Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/389

Rh

Woe, Sire, thy wedded-bane!

[Enter.

Me it behoves to publish the resolve,

And statute of Cadmeia's senators.

Eteocles, for love he bore the land,

Shall be with kindly obsequies interred.

For in our city, warding off her foes,

Death he encountered; free from all offence

Against his country's rites, blameless, he died

Where for the young to die is glorious.

Of him, I thus am ordered to proclaim.

But this, his brother Polyneikes' corse,

Unburied to cast forth, of dogs the prey,

As ravager of this Cadmeian land,

Unless against his spear some god had stood;

Thus e'en in death polluted he will lie,

Cursed of ancestral gods in scorn of whom,

With alien host, he sought the town to capture.

By wingèd fowl entombed, inglorious,

For him this just requital is decreed;—

No rearing of the mound by pious hands,

No shrill-voiced wail shall grace his funeral,

Unhonour'd thus with tender obsequies.

So they who rule Cadmeians have ordained.

But to Cadmeia's rulers I declare,

If none will join in burying this man,

Myself will bury him, and take the risk,