Epeisodion 2
Antigone
and unfailing statutes given us by the gods. For their
life is not of today or yesterday, but for all time, and no man knows
when they were first put forth. Not for fear of any man’s pride was I
about to owe a penalty to the gods for breaking these.
455
Die I
must, that I knew well (how could I not?). That is true even without
your edicts. But if I am to die before my time, I count that a gain.
When anyone lives as I do, surrounded by evils, how can he not carry off
gain by dying?
460
So for me to meet this doom is a grief of no account.
But if I had endured that my mother’s son should in death lie an
unburied corpse, that would have grieved me. Yet for this, I am not
grieved. And if my present actions are foolish in your sight,
465
it may
be that it is a fool who accuses me of folly.
470
Chorus
She shows herself the wild offspring of a wild father, and does not know
how to bend before troubles.
Creon
Yet remember that over-hard spirits most often collapse. It is the
stiffest iron, baked to
utter hardness in the fire, that you most often see
snapped and shivered. And I have witnessed horses with great spirit
disciplined by a small bit. For there is no place for pride, when one is
his neighbors’ slave.
475
This girl was already
practiced in outrage when she overstepped the published laws. And, that
done, this now is a second outrage, that she glories in it and exults in
her deed. In truth, then, I am no man, but she is,
480
if this victory rests with her and brings no penalty.
No! Whether she is my sister’s child, or nearer to me in blood than any
of my kin that worship Zeus at the altar of our house, she and her
sister will not escape a doom most harsh. For in truth
485
I charge that other with an equal share
in the plotting of this burial. Call her out! I saw her inside just now,
raving, and not in control of her wits. Before the deed, the mind
frequently is convicted of stealthy crimes when conspirators are
plotting depravity in the dark.
490
But, truly, I detest it, too, when one who has been caught in
treachery then seeks to make the crime a glory.
495
Antigone
What more do you want than to capture and kill me?
Creon
I want nothing else. Having that, I have everything.
Antigone
Why then do you wait? In none of your maxims
is there anything that pleases me—and may there never
be! Similarly to you as well my views must be displeasing. And yet, how
could I have won a nobler glory than by giving burial to my own brother?
All here would admit that they approve,
500
if fear did not grip their tongues. But tyranny, blest
with so much else, has the power to do and say whatever it pleases.
505
Creon
You alone out of all these Thebans see it that way.
Antigone
They do, too, but for you they hold their tongues.
Creon
Are you not ashamed that your
beliefs differ from theirs?
510
Antigone
No, there is nothing shameful in respecting your own flesh and blood.
Creon
Was not he your brother too, who died in the opposite cause?
Antigone
A brother by the same mother and the same father.
Creon
Why, then, do you pay a service that is disrespectful to him?
Antigone
The dead man will not support you
in that.
515
Creon
Yes, he will, if you honor him equally with the wicked one.
Antigone
It was his brother, not his slave, who died.
Creon
But he died ravaging this land, while he fell in its defense.
Antigone
Hades craves these rites, nevertheless.
Creon
But the good man craves a portion not equal to the
evil’s.
520
Antigone
Who knows but that these actions are pure to those below?
