Æschylos Tragedies and Fragments

On all men sacred hold.

Strophe III

And hollow din is heard throughout the town,
Hemmed in by net of towers;
And man by man is slaughtered with the spear,
And cries of bleeding babes,
Of children at the breast,
Are heard in piteous wail,
And rapine, sister of the plunderer's rush,
Spoiler with spoiler meets,
And empty-handed empty-handed calls,
Wishing for share of gain,
Both eager for a portion no whit less,
For more than equal lot
With what they deem the others' hands have found.

Antistrophe III

And all earth's fruits cast wildly on the ground,
Meeting the cheerless eye
Of frugal housewives, give them pain of heart;
And many a gift of earth
In formless heaps is whirled
In waves of nothingness;
And the young maidens know a sorrow new;
For now the foe prevails,
And gains rich prize of wretched captive's bed;
And now their only hope
Is that the night of death will come at last,
Their truest, best ally,
To rescue them from sorrow fraught with tears.

Enter Eteocles, followed by his Chief Captains,

and by the Scout

Semi-Chor. A. The army scout, so deem I, brings to us,
Dear friends, some tidings new, with quickest speed
Plying the nimble axles of his feet.

Semi-Chor. B. Yea, the king's self, the son of Œdipus,
Is nigh to hear the scout's exact report;
And haste denies him too an even step.

Mess. I knowing well, will our foes' state report,
How each his lot hath stationed at the gates.
At those of Prœtos, Tydeus thunders loud,
And him the prophet suffers not to cross
Ismenos' fords, the victims boding ill.[94 - Here, as in v. 571, Tydeus appears as the real leader of the expedition, who had persuaded Adrastos and the other chiefs to join in it, and Amphiaraos, the prophet, the son of Œcleus, as having all along foreseen its disastrous issue. The account of the expedition in the Œdipus at Colonos (1300-1330) may be compared with this.]
And Tydeus, raging eager for the fight,
Shouts like a serpent in its noontide scream,
And on the prophet, Œcleus' son, heaps shame,
That he, in coward fear, doth crouch and fawn
Before the doom and peril of the fight.
And with such speech he shakes his triple crest,
O'ershadowing all his helm, and 'neath his shield
Bells wrought in bronze ring out their chimes of fear;
And on his shield he bears this proud device, —
A firmament enchased, all bright with stars;[95 - The legend of the Medusa's head on the shield of Athena shows the practice of thus decorating shields to have been of remote date. In Homer it does not appear as common, and the account given of the shield of Achilles lays stress upon the work of the artist (Hephæstos) who wrought the shield in relief, not, as here, upon painted insignia. They were obviously common in the time of Æschylos.]
And in the midst the full moon's glittering orb,
Sovran of stars and eye of Night, shines forth.
And thus exulting in o'er boastful arms,
By the stream's bank he shouts in lust of war,
[E'en as a war-horse panting in his strength
Against the curb that galls him, who at sound
Of trumpet's clang chafes hotly.] Whom wilt thou
Set against him? Who is there strong enough
When the bolts yield, to guard the Prœtan gates?

Eteoc. No fear have I of any man's array;
Devices have no power to pierce or wound,
And crest and bells bite not without a spear;
And for this picture of the heavens at night,
Of which thou tellest, glittering on his shield,
Perchance his madness may a prophet prove;
For if night fall upon his dying eyes,
Then for the man who bears that boastful sign
It may right well be all too truly named,
And his own pride shall prophet be of ill.
And against Tydeus, to defend the gates,
I'll set this valiant son of Astacos;
Noble is he, and honouring well the throne
Of Reverence, and hating vaunting speech,
Slow to all baseness, unattuned to ill:
And of the dragon-race that Ares spared[96 - The older families of Thebes boasted that they sprang from the survivors of the Sparti, who, sprung from the Dragon's teeth, waged deadly war against each other, till all but five were slain. The later settlers, who were said to have come with Cadmos, stood to these as the “greater” to the “lesser gentes” at Rome.]
He as a scion grows, a native true,
E'en Melanippos; Ares soon will test
His valour in the hazard of the die:
And kindred Justice sends him forth to war,
For her that bore him foeman's spear to check.

Strophe I

Chor. May the Gods grant my champion good success!
For justly he goes forth
For this our State to fight;
But yet I quake with fear
To see the deaths of those who die for friends.