Epeisodion 5
Antigone
Look, the stranger, it seems, is coming here to us.
Yes, without attendants, father, with tears streaming from his eyes.
1250
Antigone
The very man who was in our thoughts from the first. Polyneices has come to us.
Polyneices
Ah, me, what should I do? Should I weep first
for my own woes, sisters, or for those of my father here, in his old age? I have found him in a foreign land, here with you two as an exile, clad in such garments as these. Their unfriendly filth has resided with the old man for long,
1255
wasting his flesh; while above the sightless eyes the unkempt hair flutters in the breeze; and matching with these things, it seems, is the food that he carries, sustenance for his poor stomach.
Wretch that I am! I learn all this too late.
1260
And I bear witness that I have proved the worst of men in all that concerns care for you; from my own lips hear what I am. But seeing that Zeus himself in all his actions has Shame beside him to share his throne, may she come to your aid too, father. For the sins committed can be healed,
1265
but can never be made worse.Why are you silent? Speak, father. Do not turn away from me. Do you not have any answer at all for me? Will you dismiss me without a word, dishonored, and not tell me why you are angry?
1270
Seed of this man, my sisters, you at least must try to move our father’s implacable, inexorable silence, so that he may not send me away like this, dishonored and with no word in return, when I am the suppliant of the god.
1275
Antigone
Tell him yourself, unhappy man, what you have come to seek. When words flow, you know, they may give joy, or incite anger or pity, and so they may give a voice to the mute.
1280
Polyneices
Then I will speak boldly, for you give me excellent guidance,
first claiming the help of the god himself, from whose altar the king of this land raised me to come to you, with a guarantee to speak and hear, and go my way unharmed. And I wish these pledges, strangers, to be kept with me by you, and by my sisters here, and by my father.
1285
But now I want to tell you, father, why I came. I have been driven as an exile from my fatherland, because, as eldest-born, I thought it right to sit on your sovereign throne.
1290
Therefore Eteocles, though the younger, thrust me from the land, when he had neither defeated me by an argument of law, nor made a trial of might and deed. He brought over the city by persuasion. The cause of this, I claim, is most of all the curse on your house;
1295
I also hear this from soothsayers. For when I came to Dorian Argos, I made Adrastus my father-in-law. And I bound to me by oath all men of the Apian land who are foremost in their renown for war,
1300
so that with their aid I might collect the seven armies of spearmen against Thebes, and die in a just cause, or drive the doers of this wrong from the land. All right then, why have I come to you now? Bearing prayers of supplication, father, in person to you,
1305
my own prayers and those of my allies, who now with seven armies behind their seven spears have set their blockade around the plain of Thebes. One such is swift-speared Amphiaraus, a matchless warrior, and a matchless diviner;
1310
then comes the son of Oeneus, Aetolian Tydeus; Eteoclus is third, of Argive birth; the fourth, Hippomedon, is sent by Talaos, his father; while Capaneus, the fifth, boasts that he will burn Thebes to the ground with fire; and sixth, Arcadian Parthenopaeus rushes to the war.
1315
He is named for that virgin of long ago from whose marriage in later time he was born, the trusty son of Atalanta. Last come I, your son—or if not yours, then the offspring of an evil fate, but yours at least in name—
1320
leading the fearless army of Argos to Thebes. It is we who implore you, father, every one of us, by your daughters here and by your soul, begging you to forgo your fierce anger against me, as I go forth to punish my brother,
1325
who has expelled me and robbed me of my fatherland. For if anything trustworthy comes from oracles, they said that whoever you join with in alliance will have victorious strength. Then, by the streams of water and gods of our race, I ask you to listen and to yield.
1330
I am a beggar and a stranger, as you are yourself; by paying court to others both you and I have a home, obtaining by lot the same fortune. But he is tyrant at home—wretched me!—and in his pride laughs at you and me alike.
1335
But if you join as ally to my purpose, with little trouble or time I will scatter his strength to the winds, so that I will bring you home and set you in your own house, and set me in mine, when I have cast him out by force. If you are with me, then I can make this boast; but without you
1340
I cannot even return alive.
1345
Chorus
For the sake of him who has sent this man, Oedipus, speak what seems good to you, before you send him away.
Oedipus
Guardians of this land, if it were not Theseus who had sent him here to me, thinking it just that he should hear my response,
then never would he have heard my voice of prophecy. But now he will be graced with it, before he goes, and hear from me such words as never will gladden his life.
1350
Worst of men, when you had the scepter and the throne, which now your brother has in Thebes, you drove me, your own father, into exile; and by making me an exile you caused me to wear this clothing at whose sight you weep, now that you have come to the same state of misery as I.
1355
The time for tears is past. I must bear this burden as long as I live, and keep you before my mind as a murderer. For it is you that have made me subject to this anguish; it is you that have thrust me out, and because of you I wander, begging my daily bread from strangers.
1360
