Matheson Collection > Togail na Tebe

THE THEBAID
tutor, who was present with them, wearied of their conversing
without him, and he said to them : " Cease your conversation,"
said he, " and do the thing ye have come for, seeing it is the
end of the night, and the day is advancing upon you." Then the
three of them arose, and by them in turn the bodies of those men,
Eteocles and Polynices, were lifted to the banks of the river
Ismenos, that was in the neighbourhood of Thebes. And when
they had there cleansed the bodies of the heroes with the waves
of the beautiful river Ismenos, they found near them a fire of
wood continuing there through the powers of the gods. And
they lit a pile of a very great fire of dry sticks and of inflammable
stuff of the forest, and they placed the bodies on it forthwith,
and the bodies were blazing together, and they swiftly fell
asunder, and the fire and the stream of rushing flame that was
above them parted as a sign of the disunion and anger of the
twain whose bodies were upon the fire. And when they were
thus, there came exceeding great thunder, so that the towers
and houses of Thebes shook, and the watchmen and warders of
the town arose, and the soldiers of the city came forth upon the
great level plain. When Menoetes saw them, great fear seized
him, but the women at the fire were without fear of Creon or
his people for themselves, for they preferred to die when they
had accomplished the thing they had come for. And they were
relating, in high converse among them, so that the people of the
king might hear, how they had brought the bodies where they
were. 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, son
of Aegeus, son of Neptune, they arrived in haste at the city of
Theseus, and Theseus was not in the city at that time ; and it
was demanded of them in the town whence their kindred, and
what the business on which they had come. They answered at
once, and narrated the fray of the Thebans and the Greeks, and
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