Seven Against Thebes
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
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Chorus
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It is only at this moment that death stands close by you, for the divine spirit may change its purpose even after a long time and come on a gentler wind. But now it still seethes.
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Eteocles
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Yes, the curses of Oedipus have made it seethe in fury.
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Too true were the phantoms in my sleeping visions, predicting the division of our father’s wealth!
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Chorus
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But when both have died, each killing
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the other in mutual slaughter, and the earth’s dust has swallowed the black streams of their blood, who could offer sacrifice that might make purification? Who could cleanse them of their pollution?
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O, the new troubles of this house mixed with its evils of before!
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Chorus
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Indeed I speak of the ancient transgression, now swift in its retribution. It remains even into the third generation,
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ever since Laius—in defiance of Apollo who, at his Pythian oracle at the earth’s center, said three times that the king would save his city if he died without offspring—
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Chorus
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Pierced through your left sides, pierced indeed—
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through those sides that were born from one womb! Ah, strange ones! Ah, the curses that demand death for death!
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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.
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Chorus
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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
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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,
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nor is Ares agreeable.
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Chorus
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All-powerful divinities, you gods and goddesses who wield the power to guard the towers of our land, do not betray our city that now toils under the spear
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to an alien-tongued army. Hear us, hear, as is right, the prayers we maidens offer with outstretched hands.
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Chorus
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Beloved spirits,
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encompass the city to deliver it from ruin and show that you love it. Consider the people’s offerings, and as you consider, help us.
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Remember, I beg, our city’s worship, rich in sacrifice..
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Chorus
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By the will of the gods we inhabit an unconquered city, and the rampart withstands the enemy throng.
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What indignation makes you resent this?
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Eteocles
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I do not begrudge your honor of the divine race; but lest you make the citizens cowardly, be calm and do not be overly fearful.
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Chorus
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When I heard the strange and jumbled clashes,
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I came in trembling fear to this citadel, our seat of worship.
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Eteocles
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If, then, you hear that men are dying or wounded, do not seize on the news with loud wailing. For this is the food of Ares, human blood.
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Chorus
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Tumults swell through the town, and against it a towering net is advancing. Man falls before man beneath the spear. Sobs and wails over gore-covered babes, just nursed at their mothers’ breasts,
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resound. Rape and pillage of those fleeing through the city are the deeds of one’s own blood. Plunderer joins up with plunderer; the empty-handed calls to the empty-handed, wishing to have a partner,
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each greedy for neither less nor equal share. Reason exists for imagining what will come after this.
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Chorus
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The earth’s varied fruits, fallen to the ground, give pain, a bitter sight for the maid-servants.
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In jumbled confusion the abundant gifts of earth are carried away by reckless looting waves. Young women, enslaved, suffer a new evil: a bed of misery, prize of the conquering enemy’s spear, as though of a prospering husband—
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they can expect the coming of the nightly rite, which gives aid to tears and anguish!In this highly condensed passage, contrasted with the note of the misery of an enforced union is an undertone of the happiness of a marriage of love. ἀνδρός is at once man and husband, τέλος rite and consummation, ἐλπίς expectation of sorrow and joy.
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Chorus
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His words penetrate to my heart, my hair stands on end
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as I hear the loud threats of these loud-boasting, impious men. May the gods destroy them here in our land!
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Scout
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The sixth man I will name is of the highest moderation and a seer brave in combat, mighty Amphiaraus.
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Stationed at the Homoloid gate, he repeatedly rebukes mighty Tydeus with evil names Murderer, maker of unrest in the city, principal teacher of evils to the Argives, summoner of vengeance’s Curse, servant of Slaughter, counselor to Adrastus in these evil plans. And next, with eyes looking upward, he addressed your own brother, mighty Polynices who shares your blood, and called him by name, dwelling twice upon its latter part.Polynices much-strife (πολύ νεῖκος). ἐνδατούμενος, literally separating, i.e. dwelling with emphasis on each separate part of the name. These were his words:
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Will such a deed as this be pleasing to the gods, fine to hear of and to relate to those in the future—that you sacked the city of your ancestors and your native gods and launched a foreign army against them? What justice is it to drain dry the font of your existence? μητρὸς πηγή strictly means source, which consists in a mother. Having used this expression for mother, who is the source of life, the poet accommodates the verb to the literal sense of πηγή rather than use a verb of slaying which would have suited the personal object.
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And how shall your fatherland, captured by the spear for the sake of your ambition, be won over to your cause? As for me, I will enrich this earth, a seer interred beneath enemy soil. Let us fight! I anticipate no dishonorable death.
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So the seer spoke as untroubled he held his all-bronze shield. No symbol was fixed to his shield’s circle. For he does not wish to appear the bravest, but to be the bravest, as he harvests the fruit of his mind’s deep furrow, where his careful resolutions grow.
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I advise you to send wise and brave opponents against him. He who reveres the gods is to be feared.
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Eteocles
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Ah, the pity of fate’s omen when it makes a just man associate with the irreverent! In all things, nothing is more evil
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than evil partnership. Its fruit should not be gathered in: the field of recklessness yields a harvest of death. For it may be that a pious man, embarked shipboard with sailors hot for some crime, perishes along with the sort of men hated by the gods;
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or, a man, though upright himself, when among fellow-citizens who hate all strangers and neglect the gods, may fall undeserving into the same trap as they, and be subdued, struck by the scourge of God that strikes all alike. Just so the seer, Oecles’ son,
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although a moderate, just, noble, reverent man and a great prophet, mixes with impious, rash-talking men against his own judgment, men stretching out in a procession that is long to retrace,The march of the army from distant Argos is compared to a lengthened-out procession. and, if it is Zeus’s will, he will be be dragged down in ruin along with them.
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So then, I expect that he will not even charge the gates: not because he lacks courage or is weak-willed, but because he knows that he must meet his end in battle, if the prophecies of Loxias are to come to fruition—the god usually either holds silent or speaks to the point.
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Just the same, I will station a man against him, mighty Lasthenes, a gate-keeper who hates foreigners. He has the wisdom of an old man, but his body is at its prime: his eyes are quick, and he does not let his hand delay for his spear to seize what is left exposed by the shield.
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Still it is God’s gift when mortals succeed. Exit Lasthenes.
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Chorus
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Gods, hear our just prayers and fulfil them, that the city may have good fortune! Turn aside the evils suffered in war onto those who invade our land! May Zeus strike them
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with his thunderbolt outside the walls and slay them!
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Chorus
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Ever since he, overcome by the thoughtlessness of his longing, fathered his own death, the parricide Oedipus, who sowed his mother’s sacred field, where he was nurtured,
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and endured a bloody crop. Madness united the frenzied bridal pair.
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Chorus
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Now it is as if a sea of evils pushes its swell onward. As one wave sinks, the sea raises up another,
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triple-crested, which crashes around the city’s stern. In between a narrow defense stretches—no wider than a wall. I fear that the city will be overthrown along with its kings.
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Chorus
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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.As the brothers were to divide the substance of their dead father, their equal inheritance was the tomb. λαχαί means both apportioning of possessions and digging.
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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
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that wastes away as I weep for these two princes.
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Chorus
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Over these poor men it can be said that they did much to harm our citizens and also the ranks of all the foreigners
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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,
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she gave birth to these sons, who have thus ended their lives with kindred hands giving death for death.
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Chorus
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For the compensation is heavy when curses uttered long ago are fulfilled, and once the deadly curse has come into existence, it does not pass away. When the fortune of seafaring merchants has grown too great,
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it must be thrown overboard.
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Chorus
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For whom have the gods and divinities that share their altar and the thronging assembly of men ever admired
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so much as they honored Oedipus then, when he removed that deadly, man-seizing plague from our land?
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Chorus
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Of the same seed, in truth, they were utterly destroyed in unloving divisions,
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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.
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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.
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Chorus
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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
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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
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where they struck each other and where, having conquered them both, the divine power stayed its hand.
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Chorus
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But when, his sanity regained, he grew miserable in his wretched
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marriage, then carried away by his grief and with maddened heart he accomplished a double evil. With the hand that killed his father he struck out his eyes, which were dearer to him than his children.
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Chorus
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Next he launched brutal, wrathful words against the sons he had bred—ah! curses from a bitter tongue—that wielding iron in their hands they would one day divide his property.
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So now I tremble in fear that the swift-running Erinys will bring this to fulfillment.
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Ismene
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You died as you killed.