Second Stasimon: the curse on the house
The chorus sings the family's long doom. Once a god has cursed a bloodline, the curse runs generation by generation until the cup is drained.
Summary
The chorus, with Antigone now condemned, sings the curse on her family. Three times blessed are those who have never tasted pain. Once the gods strike a bloodline the infection lingers, generation after generation, and each must drain the cup. The image is of the Etesian winds from Thrace pouring down on the blackening sea, billow upon billow thundering on the shore — the curse arriving as weather, impersonal, repeating.
They trace the line. The house of Labdacus has been struck since ancient days. From old Cadmus through Oedipus to the brothers and now to the daughters, the rod of some early god scourges age after age with sorrows that never end. The light that dawned upon its last-born son — Polyneices, the youngest brother — is gone. The bloody axe of Fate has felled the handsome tree that flowered late. The chorus does not soften it; the family is being extinguished and the chorus knows it.
The ode then turns from family to god. Your might, O Zeus — what mortal power can quell it? Not sleep that lays everything else beneath its spell. Not the moons that never tire. Untouched by Time, throned in dazzling light, you reign king, omnipotent, sublime. All that exceeds the mean is punished by Fate. Hope flits about on never-tiring wings; to some she brings profit, to some light loves; but no one knows how her gifts may turn until the treacherous ashes burn beneath his feet. It is a wise saying, the chorus closes: when evil seems good to any man, Fate is near. They have been describing Antigone. They will, by the end of the play, have been describing Creon. The song ends as Haemon — Creon's son, Antigone's betrothed — is seen approaching in anger, and the elders fall silent to watch.
- Scene 1Antigone summons Ismene outside the palace before dawn. Their two brothers killed each other in the war; Creon has forbidden...
- Scene 2The elders of Thebes sing the dawn after the battle. The Argive invaders have been driven back; the brothers killed each other...
- Scene 3Creon's first speech of state. He proclaims the edict — Eteocles honored, Polyneices left for the dogs — and the chorus accepts...
- Scene 4The chorus sings the most famous ode in Greek tragedy. Man is wondrous in everything — sailing, plowing, hunting, building...
- Scene 5Antigone is dragged before Creon. She admits the act and argues that the gods' unwritten laws preceded his decree. Creon condemns...
- Scene 6The chorus sings the curse on the house of Labdacus. Once a god curses a bloodline, the disease runs generation by generation....
- Scene 7Haemon, Creon's son, comes to warn his father. The city sees Antigone as noble; no man is wise enough to stand alone; the trees...
- Scene 8A short bitter ode to Eros. Love has set Haemon against his father; even the wisest heart falls to the god's dart. Then Creon...
- Scene 9Antigone gives her last speech — farewell to the sun, no marriage song will be sung for her, Death is the groom she weds — and is...
- Scene 10The chorus, for the first time, gives Creon direct counsel. Free the girl. Build the tomb. Now. Creon obeys, runs out himself with...
- Scene 11The messenger reports it all. Antigone hanged herself in the cave; Haemon, finding her body, lunged at his father with a sword...