Sophocles, Antigone 781–882: Third stasimon: the ode to Eros, and Antigone's lament

Love, the unconquered in battle, Love, you who descend upon riches, and watch the night through on a girl’s soft cheek, you roam over the sea and among the homes of men in the wilds. Neither can any immortal escape you, nor any man whose life lasts for a day. He who has known you is driven to madness.

You seize the minds of just men and drag them to injustice, to their ruin. You it is who have incited this conflict of men whose flesh and blood are one. But victory belongs to radiant Desire swelling from the eyes of the sweet-bedded bride. Desire sits enthroned in power beside the mighty laws. For in all this divine Aphrodite plays her irresistible game.

But now, witnessing this, I too am carried beyond the bounds of loyalty. The power fails me to keep back my streaming tears any longer, when I see Antigone making her way to the chamber where all are laid to rest, now her bridal chamber.

Citizens of my fatherland, see me setting out on my last journey, looking at my last sunlight, and never again. No, Hades who lays all to rest leads me living to Acheron’s shore, though I have not had my due portion of the chant that brings the bride, nor has any hymn been mine for the crowning of marriage. Instead the lord of Acheron will be my groom.

Then in glory and with praise you depart to that deep place of the dead, neither struck by wasting sickness, nor having won the wages of the sword. No, guided by your own laws and still alive, unlike any mortal before, you will descend to Hades.

I have heard with my own ears how our Phrygian guest, the daughter of Tantalus, perished in so much suffering on steep Sipylus—how, like clinging ivy, the sprouting stone subdued her. And the rains, as men tell, do not leave her melting form, nor does the snow, but beneath her weeping lids she dampens her collar. Most like hers is the god-sent fate that leads me to my rest.

Yet she was a goddess, as you know, and the offspring of gods, while we are mortals and mortal-born. Still it is a great thing for a woman who has died to have it said of her that she shared the lot of the godlike in her life, and afterwards, in death.

Ah, you mock me! In the name of our fathers’ gods, why do you not wait to abuse me until after I have gone, and not to my face, O my city, and you, her wealthy citizens? Ah, spring of Dirce, and you holy ground of Thebes whose chariots are many, you, at least, will bear me witness how unwept by loved ones, and by what laws I go to the rock-closed prison of my unheard-of tomb! Ah, misery! I have no home among men or with the shades, no home with the living or with the dead.

You have rushed headlong to the far limits of daring, and against the high throne of Justice you have fallen, my daughter, fallen heavily. But in this ordeal you are paying for some paternal crime.

You have touched on my most bitter thought and moved my ever-renewed pity for my father and for the entire doom ordained for us, the famed house of Labdacus. Oh, the horrors of our mother’s bed! Oh, the slumbers of the wretched mother at the side of her own son, my own father! What manner of parents gave me my miserable being! It is to them that I go like this, accursed and unwed, to share their home. Ah, my brother, the marriage you made was doomed, and by dying you killed me still alive!

Your pious action shows a certain reverence, but an offence against power can no way be tolerated by him who has power in his keeping. Your self-willed disposition is what has destroyed you.

Unwept, unfriended, without marriage-song, I am led in misery on this journey that cannot be put off. No longer is it permitted me, unhappy girl, to look up at this sacred eye of the burning sun. But for my fate no tear is shed, no friend moans in sorrow.