opponents against him. He who reveres the gods is to be feared. Eteocles Ah, the pity of fate’s omen when it makes a just man associate with the irreverent! In all things, nothing is more evil than evil partnership. Its fruit should not be gathered in: the field of recklessness yields a harvest of death. For it may be that a pious man, embarked shipboard with sailors hot for some crime, perishes along with the sort of men hated by the gods; or, a man, though upright himself, when among fellow-citizens who hate all strangers and neglect the gods, may fall undeserving into the same trap as they, and be subdued, struck by the scourge of God that strikes all alike. Just so the seer, Oecles’ son, although a moderate, just, noble, reverent man and a great prophet, mixes with impious, rash-talking men against his own judgment, men stretching out in a procession that is long to retrace,†and, if it is Zeus’s will, he will be be dragged down in ruin along with them. So then, I expect that he will not even charge the gates: not because he lacks courage or is weak-willed, but because he knows that he must meet his end in battle, if the prophecies of Loxias are to come to fruition—the god usually either holds silent or speaks to the point. Just the same, I will station a man against him, mighty Lasthenes, a gate-keeper who hates foreigners. He has the wisdom of an old man, but his body is at its prime: his eyes are quick, and he does not let his hand delay for his spear to seize what is left exposed by the shield. Still it is God’s gift when mortals succeed. Exit Lasthenes.

3Chorus Gods, hear our just prayers and fulfil them, that the city may have good fortune! Turn aside the evils suffered in war onto those who invade our land! May Zeus strike them with his thunderbolt outside the walls and slay them!

1Chorus For what are you so eager, child? Do not let mad lust for battle fill your soul and carry you away. Reject this evil passion while it is still young. Eteocles Since God hastens the deed so urgently, let the whole race of Laius, hated by Phoebus, be swept on the wind to Cocytus’ destined flood!

1Chorus A savage desire eats away at you, drives you to murder, blood-sacrifice proscribed by divine law, whose only fruit is bitterness. Eteocles True, my own beloved father’s hateful, ruinous curse hovers before my dry, unweeping eyes, and informs me of benefit preceding subsequent death.†

2Chorus No, do not let yourself be driven to it. You will not be called a coward if you retain life nobly. Will not the avenging Erinys in her dark aegis leave your house, when the gods receive sacrifice from your hands? Eteocles The gods, it seems, have already banished us from their care, yet they admire the grace we offer them when we perish. So then, why should we cringe and shy away from deadly fate?

2Chorus It is only at this moment that death stands close by you, for the divine spirit may change its purpose even after a long time and come on a gentler wind. But now it still seethes. Eteocles Yes, the curses of Oedipus have made it seethe in fury. Too true were the phantoms in my sleeping visions, predicting the division of our father’s wealth!

1Chorus 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 curses that Oedipus spoke in madness. This strife that will destroy his sons drives the Erinys to fulfillment.

1Chorus A stranger distributes their inheritance, a Chalybian immigrant from Scythia, a bitter divider of wealth, 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.

2Chorus But when both have died, each killing the other in mutual slaughter, and the earth’s dust has swallowed the black streams of their blood, who could offer sacrifice that might make purification? Who could cleanse them of their pollution? O, the new troubles of this house mixed with its evils of before!

2Chorus Indeed I speak of the ancient transgression, now swift in its retribution. It remains even into the third generation, ever since Laius—in defiance of Apollo who, at his Pythian oracle at the earth’s center, said three times that the king would save his city if he died without offspring—

3Chorus Ever since he, overcome by the thoughtlessness of his longing, fathered his own death, the parricide Oedipus, who sowed his mother’s sacred field, where he was nurtured, and endured a bloody crop. Madness united the frenzied bridal pair.

3Chorus Now it is as if a sea of evils pushes its swell onward. As one wave sinks, the sea raises up another, triple-crested, which crashes around the city’s stern. In between a narrow defense stretches—no wider than a wall. I fear that the city will be overthrown along with its kings.

4Chorus For the compensation is heavy when curses uttered long ago are fulfilled, and once the deadly curse has come into existence, it does not pass away. When the fortune of seafaring merchants has grown too great, it must be thrown overboard.

4Chorus For whom have the gods and divinities that share their altar and the thronging assembly of men ever admired so much as they honored Oedipus then, when he removed that deadly, man-seizing plague from our land?

