Chorus
What would you infer from this? The lady
[1245]
has turned back and gone without a word, either for good or for evil.
Messenger
I, too, am startled. Still I am nourished by the hope that at the grave news of her son she thinks it unworthy to make her laments before the city, but in the shelter of her home will set her handmaids to mourn the house's grief.
[1250]
For she is not unhabituated to discretion, that she should err.
Chorus
I do not know. But to me, in any case, a silence too strict seems to promise trouble just as much as a fruitless abundance of weeping.
Messenger
I will find out whether she is not, in fact, hiding some repressed plan in the darkness of her passionate heart.
[1255]
I will go in, since you are right—in an excess of silence, too, there may be trouble.Exit Messenger.
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Sophocles. The Antigone of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1891.
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