ut I say to the rulers of the Cadmaeans, if not another single
person is willing to take part with me in burying him, I will bury him,
and will expose myself[178] to peril by burying my brother. And I feel
no shame at being guilty of this disobedient insubordination against the
city. Powerful is the tie of the common womb from which we sprung, from
a wretched mother and a hapless sire. Wherefore, my soul, do thou,
willing with the willing share in his woes, with the dead, thou living,
with sisterly feeling--and nought shall lean-bellied wolves tear his
flesh--let no one suppose it. All woman though I be, I will contrive a
tomb and a deep-dug grave for him, bearing earth in the bosom-fold of
my fine linen robe, and I myself will cover him; let none imagine the
contrary: an effective scheme shall aid my boldness.

HER. I bid thee not to act despite the state in this matter.

ANT. I bid thee not announce to me superfluous things.

HER. Yet stern is a people that has just escaped troubles.

ANT. Ay, call it stern[179]--yet this [corpse] shall not lie unburied.

HER. What! wilt thou honor with a tomb him whom our state abhors?[180]

HER. ANT. Heretofore he has not been honored by the gods.[181]

HER. Not so, at least before he put this realm in jeopardy.

ANT. Having suffered injuriously he repaid with injury.

HER. Ay, but this deed of his fell on all instead of one.

ANT. Contention is the last of the gods to finish a dispute,[182] and I
will bury him; make no more words.

HER. Well, take thine own way--yet I forbid thee.

[Exit_ HERALD.

CH. Alas! alas! O ye fatal Furies, proudly triumphant, and destructive
to this race, ye that have ruined the family of OEdipus from its root.
What will become of me? What shall I do? What can I devise? How shall I
have the heart neither to bewail thee nor to escort thee to the tomb?
But I dread and shrink from the terror of the citizens. Thou, at all
events, shalt in sooth have many mourners; but he, wretched one, departs
unsighed for, having the solitary-wailing dirge of his sister. Who will
agree to this?

SEM. Let the state do or not do aught to those who bewail Polynices. We,
on this side will go and join to escort his funeral procession; for both
this sorrow is common to the race, and the state at different times
sanctions different maxims of justice.

SEM. But we will go with this corpse, as both the city and justice join
to sanction. For next to the Immortals and