Hades that welcomes all,
To Acheron's dark shore,
With neither part nor lot
In marriage festival,
Nor hath the marriage hymn
Been sung for me as bride,
But I shall be the bride of Acheron.
Chor. And hast thou not all honour, worthiest praise,
Who goest to the home that hides the dead,
Not smitten by the sickness that decays,
Nor by the sharp sword's meed,820
But of thine own free will, in fullest life,
Alone of mortals, thus
To Hades tak'st thy way?
Antig. I heard of old her pitiable end,[1]
On Sipylos' high crag,
The Phrygian stranger from a far land come,
Whom Tantalos begat;
Whom growth of rugged rock,
Clinging as ivy clings,
Subdued, and made its own:
And now, so runs the tale,
There, as she melts in shower,
The snow abideth aye,830
And still bedews yon cliffs that lie below
Those brows that ever weep.
With fate like hers God brings me to my rest.
Chor. A Goddess she, and of the high Gods born;[2]
- ↑ The thoughts of Antigone go back to the story of one of her own race, whose fate was in some measure like her own. Niobe, daughter of Tantalos, became the wife of Amphion, and then, boasting of her children as more and more goodly than those of Leto, provoked the wrath of Apollo and Artemis, who slew her children. She, going to Sipylos, in Phrygia, was there turned into a rock.
- ↑ Tantalos, the father of Niobe, was himself a son of Zeus.
