Togail na Tebe = The Thebiad of Statius : the Irish text

THE THEBAIDtutor, who was present with them, wearied of their conversingwithout him, and he said to them :" Cease your conversation,"said he, " and do the thing ye have come for, seeing it is theend of the night, and the day is advancing upon you."Then thethree of them arose, and by them in turn the bodies of those men,Eteocles and Polynices, were lifted to the banks of the riverIsmenos, that was in the neighbourhood of Thebes. And whenthey had there cleansed the bodies of the heroes with the wavesof the beautiful river Ismenos, they found near them a fire ofwood continuing there through the powers of the gods. Andthey lit a pile of a very great fire of dry sticks and of inflammablestuff of the forest, and they placed the bodies on it forthwith,and the bodies were blazing together, and they swiftly fellasunder, and the fire and the stream of rushing flame that wasabove them parted as a sign of the disunion and anger of thetwain whose bodies were upon the fire. And when they werethus, there came exceeding great thunder, so that the towersand houses of Thebes shook, and the watchmen and warders ofthe town arose, and the soldiers of the city came forth upon thegreat level plain. When Menoetes saw them, great fear seizedhim, but the women at the fire were without fear of Creon orhis people for themselves, for they preferred to die when theyhad accomplished the thing they had come for. And they wererelating, in high converse among them, so that the people of theking might hear, how they had brought the bodies where theywere. And when they were heard thus, they were approached,tied, bound, and brought in fetters to sinful Creon.As to Argia, wife of Polynices, thus far.The muster of the Greek women here below.Now as to the women who went to ask help of Theseus, sonof Aegeus, son of Neptune, they arrived in haste at the city ofTheseus, and Theseus was not in the city at that time ; and itwas demanded of them in the town whence their kindred, andwhat the business on which they had come. They answered atonce, and narrated the fray of the Thebans and the Greeks, and307 20—2