of sheep, offering bulls to the gods, will deposit trophies, and vestments of our enemies, spear-won spoils of the foe, in their hallowed abodes. Offer thou prayers like these to the gods, not with a number of sighs, nor with foolish and wild sobbings; for not one whit the more wilt thou escape 65Destiny. But I too, forsooth,113 will go and marshal at the seven outlets of our walls, six men, with myself for a seventh, antagonists to our foes in gallant plight, before both urgent messengers and quickly-bruited tidings arrive, and inflame us by the crisis. Et. 65 [Exit Eteocles. Eteocles Ch. I attend, but through terror my heart sleeps not, and cares that press close upon my heart keep my dread alive, because of the host that hems our walls114 around; like as a dove, an all-attentive nurse, fears, on behalf of her brood, serpents, evil intruders into her nest. For some are advancing against the towers in all their numbers, in all their array; (what will become of me?) and others are launching the vast rugged stone at the citizens, who are assailed on all sides. By every means, O ye Jove-descended gods! rescue the city and the army that spring from Cadmus. What better plain of land will ye take in exchange to yourselves than this, after ye have abandoned to our enemies the fertile land, and Dirce's water best fed of all the streams that earth-encircling Neptune sends forth, and the daughters of Tethys? Wherefore, O tutelary gods of the city! having hurled on those without the towers the calamity that slaughters men, and casts away shields, achieve glory for these citizens, and be your statues placed on noble sites, as deliverers of our city,115 through our entreaties fraught with 66shrill groanings. For sad it is to send prematurely to destruction an ancient city, a prey of slavery to the spear, ingloriously overthrown in crumbling ashes by an Achæan according to the will of heaven; and for its women to be dragged away captives, alas! alas! both the young and the aged, like horses by their hair, while their vestments are rent about their persons. And the emptied city cries aloud, while its booty is wasted amid confused clamors; verily I fearfully forbode heavy calamities. And a mournful thing it is for [maidens] just marriageable,116 before the celebration of rites for culling the fresh flower of their virginity, to have to traverse a hateful journey from their homes. What? I pronounce that the dead fares better than these; for full many are the calamities, alas! alas! which a city undergoes when it has been reduced. One drags
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