by Daisy Dunn
ISMENE. But in your stormy voyage I am glad
To share the danger, travelling at your side.
ANTIGONE. Whose was the deed the god of Death knows well;
I love not those who love in words alone.
ISMENE. My sister, do not scorn me, nor refuse
That I may die with you, honouring the dead.
ANTIGONE. You shall not die with me, nor claim as yours
What you rejected. My death will be enough.
ISMENE. What life is left to me if I lose you?
ANTIGONE. Ask Creon! It was Creon that you cared for.
ISMENE. O why taunt me, when it does not help you?
ANTIGONE. If I do taunt you, it is to my pain.
ISMENE. Can I not help you, even at this late hour?
ANTIGONE. Save your own life. I grudge not your escape.
ISMENE. Alas! Can I not join you in your fate?
ANTIGONE. You cannot: you chose life, and I chose death.
ISMENE. But not without the warning that I gave you!
ANTIGONE. Some thought you wise; the dead commended me.
ISMENE. But my offence has been as great as yours.
ANTIGONE. Be comforted; you live, but I have given
My life already, in service of the dead.
CREON. Of these two girls, one has been driven frantic,
The other has been frantic since her birth.
ISMENE. Not so, my lord; but when disaster comes
The reason that one has can not stand firm.
CREON. Yours did not, when you chose to partner crime!
ISMENE. But what is life to me, without my sister?
CREON. Say not ‘my sister’: sister you have none.
Antigone hangs herself. Creon’s son Haemon, who was engaged to her, kills himself. Haemon’s devastated mother kills herself. For his hubris, Creon has witnessed the devastating collapse of his household.
A version of this story by Jean Anouilh was performed in Paris in 1944. Its juxtaposition of rejection of authority (by Antigone) and acceptance of it (by Creon) offered parallels with life under the German Occupation of France.
THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS
The History of the Peloponnesian War, Book II
Thucydides
Translated by Paul Woodruff, 1993
The Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460–400 BC) wrote a riveting account of the Peloponnesian War, which was fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies from 431 to 404 BC. He was also an eyewitness to the devastating plague that hit Athens in the second year of the conflict. The timing could hardly have been worse, for the inhabitants of the surrounding countryside of Attica had poured into the city to seek protection from the Spartans (‘Lacedaemonians’) behind the walls, meaning that the plague could spread at terrifying speed. It has been estimated that a third of the population perished from the disease, which modern historians have interpreted variously as typhus, bubonic plague, smallpox or ebola. Some readers view Thucydides’ description of the wild behaviour that spread with the plague as needless moralising, but difficult times have often prompted the desperate to seize the day. The unfortunate Athenians went on to lose the Peloponnesian War.
In the very beginning of summer the Peloponnesians and their allies, with two-thirds of their forces as before, invaded Attica under the command of Archidamus, King of Lacedaemon. After they had settled in, they started wasting the country around them.
They had not been in Attica for many days when the plague first began among the Athenians. Although it was said to have broken out in many other places, particularly in Lemnos, no one could remember a disease that was so great or so destructive of human life breaking out anywhere before. Doctors, not knowing what to do, were unable to cope with it at first, and no other human knowledge was any use either. The doctors themselves died fastest, as they came to the sick most often. Prayers in temples, questions to oracles—all practices of that kind turned out to be useless also, and in the end people gave them up, defeated by the evil of the disease.
They say it first began in the part of Ethiopia that is above Egypt, and from there moved down to Egypt and Libya and into most of the Persian Empire. It hit Athens suddenly, first infecting people in Piraeus [the port of Athens], with the result that they said the Peloponnesians must have poisoned the water tanks (they had no wells there at the time). Afterwards the plague moved inland to the city, where people died of it a good deal faster. Now anyone, doctor or layman, may say as much as he knows about where this probably came from, or what causes he thinks are powerful enough to bring about so great a change. For my part, I will only say what it was like: I will show what to look for, so that if the plague breaks out again, people may know in advance and not be ignorant. I will do this because I had the plague myself, and I myself saw others who suffered from it.
This year of all years was the most free of other diseases, as everyone agrees. If anyone was sick before, his disease turned into this one. If not, they were taken suddenly, without any apparent cause, and while they were in perfect health. First they had a high fever in the head, along with redness and inflammation of the eyes; inside, the throat and tongue were bleeding from the start, and the breath was weird and unsavory. After this came sneezing and hoarseness, and soon after came a pain in the chest, along with violent coughing. And once it was settled in the stomach, it caused vomiting, and brought up, with great torment, all the kinds of bile that the doctors have named. Most of the sick then had dry heaves, which brought on violent spasms which were over quickly for some people, but not till long after for others. Outwardly their bodies were not very hot to the touch, and they were not pale but reddish, livid, and flowered with little pimples and ulcers; inwardly they were burning so much with fever that they could not bear to have the lightest clothes or linen garments on them—nothing but mere nakedness, and they would have loved to throw themselves into cold water. Many of them who were not looked after did throw themselves into water tanks, driven mad by a thirst that was insatiable, although it was all the same whether they drank much or little. Sleeplessness and total inability to rest persisted through everything.
