ts deliverers, show how ye love it; give heed to our public rituals,
and when ye give heed to them succor us, and be ye truly mindful, I
beseech ye, of the rites of our city which abound in sacrifices.

_Re-enter_ ETEOCLES.

Intolerable creatures! is this, I ask you, best and salutary for our
city, and an encouragement to this beleagured force, for you to fall
before the statues of our tutelary gods, to shriek, to yell--O ye
abominations of the wise. Neither in woes nor in welcome prosperity may
I be associated with womankind; for when woman prevails, her audacity is
more than one can live with; and when she is affrighted, she is a still
greater mischief to her home and city. Even now, having brought upon
your countrymen this pell-mell flight, ye have, by your outcries, spread
dastard cowardice, and ye are serving, as best ye may, the interests of
those without, but we within our walls are suffering capture at our own
hands; such blessings will you have if you live along with women.
Wherefore if any one give not ear to my authority, be it man or woman,
or other between [these names[109]], the fatal pebble shall decide
against him, and by no means shall he escape the doom of stoning at the
hand of the populace. For what passeth without is a man's concern, let
not woman offer advice--but remaining within do thou occasion no
mischief. Heard'st thou, or heard'st thou not, or am I speaking to a
deaf woman?

CH. O dear son of OEdipus, I felt terror when I heard the din from the
clatter of the cars, when the wheel-whirling naves rattled, and [the
din] of the fire-wrought bits, the rudders[110] of the horses, passing
through their mouths that know no rest.

ET. What then? does the mariner who flees from the stern to the
prow[111] find means of escape, when his bark is laboring against the
billow of the ocean?

CH. No; but I came in haste to the ancient statues of the divinities,
trusting in the gods, when there was a pattering at our gates of
destructive sleet showering down, even then I was carried away by terror
to offer my supplications to the Immortals, that they would extend their
protection over the city.

ET. Pray that our fortification may resist the hostile spear.

CH. Shall not this, then, be at the disposal of the gods?

ET. Ay, but 'tis said that the gods of the captured city abandon it.

CH. At no time during my life may this conclave of gods abandon us:
never may I behold our city overrun, and an army