Antigone (754-823)

You will regret your unwise instructions in wisdom.

If you were not my father, I would have called you insane.

You woman’s slave, do not try to cajole me.

Do you want to have your say and then have done without a reply?

Is that so? By Olympus above—know this well—you will have no joy for taunting me over and above your censures.

Bring out that hated thing, so that with him looking on she may die right now in her bridegroom’s presence and at his side!

No, not at my side will she die—do not ever imagine it. Nor shall you ever look at me and set eyes on my face again.

Indulge in your madness now with whomever of your friends can endure it. Exit Haemon.

The man is gone, King Creon, in anger and haste. A young mind is fierce when stung.

Let him do—no!—let him plan something more immense than befits a man. Farewell to him! Still he will not save these two girls from death.

Then the pair of them, you really intend to kill them both?

Not the one who did not put her hands to the burial. You are right.

And by what mode of death do you mean to kill the other?

I will take her where the path is deserted, unvisited by men, and entomb her alive in a rocky vault,

setting out a ration of food, but only as much as piety requires so that all the city may escape defilement. And praying there to Hades, the only god she worships, perhaps she will obtain immunity from death, or else will learn, at last, even this late,

that it is fruitless labor to revere the dead. Exit Creon.