1. Sophocles, Antigone, 164-165, 264, 469-472, 486-487, 517, 568-572, 631-765, 821-871, 1015, 1023-1028, 1039-1044, 1226-1227, 1240-1241, 1261-1276 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Antigone (Sophocles), Haemon’s speech in • Creon, and Haemon’s speech • Haemon • Haemon, and Antigone • Haemon, and agōn scenes • Haemon, and the social hierarchy • Haemon, and tragic discovery • Haemon, speech of • Haemon, withdrawal of • Rhetoric (Aristotle), on Haemon’s speech • characters, tragic/mythical, Haemon
Found in books: Jouanna (2018) 285, 297, 298, 317, 347, 348, 350, 437, 438, 733; Liapis and Petrides (2019) 278; Moss (2012) 29, 30; Sommerstein and Torrance (2014) 104, 106
| 164. My fellow citizens! First, the gods, after tossing the fate of our city on wild waves, have once more righted it. Second, I have ordered you through my messengers to come here 165. apart from all the rest, because I knew, first of all, how constant was your reverence for the power of the throne of Laius; how, again, you were reverent, when Oedipus was guiding our city; and lastly, how, when he was dead, you still maintained loyal thoughts towards his children.
264. guard accusing guard. It would even have come to blows in the end, nor was there anyone there to prevent it: every man was the culprit, and no one was plainly guilty, while all disclaimed knowledge of the act. We were ready to take red-hot iron in our hands,
469. So for me to meet this doom is a grief of no account. But if I had endured that my mother’s son should in death lie an unburied corpse, that would have grieved me. Yet for this, I am not grieved. And if my present actions are foolish in your sight, 470. it may be that it is a fool who accuses me of folly. 471. She shows herself the wild offspring of a wild father, and does not know how to bend before troubles.
486. if this victory rests with her and brings no penalty. No! Whether she is my sister’s child, or nearer to me in blood than any of my kin that worship Zeus at the altar of our house, she and her sister will not escape a doom most harsh. For in truth
517. It was his brother, not his slave, who died.
568. What? You will kill your own son’s bride? 569. Why not? There are other fields for him to plough. 570. But not fitted to him as she was. 571. I abhor an evil wife for my son. 572. Haemon, dearest! How your father wrongs you!
631. We will soon know better than seers could tell us.—My son, can it be that after hearing the final judgment concerning your betrothed, you have come in rage against your father? Or do I have your loyalty, act how I may? 635. Father, I am yours, and you keep me upright with precepts good for me—precepts I shall follow. No marriage will be deemed by me more important than your good guidance. 640. Yes, my son, this is the spirit you should maintain in your heart—to stand behind your father’s will in all things. It is for this that men pray: to sire and raise in their homes children who are obedient, that they may requite their father’s enemy with evil and honor his friend, just as their father does. 645. But the man who begets unhelpful children—what would you say that he has sown except miseries for himself and abundant exultation for his enemies? Never, then, my son, banish your reason for pleasure on account of a woman, 650. knowing that this embrace soon becomes cold and brittle—an evil woman to share your bed and home. For what wound could strike deeper than a false friend? No, spit her out as if she were an enemy, let her go find a husband in Hades. 655. For since I caught her alone of all the city in open defiance, I will not make myself a liar to my city. I will kill her. So let her call on Zeus who protects kindred blood. If I am to foster my own kin to spurn order, 660. urely I will do the same for outsiders. For whoever shows his excellence in the case of his own household will be found righteous in his city as well. But if anyone oversteps and does violence to the laws, or thinks to dictate to those in power, 665. uch a one will never win praise from me. No, whomever the city may appoint, that man must be obeyed in matters small and great and in matters just and unjust. And I would feel confident that such a man would be a fine ruler no less than a good and willing subject, 670. and that beneath a hail of spears he would stand his ground where posted, a loyal and brave comrade in the battle line. But there is no evil worse than disobedience. This destroys cities; this overturns homes; this break 675. the ranks of allied spears into headlong rout. But the lives of men who prosper upright, of these obedience has saved the greatest part. Therefore we must defend those who respect order, and in no way can we let a woman defeat us. It is better to fall from power, if it is fated, by a man’s hand, 680. than that we be called weaker than women. 