HTML, Modifications and corrections of the text by: Dr. Barry F. Vaughan (2000)
Having grown to maturity, the boy began to doubt his parentage; so, he inquired of the Delphic Oracle of Pheobus Apollo and heard himself the strange prophecy given to Laios many years before. Fearing that he should kill Polubos, he fled from, what he thought, was his father's house. In his flight he encountered and unwittingly slew his true father, Laios King of Thebes.
Arriving at Thebes, Oedipus solved the riddle of the dread Sphinx, lifting the curse of the beast from the city. The grateful Thebans thereupon made Oedipus their king. Thus, Oedipus came to rule in Laios' house, and he married the widowed queen Iokaste, his mother. To them were born children, and Thebes prospered under his rule. But in time, a grievous plague fell upon the city. An oracle was consulted and it bade them purge themselves of a grave sin within the city. Oedipus denounced the crime of which he himself had unwittingly committed, and undertakes to find the criminal. It is eventually revealed that he is the man who has brought the plague upon Thebes by killing his father and marrying his mother. The play ends with Iokaste's suicide and Oedipus blinding himself and praying for death or exile.
Suppliants of all ages are seated round the altar at the palace doors, at their head is a PRIEST OF ZEUS. Oedipus enters . . .
OEDIPUS
My children, latest born to Kadmos old,
Why sit you here as suppliants, in your hands
Branches of olive filleted with wool?
What means this reek of incense everywhere,
And everywhere laments and litanies?
Children, it were not meet that I should learn
From others, and am hither come, myself,
I Oedipus, your world-renowned king.
(to the Priest)
Ho! aged father, whose venerable locks
Proclaim you spokesman of this company,
Explain your mood and purport. Is it dread
Of ill that moves you or a boon you crave?
My zeal in your behalf you cannot doubt;
Ruthless indeed were I and obdurate
If such petitioners as you I spurned.
PRIEST
Yes, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,
You see how both extremes of age besiege
Your palace altars--fledglings hardly winged,
and greybeards bowed with years; priests, as am I
of Zeus, and these the flower of our youth.
Meanwhile, the common folk, with wreathed boughs
Crowd our two market-places, or before
Both shrines of Pallas congregate, or where
Ismenus gives his oracles by fire.
For, as you see yourself, our ship of State,
Sore buffeted, can no more lift her head,
Foundered beneath a weltering surge of blood.
A blight is on our harvest in the ear,
A blight upon the grazing flocks and herds,
A blight on wives in travail; and withal
Armed with his blazing torch the God of Plague
Hath swooped upon our city emptying
The house of Kadmos, and the murky realm
Of Pluto is full fed with groans and tears.
Therefore, O King, here at your hearth we sit, I and these children; not as deeming you A new divinity, but the first of men; First in the common accidents of life, And first in visitations of the Gods. Art you not he who coming to the town of Kadmos freed us from the tax we paid To the fell songstress? Nor had you received Prompting from us or been by others schooled; No, by a god inspired (so all men deem, And testify) did you renew our life. And now, O Oedipus, our peerless king, All we your votaries beseech you, find Some succor, whether by a voice from heaven Whispered, or haply known by human wit. Tried counselors, methinks, are aptest found To furnish for the future pregnant rede. Upraise, O chief of men, upraise our City! Look to your laurels! for your zeal of yore Our country's savior you are justly hailed: O never may we thus record your reign: "He raised us up only to cast us down." Uplift us, build our city on a rock. Your happy star ascendant brought us luck, O let it not decline! If you would rule This land, as now you reign, better sure To rule a peopled than a desert realm. Nor battlements nor galleys aught avail, If men to man and guards to guard them tail.
OEDIPUS
Ah! my poor children, known, ah, known too well,
The quest that brings you hither and your need.
You sicken all, well wot I, yet my pain,
How great soever yours, outtops it all.
Your sorrow touches each man severally,
Him and none other, but I grieve at once
Both for the general and myself and you.
Therefore, you rouse no sluggard from day-dreams.
Many, my children, are the tears I've wept,
And threaded many a maze of weary thought.
Thus pondering one clue of hope I caught,
And tracked it up; I have sent Menoikeus' son,
Kreon, my consort's brother, to inquire
Of Pythian Phoebus at his Delphic shrine,
How I might save the City by act or word.
And now I reckon up the tale of days
Since he set forth, and marvel how he fares.
It is strange, this endless tarrying, passing stran
But when he comes, then I were base indeed,
If I perform not all the god declares.
PRIEST
Your words are well timed; even as you speak
That shouting tells me Kreon is at hand.
OEDIPUS
O King Apollo! may his joyous looks
Be presage of the joyous news he brings!
PRIEST
As I surmise, it is welcome; else his head
Had scarce been crowned with berry-laden bays.
OEDIPUS
We soon shall know; he's now in earshot range.
My royal cousin, say, Menoikeus' child, What message have you brought us from the god?
KREON
Good news, for even intolerable ills,
Finding right issue, tend to nothing but good.
OEDIPUS
How runs the oracle? thus far your words
Give me no ground for confidence or fear.
KREON
If you would hear my message publicly,
I'll tell you straight, or with you pass within.
OEDIPUS
Speak before all; the burden that I bear
Is more for these my subjects than myself.
KREON
Let me report then all the god declared.
King Phoebus (ie., Apollo) bids us straitly extirpate
A fell pollution that infests the land,
And no more harbor an inveterate sore.
OEDIPUS
What expiation means he? What's amiss?
KREON
Banishment, or the shedding blood for blood.
This stain of blood makes shipwreck of our state.
OEDIPUS
Whom can he mean, the miscreant thus denounced?
KREON
Before you did assume the helm of State,
The sovereign of this land was Laios.
OEDIPUS
I heard as much, but never saw the man.
KREON
He fell; and now the god's command is plain:
Punish his takers-off, whomever they be.
OEDIPUS
Where are they? Where in the wide world to find
The far, faint traces of a bygone crime?
KREON
In this land, said the god; "who seeks shall find;
Who sits with folded hands or sleeps is blind."
OEDIPUS
Was he within his palace, or afield,
Or traveling, when Laios met his fate?
KREON
Abroad; he started, so he told us, bound
For Delphi, but he never thence returned.
OEDIPUS
Came there no news, no fellow-traveler
To give some clue that might be followed up?
KREON
But one escape, who flying for dear life,
Could tell of all he saw but one thing sure.
OEDIPUS
And what was that? One clue might lead us far,
With but a spark of hope to guide our quest.
KREON
Robbers, he told us, not one bandit but
A troop of villains, attacked and murdered him.
OEDIPUS
Did any bandit dare so bold a stroke,
Unless indeed he were suborned from Thebes?
KREON
So it was surmised, but none was found to avenge
His murder mid the trouble that ensued.
OEDIPUS
What trouble can have hindered a full quest,
When royalty had fallen thus miserably?
KREON
The riddling Sphinx compelled us to let slide
The dim past and attend to instant needs.
OEDIPUS
Well, I will start afresh and once again
Make dark things clear. Right worthy the concern
Of Phoebus, worthy your too, for the dead;
I also, as is meet, will lend my aid
To avenge this wrong to Thebes and to the god.
