The unnatural brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, are competitors for the lordship of Thebes. Eteocles is in possession. Polynices, having married the daughter of Adrastus, King of Argos, leads an army, raised by the help of his father-in-law, against Thebes.
In this army there are seven champions. The Argive army is drawn out in array against the city in seven divisions, each division facing one of the seven gates of Thebes, and with a champion at its head. The champions are described to Eteocles by a Theban, who has been sent to watch the movements of the enemy. Under the name of Amphiaraus lurks a description of Aristides "the just," the head of the conservative party to which Aeschylus belonged, whose conscientiousness and moderation are obliquely contrasted with the revolutionary violence of the ultra-democratic party headed by Themistocles. The chorus consists of Theban maidens.
* * * * *
THE CHAMPIONS.
LINES 370-673.
MESSENGER.
The order of our foemen you shall hear,
And at which gate each champion has his post.
Tydeus stands ready at the Proetian gate,
Fuming, for still the seer forbids to ford
Ismenus, since the omens are not fair.
Thereat the chieftain, mad with warlike rage
As is a snake with heat at noonday, raves;
And on the prudent seer Oeclides heaps
Taunts of faint-heartedness and craven fear.
While thus he storms, wild on his helmet waves,
The shaggy crest threefold, and on his shield
The brazen bells ring out a fearful note.
Upon that shield a proud device he wears,
A firmament all luminous with stars,
While in the centre shines the moon full-orbed,
Empress of constellations, eye of night.
Thus in his boastful panoply he stalks
Along the river panting for the fray,
As a proud charger at the trumpet sound
Frets, paws the earth, and flecks his bit with foam.
Think whom thou hast to cope with this dread chief,
Who of that gate unbarred shall warder be.
ETEOCLES.
My spirit quails at no proud panoply.
Escutcheons wound not, nor will waving crests
Or clashing bells bite without thrust of spear.
This night of which thou tellest on his shield,
Albeit it blaze with all the stars of heaven,
May to the bearer's self prove ominous;
For if death's night should fall upon his eyes
His boastfulness will turn to prophecy,
And his device will have foreshown his doom.
To cope with Tydeus and that post to guard,
I send the gallant son of Astacus,
Whose noble blood is loyal to the rule
Of honour and abhors vainglorious words,
Whose chivalry fears nothing but reproach,
Sprung from that remnant of the Earth-born race,
Which the sword spared, a true son of the soil,
Melanippus. Ares' hand the die will cast,
But nature sends our soldier to the field
To drive the invader from his mother-land.
CHORUS.
Heaven shield our country's champion with its might,
Him who will combat for the right,
And guard our warriors all from perils of the fight.
MESSENGER.
Good fortune on thy chosen warder wait.
Before the Electran gate stands Capaneus,
Whose giant frame o'ertops e'en Tydeus' self.
His vaunts are more than mortal, and he hurls
Against our towers threats which may heaven forfend.
Be it the will of heaven or not, he vows
That he will storm this town, nor Zeus himself
With red right hand shall scare him from his prey.
Of lightnings or of thunderbolts he recks
No more than of the rays of noonday sun.
For his device he bears a naked man
With burning torch in hand, whose legend says
In golden letters, "I will fire this town."
Bethink thee whom thou hast this chief to mate,
Who without quailing will his vaunts withstand.
ETEOCLES.
Why, here we have gain added unto gain.
When pride and folly in the heart abide,
The tongue fails not their presence to betray.
Capaneus threatens what his hand would do,
Scorning the gods, and with unchastened lips,
Madly exulting, vents against high heaven
And heaven's high king his swelling blasphemies.
Surely I trust that on his impious head
The lightning shall be launched more fiery far
Than are the rays of any noonday sun.
To meet him with his braggart menaces
Stout Polyphontus goes, a gallant soul,
Who well can hold the post, so Artemis
And all protecting gods his arm will aid.
Tell us whose lot is at another gate.
CHORUS.
Perish the man who would lay low our towers;
Smite him with lightning, kindly powers,
Ere he can storm our home and spoil our virgin bowers.
MESSENGER.
Hear, then, who has his post at the next gate.
Eteocles is his name, him the third lot,
Forth from the brazen helmet leaping, set
To lead his band against the Eastern gate.
