others who devoted themselves for a noble cause, she "surrendered all, and looked forward to nothing but the joyless asphodel meadow, and 'drear Cocytus, with its languid stream.'"[1] There was not even the expectancy of a material happiness, such as consoles the dying Islamite. To the Greek maiden all beyond the Styx was dim, shadowy, and spectral as the ghosts with which Homer peopled Hades.
Retribution, in the drama, follows closely upon crime. Scarcely has Antigone been led away to death—scarcely have the Chorus ended their dirge in her memory, in which they illustrate the law of suffering, from which even gods are not exempt—when Teiresias, the blind prophet, whose approach is always ominous of woe, confronts Creon, as Elijah confronted Ahab on his return from the vineyard whither he had gone up to take possession. The augur has read signs of coming disaster portended in the heavens above and in the earth beneath. To Teiresias, as to Elijah, "the horizon was darkened with the visions of vultures glutting on the carcases of the dead, and the packs of savage dogs feeding on their remains, or lapping up their blood."[2] Seated on his "old augurial throne," he has heard a strange clamour of birds battling in the air, and tearing each other's flesh. Instead of the wonted flame rising bright and clear from the altar, the sacred fire had but smoked and spluttered; the victim's flesh had fallen to the ground and wasted; every shrine and hearth was full of unclean food.
- ↑ Ecce Homo, ch. xi.
- ↑ Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, ii. 314.
