Not only does the antistrophe repeat topics from the strophe—warfare on the plain and barren women in the town laying their laments upon the altars of their gods–it thematizes the singing of the ode itself; the Chorus’s present singing enacts the song it describes. The Chorus superimposes the image it presents upon the image of the suffering women whom it portrays. Indeed, insofar as the Theban women go to the altars of their gods to sing laments for their dead, the dramatic representation loses its artifice; mythical Thebes engulfs the Athenian chorus and even its audience, which finds itself watching an enactment of itself everywhere engaging in lamentation for the injuries it presently suffers due to war and plague. The members of the chorus need not act here: the lines they sing can come straight from the heart and speak directly to an experience in which they and the audience are already fully and directly joined. Thus as the dramatic chorus dissolves into the subject of its song, the implied dramatic audience dissolves into the throng of Thebans lamenting and dancing in the orchestra. [Gt-a]