There to and fro he wheels his fiery steeds,
That pant in their caparisons to charge
The portal, and with snorting nostrils proud
Make uncouth music through their mouth-pieces.
Nor lowly the device upon his shield:
A man-at-arms is on a ladder seen
Scaling the wall of a beleaguered town,
And underneath the vaunting legend dares
Ares himself to beat back the assault.
Against this champion you must bid go forth
One that can save our town from slavery.
ETEOCLES.
He goes—is gone, with victory on his helm;
A chief whose boasting is in deeds, not words,
Megareus, of earth-born lineage, Creon's son.
Him shall no snortings of impetuous steeds
Scare from the gate, but either with his blood
He will repay the earth that gave him life,
Or both the warriors and the town to boot
Bear off and with the spoils adorn his home.
Give us some more vainglory; stint not speech.
CHORUS.
Good luck with him that guards my city go,
Ill luck with the o'erweening foe.
High is their boast; may Zeus, the avenger, lay them low.
MESSENGER.
At the fourth gate, where stands Athene's fane
Of Onke hight, another chief appears,
Towering with giant bulk—Hippomedon.
Broad as a threshing-floor his buckler is,
And terror seized me as he whirled it round.
Nor was it any common craftsman's hand
That wrought the emblem which that buckler bears,
A Typhon vomiting with fiery mouth,
Black clouds of smoke, the wavering mate of fire.
And all around his hollow buckler's rim
A coil of twining snakes is riveted.
Loud is his battle-cry. By Ares fired
He like a Maenad storms and raves for fight.
Against this champion's onset guard thee well;
Already rout is threatened at the gate.
ETEOCLES.
The deity herself that has her fane
Hard by the gates, abhorring insolence,
Will ward this deadly serpent from her brood.
But as our man, valiant Hyperbius,
The son of Oenops, to the lists has gone,
Ready at need to brave the risks of war,
In form, in spirit, and in arms alike
Reproachless. Hermes well has matched the pair.
For as each champion is the other's foe,
So are the gods that on their shields they bear:
Hippomedon has Typhon breathing fire,
But on the buckler of Hyperbius
Is Zeus the unconquered, thunderbolt in hand;
And who e'er knew the arm of Zeus to fail?
Such are the patron deities of whom
The weaker are the foe's, the mightier ours.
So will it fare with those they patronise,
If Zeus o'er Typhon has the mastery;
For Zeus, the saviour, on Hyperbius' shield
Blazoned, will save his liegeman in the fight.
CHORUS.
The foe of Zeus bearing that form of hate,
By gods and mortals reprobate,
The hell fiend soon, I trust, shall fall before the gate.
MESSENGER.
So may it be, now to the fifth I come
Whose station is at the Borraean gates,
Hard by the tomb that holds Amphion's dust.
This champion swears by what he higher deems
Than god and dearer than his eyes, his spear,
That he will Cadmus' city storm and sack
In heaven's despite. So vows the wood nymph's son,
That fair-faced stripling, scarcely yet a man,
For on his cheek still blooms the down of youth.
Marshal his mood and fierce his countenance,
And all unlike the maiden name he bears.
Nor does he lack his share of boastfulness,
For on the shield that with its brazen round
His body fenced, he bore our city's shame,
The rav'ning Sphynx, in burnished effigy
Empaled, and grasping in her felon claws
The limbs of a Cadmean citizen;
Which on the bearer drew a shower of darts.
Battle to huckster is not his intent,
Nor to have marched so far and marched in vain.
His name Parthenopaeus, Arcady
His home, Argos his nurse, whom to requite
He threatens that from which heaven save our towers.
ETEOCLES.
Yes, only let their thoughts be paid them home
[Footnote: Two lines in this speech appear to have been lost.]
By the just gods, they with their impious vaunts
Will be consumed and perish utterly.
To cope with thy Arcadian goes a man
Modest in speech but nowise slack in deed,
Actor, his brother of whom last I spake,
Who will not let a tongue without an arm
Within our gates rave to our overthrow,
Nor entrance give the foe, who on his shield
To flout us bears the hated effigy.
His Sphynx, midst rattling darts, will hardly thank
Him that advanced her to our battlements.—
Heaven grant that as I say the event may be.
CHORUS.
Thy tidings pierce my fluttering breast, and fright
Makes all my tresses rise upright
At that fell foeman's vaunt; may heaven confound his spite.
