Sophocles (Collins)/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
ANTIGONE.
Of all the plays of Sophocles, this has had the most long-lived popularity. Not only was it frequently acted on the Athenian stage, but it has been translated, imitated, and "adapted" by successive generations of dramatists, from Seneca to Racine. The plot has been illustrated by Alfieri, and the choruses have been set to music by Mendelssohn; and only so recently as 1845, the play was actually represented on the boards of Covent Garden Theatre, with all the accessories of classical costume and scenery, and with Helen Faucit as the heroine.
It is not hard to discover the secret of the enduring favour with which the 'Antigone' has been regarded. The heroine, who absorbs the interest of the piece, is the purest and noblest idea of womanhood that ever inspired a poet. In reading the play we have something of the same feeling as when we look at Delaroche's famous picture of Marie Antoinette. All else in the painting—whether judges, guards, or spectators—sinks into shade and insignificance before the one grand central figure, standing out in bold relief against the darkness of the canvas—
"Death's purpose flashing in her face."[1]
'Antigone' has been said to be the poetry of what Socrates is the prose; that is, she is in fiction what he is in history—a martyr in the cause of truth. The death of both was as truly a martyrdom as that of any Christian who suffered for his faith in the persecutions of Nero or Diocletian. Both chose to obey God rather than man. Both appealed from the law of the land, and from the sentence of an earthly judge, to those laws which are "neither written on tablets nor proclaimed by heralds," but engraven in the heart of man. More than two thousand five hundred years have passed since the day when Antigone made her noble protest; but time has only justified her cause, and her voice still speaks to us across the lapse of years:—
"No ordinance of Man shall override
The settled laws of Nature and of God;
Not written these in pages of a book,
Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday;
We know not whence they are; but this we know,
That they from all eternity have been,
And shall to all eternity endure."[2]
It was outraged nature which made this appeal through the mouth of Antigone. Creon had, by his exposure of the body of Polynices, violated the first great law of humanity, and had committed an act which was at once impious and barbarous, detestable alike in the eyes of gods and men. To the Greek, reverence for the dead was the most sacred of all duties. In his national creed, the ghosts of Hades seem more than disembodied spirits;—they retain their bodily senses; they remember the joys and brood over the sorrows of their former life; they carry traces of the mortal wounds or mutilation which caused their death; and so, in the Odyssey, we find them crowding to drink the blood which, like an elixir of life, seems to reanimate their veins, and give them speech and utterance. To the Greek the grave was not a barrier across which there was no return. Hercules had wrestled bodily with Death for the possession of Alcestis; Orpheus had almost regained his Eurydice; and Hesiod tells us how the spirits of the just revisit the loved scenes of their lifetime, like guardian angels—
"Earth haunting, beneficent, holy."[3]
But nothing could compensate to the dead for their cruel deprivation of a tomb. Not only was the spirit in such a case condemned to wander restlessly for a hundred years on the banks of Styx—a belief of which Lord Lytton has made such skilful use in his tale of 'Sisyphus'—but the laws of the gods in the lower world were violated, and the majesty of Proserpine, the queen of Hades, was set at nought. Few would take the common-sense view of Socrates in Plato's Dialogue, who told his friends that, do what they would, they could not bury him; or of Anchises in the Æneid, that
"He lacks not much who lacks a grave."[4]
Tradition unanimously consecrated the importance of sepulture. The fiercest battles in Homer are those waged for the possession of the dead bodies of heroes like Sarpedon or Patroclus. The most cruel insult to the conquered is that of Achilles, when he lashes the corpse of Hector to his chariot, and drags it round the walls of Troy. The most touching scene in all the Iliad is where Priam humbles himself in the dust before the victor to obtain the body of his son for burial. So strong was the feeling even in actual history, that after the battle of Arginusæ (fought in the same year that Sophocles died) we find the Athenian people condemning ten victorious generals to death for having allowed the seamen of sinking vessels to be drowned unrescued, and so be deprived of a grave. Hence, without question, the tragedies which must have excited the keenest sympathy in a Greek audience were those in which the interest turned on the violation of funeral rites—as in the 'Ajax' and 'Antigone' of Sophocles, and in the 'Suppliants' of Euripides.
