THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

THESEUS
Myself will look to those others; let the biers advance.
ADRASTUS
Approach your sons, unhappy mothers.
THESEUS
This thy proposal, Adrastus, is anything but good.
ADRASTUS
Must not the mothers touch their sons?
THESEUS
It would kill them to see how they are altered.
ADRASTUS
'Tis bitter, truly, to see the dead even at the moment of death.
THESEUS
Why then wilt thou add fresh grief to them?
ADRASTUS
Thou art right. Ye needs must patiently abide, for the words of Theseus
are good. But when we have committed them unto the flames, ye shall
collect their bones. O wretched sons of men! Why do ye get you weapons
and bring slaughter on one another? Cease therefrom, give o'er your
toiling, and in mutual peace keep safe your cities. Short is the span of
life, so 'twere best to run its course as lightly as we may, from trouble free.
(The corpses, followed by the CHILDREN of the slain chieftains, are carried
off to the pyre which is kindled within the sight of the persons
on the stage.)
CHORUS {singing)
strophe
No more a happy mother I, with children blest; no more I share,
among Argive women, who have sons, their happy lot; nor any more
will Artemis in the hour of travail kindly greet these childless
mothers. Most dreary is my life, and like some wandering cloud I
drift before the howling blast.
antistrophe
The seven noblest sons in Argos once we had, we seven hapless
mothers; but now my sons are dead, I have no child, and on me steals
old age in piteous wise, nor 'mongst the dead nor 'mongst the living
do I count myself, having as it were a lot apart from these.