Not for some far-off kinsman, but myself,
Shall I expel this poison in the blood;
For whoso slew that king might have a mind
To strike me too with his assassin hand.
Therefore, in righting him I serve myself.
Up, children, haste you, quit these altar stairs,
Take hence your suppliant wands, go summon hither
The Theban commons. With the god's good help
Success is sure; it is ruin if we fail.
PRIEST
Come, children, let us hence; these gracious words
Forestall the very purpose of our suit.
And may the god who sent this oracle
Save us withal and rid us of this pest.
CHORUS
Sweet-voiced daughter of Zeus from your gold-paved Pythian shrine
Wafted to Thebes divine,
What do you bring me? My soul is racked and shivers with fear.
(Healer of Delos, hear!)
Have you some pain unknown before,
Or with the circling years renew a penance of yore?
Offspring of golden Hope, you voice immortal, O tell me.
First on Athene I call; O Zeus-born goddess, defend!
Goddess and sister, befriend,
Artemis, Lady of Thebes, high-throned in the midst of our mart!
Lord of the death-winged dart!
Your threefold aid I crave
From death and ruin our city to save.
If in the days of old when we nigh had perished, you drove
From our land the fiery plague, be near us now and defend us!
Ah me, what countless woes are mine!
All our host is in decline;
Weaponless my spirit lies.
Earth her gracious fruits denies;
Women wail in barren throes;
Life on life downstriken goes,
Swifter than the wind bird's flight,
Swifter than the Fire-God's might,
To the westering shores of Night.
Wasted thus by death on death
All our city perisheth.
Corpses spread infection round;
None to tend or mourn is found.
Wailing on the altar stair
Wives and grandams rend the air--
Long-drawn moans and piercing cries
Blent with prayers and litanies.
Golden child of Zeus, O hear
Let your angel face appear!
And grant that Ares whose hot breath I feel,
Though without targe or steel
He stalks, whose voice is as the battle shout,
May turn in sudden rout,
To the unharbored Thracian waters sped,
Or Amphitrite's bed.
For what night leaves undone,
Smit by the morrow's sun
Perisheth. Father Zeus, whose hand
Does wield the lightning brand,
Slay him beneath your levin bold, we pray,
Slay him, O slay!
O that your arrows too, Lycean King,
From that taut bow's gold string,
Might fly abroad, the champions of our rights;
Yes, and the flashing lights
Of Artemis, wherewith the huntress sweeps
Across the Lycian steeps.
You too I call with golden-snooded hair,
Whose name our land doth bear,
Bakxos to whom your Maenads Evoe shout;
Come with your bright torch, rout,
Blithe god whom we adore,
The god whom gods abhor.
OEDIPUS
You pray; it is well, but would you hear my words
And heed them and apply the remedy,
You might perchance find comfort and relief.
Mind you, I speak as one who comes a stranger
To this report, no less than to the crime;
For how unaided could I track it far
Without a clue? Which lacking (for too late
Was I enrolled a citizen of Thebes)
This proclamation I address to all:
Thebans, if any knows the man by whom
Laios, son of Labdacus, was slain,
I summon him to make clean shrift to me.
And if he shrinks, let him reflect that thus
Confessing he shall escape the capital charge;
For the worst penalty that shall befall him
Is banishment--unscathed he shall depart.
But if an alien from a foreign land
Be known to any as the murderer,
Let him who knows speak out, and he shall have
Due recompense from me and thanks to boot.
But if you still keep silence, if through fear
For self or friends you disregard my hest,
Hear what I then resolve; I lay my ban
On the assassin whosoe'er he be.
Let no man in this land, whereof I hold
The sovereign rule, harbor or speak to him;
Give him no part in prayer or sacrifice
Or lustral rites, but hound him from your homes.
For this is our defilement, so the god
Hath lately shown to me by oracles.
Thus as their champion I maintain the cause
Both of the god and of the murdered King.
And on the murderer this curse I lay
(On him and all the partners in his guilt):
Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness!
And for myself, if with my privity
He gain admittance to my hearth, I pray
The curse I laid on others fall on me.
See that you give effect to all my hest,
For my sake and the god's and for our land,
A desert blasted by the wrath of heaven.
For, let alone the god's express command,
It were a scandal you should leave unpurged
The murder of a great man and your king,
Nor track it home. And now that I am lord,
Successor to his throne, his bed, his wife,
(And had he not been frustrate in the hope
Of issue, common children of one womb
Had forced a closer bond twixt him and me,
But Fate swooped down upon him), therefore I
His blood-avenger will maintain his cause
As though he were my father, and leave no stone
Unturned to track the assassin or avenge
The son of Labdacus, of Polydore,
Of Kadmos, and Agenor first of the race.
And for the disobedient thus I pray:
May the gods send them neither timely fruits
Of earth, nor teeming increase of the womb,
But may they waste and pine, as now they waste,
Yes and worse stricken; but to all of you,
My loyal subjects who approve my acts,
May Justice, our ally, and all the gods
Be gracious and attend you evermore.
CHORUS
The oath you proffer, father, I take and swear.
I slew him not myself, nor can I name
The slayer. For the quest, it were well, methinks
That Phoebus (i.e., Apollo), who proposed the riddle, himself
Should give the answer--who the murderer was.
OEDIPUS
Well argued; but no living man can hope
To force the gods to speak against their will.
CHORUS
May I then say what seems next best to me?
OEDIPUS
Yes, if there be a third best, tell it too.
CHORUS
My liege, if any man sees eye to eye
With our lord Phoebus, it is our prophet, lord
Teiresias; he of all men best might guide
A searcher of this matter to the light.
OEDIPUS
Here too my zeal has nothing lagged, for twice
At Kreon's instance have I sent to fetch him,
And long I marvel why he is not here.
CHORUS
I mind me too of rumors long ago--
Mere gossip.
OEDIPUS
Tell them, I would fain know all.
CHORUS
It was said he fell by travelers.
OEDIPUS
So I heard,
But none has seen the man who saw him fall.
CHORUS
Well, if he knows what fear is, he will quail
And flee before the terror of your curse.
OEDIPUS
Words scare not him who blenches not at deeds.
CHORUS
But here is one to arraign him. Lo, at length
They bring the god-inspired seer in whom
Above all other men is truth inborn.
OEDIPUS
Teiresias, seer who comprehend all,
Lore of the wise and hidden mysteries,
High things of heaven and low things of the earth,
You know, though your blinded eyes see nothing,
What plague infects our city; and we turn
To you, O seer, our one defense and shield.
The purport of the answer that the God
Returned to us who sought his oracle,
The messengers have doubtless told you--how
One course alone could rid us of the pest,
To find the murderers of Laios,
And slay them or expel them from the land.
Therefore, begrudging neither augury
Nor other divination that is your,
O save yourself, your country, and your king,
Save all from this defilement of blood shed.
On you we rest. This is man's highest end,
To others' service all his powers to lend.
TEIRESIAS
Alas, alas, what misery to be wise
When wisdom profits nothing! This old lore
I had forgotten; else I were not here.
