Stasimon 5
[Episode]
The army sprang to their feet and fell to wrangling, we maintaining that victory rested with my master, they with theirs; and there was strife among the generals, some holding that Polyneices gave the first wound with his spear, others that, as both were dead, victory rested with neither.
1460
Messenger
Meanwhile Antigone crept away from the army. They rushed to their weapons, but by some lucky forethought the people of Cadmus had sat down under arms; and by a sudden attack we surprised the Argive army before it was fully equipped.
1465
Not one withstood our onset, and they filled the plain with fugitives, while blood was streaming from the countless dead our spears had slain. When victory had crowned our warfare, some set up an image of Zeus as a trophy, others were stripping the Argive dead of their shields
1470
and sending their spoils inside the battlements; and others with Antigone are bringing the dead here for their friends to mourn. So for the city, the result of this struggle hovers between the two extremes of good and evil fortune. Exit Messenger.
1475
Chorus
No longer do the misfortunes of this house extend to hearsay only; three corpses of the slain lie here at the palace for all to see; by one common death they have drawn their lot, a life of darkness.
1480
Antigone
I do not veil my tender cheek shaded with curls, nor do I feel shame, from maiden modesty, at the dark red beneath my eyes, the blush upon my face, as I hurry on, in bacchic revelry for the dead,
1485
casting from my hair its mantle and letting my delicate saffron robe fly loose, a tearful escort to the dead. Ah me!
1490
Oh, Polyneices! you were rightly named, after all; woe to you, Thebes!
Your strife—not strife, but murder on murder— has brought the house of Oedipus to ruin with dire and grim bloodshed. What harmonious or tuneful wailing can I summon,
1495
for my tears, my tears, oh, my home! oh, my home! as I bear these three kindred bodies, my mother and her sons, a welcome sight to the Fury? She destroyed the house of Oedipus, root and branch,
1500
when his shrewdness solved the Sphinx’s unsolvable song and killed that savage singer. Alas for you, father! What other Hellene or barbarian,
1505
what mortal from a noble line ever endured the anguish of such visible afflictions?
1510
Ah! poor girl, how piteous is your cry!
What bird, perched on the high-leaved branches of oak or pine, will come to mourn with me, left motherless? With cries of woe,
1515
I lament before it comes the piteous lonely life, that I shall live for the rest of time, in streaming tears. On which of these
1520
shall I throw my offerings first, plucking the hair from my head? on the breast of the mother that suckled me, or beside the ghastly death-wounds of my brothers’ corpses?
1525
Oh, oh! Oedipus, my old father with sightless eyes, leave your house, reveal the misery of your life, you who have cast a mist of darkness over your eyes and
1530
draw out a weary existence within the house. Do you hear, you who are wandering with old step across the court, or sleeping on your wretched pallet couch?
1535
have you dragged me to the light by your piteous tears, supporting my blind footsteps, from the gloom of my bed-chamber, gray-haired, invisible as a phantom of the air, or as a spirit from the world below, or
1540
as a dream that flies?
1545
Antigone
Father, there are tidings of sorrow for you to bear; no longer do your sons see the light, or your wife, who would always labor to tend your blind footsteps as with a staff.
Alas for you, my father!
1550
Oedipus
Alas for my sorrows! I may well groan and cry. Three lives! Tell me, child, by what fate they left the light.
Antigone
I do not say this to reproach or mock you, but in sadness: your own avenging curse, with all its load of swords and fire and ruthless war, came on your sons. Alas for you, my father!
1555
Antigone
Why that groan?
1560
Antigone
You are in pain; but if you could look towards the sun-god’s four-horse chariot and turn the light of your eyes on these corpses—
Oedipus
The evil fate of my sons is clear; but she, my poor wife, tell me, daughter, by what fate did she die?
1565
