Stasimon 1
[Episode]
Ah, my sisters!
Eteocles
Why do you, their bitterest enemy, call on them?
Polyneices
To you at least farewell, mother!
Jocasta
Indeed I am faring well, my son!
Polyneices
I am no longer your son.
Jocasta
I was born to great sorrow.
Polyneices
Because my brother treats me outrageously.
620
Eteocles
I am treated just the same.
620
Polyneices
Where will you be stationed before the towers?
Eteocles
Why do you ask me this?
Polyneices
I will set myself against you for your death.
Eteocles
I too have the same desire.
Jocasta
Woe is me! what will you do, my sons?
Polyneices
The event will show.
Jocasta
Oh, try to escape your father’s curse! Exit Jocasta.
Eteocles
May destruction seize our whole house!
Polyneices
Soon my sword will be busy, plunged in gore. But I call my native land and the gods to witness, with what dishonor and bitter treatment I am being driven forth, as though I were a slave, not a son of Oedipus as much as he. If anything happens to you, my city, blame him, not me;
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for I did not come willingly, and unwillingly I am driven from the land. And you, Phoebus, lord of highways, and my home, farewell, and my comrades, and statues of the gods, where sheep are sacrificed. For I do not know if I can ever again address you; though hope is not yet asleep, which makes me confident that with the gods’ help
630
I shall slay him and rule this land of Thebes. Exit Polyneices.
635
Eteocles
Get out of the country! It was a true name our father gave you, when, prompted by some god, he called you Polyneices, man of many quarrels. Exit Eteocles.
[Choral 1]
Cadmus of Tyre came to this land, and at his feet a four-footed,
Chorus
untamed heifer threw itself down, fulfilling an oracle, where the god’s prophecy told him to make his home in the plains rich with wheat,
640
and where the lovely waters of Dirce pour over the fields, the green and deep-seeded fields; here Bromius’ mother gave birth
645
from her union with Zeus; Bromius, round whom the ivy twined its wreaths while he was still a baby, covering him and blessing him in the shades of its green foliage,
650
a Bacchic dance for the maids and wives inspired in Thebes.
655
There was Ares’ murderous dragon, a savage guard,
watching with wandering eye the watery rivers and fresh streams. Cadmus destroyed it with a jagged stone, when he came there to draw lustral water; smiting the deadly head
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with a blow of his beast-slaying arm; and by the counsel of PalIas, the motherless goddess, he cast the teeth upon the deep fields to fall to the earth,
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from which the earth brought forth a sight fully-armed, above the surface of the soil; but grim slaughter once again united them to the earth they loved, bedewing with blood the ground that had
670
shown them to the sunlit breath of heaven.
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