Page:Masterpieces of Greek Literature (1902).djvu/184

154 154 SOPHOCLES

Guard. I saw her burying that self-same corpse Thou bad'st us not to bury. Speak I clear? 439

Creon. How was she seen, and taken in the act ?

Guard. The matter passed as follows : — When we came, With all those dreadful threats of thine upon us, Sweeping away the dust which, lightly spread, Covered the corpse, and laying stript and bare The tainted carcase, on the hill we sat 445

To windward, shunning the infected air. Each stirring up his fellow with strong words, If any shirked his duty. This went on Some time, until the glowing orb of day Stood in mid-heaven, and the scorching heat 450

Fell on us. Then a sudden whirlwind rose, A scourge from heaven, raising squalls on earth. And filled the plain, the leafage stripping bare Of all the forest, *and the air's vast space Was thick and troubled, and we closed our eyes, 455 Until the plague the Gods had sent was past ; And when it ceased, a weary time being gone, The girl is seen, and with a bitter cry, Slirill as a bird's, when it beholds its nest All emptied of its infant brood, she wails ; 460

Thus she, when she beholds the corpse all stript. Groaned loud with many moanings, and she called Fierce curses down on those who did the deed. And in her hand she brings some fine, dry dust, And from a vase of bronze, well wrought, upraised, She pours the three libations o'er the dead.^ 466

And we, beholding, give her chase forthwith,

^ The three libations were sometimes separately of wine, milk, and honey. Here the "narrative implies that Antigone had only one urn, but adhered to the sacred niunber in her act of pouring.