681. To us, unless our years have stolen our wit, you seem to say what you say wisely. 683. Father, the gods implant reason in men, the highest of all things that we call our own. 685. For my part, to state how you are wrong to say those things is beyond my power and my desire, although another man, too, might have a useful thought. In any case, it is my natural duty to watch on your behalf all that men say, or do, or find to blame. 690. For dread of your glance forbids the ordinary citizen to speak such words as would offend your ear. But I can hear these murmurs in the dark, how the city moans for this girl, saying: No woman ever merited death less— 695. none ever died so shamefully for deeds so glorious as hers, who, when her own brother had fallen in bloody battle, would not leave him unburied to be devoured by savage dogs, or by any bird. Does she not deserve to receive golden honor? 700. Such is the rumor shrouded in darkness that silently spreads. For me, father, no treasure is more precious than your prosperity. What, indeed, is a nobler ornament for children than the fair fame of a thriving father, or for a father than that of his children? 705. Do not, then, bear one mood only in yourself: do not think that your word and no other, must be right. For if any man thinks that he alone is wise—that in speech or in mind he has no peer—such a soul, when laid open, is always found empty. 710. No, even when a man is wise, it brings him no shame to learn many things, and not to be too rigid. You see how the trees that stand beside the torrential streams created by a winter storm yield to it and save their branches, while the stiff and rigid perish root and all? 715. And in the same way the pilot who keeps the sheet of his sail taut and never slackens it, upsets his boat, and voyages thereafter with his decking underwater. Father, give way and allow a change from your rage. For if even from me, a younger man, a worthy thought may be supplied, 720. by far the best thing, I believe, would be for men to be all-wise by nature. Otherwise—since most often it does not turn out that way—it is good to learn in addition from those who advise you well. 724. My king, it is right, if he speaks something appropriate, that you should learn from him 725. and that you, in turn, Haemon, should learn from your father. On both sides there have been wise words. 726. Men of my age—are we, then, to be schooled in wisdom by men of his? 728. Not in anything that is not right. But if I am young, you should look to my conduct, not to my years. 730. Is it worthy conduct to honor disrupters? 731. I could not urge anyone to show respect for the wicked. 732. And is she not in the grasp of that disease? 733. All the people of this city of Thebes deny it. 734. Shall Thebes prescribe to me how I must rule? 735. See, there, how you have spoken so much like a child. 736. Am I to rule this land by the will of another than myself? 737. That is no city, which belongs to one man. 738. Does not the city by tradition belong to the man in power? 739. You would make a fine monarch in a desert. 740. This boy seems to be fighting on the side of the woman. 741. If you are a woman, for, to be sure, my concern is for you. 742. You traitor, attacking your father, accusing him! 743. Because I see you making a mistake and committing injustice. 744. Am I making a mistake when I respect my own prerogatives? 745. Yes. You do not respect them, when you trample on the gods’ honors. 746. Polluted creature, submitting to a woman! 747. You will never catch me submitting to shamelessness. 748. You do. Your every word, after all, pleads her case. 749. And yours, and mine, and that of gods below. 750. You can never marry her, not while she is still alive. 751. Then she will die, and in death destroy another. 752. What! Does your audacity run to open threats? 753. How is it a threat to speak against empty plans? 754. You will regret your unwise instructions in wisdom. 755. If you were not my father, I would have called you insane. 756. You woman’s slave, do not try to cajole me. 757. Do you want to have your say and then have done without a reply? 758. Is that so? By Olympus above—know this well—you will have no joy for taunting me over and above your censures. 760. Bring out that hated thing, so that with him looking on she may die right now in her bridegroom’s presence and at his side! 762. No, not at my side will she die—do not ever imagine it. Nor shall you ever look at me and set eyes on my face again. 765. Indulge in your madness now with whomever of your friends can endure it. Exit Haemon.
