Antistrophe
And now all the earth mourns,
And for that grand and ancient sway she weeps,
With mourning for the empire thou and thy brothers held. 410
And all who have abodes
On holy Asia’s borders, in thy loud mourned woes
Those mortals suffer with thee.
The curious responsion of these two strophes is very interesting, interwoven as it is with most of the lines, now by verbal similarity (as in στένω and στονόεν), now by similarity of sense (tears and weeps), now by antithesis (gods and men), and lastly, by an etymological play upon words (νόμος and νέμονται). In addition we have the contrast of ideas in the last lines, in the one strophe Zeus constrains the gods, in the other men mourn complaining. Again in the Œdipus Rex of Sophocles, 1, 863-910:
| Strophe I | Antistrophe I |
| Beginning. | |
| 863) Be it my lot to keep | 873)’Tis insolence begets the tyrant, |
| That reverent purity of word and deed, etc. | Insolence, foolishly puffed up, etc. |
| Conclusion. | |
| 870) Ne’er shall forgetfulness lull them to rest: | 880) Rivalry that brings |
| Weal to the state I ask not God to end: | A great god in them dwells, nor ever waxeth old. |
| Never shall I depart from God my champion. | |
| Strophe II | Antistrophe II |
| Beginning. | |
| 883) But a man who walks in haughty insolence of word or deed, | 897) Never shall I more in reverence go to Delphi’s holy place |
| Fearing not the hand of Justice, nor revering shrines of gods. | Nor the shrine of Abæ, nor Olympia. |
| Conclusion. | |
| 895) But if such deeds as these are held in honour | 909) No longer in Apollo’s worship manifest, |
| What offerings need I bring the gods? | But honours to the gods go all unpaid. |