MESSENGER.
Five were accursed; one righteous man succeeds
The seer Amphiaraus, good and brave.
His post is at the Homoloian gate.
Here he reproaches heaps on Tydeus' head,
Calling him murderer and the public bane,
Leader of Argos in all evil ways,
The Furies' pursuivant, henchman of death,
That has Adrastus to his ruin trained.
Thy brother too, stained by his father's fate,
Great Polynices, with accusing face
Turned heavenward, he upbraids and thus he speaks:
"Certes a deed it is to please the gods,
Fair to recount and glorious to hand down,
Thus thy own city to lay low and raze
Her temples with an alien soldiery.
What stream can wash away a mother's curse?
How shall thy country, captive to a foe
By thee set on, requite thee with her love?
For me, this hostile land must be my tomb
And be enriched with my prophetic bones.
Forward! I look for no inglorious grave."
Thus spake the seer as he before him threw
His glittering shield. On it was no device.
Foremost to be, not seem, was still his aim.
His soul is as a plough-land deep and rich,
From which a harvest of good counsels grows.
Against him send some worthy opposite.
He most is to be feared who fears the gods.
ETEOCLES.
Woe worth the day that links the righteous man
To the dark fortunes of iniquity.
In all the world is nothing so malign,
Of fruit so poisonous, as an evil friend.
One day shall ye behold the pious man,
Going on ship-board with an impious crew,
Sink amid sinners reprobate of heaven.
Another day shall ye behold the just,
In an outlawed and godless commonwealth,
Snared like their fellows in the net of doom
And struck by the avenging rod of heaven.
And so this seer, this son of OecleËs,
A wise, just, blameless, and god-fearing man,
A famous prophet, to an impious host
Against his better judgment misallied
And drawn to march with them whose bourne is hell,
With them must perish; such the stern decree.
Hardly, I think, he will assault the gate;
Not that his heart will faint or arm will fail,
But that he knows he on this field must die,
Unless Apollo's oracle prove false,
Which if he tells not, prudence seals his lips.
Yet shall our champion be stout Lasthenes,
A churlish gate-ward to intruders he,
An aged head upon a youthful frame.
Quick is his eye and nimble is his hand
From the shield's cover to dart forth the spear.
But who shall win the gods alone can tell.
CHORUS.
O hear our righteous prayer, ye heavenly powers,
The ruin be the foe's, not ours,
And may the thunder smite him who would storm our towers.
MESSENGER.
The chief whose post is at the seventh gate
Is thine own brother; hear his direful prayers,
His imprecations on our commonwealth.
He prays that he may mount our battlements,
Be there proclaimed our king, shout victory,
Meet thee, and slay thee, and insult thee slain,
Or, living, drive thee forth a banished man,
Disgracing thee as thou hast him disgraced.
With such fell words and adjurations dire
Of his paternal gods to hear his prayer,
Strong Polynices makes the field resound.
A shield he bears, fair-shaped and newly-wrought,
Whereon a twofold emblem is empaled:
A lady with a stately mien leads on
The golden likeness of a man-at-arms,
The legend says that Justice is her name
And she is bringing back a banished man
To claim his native city and his home.
[Footnote: Four lines, probably spurious, if not interpolated, are
here omitted.]
ETEOCLES.
O madness of the wicked, heaven-abhorred!
O hapless race of Oedipus my sire,
Alas! a father's curse is here fulfilled.
But now away with tears, away with wails,
Lest a worse cause of lamentation come.
For Polynices, all too truly named,
[Footnote: The last part of the name means strife.]
Soon shall he know what his device portends,
And whether golden letters on his shield,
Vaunt as they may, shall bring the boaster home.
Perchance if Justice, virgin child of Zeus,
Were in his thoughts and deeds, so it might be;
But neither when he issued from the womb,
Nor in his childhood's days, nor in his youth,
Nor since the beard has gathered on his chin,
Has Justice e'er vouchsafed a word to him.
Nor now, when on his native soil he treads
In enmity, is Justice at his side.
Nor could the deity deserve her name
If she could be a miscreant's paramour.
Herein I put my trust, and will myself
Accept this combat; better right has none;
Chieftains alike we meet, brethren we are
And deadly enemies. My armour, ho!
