Scaife ATLAS

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Seven Against Thebes (879-963)

urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0085.tlg004.perseus-eng2:879-963
Refs {'start': {'reference': '879', 'human_reference': 'Line 879'}, 'end': {'reference': '963', 'human_reference': 'Line 963'}}
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To their misery, indeed,
they found a miserable death in the outrage done their house.
881
Ah, you brothers who were poised to cast over the walls of your home and looked—to your sorrow—for sole rule, now you have been
reconciled by the iron sword.
The great Erinys of your father Oedipus has fulfilled it all truly.
888
Chorus
Pierced through your left sides, pierced indeed—
through those sides that were born from one womb! Ah, strange ones! Ah, the curses that demand death for death!
Right through, as you say, were they struck, with blows to house and body by an unspeakable wrath and by the doom, called down by their father’s curse, which they shared without discord.
900
Chorus
Groaning spreads throughout the city, too: the walls groan; the land that loves its sons groans. But for those who come after them there remains their property, on which account the strife
of those terrible-fated men came to fulfillment in death.
In their haste to anger they apportioned their property so that each has an equal share. To those who loved them their reconciler is not blameless,
nor is Ares agreeable.
911
Chorus
Under strokes of iron they are come to this, and under strokes of iron there await them—what, one might perhaps ask—shares in their father’s tomb.[*]
Our shrill, heart-rending wail goes with them—product of lamentation and pain felt of its own accord—a wail from a distressed mind, joyless, pouring forth tears from a heart
that wastes away as I weep for these two princes.
922
Chorus
Over these poor men it can be said that they did much to harm our citizens and also the ranks of all the foreigners
who died in abundance in the fighting.
Ill-fated beyond all women who are called by the name of mother is she who bore them. After she made her own child her own husband,
she gave birth to these sons, who have thus ended their lives with kindred hands giving death for death.
933
Chorus
Of the same seed, in truth, they were utterly destroyed in unloving divisions,
in maddened discord, in the ending of their strife.
Their hatred has ceased. Their life has been mingled in the blood-soaked earth. Now truly their blood is one.
Ruthless is that which resolved their strife, the stranger from across the sea, sharpened iron rushed from the fire. Ruthless, too, was Ares, the cruel divider of their property, who made their father’s curses come true.
945
Chorus
They hold in misery their allotted portion of god-given sorrows. Beneath their corpses there will be boundless wealth of earth.
Ah, you have wreathed
your race with many troubles! In the final outcome the Curses have raised their piercing cry, now that the family is turned to flight in all directions. A trophy to Ruin now stands at the gate
where they struck each other and where, having conquered them both, the divine power stayed its hand.
957
The following antiphonal dirge is sung by the two sisters—Antigone standing by the bier of Polynices, Ismene by that of Eteocles.
Antigone
You were struck as you struck.
Ismene
You died as you killed.
Antigone
By the spear you killed—
Ismene
By the spear you died—
Antigone
Your deed made you wretched.
Ismene
You suffering made you wretched.
Antigone
Let the lament come.
Ismene
Let the tears come.

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