seems. The wrath of heaven has been pointed against the devoted city only that it might fall with concentrated force on the head of a single man; and he, who is its object, stands alone calm and serene. Unconscious of his own misery, he can afford pity for the unfortunate; and, as if in the plenitude of wisdom and power, he undertakes to trace the evil, of which he is himself the sole author, to its secret source."[1]
The Chorus of Theban citizens now enters, and, as in every chorus in Sophocles, their first ode is a solemn prayer. They draw a piteous picture of the miseries of Thebes, and they invoke its guardian gods to stay the plague which is wasting the inhabitants. Let them rise in defence of the city which has honoured them so well, and drive far away to the gloomy shores of Thrace the destroying angel who rides on the wings of pestilence.
"Lord of the starry heaven,
Grasping the terrors of the burning levin!
Let thy fierce bolt descend,
Scathe the Destroyer's might, and suffering Thebes befriend.
Speed thou here, Lycæan king,—
Archer, from whose golden string
Light the unerring arrows spring—
Apollo, lend thine aid!
And come, ye beams of wreathèd light,
Glancing on the silent night,
In mazy dance, on Lycia's height,
When roves the huntress maid.
- ↑ Bishop Thirlwall, "On the Irony of Sophocles," Philol. Museum, ii. 496.