The sisters Antigone and Ismene had returned to Thebes after the death of Œdipus, and there they lived, under the guardianship of Creon, with their brother Eteocles. Then came the famous siege, of which an account has been given in a preceding volume of this series. For three days the Seven Chieftains had assaulted the seven gates, with varying success, and on the third day the single combat took place which resulted in the death by each other's hands of the two brothers. After their fall, the battle still raged on, until at last Menœceus, son of Creon, devoted himself as a sacrifice for his country, and then the Argive host were seized with a sudden panic, and fled in headlong rout.
It is on the morning after their flight that the play opens. All that scenery can do to heighten the effect has been employed by the poet. In the background rises the palace of the kings of Thebes, and on the walls are hung six suits of armour, taken from the Argive chieftains. One side-scene represents the distant hills of Cithæron; on the other is depicted the city itself, with its houses and temples, the sacred streams of Dirce and Ismenus, and the "Scæan gates," still bearing traces of the late assault.
The audience, who have murmured their applause at the fidelity with which the artist has brought before them a well-known locality, are hushed into silence as the two sisters enter. They have come forth from the palace to discuss the new decree which Creon the king has just proclaimed. By his orders, Eteocles has been already buried with all the honours of a soldier's grave; but the corpse of Polynices is to lie "unwept, unburied," a prey for the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field. Whoever disobeys this mandate is to be stoned to death. "Now is the time," says Antigone to her sister, "to show
"Whether thou hast an innate nobleness,
Or art the base-born child of noble sires."—(P.)
And here we find at once the same strong contrast between the characters of the two sisters, which in a subsequent tragedy is seen between Electra and Chrysothemis. Antigone, like Joan of Arc and other enthusiasts, is so absorbed in her own self-sacrifice, inspired with such a lofty sense of what her duty towards her brother demands, that she spurns all other considerations. Death and life, honour and dishonour, happiness and misery, are as nothing compared with the work she has in hand. Ismene, though not less affectionate, is of a softer temper. She has less heroism, but more common-sense. Her advice is that which prudence naturally suggests—"Why add another to the countless sorrows of the family? Why offend the powers that be, or offer unavailing resistance to the majesty of law?"
But these prudent counsels only incense Antigone, and she breaks into a tone of lofty scorn:—
"No more will I exhort thee—no! and if
Thou wouldst it now, it would not pleasure me
To have thee as a partner in the deed.
Be what it liketh thee to be, but I
Will bury him; and shall esteem it honour
To die in the attempt; dying for him,
Loving with one who loves me I shall lie
After a holy deed of sin; the time
Of the world's claims upon me may not mate
With what the grave demands; for there my rest
Will be for everlasting.
*******
Come what will,
It cannot take from me a noble death."
In her "fiery mood," Antigone disdainfully rejects Ismene's offer to keep her counsel, and so the sisters part,—Antigone going to prepare the body for burial, and Ismene, broken-hearted at the thought of the coming evil, retreating within the palace.
The Chorus of "grave and reverend" Theban elders now enter to the sound of music, and burst into a triumphal hymn in honour of the late victory, as they hail the bright sunlight which streams above the eastern gates. For it is the Sun-god himself that has driven in headlong flight
"The Argive hero of the argent shield."
Then, in the figurative style of lyric verse, which recalls to the reader the songs of Miriam and Deborah, they tell how Polynices had swooped down upon his native land, like an eagle thirsting for slaughter:—
"White as the snow were the pinions that clothed him,
Many his bucklers,
And his helmets crested with horse-hair."
But ere he could lay the city low in blood and fire, "the dragon" (of Thebes) "had proved his match in war."
