Messenger

Ye race of Cadmus, sons of ancient

Thebes,

Henceforth no state of human life by me

Shall be or valued or despised : for all

Depends on fortune ; she exalts the low.

And casts the mighty down. The fate of men

Can never be foretold. There was a time

When Creon lived in envied happiness,

Ruled o'er renowned Thebes, which from her foes

He had delivered, with successful power;

Blest in his kingdom, in his children blest,

He stretched o'er all his universal sway.

Now all is gone : when pleasure is no more,

Man is but an animated corse,

Nor can be said to live ; he may be rich.

Or decked with regal honours, but if joy

Be absent from him, if he tastes them not, I

'Tis useless grandeur all, and empty shade. \

Chorus

Touching our royal master, bringst thou news

Of sorrow to us?

Messenger

They are dead ; and those

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Who live the dreadful cause.

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Choe. Quick, tell us who —

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The slayer and the slain !

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Messenger

Hsemon is dead.

Cttor. Dead ! by what hand, his father's or his own ?

Mets. Enraged and grieving for liis murdered love,

He slew himself.

Chorus

O proijhet ! thy predictions

Were bnt too true !

Messenger

Since thus it be, 'tis fit

We should consult ; our present state demands it,

Chorus

But see ! Eurydice, the wretched wife

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Of Creon, comes this way ; or chance hath brought her.

Or Haemon's hapless fate hath reached her ear.

Eurydice

Scene II.

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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