HER. Not so, at least before he put this realm in jeopardy.
ANT. Having suffered injuriously he repaid with injury.
HER. Ay, but this deed of his fell on all instead of one.
ANT. Contention is the last of the gods to finish a dispute,[182] and I
will bury him; make no more words.
HER. Well, take thine own way--yet I forbid thee.
[Exit_ HERALD.
CH. Alas! alas! O ye fatal Furies, proudly triumphant, and destructive
to this race, ye that have ruined the family of OEdipus from its root.
What will become of me? What shall I do? What can I devise? How shall I
have the heart neither to bewail thee nor to escort thee to the tomb?
But I dread and shrink from the terror of the citizens. Thou, at all
events, shalt in sooth have many mourners; but he, wretched one, departs
unsighed for, having the solitary-wailing dirge of his sister. Who will
agree to this?
SEM. Let the state do or not do aught to those who bewail Polynices. We,
on this side will go and join to escort his funeral procession; for both
this sorrow is common to the race, and the state at different times
sanctions different maxims of justice.
SEM. But we will go with this corpse, as both the city and justice join
to sanction. For next to the Immortals and the might of Jove, this man
prevented the city of the Cadmaeans from being destroyed, and thoroughly
overwhelmed by the surge of foreign enemies.