Then they sing of the fall of Capaneus, that impious blasphemer of the gods, who had been dashed from the scaling-ladder, torch in hand, by a thunderbolt from heaven. The gods had fought for the city they loved so well, and the seven chieftains had left their panoplies as trophies for the Theban temples. And now that victory has come with the bright daylight (conclude the Chorus)—
"Forget the wars that now no longer rage,
And seek we all the temples of the gods
With choirs that last the livelong night."
Creon now sweeps upon the stage with a long retinue of attendants, splendid in royal apparel, and carrying the sceptre which is the symbol of his dignity. He delivers a "speech from the throne," in which he vindicates his past and present policy, and explains the reasons for his different treatment of the bodies of the two brothers in the decree which had roused the indignation of Antigone. But in this elaborate address we are at once reminded of the proverb, "Qui s'excuse s'accuse." There is a ring of insincerity in his studious defence of the prerogative which has put in force the late decree. There is a covert dread of opposition in the tone in which he deprecates the forbearance of his "good friends" and "trusty citizens"—the Chorus. There is ostentation in his assertion of the great principle of patriotism, which he assumes to be the mainspring of his conduct, and which he is resolved to carry out, whatever may be the sacrifice of private affections involved:—
"There is no man whose soul and will and meaning
Stand forth as outward things for all to see,
Till he has shown himself by practice versed
In ruling under law and making laws.
As to myself, it is, and was of old,
My fixed belief that he is vile indeed
Who, when the general State his guidance claims,
Dares not adhere to wisest policy,
But keeps his tongue locked up for fear of somewhat.
Him too I reckon nowhere, who esteems
A private friend more than his fatherland.
*******
Nor would I ever count among my friends
My country's enemy; for well I know
She is the barque that brings us safe to port:
Sailing in her, unswayed by sidelong gales,
We make the only friends we ought to make."
And then he recites the words of the decree,—all the honours of the tomb to the brave champion who had fallen in defence of hearth and home; but as to the body of the outcast and renegade, who had brought fire and sword against the city of his fathers, it shall lie unburied and dishonoured, to be mangled by dogs and vultures. "Such is my will," concludes the king (and we can fancy the majestic wave of the hand with which a great actor would have accompanied the words); and then he announces that, in order to secure obedience to his mandate, a watch had been already set to guard the body.
He has scarcely spoken before one of the watchmen enters—a personage alien from the general lofty vein of tragedy. He is emphatically "vulgar"—a true son of democracy; low-bred, half-educated, insolent where he dare be so, but cringing before a superior will, with something of the coarse and garrulous wit of the "Sausage-seller " in the comedy of Aristophanes. His opening speech (which has been well translated by Dr Donaldson) will remind the reader of Lancelot Gobbo's dilemma between the suggestions of "the fiend" and his "conscience," in the 'Merchant of Venice.' The watchman has been divided within himself—starting, and returning, and halting by the road. "In fact," he says, "my soul often addressed me with some such tale as this: 'Why goest, simpleton, where to be come is to be punished?' Then again, 'What! wilt not away, poor wretch? and if Creon shall learn these tidings from some one else, how then wilt thou escape the penalty?'"
There is some excuse for his unwillingness to come, for he has been charged with unwelcome tidings. Early though it is in the day, the recent decree has been already broken. "Some one has entombed the body, and is gone." At daybreak the watchmen had discovered the corpse covered with a light coating of dust—sufficient to meet the religious idea of burial[5]—and untouched by bird or beast. Each had accused his fellow, and each had disclaimed all knowledge of the deed—
"And we were ready in our hands to take
Bars of hot iron, and to walk through fire,
And call the gods to witness, none of us
Were privy to his schemes who planned the deed,
Nor his who wrought it."—(P.)
Then they had cast lots to decide who should hear the news to Creon; and the lot had fallen on this unlucky member of the force, who has now actually brought it—no pleasant office, he says; for
"Though it be honest, it is never good
To bring bad news."
