shields:  and we gained the advantage of falling on the Argives not yet accoutred in their arms.  And no one made a stand, but flying they covered the plain; and immense quantities of blood were spilt of the corses that fell, but when we were victorious in the fight, some indeed raised the image of Jove emblem of victory, but some of us stripping the shields from the Argive corses sent the spoils within the city.  But others with Antigone are bearing hither the dead for their friends to lament over.  But these contests have in some respect turned out most happy for this state, but in other respect most unhappy.

CHOR.  No longer the misfortunes of the house come to our ears, we may also see before the palace these three fallen corses, who have shared the dark realms by a united death.

[The dead bodies borne.]

ANTIGONE, CREON, CHORUS.

ANT.  Not veiling the softness of my cheek on which my ringlets fall, nor caring for the purple glow of virginity under my lids, the blush of my countenance, I am borne along the bacchanal of the dead, rending the fillet from my hair, rejecting the saffron robe of delicateness, having the mournful office of conducting the dead.  Alas! alas! woe is me!  Oh Polynices, thou well answeredst to thy name!  Alas me!  Oh Thebes! but thy strife, no strife, but murder consummated with murder,[47] hath destroyed the house of Oedipus with dreadful, with mournful blood.  But what groan responsive to my sufferings, or what lament of music shall I invoke to my tears, to my tears, O house, O house, bearing these three kindred bodies, my mother, and her children, the joy of the fury? who destroyed the entire house of Oedipus, what time intelligently[48] he unfolded the difficult song of the fierce monster, having thereby slain the body of the fierce musical Sphinx.  Alas me! my father; what Grecian, or what Barbarian, or what other of the noble in birth, of mortal blood, in time of old ever bore such manifest sufferings of so many ills?  Wretched I, how do I lament!  What bird, sitting on the highest boughs of the oak or pine, will sing responsive to my lamentations, who have lost my mother? who weep the strain of grief in addition to these moans for my brothers, about to pass my long life in floods of tears.—­Which shall I bewail?  On which first shall I scatter the first offerings rent from my hair?  On my mother’s two breasts of milk, or upon the death-wounds of my two brothers?  Alas! alas!  Leave thine house, bringing thy sightless eye, O aged father, Oedipus, show thy wretched age, who within thy palace having poured the gloomy darkness over thine eyes, draggest on a long[49] life.  Dost thou hear wandering in the hall,—­resting thy aged foot upon the couch in a state of misery?

OEDIPUS, CREON, ANTIGONE, CHORUS.

OED. Why, O virgin, hast thou with the most doleful tears called me forth leaning on the support of a blind foot[50] to the light, a bed-ridden man from his darksome chamber, gray-headed, an obscure phantom of air—­a dead body beneath the earth—­a flitting dream?