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 Œdipus 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 Œdipus, 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, Œdipus, 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?