The Chorus suggest that this "unseen worker" may possibly have been a god; but the suggestion only increases Croon's resentment. "Not so," he angrily replies; "the gods would scarcely have favoured the man who in his life had threatened their altars with the flames." It is an act of rebellion against his own authority. Some evil-disposed townsmen have tampered with the sentinels; and it is "money" which is at the root of this as of all other evils. If the Chorus cannot or will not discover the traitor—so help him Zeus!—they shall be hung themselves; and then, with a fierce parting threat to the watchman, Creon departs in a rage. The watchman also goes his way, naïvely confessing his relief at his escape:—
"God send we find him! If we find him not,
As well may be (for this must chance decide),
You will not see me coming here again."—(P.)
In the choral ode which follows, a noble tribute is paid to the versatility of human genius, and to the dominion of man over the powers of nature,—true even then, and far truer now, in these fairy times of modern science, which have eclipsed all the wonders of the "New Atlantis."
"Many the things that strange and wondrous are,
None stranger and more wonderful than Man;
He dares to wander far,
With stormy blast across the hoary sea,
Where nought his eye can scan
But waves still surging round unceasingly;
And Earth, of all the gods
Mightiest, unwearied, indestructible,
He weareth year by year, and breaks her clods,
While the keen ploughshare marks her furrows well,
Still turning to and fro;
And still he bids his steeds
Through daily task-work go."—(P.)
Man extends his dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field. He has resources against all dangers, plans by which he overcomes all obstacles, inventions which can solve all difficulties—
"Armed at all points, unarmed he nought shall meet
That coming time reveals;
Only from Hades finds he no retreat,
Though many a hopeless sore disease he heals."—(P.)
Pride is the besetting sin of so gifted a being, and it is pride in the statesman which brings about his speedy fall; and then comes the warning, like Wolsey's to Cromwell, to "guard against ambition"—
"By that sin fell the angels,—how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to profit by it?"
Suddenly the Chorus break off in wonder and dismay. They can scarcely believe their eyes; for, bound between two of the watch, Antigone walks in with a stately and defiant bearing. At the same moment Creon comes from the palace-gates, and meets the prisoner. The same watchman who had enraged Creon by his vulgar insolence before, becomes the spokesman now; and this time his tale is to the point. The guard had returned to their post, and, after clearing the corpse from the dust which had been sprinkled on it by the unknown visitor on the previous night, they had sat down on the hillside, at a little distance from the body, to watch for what might happen. The morning had passed without a sign, and the sun had reached mid-heavens, and still they waited, "scorched by the sultry heat." Then came a whirlwind, "raising the dust in clouds, stripping the foliage off the trees, and choking the atmosphere;" and still they watched, with closed eyes and mouths. Then at last the maiden was seen, and she uttered a bitter cry to see her work undone, and the corpse again exposed. And as she was in the act of again sprinkling the dust and pouring a libation, the guards had rushed in and seized her.
Creon, who has listened intently to the watchman's story, now turns to Antigone, and asks whether she has dared thus to disobey the laws. "Yes," she proudly replies,—
"Yes, for it was not Zeus who gave them forth,
Nor Justice, dwelling with the gods below,
Who traced these laws for all the sons of men;
Nor did I deem thy edicts strong enough,
That thou, a mortal man, shouldst overpass
The unwritten laws of God that know no change.
They are not of to-day nor yesterday,
But live for ever, nor can man assign
When first they sprang to being. Not through fear
Of any man's resolve was I prepared
Before the gods to bear the penalty
Of sinning against these. That I should die
I knew (how should I not?) though thy decree
Had never spoken. And before my time
If I shall die, I reckon this a gain;
For whoso lives, as I, in many woes,
How can it be but he shall gain by death?"—(P.)
