Page:The Antigone of Sophocles (1911).djvu/26

22 to his adopted Argos, but fall by the hand of the man who robbed him of his heritage. Polyneices begs his sisters to see that his corpse is given burial, if his father’s imprecations should be fulfilled.

In the Seven Against Thebes of Æschylus, Polyneices with his army has arrived. Many thousand warlike Argives are embattailed and ranked before the gates. Of the seven chiefs selected to stand against the seven Argive leaders, Eteocles is matched with his brother. The chorus sings of the impending conflict which will spill fratricidal blood upon the dust of Earth, and of the curses of wrath which the father had launched against his sons for their unfilial acts towards him. A scout enters to announce that the realm is saved, but that the princes are dead, slain by each other’s hand. It is here that Sophocles, in his Antigone, takes up the thread of the story.