5Chorus But when, his sanity regained, he grew miserable in his wretched marriage, then carried away by his grief and with maddened heart he accomplished a double evil. With the hand that killed his father he struck out his eyes, which were dearer to him than his children.

5Chorus Next he launched brutal, wrathful words against the sons he had bred—ah! curses from a bitter tongue—that wielding iron in their hands they would one day divide his property. So now I tremble in fear that the swift-running Erinys will bring this to fulfillment.

1Chorus O black curse on the family, Oedipus’ curse, now brought to fulfillment! A chill of horror falls about my heart. 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.†

1Chorus The curseful utterance of their father has done its work and not fallen short. Laius’ plans, made in disobedience, have kept their force. I am anxious for our city; divine decrees do not lose their edge. The funeral procession with the bodies of the brothers comes into view.

1Chorus Ah, pity you senseless men, whom friends could not persuade and evils could not wear down! To your misery you have captured your father’s house with the spear.

1Chorus To their misery, indeed, they found a miserable death in the outrage done their house. Ah, you brothers who were poised to cast over the walls of your home and looked—to your sorrow—for sole rule, now you have been reconciled by the iron sword. The great Erinys of your father Oedipus has fulfilled it all truly.

2Chorus Pierced through your left sides, pierced indeed— through those sides that were born from one womb! Ah, strange ones! Ah, the curses that demand death for death! Right through, as you say, were they struck, with blows to house and body by an unspeakable wrath and by the doom, called down by their father’s curse, which they shared without discord.

2Chorus Groaning spreads throughout the city, too: the walls groan; the land that loves its sons groans. But for those who come after them there remains their property, on which account the strife of those terrible-fated men came to fulfillment in death. In their haste to anger they apportioned their property so that each has an equal share. To those who loved them their reconciler is not blameless, nor is Ares agreeable.

3Chorus Under strokes of iron they are come to this, and under strokes of iron there await them—what, one might perhaps ask—shares in their father’s tomb.†Our shrill, heart-rending wail goes with them—product of lamentation and pain felt of its own accord—a wail from a distressed mind, joyless, pouring forth tears from a heart that wastes away as I weep for these two princes.

3Chorus Over these poor men it can be said that they did much to harm our citizens and also the ranks of all the foreigners who died in abundance in the fighting. Ill-fated beyond all women who are called by the name of mother is she who bore them. After she made her own child her own husband, she gave birth to these sons, who have thus ended their lives with kindred hands giving death for death.

4Chorus Of the same seed, in truth, they were utterly destroyed in unloving divisions, in maddened discord, in the ending of their strife. Their hatred has ceased. Their life has been mingled in the blood-soaked earth. Now truly their blood is one. Ruthless is that which resolved their strife, the stranger from across the sea, sharpened iron rushed from the fire. Ruthless, too, was Ares, the cruel divider of their property, who made their father’s curses come true.

4Chorus They hold in misery their allotted portion of god-given sorrows. Beneath their corpses there will be boundless wealth of earth. Ah, you have wreathed your race with many troubles! In the final outcome the Curses have raised their piercing cry, now that the family is turned to flight in all directions. A trophy to Ruin now stands at the gate where they struck each other and where, having conquered them both, the divine power stayed its hand.

1Antigone Ah me! Ismene Ah me! Antigone My heart is mad with wailing. Ismene My heart groans within me. Antigone Ah, the grief, brother all-lamentable. Ismene And you also, brother all-wretched. Antigone You perished at the hands of your nearest and dearest. Ismene And you killed your nearest and dearest. Antigone Twofold to tell of— Ismene Twofold to look upon— Antigone Are these sorrows so close to those. Ismene Fraternal sorrows stand close by fraternal sorrows. Chorus O Fate, giver of grievous troubles, and awful shade of Oedipus, black Erinys, you are indeed a mighty force.

1Antigone Ah, me Ismene Ah, me Antigone Sorrows hard to behold— Ismene He showed me when he returned from exile. Antigone But he made no return after he had killed. Ismene He was saved, but lost his life. Antigone He lost it, all too truly. Ismene And took this one’s life away. Antigone Wretched family! Ismene Wretched suffering! Antigone Kindred sorrows full of groans! Ismene Sorrows steeped in tripled griefs. Chorus O Fate, giver of grievous troubles, and awful shade of Oedipus, black Erinys, you are indeed a mighty force.