This noble appeal of Antigone to a higher law only incenses Creon. This stubbornness of temper, which glories in crime, shall break and shiver like brittle steel. Were she his own sister's child, or more near "than all the kith and kin of household Zeus," she shall not escape her doom. But to his angry denunciations Antigone answers shortly and simply, "Does he wish for anything beyond her death?" To his question why she had insulted the dead patriot by honouring the godless renegade, she replies—and how faintly can the famous line be reproduced in English—
"My love shall go with thine, but not my hate."[6]
Ismene now enters, in obedience to a summons from Creon. She does not defend herself against his charge of having been an accomplice in the deed, but only piteously entreats that she may be allowed to share her sister's fate. But Antigone at once rejects her offer. "You have chosen life," she says (almost in the last words of Socrates to his judges), "but I have chosen death,"—
"Thou dost live. My soul long since
Hath died to render service to the dead."
Creon cuts short their dialogue by bidding his guards lead them both within the palace.
The Chorus mourn, in the strain which follows, over the doom of ancestral guilt—the sorrows upon sorrows which have extinguished the last faint gleam of light which had shone upon the house of Labdacus. Bright delusive hopes, high aspirations, mortal day-dreams, the glory of man and the pride of life—what are they, compared with the resistless decree of Zeus?
"A potentate through time, which grows not old."
"Shall judgment be less strong than sin?
Shall man o'er Jove dominion win?
No! Sleep beneath his leaden sway
May hold but things that know decay;
The unwearied months with godlike vigour move,
Yet cannot change the might of Jove.
Compassed with dazzling light,
Throned on Olympus' height,
His front the eternal god uprears,
By toils unwearied, and unaged by years!
Far back through seasons past,
Far on through times to come,
Has been, and still must last,
Sin's never-failing doom:
Doom, whence with countless sorrows rife
Is erring man's tumultuous life.
Some, heeding hope's beguiling voice,
From virtue's pathway rove;
And some, deluded, make their choice
The levities of love.
For well and wisely was it said,
That all, by Heaven to sorrows led,
Perverted by delirious mood,
Deem evil wears the shape of good;
Chase the fair phantom, free from fears,
And waken to a life of tears."—(A.)
Hæmon, Creon's son, betrothed to Antigone—and who is perhaps the only "lover" in all ancient tragedy, so widely different is the Greek drama from our own—comes now to plead for the life of his affianced bride. Then ensues a scene familiar in life and fiction, where two strong wills inevitably clash—the son eager and impassioned, the father hardened by that sense of duty never so keenly felt as when stimulated by a private pique. The first and foremost of all duties in the home and in the state, argues Creon, is obedience. The family must be one—united under the patria potestas. The object of men's prayer for children is, according to Creon, much like that of the Hebrew Psalmist,—that they may "not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate." Sons are born that
"They may requite with ill their father's foe,
And honour whom their father loves to honour.
But when a man's own children help him not,
What shall we say he has begotten, but
Clogs for himself and laughter for his foes?"
Love for a woman—already doomed to death—should not make shipwreck of a man's understanding. Disobedience produces anarchy, and anarchy destroys the state.
Hæmon eloquently entreats his father to listen to the voice of reason, and not to disregard the public opinion, which had already pronounced in favour of Antigone. Creon, as a sovereign, cannot himself hear the secret whispers of the people, or know
"How the whole city mourns this maiden's fate
As one 'who of all women most unjustly
For noblest deed must die the foulest death.'"—(P.)
King though he is, let him beware of straining the reins of government too tightly. He should not act the tyrant by ruling only for himself.
"That is no city which belongs to one."
But all Hæmon's arguments and remonstrances are unavailing. Croon's heart is hardened, and he will not let the maiden go.
"Lead her out
Whom my soul hates, that she may die forthwith
Before mine eyes, and near her bridegroom here."—(P.)
This cruel speech exhausts Hæmon's patience, and he hurries from the scene with a parting threat to his father that, come what will, "he shall see his face no more."
