“Unless some God had stood against the spear
This chief did wield.”
Footnote 133:
The speech of the Antigone becomes the starting-point, in the hands of
Sophocles, of the noblest of his tragedies. The denial of burial, it
will be remembered, was looked on as not merely an indignity and
outrage against the feelings of the living, but as depriving the souls
of the dead of all rest and peace. As such it was the punishment of
parricides and traitors.
Footnote 134:
The words are obscure enough, the point lying, it may be, in their
ambiguity. Antigone here, as in the tragedy of Sophocles, pleads that
the Gods have pardoned; they still command and love the reverence for
the dead, which she is about to show. The herald catches up her words
and takes them in another sense, as though all the honour he had met
with from the Gods had been defeat, and death, and shame, as the
reward of his sacrilege. Another rendering, however, gives—
“Yes, so the Gods have done with honouring him.”
Footnote 135:
The words are probably a protest against the changeableness of the
Athenian _demos_, as seen especially in their treatment of Aristeides.