ETEO.  It shall be so:  and having gone to the city of the seven towers, I will appoint chiefs at the gates, as you advise, having opposed equal champions against equal foes.  But to mention the name of each would be a great delay, the enemy encamped under our very walls.  But I will go, that I may not be idle with my hand.  And may it befall me to find my brother opposed to me, and being joined with me in battle, to take him with my spear, [and to slay him, who came to desolate my country.] But it is thy duty to attend to the marriage of my sister Antigone and thy son Haemon, if I fail aught of success; but the firm vow made before I now confirm at my going out.  Thou art my mother’s brother, why need I use more words?  Treat her worthily, both for thine own and my sake.  But my father incurs the punishment of the rashness he brought upon himself, having quenched his sight; I praise him not; even us will he put to death with his execrations, should he gain his point.  But one thing is left undone by us, if the soothsayer Tiresias have any oracle to deliver, to enquire this of him; but I will send thy son, Creon, Menoeceus, of the same name with thy father, to bring Tiresias hither.  With pleasure will he enter into conversation with you; but I lately reviled him with his divining art, so that he is offended with me.  But this charge I give the city with thee, Creon; if my arms should conquer, that the body of Polynices be never buried in this Theban land; but that the man who buries him shall die, although he be a friend.  This I have told you:  but my attendants I tell, bring out my arms, and my panoply which covers me, that we may go this appointed contest of the spear with victorious justice.  But to Caution, the most valued of the Goddesses, will we address our prayers to preserve this city.

CHORUS.

O Mars, cause of infinite woe, why, I pray, art thou so possessed with blood and death, so discordant with the revels of Bacchus?  Thou dost not in the circle of beautiful dancers in the bloom of youth, having let flow thy hair,[29] on the breath of the flute modulate strains, in which there is a lovely power to renew the dance.  But with thy armed men, having excited the army of Argives against Thebes with blood, thou dancest before the city in a most inharmonious revel, thou movest not thy foot maddened by the thyrsus clad in fawn-skins, but thy solid-hoofed steed with thy chariot and horses’ bits; and bounding at the streams of Ismenus, thou art borne rapidly in the chariot-course, having excited against the race of those sown [by Cadmus,] a raging host that grasp the shield, well armed, adverse to us at the walls of stone:  surely Discord is some dreadful Goddess, who devised all these calamities against the princes of this land, the Labdacidae involved in woe.  O thou forest of heavenly foliage, most productive of beasts, thou snowy eye of Diana, Cithaeron, never oughtest thou to have nourished him doomed to death,