Alas! alas! and me, be sure, more than all. (ISM: Alas! alas! for the wretched horrors! O sovereign Eteocles, our chieftain!) Alas! ye most miserable of all men. (ISM: Alas! ye possessed by Ate.) Alas! alas! where in the land shall we place them both? Alas! in the spot that is most honorable. Alas! alas! a woe fit to sleep beside my father. (177) (Enter.) HERALD. 'Tis my duty to announce the good pleasure and the decree of the senators of the people of this city of Cadmus. It is resolved to bury this body of Eteocles for his attachment to his country, with the dear interment in earth! for in repelling our foes he met death in the city, and being pure in respect to the sacred rites of his country, blameless hath he fallen where 'tis glorious for the young to fall; thus, indeed, hath it been commissioned me to announce concerning this corpse: But (it has been decreed) to cast out unburied, a prey for dogs, this the corpse of his brother Polynices, inasmuch as he would have been the overturner of the land of Cadmus, if some one of the gods had not stood in opposition to his spear: and even now that he is dead, he will lie under the guilt of pollution with the gods of his country, whom he having dishonored was for taking the city by bringing against it a foreign host. So it is resolved that he, having been buried dishonorably by winged fowls, should receive his recompense, and that neither piling up by hands of the mound over his tomb should follow, nor any one honor him with shrill-voiced wailings, but that he be ungraced with a funeral at the hands of his friends. Such is the decree of the magistracy of the Cadmaeans.

Ant Monologue from Seven Against Thebes

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