Antigone / Oedipus the King / Electra by Sophocles
My own escape comes before everything.
440
CREON. You there, who keep your eyes fixed on the
ground,
Do you admit this, or do you deny it?
ANTIGONE. No, I do not deny it. I admit it.
CREON [to Guard]. Then you may go; go where you
like. You have
Been fully cleared of that grave accusation.
[Exit GUARD
You: tell me briefly—I want no long speech:
Did you not know that this had been forbidden?
ANTIGONE. Of course I knew. There was a
proclamation.
CREON. And so you dared to disobey the law?
ANTIGONE. It was not Zeus who published this decree,
450
Nor have the Powers who rule among the dead*
Imposed such laws as this upon mankind;
Nor could I think that a decree of yours—
A man—could override the laws of Heaven*
Unwritten and unchanging. Not of today
Or yesterday is their authority;
They are eternal; no man saw their birth.
Was I to stand before the gods’ tribunal
For disobeying them, because I feared
A man? I knew that I should have to die,
460
Even without your edict; if I die
Before my time, why then, I count it gain;
To one who lives as I do, ringed about
With countless miseries, why, death is welcome.
For me to meet this doom is little grief;
But when my mother’s son lay dead, had I
Neglected him and left him there unburied,
That would have caused me grief; this causes none.
And if you think it folly, then perhaps
I am accused of folly by the fool.
470
CHORUS. The daughter shows her father’s temper—
fierce,
Defiant; she will not yield to any storm.
CREON. But it is those that are most obstinate
Suffer the greatest fall; the hardest iron,
Most fiercely tempered in the fire, that is
Most often snapped and splintered. I have seen
The wildest horses tamed, and only by
The tiny bit. There is no room for pride
In one who is a slave! This girl already
Had fully learned the art of insolence
480
When she transgressed the laws that I established;
And now to that she adds a second outrage—
To boast of what she did, and laugh at us.
Now she would be the man, not I, if she
Defeated me and did not pay for it.
But though she be my niece, or closer still
Than all our family,* she shall not escape
The direst penalty; no, nor shall her sister:
I judge her guilty too; she played her part
In burying the body. Summon her.
490
Just now I saw her raving and distracted
Within the palace. So it often is:
Those who plan crime in secret are betrayed
Despite themselves; they show it in their faces.
But this is worst of all: to be convicted
And then to glorify the crime as virtue.
[Exeunt some GUARDS
ANTIGONE. Would you do more than simply take and
kill me?
CREON. I will have nothing more, and nothing less.
ANTIGONE. Then why delay? To me no word of yours
Is pleasing—God forbid it should be so!—
500
And everything in me displeases you.
Yet what could I have done to win renown
More glorious than giving burial
To my own brother? These men too would say it,
Except that terror cows them into silence.
A king has many a privilege: the greatest,
That he can say and do all that he will.
CREON. You are the only one in Thebes to think it!
ANTIGONE. These think as I do—but they dare not
speak.
CREON. Have you no shame, not to conform with
others?
510
ANTIGONE. To reverence a brother is no shame.
CREON. Was he no brother, he who died for Thebes?
ANTIGONE. One mother and one father gave them
birth.
CREON. Honouring the traitor, you dishonour him.*
ANTIGONE. He will not bear this testimony, in death.
CREON. Yes! if the traitor fare the same as he.
ANTIGONE. It was a brother, not a slave who died!
CREON. He died attacking Thebes; the other saved us.
ANTIGONE. Even so, the god of Death* demands these
rites.
CREON. The good demand more honour than the
wicked.
520
ANTIGONE. Who knows? In death they may be
reconciled.
CREON. Death does not make an enemy a friend!
ANTIGONE. Even so, I give both love, not share their
hatred.
CREON. Down then to Hell! Love there, if love you
must.
While I am living, no woman shall have rule.
Enter GUARDS, with ISMENE
CHORUS [chants]. See where Ismene leaves the palace-
gate,
In tears shed for her sister. On her brow
A cloud of grief has blotted out her sun,
And breaks in rain upon her comeliness.
530
CREON. You, lurking like a serpent in my house,
Drinking my life-blood unawares; nor did
I know that I was cherishing two fiends,
Subverters of my throne; come, tell me this:
Do you confess you shared this burial,
Or will you swear you had no knowledge of it?
