Note 11 — Chapter V · Trial by Ordeal.
Reading edition
Pattetta, Ordalie.
In Sophocles’ Antigone, the guards protest their innocence to Creon, of any complicity in the burial of Polynices and offer to establish their innocence by ordeal, in the following lines:
“Ready with hands to bear the red-hot iron, To pass through fire, and by the gods to swear That we nor did the deed, nor do we know Who counselled it, or who performed it.” (PP. 264-267.)