821. nor having won the wages of the sword. No, guided by your own laws and still alive, unlike any mortal before, you will descend to Hades. 823. I have heard with my own ears how our Phrygian guest, the daughter of Tantalus, perished 825. in so much suffering on steep Sipylus—how, like clinging ivy, the sprouting stone subdued her. And the rains, as men tell, do not leave her melting form, nor does the snow, 830. but beneath her weeping lids she dampens her collar. Most like hers is the god-sent fate that leads me to my rest. 834. Yet she was a goddess, as you know, and the offspring of gods, 835. while we are mortals and mortal-born. Still it is a great thing for a woman who has died to have it said of her that she shared the lot of the godlike in her life, and afterwards, in death. 839. Ah, you mock me! In the name of our fathers’ gods, 840. why do you not wait to abuse me until after I have gone, and not to my face, O my city, and you, her wealthy citizens? Ah, spring of Dirce, and you holy ground of Thebes whose chariots are many, 845. you, at least, will bear me witness how unwept by loved ones, and by what laws I go to the rock-closed prison of my unheard-of tomb! Ah, misery! 850. I have no home among men or with the shades, no home with the living or with the dead. 853. You have rushed headlong to the far limits of daring, and against the high throne of Justice 855. you have fallen, my daughter, fallen heavily. But in this ordeal you are paying for some paternal crime. 858. You have touched on my most bitter thought 860. and moved my ever-renewed pity for my father and for the entire doom ordained for us, the famed house of Labdacus. Oh, the horrors of our mother’s bed! Oh, the slumbers of the wretched mother at the side 865. of her own son, my own father! What manner of parents gave me my miserable being! It is to them that I go like this, accursed and unwed, to share their home. 870. Ah, my brother, the marriage you made was doomed, and by dying you killed me still alive!
1015. And it is your will that is the source of the sickness now afflicting the city. For the altars of our city and our hearths have one and all been tainted by the birds and dogs with the carrion taken from the sadly fallen son of Oedipus. And so the gods no more accept prayer and sacrifice at our hands,'
1023. or the burning of thigh-meat, nor does any bird sound out clear signs in its shrill cries, for they have tasted the fatness of a slain man’s blood. Think, therefore, on these things, my son. All men are liable to err. 1025. But when an error is made, that man is no longer unwise or unblessed who heals the evil into which he has fallen and does not remain stubborn. Self-will, we know, invites the charge of foolishness. Concede the claim of the dead. Do not kick at the fallen.
1039. even from the plottings of the seer’s divine art, but by their tribe I have long been bought and sold and made their merchandise. Turn your profits, make your deals for the white gold of Sardis and the gold of India , if it pleases you, but you shall not cover that man with a grave, 1040. not even if the eagles of Zeus wish to snatch and carry him to be devoured at the god’s throne. No, not even then, for fear of that defilement will I permit his burial, since I know with certainty that no mortal has the power to defile the gods.
1226. But his father, when he saw him, cried aloud with a dreadful cry and went in and called to him with a voice of wailing: Ah, unhappy boy, what have you done! What plan have you seized on? By what misfortune have you lost your reason?
1240. Corpse enfolding corpse he lay, having won his marriage rites, poor boy, not here, but in Hades’ palace, and having shown to mankind by how much the failure to reason wisely is the most severe of all afflictions assigned to man. Eurydice departs into the house.
1261. Ah, the blunders of an unthinking mind, blunders of rigidity, yielding death! Oh, you witnesses of the killers and the killed, both of one family! 1265. What misery arises from my reasonings! Haemon, you have died after a young life, youngest and last of my sons! O God! You have departed not by your foolishness, but by my own! 1270. Ah, how late you seem to see the right! 1271. God, I have mastered the bitter lesson! But then, then, I think, some god struck me on my head with a crushing weight, and drove me into savage paths, 1275. —ah!—and overthrew my joy to be trampled on! Ah, the labors men must toil through! '. None |
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