ISMENE. I did it too, if she allows my claim;
I share the burden of this heavy charge.
ANTIGONE. No! Justice will not suffer that; for you
Refused, and I gave you no part in it.
ISMENE. But in your stormy voyage I am glad
540
To share the danger, travelling at your side.
ANTIGONE. Whose was the deed the god of Death
knows well;
I love not those who love in words alone.
ISMENE. My sister, do not scorn me, nor refuse
That I may die with you, honouring the dead.
ANTIGONE. You shall not die with me, nor claim as
yours
What you rejected. My death will be enough.
ISMENE. What life is left to me if I lose you?
ANTIGONE. Ask Creon! It was Creon that you cared
for.
ISMENE. O why taunt me, when it does not help you?
550
ANTIGONE. If I do taunt you, it is to my pain.
ISMENE. Can I not help you, even at this late hour?
ANTIGONE. Save your own life. I grudge not your
escape.
ISMENE. Alas! Can I not join you in your fate?
ANTIGONE. You cannot: you chose life, and I chose
death.
ISMENE. But not without the warning that I gave you!
ANTIGONE. Some thought you wise; the dead
commended me.
ISMENE. But my offence has been as great as yours.
ANTIGONE. Be comforted; you live, but I have given
My life already, in service of the dead.
560
CREON. Of these two girls, one has been driven frantic,
The other has been frantic since her birth.
ISMENE. Not so, my lord; but when disaster comes
The reason that one has can not stand firm.
CREON. Yours did not, when you chose to partner
crime!
ISMENE. But what is life to me, without my sister?
CREON. Say not ‘my sister’: sister you have none.
ISMENE. But she is Haemon’s bride—and can you kill
her?
CREON. Is she the only woman he can bed with?
ISMENE. The only one so joined in love with him.
570
CREON. I hate a son to have an evil wife.
ANTIGONE. O my dear Haemon! How your father
wrongs you!*
CREON. I hear too much of you and of your marriage.
ISMENE. He is your son; how can you take her from
him?*
CREON. It is not I, but Death, that stops this wedding.
CHORUS. It is determined, then, that she must die?*
CREON. For you, and me, determined. [To the GUARDS.]
Take them in
At once; no more delay. Henceforward let
Them stay at home, like women, not roam abroad.
Even the bold, you know, will seek escape
580
When they see death at last standing beside them.
[Exeunt ANTIGONE and ISMENE into the palace,
guarded, CREON remains
Strophe 1
CHORUS [sings]. Thrice happy are they who have never
known disaster!
Once a house is shaken of Heaven, disaster
Never leaves it, from generation to generation.
’Tis even as the swelling sea,
When the roaring wind from Thrace*
Drives blustering over the water and makes it black:
590
It bears up from below
A thick, dark cloud of mud,
And groaning cliffs repel the smack of wind and
angry breakers.
Antistrophe 1
I see, in the house of our kings, how ancient sorrows
Rise again; disaster is linked with disaster.
Woe again must each generation inherit. Some god
Besets them, nor will give release.
On the last of royal blood
There gleamed a shimmering light in the house of
Oedipus.
600
But Death comes once again
With blood-stained axe, and hews
The sapling down; and Frenzy lends her aid, and vengeful Madness.
Strophe 2
Thy power, Zeus, is almighty! No
Mortal insolence can oppose Thee!
Sleep, which conquers all else, cannot overcome
Thee,
Nor can the never-wearied
Years, but throughout
Time Thou art strong and ageless,
In thy own Olympus
Ruling in radiant splendour.
610
For today, and in all past time,
And through all time to come,
This is the law: that in Man’s
Life every success brings with it some disaster.
Antistrophe 2
Hope springs high, and to many a man
Hope brings comfort and consolation;
Yet she is to some nothing but fond illusion:
Swiftly they come to ruin,
As when a man
Treads unawares on hot fire.
For it was a wise man
620
First made that ancient saying:
To the man whom God will ruin
One day shall evil seem
Good, in his twisted judgement
He comes in a short time to fell disaster.
CHORUS. See, here comes Haemon, last-born of your
children,*
Grieving, it may be, for Antigone.* 630
CREON. Soon we shall know, better than seers can tell
us.
Enter HAEMON
My son:
You have not come in rage against your father