Hæmon and Antigone, as we have seen, are lovers, and, even in introducing them at all, Sophocles had gone a step beyond Æschylus, with whom Love is simply the divine and eternal principle of fecundity—a law, and not a passion.[7] But there is little romance or sentiment about these Greek lovers; and modern criticism at once decides that Sophocles has lost his opportunity, for he does not even once bring them on the stage together. Had it been Romeo and Juliet thus torn asunder—what tender farewells, what passionate embraces, there would have been at the last! what sombre and funereal joy in the contemplated suicide![8] In his dialogue with his father, Hæmon scarcely names his love—his appeal is to justice and to public opinion; while his father simply replies that he is not bound to alter the course of law, to suit either a woman's caprice or "a people's veering will."
The Chorus, half in awe and half in wonder, celebrate the power of Love—that irresistible and all-pervading passion, mightier than kings, and, strong as death, levelling all distinctions:—
"Unconquered Love! whose mystic sway
Creation's varied forms obey;
Who watchest long at midnight hour
On the soft cheek of beauty's flower:
Now inmate of the sylvan cot,
Now flitting o'er the waves,
Immortal gods escape thee not,
Thou rulest man's ephemeral lot,
And he who hath thee raves.[9]
Thy magic warps the right to wrong,
And troubles now the kindred throng;
The look of love yon destined bride
Darts from her pleading eye,
A subtle counsellor, hath vied
With mighty laws and princedom's pride,
And won the victory."—(A.)
Well might the Chorus now weep, as they express it, "fountains of tears," for they see Antigone led by Croon's guards to be entombed alive in a cavern among the rocks. The horror of no death can equal that of a living grave, the fearful penalty which has been annexed in all ages for certain crimes—to the vestal virgin at Rome and to the nun in the middle ages for broken vows of chastity. But Antigone was pure from sin. She had not stained her hands with blood; much less had she been guilty of frailty, like Scott's 'Constance of Beverley.' The act for which she suffers was prompted by the holiest affection. Hitherto she has been buoyed up by the sublime enthusiasm which inspires the martyr; but now that the sacrifice has been consummated, what wonder if the nerves so tightly strung give way, if for a moment nature reasserts herself, and the heroine becomes the woman? Like Jephtha's daughter, she breaks out into a passionate lament—mourning for her bright young life so cruelly cut short, for those fair promises of marriage never to be realised. The cold comfort of the Chorus and the consciousness of her own innocence can, after all, but slightly lighten the dread of approaching death to her who goes down, "living among the dead, to the strong dungeon of the tomb." Then she tries to steel her fortitude by remembering how others had suffered before her; and she recalls the fate of Niobe (one of her own race), whose children had been slain by Apollo and Diana, while she herself was changed into stone:—
"And there, hard by the crag of Siphylos,
As creeping ivy grows,
So crept the shoots of rock o'er life and breath;
And, as the rumour goes,
The showers ne'er leave her wasting in her death,
Nor yet the drifting snows;
From weeping brows they drip on rocks beneath—
Thus God my life o'erthrows."—(P.)[10]
"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,
Guarded right well for ever, where I go
To join mine own, of whom the greater part
Among the dead doth Persephassa[11] hold;
And I, of all the last and saddest, wend
My way below, life's little span unfilled."—(P.)
And then, as Socrates, her antitype, tries to console himself and his friends "with the thought that if death he not annihilation or a dreamless sleep, he may pace Elysian fields, and converse with the spirits of the good and wise; so the maiden dwells upon the hope that in death she too may not be divided from those who were nearest and dearest to her on earth—that she may meet her father and her mother, and the brother for whom she has sacrificed everything. But then again there swells up in her heart the remembrance of the pleasant life she is about to leave:—
"Cut off from marriage-bed and marriage-song,
Untasting wife's true joy or mother's bliss,
Bereaved of friends, in utter misery,
Alive I tread the chambers of the dead.
What law of heaven have I transgressed against?
What use for me, ill-starred one, still to look
To any god for succour, or to call
On any friend for aid? For holiest deed
I bear the charge of rank unholiness.
