Theseus: What is this lamentation that I hear, this beating of the
breast, these dirges for the dead, with cries that echo from this
shrine? How fluttering fear disquiets me, lest haply my mother have
gotted some mischance, in quest of whom I come, for she hath been
long absent from home. Ha! what now? A strange sight challenges my
speech; I see my aged mother sitting at the altar and stranger dames
are with her, who in various note proclaim their woe; from aged eyes
the piteous tear is starting to the ground, their hair is shorn, their
robes are not the robes of joy. What means it, mother? 'Tis thine
to make it plain to me, mine to listen; yea, for I expect some tidings
strange.
Aethra: My son, these are the mothers of those chieftains seven, who
fell around the gates of Cadmus' town. With suppliant boughs they
keep me prisoner, as thou seest, in their midst.
Theseus: And who is yonder man, that moaneth piteously in the gateway?
Aethra: Adrastus, they inform me, king of Argos.
Theseus: Are those his children, those boys who stand round him?
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