Fair flower of thy sire’s house, Antigone, Albeit thy mother suffered thee to leave Thy maiden-bower at thine entreaty, and mount The palace-roof to view the Argive host, Yet stay, that I may scan the highway first, Lest on the path some citizen appear, And scandal light—for me, the thrall, ’twere naught,— On thee, the princess. [Way’s translation.] Again, when they are ready to withdraw, the approach of the chorus reinforces the same motive (see p. 93, n. 1, above): Daughter, pass in.... Lo, to the royal halls a woman-throng Comes, ... And scandal-loving still is womankind, etc. [Vss. 193 ff.; Way’s translation] As intimated at the beginning it would be possible to extend this chapter indefinitely. One more point must suffice. The belief was widespread among the Greeks that if a man’s body failed of burial his shade was forced to wander for a season on this side of the river Styx and was thus cut off from association with the great majority of departed spirits; the obligation of attending to the funeral rites rested upon the nearest kin of the deceased. It was inevitable that a doctrine so intimately connected with the life of the people should frequently appear in their literature. Thus the _Iliad_ does not close with the deaths of Patroclus and Hector, but two whole books are devoted to an account of their funerals. Likewise in the _Odyssey_, however unsympathetic has been his delineation of the suitors’ conduct, nevertheless Homer does not pass by the final disposition of their bodies in silence (cf. xxiv. 417). In tragedy, which often involves the death of the hero, naturally this matter is frequently mentioned. In Sophocles’ _Antigone_ it provides the mainspring of the action. Because Polynices fell in arms against his native country, Creon forbade his burial, but before the call of a duty so sacred Antigone deemed not her life precious and performed the formal rites for her brother’s body in defiance of the king’s command. According to modern feeling, when the hero falls upon his sword at vs. 865 of Sophocles’ _Ajax_, the dénouement must have arrived and the ending be close at hand; as a matter of fact, the play continues for over five hundred verses. To the Greeks no less important than the fact of his death was the treatment which was to be accorded his corpse, and the honors which Ajax received in Attica as a “hero” in the technical, religious sense of that term made this a matter of far more moment than would have been true even in the case of an ordinary man. Aeschylus’ _Seven against Thebes_ concludes with a dirge between Antigone and Ismene over the bodies of their two brothers, and an altercation between a public herald and Antigone in which she declares her intention of defying the state edict by burying Polynices. The genuineness of these scenes