As long as the disease was at its height, the body did not waste away, but resisted the torment beyond all expectation, so that they either died after six or eight days from the burning inside them, or else, if they escaped that, then the disease dropped down into the belly, bringing severe ulceration and uncontrollable diarrhea; and many died later from the weakness this caused, since the disease passed through the whole body, starting with the head and moving down. And if anyone survived the worst of it, then the disease seized his extremities instead and left its mark there: it attacked the private parts, fingers, and toes. Many people escaped with the loss of these, while some lost their eyes as well. Some were struck by total amnesia as soon as they recovered, and did not know themselves or their friends.
This was a kind of disease that defied explanation, and the cruelty with which it attacked everyone was too severe for human nature. What showed more clearly than anything else that it was different from the diseases that are bred among us was this: all the birds and beasts that feed on human flesh either avoided the many bodies that lay unburied, or tasted them and perished. Evidence for this was the obvious absence of such birds: they were not to be seen anywhere, and certainly not doing that. But this effect was more clearly observed in the case of dogs, because they are more familiar with human beings.
Now this disease was generally as I have described it, if I may set aside the many variations that occurred as particular people had different experiences. During that time no one was troubled by any of the usual sicknesses, but whatever sickness came ended in this. People died, some unattended, and some who had every sort of care. There was no medical treatment that could be prescribed as beneficial, for what helped one patient did harm to another. Physical strength turned out to be of no avail, for the plague carried the strong away with the weak, no matter what regimen they had followed.
>
But the greatest misery of all was the defection of mind in those who found themselves beginning to be sick, for as soon as they made up their minds it was hopeless, they gave up and made much less resistance to the disease. Another misery was their dying like sheep, as they became infected by caring for one another; and this brought about the greatest mortality. For if people held back from visiting each other through fear, then they died in neglect, and many houses were emptied because there was no one to provide care. If they did visit each other, they died, and these were mainly the ones who made some pretense to virtue. For these people would have been ashamed to spare themselves, and so they went into their friends’ houses, especially in the end, when even family members, worn out by the lamentations of the dying, were overwhelmed by the greatness of the calamity. But those who had recovered had still more compassion, both on those who were dying and on those who were sick, because they knew the disease first-hand and were now out of danger, for this disease never attacked anyone a second time with fatal effect. And these people were thought to be blessedly happy, and through an excess of present joy they conceived a kind of light hope never to die of any other disease afterwards.
The present affliction was aggravated by the crowding of country folk into the city, which was especially unpleasant for those who came in. They had no houses, and because they were living in shelters that were stifling in the summer, their mortality was out of control. Dead and dying lay tumbling on top of one another in the streets, and at every water fountain lay men half-dead with thirst. The temples also, where they pitched their tents, were all full of the bodies of those who died in them, for people grew careless of holy and profane things alike, since they were oppressed by the violence of the calamity, and did not know what to do. And the laws they had followed before concerning funerals were all disrupted now, everyone burying their dead wherever they could. Many were forced, by a shortage of necessary materials after so many deaths, to take disgraceful measure for the funerals of their relatives: when one person had made a funeral pyre, another would get before him, throw on his dead, and give it fire; others would come to a pyre that was already burning, throw on the bodies they carried, and go their way again.
The great lawlessness that grew everywhere in the city began with this disease, for, as the rich suddenly died and men previously worth nothing took over their estates, people saw before their eyes such quick reversals that they dared to do freely things they would have hidden before—things they never would have admitted they did for pleasure. And so, because they thought their lives and their property were equally ephemeral, they justified seeking quick satisfaction in easy pleasures. As for doing what had been considered noble, no one was eager to take any further pains for this, because they thought it uncertain whether they should die or not before they achieved it. But the pleasure of the moment, and whatever contributed to that, were set up as standards of nobility and usefulness. No one was held back in awe, either by fear of the gods or by the laws of men: not by the gods, because men concluded it was all the same whether they worshipped or not, seeing that they all perished alike; and not by the laws, because no one expected to live till he was tried and punished for his crimes. But they thought that a far greater sentence hung over their heads now, and that before this fell they had a reason to get some pleasure in life.
Such was the misery that weighed on the Athenians. It was very oppressive, with men dying inside the city and the land outside being wasted. At such a terrible time it was natural for them to recall this verse, which the older people said had been sung long ago:
A Dorian war will come.
and with it a plague.
People had disagreed about the wording of the verse: some said it was not plague (loimos) but famine (limos) that was foretold by the ancients; but on this occasion, naturally, the victory went to those who said ‘plague,’ for people made their memory suit their current experience. Surely, I think if there is another Dorian war after this one, and if a famine comes with it, it will be natural for them to recite the verse in that version.
Those who knew of it also recalled an oracle that was given to the Lacedaemonians when they asked the god [Apollo] whether they should start this war or not. The oracle had said: they would win if they fought with all their might, and that he himself would take their part. Then they thought that their present misery was a fulfillment of the prophecy; the plague did begin immediately when the Peloponnesians invaded, and it had no appreciable effect in the Peloponnesus, but preyed mostly on Athens and after that in densely populated areas. So much for the plague.