If acts like these the gods on high approve,
We, taught by pain, shall see that we have sinned;
But if these sin [looking at Creon], I pray they suffer not
Worse evils than the wrongs they do to me."—(P.)
And then she passes from the scene. We may pity her—indeed who could not?—but we can hardly realise the extent of her self-sacrifice. Like the Decii or 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.'"[12] 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."[13] 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.
"The gods no more hear prayers of sacrifice,
Nor own the flame that burns the victim's limbs;
Nor do the birds give cry of omen good,
But feed on carrion of a slaughtered corpse."—(P.)
Let the king, then, concludes the seer, listen to good counsel, and not reverse the common laws of humanity. Let him restore Antigone to the upper air, and bury Polynices.
But Creon, like Œdipus before him, is deaf to the voice of prophecy, and scorns repentance or atonement till repentance and atonement come too late. Like Œdipus, he adds impiety to crime, and in the stubbornness of his pride utters blasphemous words which must have outraged the pious sense of the Athenian audience. Teiresias may play his "augur's tricks" on others, and make his gains of amber from Sardis and gold from India; but
"That corpse ye shall not hide in any tomb,
Not though the eagles, birds of Zeus, should bear
Their carrion morsels to the throne of God,—
Not even fearing this pollution dire,
Will I consent to burial."—(P.)
And then, inspired by his evil genius (or, as the Greeks would have put it, infatuated by Até, the demon-goddess of destruction), Creon adds insult to reproach, until the prophet, sorely vexed, declares the doom which awaits the shedder of innocent blood. Sorrow shall come upon his own house; few and evil shall be the days that remain of his life. The sun shall not rise and set again before he shall repay blood for blood;—
"For that thou
Hast to the ground cast one that walked on earth,
And foully placed within the sepulchre
A living soul; and now they wait for thee,
The sure though slow avengers of the grave,
The dread Erinyes of the mighty gods."—(P.)
There shall be wailing and lamentation in the palace of Thebes, and the cities round shall rise in arms against the polluter of the holiest and most universal law of nature.
Creon, overawed by the reality of this prediction, is smitten with remorse almost before Teiresias is led from the stage. He will yield to necessity, and he summons his attendants to bring axes that may break open the tomb while there is yet time to release the maiden.
Then the Chorus utter a fervent prayer to Bacchus, "the god of many names," to come to the rescue of Thebes, the city of his mother, Semele:—
"Prince of each silver star
That breathes through darkness its celestial light,—
Lord of the train who on the car of night
Swell their wild hymns afar,—
Blest youth! high offspring of eternal Jove!
Haste, and thy fair attendants bring,
Those Naxian nymphs the livelong night who rove,
Dancing around thy throne in festive ring,
And shout Iacchus' name, their leader and their king."
Events crowd on one another in rapid succession, as the action hurries on to the catastrophe. In accordance with the usual machinery of Greek tragedy, the messenger of evil tidings enters, and in one line tells his story:—
"Bathed in his blood, all lifeless, Hæmon lies."
Eurydice, the queen-mother, passing by on her way to the shrine of Minerva, overhears his words, and in an agony of terror demands to be told the whole truth. Then follows the tale of doom.
Creon had hurried to make what atonement he might to the outraged corpse of Polynices. It still lay upon the plain where the watchmen had left it, torn and mangled by the dogs, holding their carnival around the dead. After prayer had been made to the "Goddess of Pathways,"[14] Creon's attendants reverently wash the body in pure water, burn the remains, and raise a mound of earth. Then they take their way to "death's marriage-chamber," in which Antigone had been immured. Even before they reach it, a shrill cry of lamentation breaks upon their ears; and with a heart foreboding the worst, Creon bids his slaves roll away the stones and widen the entrance to the tomb. The sight which meets their eyes, as the set scene in the background opens, is piteous beyond all expression. The messenger continues:—
"In the farthest corner of the vault
We saw her hanging by her neck, with cord
Of linen threads entwined, and him we found
Clasping her form in passionate embrace."—(P.)
