"Yes," say the Chorus, "and she was immortal, while thou art mortal; yet for a mortal to obtain the lot of immortality is great glory."
But this glory is too vague to console Antigone, and her mind reverts to the actual horror of the present. She must tread this last sad journey alone, "unwept, and unwedded." She must look on the bright sunlight, on the streams of Dirce, on the familiar streets of Thebes,—
"This once, but never more; for Hades vast,
Drear home of all the dead,
Leads me, in life, where Acheron flows fast,
Sparing no marriage-bed;
No marriage-hymn was mine in all the past,
But Acheron I wed."—(P.)
Creon roughly breaks in upon the lament of Antigone; and at sight of him the maiden recovers something of her haughty spirit, and proclaims aloud the justice of her cause and her own innocence, deserted though she seems to be by men and gods. Looking with steady gaze towards the tomb whither she is being led, she utters her last farewell to light and life:—
"O tomb, my bridal chamber, vaulted home,
depths of the rock, the sitting form of a woman, bending forward in her grief, over whom the water drips and flows ceaselessly. This is Niobe, the mother of the Phrygian mountains, who saw her happy offspring, the rivulets, playing round her, till they were all carried away by the day-heat of the sun."—Curtius's Hist. of Greece, i. 81.