THE MURDER OF ERATOSTHENES
On the Murder of Eratosthenes
Lysias
Translated by S. C. Todd, 2011
This is a gripping tale of murder embedded in a speech by Lysias (c. 445 BC–c. 380 BC), one of the great orators of ancient Athens. Euphiletus stands accused of killing Eratosthenes for having an affair with his wife. The defendant, the narrator of this piece, maintains that his act was justified by Athenian law, which he cites as permitting a man to kill with impunity an adulterer caught in the act with his wife. Did Euphiletus get away with the murder? Frustratingly we do not know. But it is worth noting that the murdered Eratosthenes was one of the Thirty Tyrants who subjected Athens to harsh rule after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC.
After I decided to get married, men of Athens, and brought my bride home, for a while my attitude was not to trouble her too much but not to let her do whatever she wanted either. I watched her as best I could and gave her the proper amount of attention. But from the moment my son was born, I began to have full confidence in her and placed everything in her hands, reckoning that this was the best relationship. In those early days, men of Athens, she was the best of women: a good housekeeper, thrifty, with a sharp eye on every detail. But my mother’s death was the cause of all my troubles. For it was while attending her funeral that my wife was seen by this fellow and eventually corrupted by him: he kept an eye out for the slave girl who did the shopping, put forward proposals, and seduced her.
Now before continuing, gentlemen, I need to explain something. My house has two stories, and in the part with the women’s rooms and the men’s rooms, the upper floor is the same size as the floor below. When our baby was born, his mother nursed him. To avoid her risking an accident coming down the stairs whenever he needed washing, I took over the upstairs rooms, and the women moved downstairs. Eventually we became so used to this arrangement that my wife would often leave me to go down and sleep with the baby, so that she could nurse it and stop it crying. Things went on in this way for a long time, and I never had the slightest suspicion; indeed, I was so naive that I thought my wife was the most respectable woman in Athens.
Some time later, gentlemen, I returned unexpectedly from the country. After dinner, the baby began to cry and was restless. (He was being deliberately teased by the slave girl, to make him do this, because the man was inside the house: I later found out everything.) So I told my wife to go down and feed the baby, to stop it crying. At first she refused, as if glad to see me home after so long. When I became angry and ordered her to go, she said, “You just want to stay here and have a go at the slave girl. You had a grab at her once before when you were drunk.” I laughed at this, and she got up and left. She closed the door behind her, pretending to make a joke out of it, and bolted it. I had no suspicions and thought no more of it, but gladly went to bed, since I had just returned from the country. Towards morning, she came and unlocked the door. I asked her why the doors had creaked during the night, and she claimed that the baby’s lamp had gone out, so she had to get it relit at our neighbors’. I believed this account and said no more. But I noticed, gentlemen, that she had put on makeup, even though her brother had died less than a month earlier. Even so, I did not say anything about it but left the house without replying.
After this, gentlemen, there was an interval of some time, during which I remained completely un
aware of my misfortunes. But then an old woman came up to me. She had been secretly sent, or so I later discovered, by a lady whom this fellow had seduced. This woman was angry and felt cheated, because he no longer visited her as before, so she watched until she found out why. The old woman kept an eye out and approached me near my house. “Euphiletus,” she said, “please do not think that I am being a busybody by making contact with you. The man who is humiliating you and your wife is an enemy of ours as well. Get hold of your slave girl, the one who does the shopping and waits on you, and torture her: you will discover everything. It is,” she continued, “Eratosthenes of the deme Oe who is doing this. He has seduced not only your wife but many others as well. He makes a hobby of it.” She said this, gentlemen, and left. At once I became alarmed. Everything came back into my mind, and I was filled with suspicion. I remembered how I had been locked in my room, and how that night both the door of the house and the courtyard door had creaked (which had never happened before), and how I had noticed that my wife had used makeup. All these things flashed into my mind, and I was full of suspicion. I returned home, and told the slave girl to come shopping with me, but I took her to the house of one of my friends and told her that I had found out everything that was going on in my house. “So it is up to you,” I said, “to choose the fate you prefer: either to be flogged and put out to work in the mill, and never have any rest from such sufferings; or else to admit the whole truth and suffer no punishment, but instead to be forgiven for your crimes. No lies now: I want the full truth.” At first she denied it and told me to do whatever I pleased, because she knew nothing. But when I mentioned the name Eratosthenes to her and declared that this was the man who was visiting my wife, she was astonished, realizing that I knew everything. She immediately fell at my knees and made me promise she would suffer no harm. She admitted, first, how he had approached her after the funeral, and then how she had eventually acted as his messenger, and how my wife had in the end been won over, and the various ways he had entered the house, and how during the Thesmophoria,1 when I was in the country, my wife had attended the shrine with his mother. She gave me a full and accurate account of everything else that had happened. When she had finished, I said, “Make sure that nobody at all hears about this; otherwise nothing in our agreement will be binding. I want you to show me them in the act. I don’t want words; I want their actions to be clearly proved, if it is really true.” She agreed to do this.