This is a translation of lines 332–348 of Antigone. We can’t assign it to an act or scene, because if classical Greek plays were divided into scenes by the playwright, they never wrote down these divisions, or at least the manuscript tradition does not preserve them. Any such divisions in modern texts have been added by later copyists or translators. (See this answer for a discussion of the state of the evidence for stage directions in classical tragedy.)
Χορός πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.
τοῦτο καὶ πολιοῦ πέραν πόντου χειμερίῳ νότῳ
χωρεῖ, περιβρυχίοισιν
περῶν ὑπ᾽ οἴδμασιν.
θεῶν τε τὰν ὑπερτάταν, Γᾶν
ἄφθιτον, ἀκαμάταν, ἀποτρύεται
ἰλλομένων ἀρότρων ἔτος εἰς ἔτος
ἱππείῳ γένει πολεύων.
κουφονόων τε φῦλον ὀρνίθων ἀμφιβαλὼν ἄγει
καὶ θηρῶν ἀγρίων ἔθνη πόντου τ᾽ εἰναλίαν φύσιν
σπείραισι δικτυοκλώστοις,
περιφραδὴς ἀνήρ:
κρατεῖ δὲ μηχαναῖς ἀγραύλου
θηρὸς ὀρεσσιβάτα, λασιαύχενά θ᾽
ἵππον ὀχμάζεται ἀμφὶ λόφον ζυγῶν
οὔρειόν τ᾽ ἀκμῆτα ταῦρον.
Chorus Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man. This power spans the sea, even when it surges white before the gales of the south-wind, and makes a path under swells that threaten to engulf him. Earth, too, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, he wears away to his own ends, turning the soil with the offspring of horses as the plows weave to and fro year after year.
The light-hearted tribe of birds and the clans of wild beasts and the sea-brood of the deep he snares in the meshes of his twisted nets, and he leads them captive, very-skilled man. He masters by his arts the beast who dwells in the wilds and roams the hills. He tames the shaggy-maned horse, putting the yoke upon its neck, and tames the tireless mountain bull.
Sophocles. Antigone, lines 332–352. Translated by Richard C. Jebb (1891). Perseus Digital Library.
These two stanzas are the first strophe and antistrophe, respectively, of the choric ode. Jebb has the following note on the dramatic context:
The Chorus had not thought it possible that any one should brave death to bury the corpse (220). But the deed has been done, and without leaving a trace (252). And Creon has silenced the suggestion that gods did it (278). The train of thought is continued in this ode. Its theme is man’s daring,—his inventiveness, and the result to his happiness.
Man is master of sea and land; he subdues all other creatures; he has equipped his life with all resources, except a remedy against death. His skill brings him to prosperity, when he observes divine and human laws, but to ruin when he breaks them.—At that moment Antigone is led in, and the coryphaeus speaks the closing anapaests (376–383).
Richard C. Jebb (1891). Antigone, p. 69. Cambridge University Press.
That is, the chorus in this ode are elaborating on the central conflict of the play: whether Antigone is right to insist on the burial of her brother, in accordance with human custom and divine law, even at the expense of her life, or whether she should save her life by compromising with her uncle Cleon, as advised by her cousin Haemon:
Haemon No, though a man be wise, ’tis no shame for him to learn many things, and to bend in season. Seest thou, beside the wintry torrent’s course, how the trees that yield to it save every twig, while the stiff-necked perish root and branch?
Sophocles. Antigone, lines 710–714. Translated by Richard C. Jebb (1891). Perseus Digital Library.