Then Creon, groaning in the bitterness of his heart, entreats his son to leave the body and to come forth from the ill-omened chamber. Hæmon answers not, but, glaring with angry eyes, draws his sword; and as his father, believing his own life to be threatened, starts back in terror, the unfortunate youth buries the blade in his own body, and falls forwards on the earth, still clasping the dead Antigone:—
"Yet ever, while dim sense
Struggled within the fast-expiring soul,
Feebler and feebler still his stiffening limbs
Clung to that virgin form, and every gasp
Of his last breath with bloody dews distained
The cold white cheek that was his pillow. So
Lies death embracing death."—(Lord Lytton.)[15]
But the doom of the house of Œdipus is not yet consummated. Eurydice had heard to the end the tale of the messenger, and had then rushed into the palace without a word or cry. The Chorus argue the worst from this ominous silence; and their fears are fulfilled, for hardly has Creon again come upon the stage, bearing the dead body of his son in his arms, when he is met by a second messenger with the news that the queen, his wife, has stabbed herself to the heart with a mortal blow.
And here the horror culminates. Nothing can be added to increase the agony and remorse of Creon—left living, it is true, but more to be pitied than the dead themselves,—crushed and humbled in the dust, all joy in life, all domestic happiness, all peace of mind gone for ever. Above all, he is tormented by the consciousness that it is his own stubborn pride, and not his evil destiny, that has thus made him the murderer of son and wife. "Heaven has sorely smitten me," he says,—
"And I know not
Which way to look or turn. All near at hand
Is turned to evil; and upon my head
There falls a doom far worse than I can bear."—(P.)
- ↑ Conington's translation of Horace's "deliberata morte ferocior," applied to Cleopatra.
- ↑ Thompson's Sales Attici, 65.
- ↑ Op. et D., 122, 252.
- ↑ "Facilis jactura sepulchri."—Virg. Æn., ii. 646. Compare Lucan (Phars. vi. 809), "cœlo tegitur qui non habet urnam."
- ↑ The casting of three handfuls of dust upon the corpse was enough to avoid the pollution of leaving it unburied. So in Horace we find the ghost of a shipwrecked and unburied man threatening a passing sailor—
"My prayers shall reach the avengers of all wrong;
No expiations shall the curse unbind.
Great though your haste, I would not task you long;
Thrice sprinkle dust—then scud before the wind."
—Ode I. xxviii. (Conington's Transl.) - ↑ So the line is rendered by Franklin; but the German of Schlegel gives more thoroughly the force of the two Greek verbs;—
"Nicht mitzuhassan, mitzulieben bin ich da."
- ↑ The only passage in which Æschylus dwells upon the influence of love is in a fragment of the Danaidæ, where Venus says, "The pure Heavens are enamoured of the Earth; and Love impels Earth to embrace the Heavens; and Rain falling from the Heavens kisses Earth; and she brings forth corn and sheep for the sustenance of man; and from these rainy nuptials the fruits of autumn come to their perfection; and it is I, Love, who am the cause of all these things."
- ↑ Girardin, ii. 326.
- ↑ Scott's imitation—conscious or unconscious—does not come up to the fire of the Greek original:—
"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and saints above."
—Lay, iii. 1. - ↑ "As a documentary reminiscence of the myths proper to these regions (Lydia), there gleams, even at the present day, at two hours' distance from the ancient Magnesia, in the sunken 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.
- ↑ The Greek form of "Proserpine."
- ↑ Ecce Homo, ch. xi.
- ↑ Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, ii. 314.
- ↑ Proserpine or Hecate—the goddess who guarded the highways which were polluted by the unburied body of Polynices.
- ↑ We are at once reminded of the last scene in 'Romeo and Juliet,' where rescue and explanation come too late to save the lovers, and where the tomb of the Capulets is, as the Friar says, "a nest
"Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep."