Epeisodion 6
Messenger
Neighbors of the house of Cadmus and of Amphion, there
is no station of human life that I would ever praise or blame as being
settled. Fortune sets upright and Fortune sinks the lucky and unlucky
from day to day,
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and no one can prophesy to men concerning the order
that has just been established. For Creon, as I saw it, was once blest:
he had saved this land of Cadmus from its enemies; and having won sole
and total dominion in the land, he guided it on a straight course and
flourished in his noble crop of children.
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And now all this has been lost. When a man has
forfeited his pleasures, I do not reckon his existence as life, but
consider him just a breathing corpse. Heap up riches in your house, if
you wish! Live with a tyrant’s pomp! But if there is no joy
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along with all of that, I would not pay even the shadow
of smoke for all the rest, compared with joy.
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Chorus
What is this new grief for our princes that you have come
to report?
Messenger
They are dead, and the living are guilty of the deaths.
Chorus
Who is the murderer? Who the murdered? Tell us.
Messenger
Haemon is dead—his blood was shed by no strange
hand.
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Chorus
Was it his father’s, or his own ?
Messenger
He did it by his own, enraged with his father for the
murder.
Chorus
Ah, prophet, how true, then, you have proved your word!
Messenger
Knowing that these things are so, you must consider the
rest.
Chorus
Wait, I see the unhappy Eurydice, Creon’s wife, nearby.
She comes from the house either knowing of her son, or merely by
chance.
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Eurydice
People of Thebes,
I heard your words as I was on my way to the gates to address divine
Pallas with my prayers.
At one and the same time I was loosening the bolts of
the gate to open it, and the sound of a blow to our house struck my ear.
In terror I sank back into the arms of my handmaids, and my senses fled.
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But repeat what your news was, for I shall hear it with
ears that are no strangers to sorrow.
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Messenger
Dear mistress, I will tell what I witnessed and leave no
word of the truth unspoken. For what good would it do that should I
soothe you with words in which I must later be found false?
The truth is always best. I attended your husband as
his guide to the furthest part of the plain, where unpitied the body of
Polyneices, torn by dogs, still lay. After we had prayed to the goddess
of the roads
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and to Pluto to restrain their anger in mercy, we
washed him with pure washing, and with freshly-plucked boughs we burned
what remains there were. Lastly we heaped a high-mounded tomb of his
native earth. Afterwards we turned away to enter the maiden’s
stoney-bedded
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bridal chamber, the caverned mansion of Hades’ bride.
From a distance, one of us servants heard a voice of loud wailing near
that bride’s unwept bed and came to tell our master Creon. And as the
King moved closer and closer, obscure signs rising from a bitter cry
surrounded him—
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he groaned and said in bitter lament, Ah, misery, am I now the prophet of evil? Am I going on the path
most lined with grief of all that I have walked before? My son’s
voice greets me. Go, my servants,
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hurry closer, and when
you have reached the tomb, enter the opening where the stones of the
mound have been torn away, up to the cell’s very mouth. See if it is
Haemon’s voice that I recognize, or if I am cheated by the
gods.
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This search, at our desperate master’s word,
we went to make, and in the furthest part of the tomb
we saw her hanging by the neck, fastened by a halter of fine linen
threads, while he was embracing her with arms thrown around her waist,
bewailing the loss of his bride to the spirits below, as well as his
father’s deeds, and his grief-filled marriage.
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But his father, when he saw him, cried aloud with a
dreadful cry and went in and called to him with a voice of wailing: Ah, unhappy boy, what have you done! What plan have
you seized on? By what misfortune have you lost your reason?
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Come out, my son, I pray
you, I beg you! But the boy glared at him with savage eyes, spat
in his face, and without a word in response drew his twin-edged sword.
As his father rushed out in flight, he missed his aim. Then the
ill-fated boy was enraged with himself
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and straightway stretched himself over his sword and
drove it, half its length, into his side. Still conscious, he clasped
the maiden in his faint embrace, and, as he gasped, he shot onto her
pale cheek a swift stream of oozing blood.
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Corpse enfolding corpse he lay, having won his marriage
rites, poor boy, not here, but in Hades’ palace, and having shown to
mankind by how much the failure to reason wisely is the most severe of
all afflictions assigned to man. Eurydice departs into the
house.
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Chorus
What would you infer from this? The lady
has turned back and gone without a word, either for
good or for evil.
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Messenger
I, too, am startled. Still I am nourished by the hope that
at the grave news of her son she thinks it unworthy to make her laments
before the city, but in the shelter of her home will set her handmaids
to mourn the house’s grief.
For she is not unhabituated to discretion, that she
should err.
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Chorus
I do not know. But to me, in any case, a silence too strict
seems to promise trouble just as much as a fruitless abundance of
weeping.
Messenger
I will find out whether she is not, in fact, hiding some
repressed plan in the darkness of her passionate heart.
I will go in, since you are right—in an excess of
silence, too, there may be trouble. Exit Messenger.
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