CREON, CHORUS.

CRE.  Ah me! what shall I do? whether am I to groan in weeping myself, or the city, which a cloud of such magnitude encircles as to cast us amidst the gloom of Acheron?  For my son has perished having died for the city, having achieved a glorious name, but to me a name of sorrow.  Him having taken just now from the dragon’s den, stabbed by his own hand, I wretched bore in my arms; and the whole house resounds with shrieks; but I, myself aged, am come after my aged sister Jocasta, that she may wash and lay out my son now no more.  For it behooves the living well to revere the God below by paying honors to the dead.

CHOR.  Thy sister is gone out of the house, O Creon, and the girl Antigone attending the steps of her mother.

CRE.  Whither? and for what hap? tell me.

CHOR.  She heard that her sons were about to come to a contest in single battle for the royal palace.

CRE.  How sayest thou? whilst I was fondly attending to my son’s corse, I arrived not so far in knowledge, as to be acquainted with this also.

CHOR.  But thy sister has indeed been gone some time; but I think, O Creon, that the contest, in which their lives are at stake, has already been concluded by the sons of Oedipus.

CRE.  Ah me!  I see indeed this signal, the downcast eye and countenance of the approaching messenger, who will relate every thing that has taken place.

MESSENGER, CREON, CHORUS.

MESS.  O wretched me! what language or what words can I utter? we are undone—­

CRE.  Thou beginnest thy speech with no promising prelude.

MESS.  Oh wretched me! doubly do I lament, for I hear great calamities.

CRE.  In addition to the calamities that have happened dost thou still speak of others?

MESS.  Thy sister’s sons, O Creon, no longer behold the light.

CRE.  Ah! alas! thou utterest great ills to me and to the state.

MESS.  O mansions of Oedipus, do ye hear these things of thy children who have perished by similar fates?

CHOR.  Ay, so that, had they but sense, they would weep.

CRE.  O most heavy misery!  Oh me wretched with woes! alas! unhappy me!

MESS.  If that thou knewest the evils yet in addition to these.

CRE.  And how can there be more fatal ills than these?

MESS.  Thy sister is dead with her two children.

CHOR.  Raise, raise the cry of woe, and smite your heads with the blows of your white hands.

CRE.  Oh unhappy Jocasta, what an end of thy life and of thy marriage hast thou endured in the riddles of the Sphinx![45] But how took place the slaughter of her two sons, and the combat arising from the curse of Oedipus? tell me.