OEDIPUS
What ails you? Why this melancholy mood?
TEIRESIAS
Let me go home; prevent me not; it were best
That you should bear your burden and I mine.
OEDIPUS
For shame! no true-born Theban patriot
Would thus withhold the word of prophecy.
TEIRESIAS
Your words, O king, are wide of the mark, and I
For fear lest I too trip like you...
OEDIPUS
Oh speak,
Withhold not, I adjure you, if you know,
Your knowledge. We are all your suppliants.
TEIRESIAS
Yes, for you all are witless, but my voice
Will never reveal my miseries--or your.
OEDIPUS
What then, you know, and yet will not speak!
Wouldst you betray us and destroy the City?
TEIRESIAS
I will not vex myself nor you. Why ask
Thus idly what from me you shalt not learn?
OEDIPUS
Monster! your silence would incense a flint.
Will nothing loose your tongue? Can nothing melt you,
Or shake your dogged taciturnity?
TEIRESIAS
You blame my mood and see not your own
Wherewith you are mated; no, you tax me.
OEDIPUS
And who could stay his choler when he heard
How insolently you do flout the City?
TEIRESIAS
Well, it will come what will, though I be mute.
OEDIPUS
Since come it must, your duty is to tell me.
TEIRESIAS
I have no more to say; storm as you will,
And give the rein to all your pent-up rage.
OEDIPUS
Yes, I am wroth, and will not stint my words,
But speak my whole mind. You methinks you are he,
Who planned the crime, yes, and performed it too,
All save the assassination; and if you
Had not been blind, I had been sworn to boot
That you alone did do the bloody deed.
TEIRESIAS
Is it so? Then I charge you to abide
By your own proclamation; from this day
Speak not to these or me. You are the man,
You the accursed polluter of this land.
OEDIPUS
Vile slanderer, you blurt forth these taunts,
And think forsooth as seer to go scot free.
TEIRESIAS
Yes, I am free, strong in the strength of truth.
OEDIPUS
Who was your teacher? not methinks your are.
TEIRESIAS
You, goading me against my will to speak.
OEDIPUS
What speech? repeat it and resolve my doubt.
TEIRESIAS
Did miss my sense would you goad me on?
OEDIPUS
I but half caught your meaning; say it again.
TEIRESIAS
I say you are the murderer of the man
Whose murderer you pursue.
OEDIPUS
You shalt rue it
Twice to repeat so gross a calumny.
TEIRESIAS
Must I say more to aggravate your rage?
OEDIPUS
Say all you will; it will be but waste of breath.
TEIRESIAS
I say you live with your nearest kin
In infamy, unwitting in your shame.
OEDIPUS
Think'st you for yes unscathed to wag your tongue?
TEIRESIAS
Yes, if the might of truth can aught prevail.
OEDIPUS
With other men, but not with you, for you
In ear, wit, eye, in everything are blind.
TEIRESIAS
Poor fool to utter gibes at me which all
Here present will cast back on you ere long.
OEDIPUS
Offspring of endless Night, you have no power
Over me or any man who sees the sun.
TEIRESIAS
No, for your curse is not to fall by me.
I leave to Apollo what concerns the god.
OEDIPUS
Is this a plot of Kreon, or your own?
TEIRESIAS
Not Kreon, you yourself are your own bane.
OEDIPUS
O wealth and empiry and skill by skill
Outwitted in the battlefield of life,
What spite and envy follow in your train!
See, for this crown the City conferred on me.
A gift, a thing I sought not, for this crown
The trusty Kreon, my familiar friend,
Hath lain in wait to oust me and suborned
This mountebank, this juggling charlatan,
This tricksy beggar-priest, for gain alone
Keen-eyed, but in his proper are stone-blind.
Say, sirrah, have you ever proved yourself
A prophet? When the riddling Sphinx was here
Why had you no deliverance for this folk?
And yet the riddle was not to be solved
By guess-work but required the prophet's are;
Wherein you wast found lacking; neither birds
Nor sign from heaven helped you, but I came,
The simple Oedipus; I stopped her mouth
By mother wit, untaught of auguries.
This is the man whom you would undermine,
In hope to reign with Kreon in my stead.
Methinks that you and your abettor soon
Will rue your plot to drive the scapegoat out.
Thank your grey hairs that you have still to learn
What chastisement such arrogance deserves.
CHORUS
To us it seems that both the seer and you,
O Oedipus, have spoken angry words.
This is no time to wrangle but consult
How best we may fulfill the oracle.
TEIRESIAS
King as you are, free speech at least is mine
To make reply; in this I am your peer.
I own no lord but Loxias; him I serve
And never can stand enrolled as Kreon's man.
Thus then I answer: since you have not spared
To twit me with my blindness--you have eyes,
Yet see'st not in what misery you are fallen,
Nor where you dwell nor with whom for mate.
Do know your lineage? Nay, you know it not,
And all unwitting are a double foe
To your own kin, the living and the dead;
Yes and the dogging curse of mother and father
One day shall drive you, like a two-edged sword,
Beyond our borders, and the eyes that now
See clear shall henceforward endless night.
Ah whither shall your bitter cry not reach,
What crag in all Cithaeron but shall then
Reverberate your wail, when you have found
With what a hymeneal you wast borne
Home, but to no fair haven, on the gale!
Yes, and a flood of ills you guess not
Shall set yourself and children in one line.
Flout then both Kreon and my words, for none
Of mortals shall be striken worse than you.
OEDIPUS
Must I endure this fellow's insolence?
A murrain on you! Get you hence! Begone
Avaunt! and never cross my threshold more.
TEIRESIAS
I never would have come had you not bidden me.
OEDIPUS
I knew not you would utter folly, else
Long had you waited to be summoned here.
TEIRESIAS
Such am I--as it seems to you a fool,
But to the parents who begat you, wise.
OEDIPUS
What say you--"parents"? Who begat me, speak?
TEIRESIAS
This day shall be your birth-day, and your grave.
OEDIPUS
You love to speak in riddles and dark words.
TEIRESIAS
In reading riddles who so skilled as you?
OEDIPUS
Twit me with that wherein my greatness lies.
TEIRESIAS
And yet this very greatness proved your bane.
OEDIPUS
No matter if I saved the commonwealth.
TEIRESIAS
It is time I left you. Come, boy, take me home.
OEDIPUS
Yes, take him quickly, for his presence irks
And lets me; gone, you can not plague me more.
TEIRESIAS
I go, but first will tell you why I came.
Your frown I dread not, for you can not harm me.
Hear then: this man whom you have sought to arrest
With threats and warrants this long while, the wretch
Who murdered Laios--that man is here.
He passes for an alien in the land
But soon shall prove a Theban, native born.
And yet his fortune brings him little joy;
For blind of seeing, clad in beggar's weeds,
For purple robes, and leaning on his staff,
To a strange land he soon shall grope his way.
And of the children, inmates of his home,
He shall be proved the brother and the father,
Of her who bare him son and husband both,
Co-partner, and assassin of his father.
Go in and ponder this, and if you find
That I have missed the mark, henceforth declare
I have no wit nor skill in prophecy.
CHORUS
Who is he by voice immortal named from Pythia's rocky cell,
Doer of foul deeds of bloodshed, horrors that no tongue can tell?
A foot for flight he needs
Fleeter than storm-swift steeds,
For on his heels doth follow,
Armed with the lightnings of his Sire, Apollo.
Like sleuth-hounds too
The Fates pursue.
Yes, but now flashed forth the summons from Parnassus' snowy peak,
"Near and far the undiscovered doer of this murder seek!"
Now like a sullen bull he roves
Through forest brakes and upland groves,
And vainly seeks to fly
The doom that ever nigh
Flits over his head,
Still by the avenging Phoebus sped,
The voice divine,
From Earth's mid shrine.
Sore perplexed am I by the words of the master seer. Are they true, are they false? I know not and bridle my tongue for fear, Fluttered with vague surmise; nor present nor future is clear. Quarrel of ancient date or in days still near know I none Twixt the Labdacidan house and our ruler, Polubos' son. Proof is there none: how then can I challenge our King's good name, How in a blood-feud join for an untracked deed of shame?
All wise are Zeus and Apollo, and nothing is hid from their ken; They are gods; and in wits a man may surpass his fellow men; But that a mortal seer knows more than I know--where Hath this been proven? Or how without sign assured, can I blame Him who saved our City when the winged songstress came, Tested and tried in the light of us all, like gold assayed? How can I now assent when a crime is on Oedipus laid?
KREON
Friends, countrymen, I learn King Oedipus
Hath laid against me a most grievous charge,
And come to you protesting. If he deems
That I have harmed or injured him in aught
By word or deed in this our present trouble,
I care not to prolong the span of life,
Thus ill-reputed; for the calumny
Hits not a single blot, but blasts my name,
If by the general voice I am denounced
False to the City and false by you my friends.
CHORUS
This taunt, it well may be, was blurted out
In petulance, not spoken advisedly.
KREON
Did any dare pretend that it was I
Prompted the seer to utter a forged charge?
CHORUS
Such things were said; with what intent I know not.
KREON
Were not his wits and vision all astray
When upon me he fixed this monstrous charge?
CHORUS
I know not; to my sovereign's acts I am blind.
But lo, he comes to answer for himself.
OEDIPUS
Sirrah, what mak'st you here? Do you presume
To approach my doors, you brazen-faced rogue,
My murderer and the filcher of my crown?
Come, answer this, did you detect in me
Some touch of cowardice or witlessness,
That made you undertake this enterprise?
I seemed forsooth too simple to perceive
The serpent stealing on me in the dark,
Or else too weak to scotch it when I saw.
This you are witless seeking to possess
Without a following or friends the crown,
A prize that followers and wealth must win.
KREON
Attend me. You have spoken, it is my turn
To make reply. Then having heard me, judge.
OEDIPUS
You are glib of tongue, but I am slow to learn
Of you; I know too well your venomous hate.
KREON
First, I would argue out this very point.
OEDIPUS
O argue not that you are not a rogue.
KREON
If you do count a virtue stubbornness,
Unschooled by reason, you are much astray.
OEDIPUS
If you do hold a kinsman may be wronged,
And no pains follow, you are much to seek.
KREON
Therein you judg rightly, but this wrong
That you alleg--tell me what it is.
OEDIPUS
Did you or did you not advise that I
Should call the priest?
KREON
Yes, and I stand to it.
OEDIPUS
Tell me how long is it since Laios...
KREON
Since Laios...? I follow not your drift.
OEDIPUS
By violent hands was spirited away.
KREON
In the dim past, a many years agone.
OEDIPUS
Did the same prophet then pursue his craft?
KREON
Yes, skilled as now and in no less repute.
OEDIPUS
Did he at that time ever glance at me?
KREON
Not to my knowledge, not when I was by.
OEDIPUS
But was no search and inquisition made?
KREON
Surely full quest was made, but nothing learnt.
OEDIPUS
Why failed the seer to tell his story then?
KREON
I know not, and not knowing hold my tongue.
OEDIPUS
This much you know and can surely tell.
KREON
What's mean'st you? All I know I will declare.
OEDIPUS
But for your prompting never had the seer
Ascribed to me the death of Laios.
KREON
If so he you know best; but I
Would put you to the question in my turn.
OEDIPUS
Question and prove me murderer if you can.
KREON
Then let me ask you, did you wed my sister?
OEDIPUS
A fact so plain I cannot well deny.
KREON
And as your consort queen she shares the throne?
OEDIPUS
I grant her freely all her heart desires.
KREON
And with you twain I share the triple rule?
OEDIPUS
Yes, and it is that proves you a false friend.
KREON
Not so, if you would reason with yourself,
As I with myself. First, I bid you think,
Would any mortal choose a troubled reign
Of terrors rather than secure repose,
If the same power were given him? As for me,
I have no natural craving for the name
Of king, preferring to do kingly deeds,
And so thinks every sober-minded man.
Now all my needs are satisfied through you,
And I have nothing to fear; but were I king,
My acts would often run counter to my will.
How could a title then have charms for me
Above the sweets of boundless influence?
I am not so infatuate as to grasp
The shadow when I hold the substance fast.
Now all men cry me Godspeed! wish me well,
And every suitor seeks to gain my ear,
If he would hope to win a grace from you.
Why should I leave the better, choose the worse?
That were sheer madness, and I am not mad.
No such ambition ever tempted me,
Nor would I have a share in such intrigue.
And if you doubt me, first to Delphi go,
There ascertain if my report was true
Of the god's answer; next investigate
If with the seer I plotted or conspired,
And if it prove so, sentence me to death,
Not by your voice alone, but mine and your.
But O condemn me not, without appeal,
On bare suspicion. It is not right to adjudge
Bad men at random good, or good men bad.
I would as lief a man should cast away
The thing he counts most precious, his own life,
As spurn a true friend. You will learn in time
The truth, for time alone reveals the just;
A villain is detected in a day.
CHORUS
To one who walketh warily his words
Commend themselves; swift counsels are not sure.
OEDIPUS
When with swift strides the stealthy plotter stalks
I must be quick too with my counterplot.
To wait his onset passively, for him
Is sure success, for me assured defeat.
KREON
What then is your will? To banish me from the land?
OEDIPUS
I would not have you banished, no, but dead,
That men may mark the wages envy reaps.
KREON
I see you will not yield, nor credit me.
OEDIPUS
[None but a fool would credit such as you.]
KREON
You are not wise.
OEDIPUS
Wise for myself at least.
KREON
Why not for me too?
OEDIPUS
Why for such a knave?
KREON
Suppose you lack sense.
OEDIPUS
Yet kings must rule.
KREON
Not if they rule ill.
OEDIPUS
Oh my Thebans, hear him!
KREON
Your Thebans? am not I a Theban too?
CHORUS
Cease, princes; lo there comes, and none too soon,
Iokaste from the palace. Who so fit
As peacemaker to reconcile your feud?
IOKASTE
Misguided princes, why have you upraised
This wordy wrangle? Are you not ashamed,
While the whole land lies striken, thus to voice
Your private injuries? Go in, my lord;
Go home, my brother, and forebear to make
A public scandal of a petty grief.
KREON
My royal sister, Oedipus, your lord,
Hath bid me choose (O dread alternative!)
An outlaw's exile or a felon's death.
OEDIPUS
Yes, lady; I have caught him practicing
Against my royal person his vile arts.
KREON
May I never speed but die accursed, if I
In any way am guilty of this charge.
IOKASTE
Believe him, I adjure you, Oedipus,
First for his solemn oath's sake, then for mine,
And for your elders' sake who wait on you.
CHORUS
Hearken, King, reflect, we pray you, but not stubborn but relent.
OEDIPUS
Say to what should I consent?
CHORUS
Respect a man whose probity and troth
Are known to all and now confirmed by oath.
OEDIPUS
Do know what grace you crave?
CHORUS
Yes, I know.
OEDIPUS
Declare it then and make your meaning plain.
CHORUS
Brand not a friend whom babbling tongues assail;
Let not suspicion 'gainst his oath prevail.
OEDIPUS
Bethink you that in seeking this you seek
In very sooth my death or banishment?
CHORUS
No, by the leader of the host divine!
Witness, you Sun, such thought was never mine,
Unblest, unfriended may I perish,
If ever I such wish did cherish!
But O my heart is desolate
Musing on our striken City,
Doubly fall'n should discord grow
Twixt you twain, to crown our woe.
OEDIPUS
Well, let him go, no matter what it cost me,
Or certain death or shameful banishment,
For your sake I relent, not his; and him,
Where'er he be, my heart shall still abhor.
KREON
You are as sullen in your yielding mood
As in your anger you wast truculent.
Such tempers justly plague themselves the most.
OEDIPUS
Leave me in peace and get you gone.
KREON
I go,
By you misjudged, but justified by these.
CHORUS
Lady, lead indoors your consort; wherefore longer here delay?
IOKASTE
Tell me first how rose the fray.
CHORUS
Rumors bred unjust suspicious and injustice rankles sore.
IOKASTE
Were both at fault?
CHORUS
Both.
IOKASTE
What was the tale?
CHORUS
Ask me no more. The land is sore distressed;
'Twere better sleeping ills to leave at rest.
OEDIPUS
Strange counsel, friend! I know you mean me well,
And yet would mitigate and blunt my zeal.
CHORUS
King, I say it once again,
Witless were I proved, insane,
If I lightly put away
You my country's prop and stay,
Pilot who, in danger sought,
To a quiet haven brought
Our distracted City; and now
Who can guide us right but you?
IOKASTE
Let me too, I adjure you, know, O king,
What cause has stirred this unrelenting wrath.
OEDIPUS
I will, for you are more to me than these.
Lady, the cause is Kreon and his plots.
IOKASTE
But what provoked the quarrel? make this clear.
OEDIPUS
He points me out as Laios' murderer.
IOKASTE
Of his own knowledge or upon report?
OEDIPUS
He is too cunning to commit himself,
And makes a mouthpiece of a knavish seer.
IOKASTE
Then you may ease your conscience on that score.
Listen and I'll convince you that no man
Hath scot or lot in the prophetic are.
Here is the proof in brief. An oracle
Once came to Laios (I will not say
It was from the Delphic god himself, but from
His ministers) declaring he was doomed
To perish by the hand of his own son,
A child that should be born to him by me.
Now Laios--so at least report affirmed--
Was murdered on a day by highwaymen,
No natives, at a spot where three roads meet.
As for the child, it was but three days old,
When Laios, its ankles pierced and pinned
Together, gave it to be cast away
By others on the trackless mountain side.
So then Apollo brought it not to pass
The child should be his father's murderer,
Or the dread terror find accomplishment,
And Laios be slain by his own son.
Such was the prophet's horoscope. O king,
Regard it not. Whate'er the god deems fit
To search, himself unaided will reveal.
OEDIPUS
What memories, what wild tumult of the soul
Came over me, lady, as I heard you speak!
IOKASTE
What do you mean? What has shocked and startled you?
OEDIPUS
Methought I heard you say that Laios
Was murdered at the meeting of three roads.
IOKASTE
So ran the story that is current still.
OEDIPUS
Where did this happen? Do you know the place?
IOKASTE
Phocis the land is called; the spot is where
Branch roads from Delphi and from Daulis meet.
OEDIPUS
And how long is it since these things befell?
IOKASTE
It was but a brief while before you were proclaimed
Our country's ruler that the news was brought.
OEDIPUS
O Zeus, what have you willed to do with me!
IOKASTE
What is it, Oedipus, that moves you so?
OEDIPUS
Ask me not yet; tell me the build and height
Of Laios? Was he still in manhood's prime?
IOKASTE
Tall was he, and his hair was lightly strewn
With silver; and not unlike you in form.
OEDIPUS
O woe is me! I think unwittingly
I laid but now a dread curse on myself.
IOKASTE
What say you? When I look upon you, my king,
I tremble.
OEDIPUS
It is a dread presentiment
That in the end the seer will prove not blind.
One further question to resolve my doubt.
IOKASTE
I quail; but ask, and I will answer all.
OEDIPUS
Had he but few attendants or a train
Of armed retainers with him, like a prince?
IOKASTE
They were but five in all, and one of them
A herald; Laios in a mule-car rode.
OEDIPUS
Alas! it is clear as noonday now. But say,
Lady, who carried this report to Thebes?
IOKASTE
A serf, the sole survivor who returned.
OEDIPUS
Haply he is at hand or in the house?
IOKASTE
No, for as soon as he returned and found
You reigning in the stead of Laios slain,
He clasped my hand and supplicated me
To send him to the alps and pastures, where
He might be farthest from the sight of Thebes.
And so I sent him. It was an honest slave
And well deserved some better recompense.
OEDIPUS
Fetch him at once. I fain would see the man.
IOKASTE
He shall be brought; but wherefore summon him?
OEDIPUS
Lady, I fear my tongue has overrun
Discretion; therefore I would question him.
IOKASTE
Well, he shall come, but may not I too claim
To share the burden of your heart, my king?
OEDIPUS
And you shalt not be frustrate of your wish.
Now my imaginings have gone so far.
Who has a higher claim that you to hear
My tale of dire adventures? Listen then.
My father was Polubos of Korinth, and
My mother Merope, a Dorian;
And I was held the foremost citizen,
Till a strange thing befell me, strange indeed,
Yet scarce deserving all the heat it stirred.
A roisterer at some banquet, flown with wine,
Shouted "You are not true son of your father."
It irked me, but I stomached for the nonce
The insult; on the morrow I sought out
My mother and my father and questioned them.
They were indignant at the random slur
Cast on my parentage and did their best
To comfort me, but still the venomed barb
Rankled, for still the scandal spread and grew.
So privily without their leave I went
To Delphi, and Apollo sent me back
Baulked of the knowledge that I came to seek.
But other grievous things he prophesied,
Woes, lamentations, mourning, portents dire;
To wit I should defile my mother's bed
And raise up seed too loathsome to behold,
And slay the father from whose loins I sprang.
Then, lady,--you shalt hear the very truth--
As I drew near the triple-branching roads,
A herald met me and a man who sat
In a car drawn by colts--as in your tale--
The man in front and the old man himself
Threatened to thrust me rudely from the path,
Then jostled by the charioteer in wrath
I struck him, and the old man, seeing this,
Watched till I passed and from his car brought down
Full on my head the double-pointed goad.
Yet was I quits with him and more; one stroke Of my good staff sufficed to fling him clean Out of the chariot seat and laid him prone. And so I slew them every one. But if Betwixt this stranger there was aught in common With Laios, who more miserable than I, What mortal could you find more god-abhorred? Wretch whom no sojourner, no citizen May harbor or address, whom all are bound To harry from their homes. And this same curse Was laid on me, and laid by none but me. Yes with these hands all gory I pollute The bed of him I slew. Say, am I vile? Am I not utterly unclean, a wretch Doomed to be banished, and in banishment Forgo the sight of all my dearest ones, And never tread again my native earth; Or else to wed my mother and slay my father, Polubos, who begat me and upreared? If one should say, this is the handiwork Of some inhuman power, who could blame His judgment? But, you pure and awful gods, Forbid, forbid that I should see that day! May I be blotted out from living men Ere such a plague spot set on me its brand!
CHORUS
We too, O king, are troubled; but till you
Have questioned the survivor, still hope on.
OEDIPUS
My hope is faint, but still enough survives
To bid me bide the coming of this herd.
IOKASTE
Suppose him here, what would you learn of him?
OEDIPUS
I'll tell you, lady; if his tale agrees
With your, I shall have escaped calamity.
IOKASTE
And what of special import did I say?
OEDIPUS
In your report of what the herdsman said
Laios was slain by robbers; now if he
Still speaks of robbers, not a robber, I
Slew him not; "one" with "many" cannot square.
But if he says one lonely wayfarer,
The last link wanting to my guilt is forged.
IOKASTE
Well, rest assured, his tale ran thus at first,
Nor can he now retract what then he said;
Not I alone but all our townsfolk heard it.
E'en should he vary somewhat in his story,
He cannot make the death of Laios
In any wise jump with the oracle.
For Loxias said expressly he was doomed
To die by my child's hand, but he, poor babe,
He shed no blood, but perished first himself.
So much for divination. Henceforth I
Will look for signs neither to right nor left.
OEDIPUS
You reason well. Still I would have you send
And fetch the bondsman hither. See to it.
IOKASTE
That will I straightway. Come, let us within.
I would do nothing that my lord mislikes.
CHORUS
My lot be still to lead
The life of innocence and fly
Irreverence in word or deed,
To follow still those laws ordained on high
Whose birthplace is the bright ethereal sky
No mortal birth they own,
Olympus their progenitor alone:
Never shall they slumber in oblivion cold,
The god in them is strong and grows not old.
Of insolence is bred
The tyrant; insolence full blown,
With empty riches surfeited,
Scales the precipitous height and grasps the throne.
Then topples over and lies in ruin prone;
No foothold on that dizzy steep.
But O may Heaven the true patriot keep
Who burns with emulous zeal to serve the City.
God is my help and hope, on him I wait.
But the proud sinner, or in word or deed,
That will not Justice heed,
Nor reverence the shrine
Of images divine,
Perdition seize his vain imaginings,
If, urged by greed profane,
He grasps at ill-got gain,
And lays an impious hand on holiest things.
Who when such deeds are done
Can hope heaven's bolts to shun?
If sin like this to honor can aspire,
Why dance I still and lead the sacred choir?
No more I'll seek earth's central oracle,
Or Abae's hallowed cell,
Nor to Olympia bring
My votive offering.
If before all God's truth be not bade plain.
O Zeus, reveal your might,
King, if you are named aright
Omnipotent, all-seeing, as of old;
For Laios is forgot;
His curse, men heed it not;
Apollo is forsook and faith grows cold.
IOKASTE
My lords, you look amazed to see your queen
With wreaths and gifts of incense in her hands.
I had a mind to visit the high shrines,
For Oedipus is overwrought, alarmed
With terrors manifold. He will not use
His past experience, like a man of sense,
To judge the present need, but lends an ear
To any croaker if he augurs ill.
Since then my counsels nothing avail, I turn
To you, our present help in time of trouble,
Apollo, Lord Lycean, and to you
My prayers and supplications here I bring.
Lighten us, lord, and cleanse us from this curse!
For now we all are cowed like mariners
Who see their helmsman dumbstruck in the storm.
MESSENGER
My masters, tell me where the palace is
Of Oedipus; or better, where's the king.
CHORUS
Here is the palace and he bides within;
This is his queen the mother of his children.
MESSENGER
All happiness attend her and the house,
Blessed is her husband and her marriage-bed.
IOKASTE
My greetings to you, stranger; your fair words
Deserve a like response. But tell me why
You come--what is your need or what your news.
MESSENGER
Good for your consort and the royal house.
IOKASTE
What may it be? Whose messenger are you?
MESSENGER
The Isthmian commons have resolved to make
Your husband king--so it was reported there.
IOKASTE
What! is not aged Polubos still king?
MESSENGER
No, verily; he's dead and in his grave.
IOKASTE
What! is he dead, the father of Oedipus?
MESSENGER
If I speak falsely, may I die myself.
IOKASTE
Quick, maiden, bear these tidings to my lord.
You god-sent oracles, where stand you now!
This is the man whom Oedipus long shunned,
In dread to prove his murderer; and now
He dies in nature's course, not by his hand.
OEDIPUS
My wife, my queen, Iokaste, why have you
Summoned me from my palace?
IOKASTE
Hear this man,
And as you hear judge what has become
Of all those awe-inspiring oracles.
OEDIPUS
Who is this man, and what his news for me?
IOKASTE
He comes from Korinth and his message this:
Your father Polubos hath passed away.
OEDIPUS
What? let me have it, stranger, from your mouth.
MESSENGER
If I must first make plain beyond a doubt
My message, know that Polubos is dead.
OEDIPUS
By treachery, or by sickness visited?
MESSENGER
One touch will send an old man to his rest.
OEDIPUS
So of some malady he died, poor man.
MESSENGER
Yes, having measured the full span of years.
OEDIPUS
Out on it, lady! why should one regard
The Pythian hearth or birds that scream in the air?
Did they not point at me as doomed to slay
My father? but he's dead and in his grave
And here am I who never unsheathed a sword;
Unless the longing for his absent son
Killed him and so I slew him in a sense.
But, as they stand, the oracles are dead--
Dust, ashes, nothing, dead as Polubos.
IOKASTE
Say, did not I foretell this long ago?
OEDIPUS
You did: but I was misled by my fear.
IOKASTE
Then let I no more weigh upon your soul.
OEDIPUS
Must I not fear my mother's marriage bed.
IOKASTE
Why should a mortal man, the sport of chance,
With no assured foreknowledge, be afraid?
Best live a careless life from hand to mouth.
This wedlock with your mother fear not you.
How often it chances that in dreams a man
Has wed his mother! He who least regards
Such brainsick phantasies lives most at ease.
OEDIPUS
I should have shared in full your confidence,
Were not my mother living; since she lives
Though half convinced I still must live in dread.
IOKASTE
And yet your father's death lights out darkness much.
OEDIPUS
Much, but my fear is touching her who lives.
MESSENGER
Who may this woman be whom thus you fear?
OEDIPUS
Merope, stranger, wife of Polubos.
MESSENGER
And what of her can cause you any fear?
OEDIPUS
A heaven-sent oracle of dread import.
MESSENGER
A mystery, or may a stranger hear it?
OEDIPUS
Yes, it is no secret. Loxias once foretold
That I should mate with mine own mother, and shed
With my own hands the blood of my own father.
Hence Korinth was for many a year to me
A home distant; and I trove abroad,
But missed the sweetest sight, my parents' face.
MESSENGER
Was this the fear that exiled you from home?
OEDIPUS
Yes, and the dread of slaying my own father.
MESSENGER
Why, since I came to give you pleasure, King,
Have I not rid you of this second fear?
OEDIPUS
Well, you shalt have due guerdon for your pains.
MESSENGER
Well, I confess what chiefly made me come
Was hope to profit by your coming home.
OEDIPUS
Nay, I will never go near my parents more.
MESSENGER
My son, it is plain, you know not what you do.
OEDIPUS
How so, old man? For heaven's sake tell me all.
MESSENGER
If this is why you dread to return.
OEDIPUS
Yes, lest the god's word be fulfilled in me.
MESSENGER
Lest through your parents you should be accursed?
OEDIPUS
This and none other is my constant dread.
MESSENGER
Do you not know your fears are baseless all?
OEDIPUS
How baseless, if I am their very son?
MESSENGER
Since Polubos was nothing to you in blood.
OEDIPUS
What are you saying? was not Polubos my father?
MESSENGER
As much your father as I am, and no more.
OEDIPUS
My father no more to me than one who is nothing?
MESSENGER
Since I begat you not, no more did he.
OEDIPUS
What reason had he then to call me son?
MESSENGER
Know that he took you from my hands, a gift.
OEDIPUS
Yet, if no child of his, he loved me well.
MESSENGER
A childless man till then, he warmed to you.
OEDIPUS
A foundling or a purchased slave, this child?
MESSENGER
I found you in Cithaeron's wooded glens.
OEDIPUS
What led you to explore those upland glades?
MESSENGER
My business was to tend the mountain flocks.
OEDIPUS
A vagrant shepherd journeying for hire?
MESSENGER
True, but your savior in that hour, my son.
OEDIPUS
My savior? from what harm? what ailed me then?
MESSENGER
Those ankle joints are evidence enow.
OEDIPUS
Ah, why remind me of that ancient sore?
MESSENGER
I loosed the pin that riveted your feet.
OEDIPUS
Yes, from my cradle that dread brand I bore.
MESSENGER
Whence you derive the name that still is your.
OEDIPUS
Who did it? I adjure you, tell me who
Say, was it father, mother?
MESSENGER
I know not.
The man from whom I had you may know more.
OEDIPUS
What, did another find me, not yourself?
MESSENGER
Not I; another shepherd gave you me.
OEDIPUS
Who was he? Would you know again the man?
MESSENGER
He passed indeed for one of Laios' house.
OEDIPUS
The king who ruled the country long ago?
MESSENGER
The same: he was a herdsman of the king.
OEDIPUS
And is he living still for me to see him?
MESSENGER
His fellow-countrymen should best know that.
OEDIPUS
Does any bystander among you know
The herd he speaks of, or by seeing him
Afield or in the city? answer straight!
The hour hath come to clear this business up.
CHORUS
Methinks he means none other than the hind
Whom you anon wert fain to see; but that
Our queen Iokaste best of all could tell.
OEDIPUS
Madam, do know the man we sent to fetch?
Is the same of whom the stranger speaks?
IOKASTE
Who is the man? What matter? Let it be.
It is a waste of thought to weigh such idle words.
OEDIPUS
No, with such guiding clues I cannot fail
To bring to light the secret of my birth.
IOKASTE
Oh, as you car for your life, give over
This quest. Enough the anguish I endure.
OEDIPUS
Be of good cheer; though I be proved the son
Of a bondwoman, yes, through three descents
Triply a slave, your honor is unsmirched.
IOKASTE
Yet humor me, I pray you; do not this.
OEDIPUS
I cannot; I must probe this matter home.
IOKASTE
It is for your sake I advise you for the best.
OEDIPUS
I grow impatient of this best advice.
IOKASTE
Ah may you never discover who you are!
OEDIPUS
Go, fetch me here the herd, and leave yon woman
To glory in her pride of ancestry.
canst
IOKASTE
O woe is you, poor wretch! With that last word
I leave you, henceforth silent evermore.
CHORUS
Why, Oedipus, why stung with passionate grief
Hath the queen thus departed? Much I fear
From this dead calm will burst a storm of woes.
OEDIPUS
Let the storm burst, my fixed resolve still holds,
To learn my lineage, be it never so low.
It may be she with all a woman's pride
Thinks scorn of my base parentage. But I
Who rank myself as Fortune's favorite child,
The giver of good gifts, shall not be shamed.
She is my mother and the changing moons
My brethren, and with them I wax and wane.
Thus sprung why should I fear to trace my birth?
Nothing can make me other than I am.
CHORUS
If my soul prophetic err not, if my wisdom aught avail,
You, Kithaeron, I shall hail,
As the nurse and foster-mother of our Oedipus shall greet
Ere tomorrow's full moon rises, and exalt you as is meet.
Dance and song shall hymn your praises, lover of our royal race.
Phoebus, may my words find grace!
Child, who bare you, nymph or goddess? sure your sure was more than
man,
Haply the hill-roamer Pan.
Of did Loxias beget you, for he haunts the upland wold;
Or Cyllene's lord, or Bakxos, dweller on the hilltops cold?
Did some Helikonian Oread give him you, a new-born joy?
Nymphs with whom he love to toy?
OEDIPUS
Elders, if I, who never yet before
Have met the man, may make a guess, methinks
I see the herdsman who we long have sought;
His time-worn aspect matches with the years
Of yonder aged messenger; besides
I seem to recognize the men who bring him
As servants of my own. But you, perchance,
Having in past days known or seen the herd,
May better by sure knowledge my surmise.
CHORUS
I recognize him; one of Laios' house;
A simple hind, but true as any man.
OEDIPUS
Corinthian, stranger, I address you first,
Is this the man you meanest!
MESSENGER
This is he.
OEDIPUS
And now old man, look up and answer all
I ask you. Wast you once of Laios' house?
SHEPPARD
I was, a thrall, not purchased but home-bred.
OEDIPUS
What was your business? how wast you employed?
SHEPPARD
The best part of my life I tended sheep.
OEDIPUS
What were the pastures you did most frequent?
SHEPPARD
Cithaeron and the neighboring alps.
OEDIPUS
Then there
You must have known yon man, at least by fame?
SHEPPARD
Yon man? in what way? what man do you mean?
OEDIPUS
The man here, having met him in past times...
SHEPPARD
Off-hand I cannot call him well to mind.
MESSENGER
No wonder, master. But I will revive
His blunted memories. Sure he can recall
What time together both we drove our flocks,
He two, I one, on the Cithaeron range,
For three long summers; I his mate from spring
Till rose Arcturus; then in winter time
I led mine home, he his to Laios' folds.
Did these things happen as I say, or no?
SHEPPARD
It is long ago, but all you say is true.
MESSENGER
Well, you mast then remember giving me
A child to rear as my own foster-son?
SHEPPARD
Why do you ask this question? What of that?
MESSENGER
Friend, he that stands before you was that child.
SHEPPARD
A plague upon you! Hold your wanton tongue!
OEDIPUS
Softly, old man, rebuke him not; your words
Are more deserving chastisement than his.
SHEPPARD
O best of masters, what is my offense?
OEDIPUS
Not answering what he asks about the child.
SHEPPARD
He speaks at random, babbles like a fool.
OEDIPUS
If you lack grace to speak, I'll loose your tongue.
SHEPPARD
For mercy's sake abuse not an old man.
OEDIPUS
Arrest the villain, seize and pinion him!
SHEPPARD
Alack, alack!
What have I done? what would you further learn?
OEDIPUS
Did give this man the child of whom he asks?
SHEPPARD
I did; and would that I had died that day!
OEDIPUS
And die you shalt unless you tell the truth.
SHEPPARD
But, if I tell it, I am doubly lost.
OEDIPUS
The knave methinks will still prevaricate.
SHEPPARD
Nay, I confessed I gave it long ago.
OEDIPUS
Whence came it? was it your, or given to you?
SHEPPARD
I had it from another, it was not mine.
OEDIPUS
From whom of these our townsmen, and what house?
SHEPPARD
Forbear for God's sake, master, ask no more.
OEDIPUS
If I must question you again, you are lost.
SHEPPARD
Well then--it was a child of Laios' house.
OEDIPUS
Slave-born or one of Laios' own race?
SHEPPARD
Ah me!
I stand upon the perilous edge of speech.
OEDIPUS
And I of hearing, but I still must hear.
SHEPPARD
Know then the child was by repute his own,
But she within, your consort best could tell.
OEDIPUS
What! she, she gave it you?
SHEPPARD
It is so, my king.
OEDIPUS
With what intent?
SHEPPARD
To make away with it.
OEDIPUS
What, she its mother.
SHEPPARD
Fearing a dread curse.
OEDIPUS
What curse?
SHEPPARD
It was told that he should slay his father.
OEDIPUS
What did you give it then to this old man?
SHEPPARD
Through pity, master, for the babe. I thought
He'd take it to the country whence he came;
But he preserved it for the worst of woes.
For if you are in sooth what this man saith,
God pity you! you wast to misery born.
OEDIPUS
Ah me! ah me! all brought to pass, all true!
O light, may I behold you nevermore!
I stand a wretch, in birth, in wedlock cursed,
A parricide, incestuously, triply cursed!
[Exit
OEDIPUS
]
CHORUS
Races of mortal man
Whose life is but a span,
I count you but the shadow of a shade!
Of bliss, hath but the show;
A moment, and the visions pale and fade.
Your fall, O Oedipus, your piteous fall
Warns me none born of women blest to call.
For he of marksmen best,
O Zeus, outshot the rest,
And won the prize supreme of wealth and power.
By him the vulture maid
Was quelled, her witchery laid;
He rose our savior and the land's strong tower.
We hailed you king and from that day adored
Of mighty Thebes the universal lord.
O heavy hand of fate!
Who now more desolate,
Whose tale more sad than your, whose lot more dire?
O Oedipus, discrowned head,
Your cradle was your marriage bed;
One harborage sufficed for son and father.
How could the soil your father eared so long
Endure to bear in silence such a wrong?
All-seeing Time hath caught
Guilt, and to justice brought
The son and father commingled in one bed.
O child of Laios' ill-starred race
Would I had never beheld your face;
I raise for you a dirge as over the dead.
Yet, sooth to say, through you I drew new breath,
And now through you I feel a second death.
SECOND MESSENGER
Most grave and reverend senators of Thebes,
What Deeds you soon must hear, what sights behold
How will you mourn, if, true-born patriots,
You reverence still the race of Labdacus!
Not Ister nor all Phasis' flood, I ween,
Could wash away the blood-stains from this house,
The ills it shrouds or soon will bring to light,
Ills wrought of malice, not unwittingly.
The worst to bear are self-inflicted wounds.
CHORUS
Grievous enough for all our tears and groans
Our past calamities; what can you add?
SECOND MESSENGER
My tale is quickly told and quickly heard.
Our sovereign lady queen Iokaste's dead.
CHORUS
Alas, poor queen! how came she by her death?
SECOND MESSENGER
By her own hand. And all the horror of it,
Not having seen, yet cannot comprehend.
Nathless, as far as my poor memory serves,
I will relate the unhappy lady's woe.
When in her frenzy she had passed inside
The vestibule, she hurried straight to win
The bridal-chamber, clutching at her hair
With both her hands, and, once within the room,
She shut the doors behind her with a crash.
"Laios," she cried, and called her husband dead
Long, long ago; her thought was of that child
By him begot, the son by whom the father
Was murdered and the mother left to breed
With her own seed, a monstrous progeny.
Then she bewailed the marriage bed whereon
Poor wretch, she had conceived a double brood,
Husband by husband, children by her child.
What happened after that I cannot tell,
Nor how the end befell, for with a shriek
Burst on us Oedipus; all eyes were fixed
On Oedipus, as up and down he strode,
Nor could we mark her agony to the end.
For stalking to and fro "A sword!" he cried,
"Where is the wife, no wife, the teeming womb
That bore a double harvest, me and mine?"
And in his frenzy some supernal power
(No mortal, surely, none of us who watched him)
Guided his footsteps; with a terrible shriek,
As though one beckoned him, he crashed against
The folding doors, and from their staples forced
The wrenched bolts and hurled himself within.
Then we beheld the woman hanging there,
A running noose entwined about her neck.
But when he saw her, with a maddened roar
He loosed the cord; and when her wretched corpse
Lay stretched on earth, what followed--O it was dread!
He tore the golden brooches that upheld
Her queenly robes, upraised them high and smote
Full on his eye-balls, uttering words like these:
"No more shall you behold such sights of woe,
Deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought;
Henceforward quenched in darkness shall you see
Those you should never have seen; now blind to those
Whom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know."
Such was the burden of his moan, whereto, Not once but often, he struck with his hand uplift His eyes, and at each stroke the ensanguined orbs Bedewed his beard, not oozing drop by drop, But one black gory downpour, thick as hail. Such evils, issuing from the double source, Have whelmed them both, confounding man and wife. Till now the storied fortune of this house Was fortunate indeed; but from this day Woe, lamentation, ruin, death, disgrace, All ills that can be named, all, all are theirs.
CHORUS
But hath he still no respite from his pain?
SECOND MESSENGER
He cries, "Unbar the doors and let all Thebes
Behold the slayer of his father, his mother's--"
That shameful word my lips may not repeat.
He vows to fly self-banished from the land,
Nor stay to bring upon his house the curse
Himself had uttered; but he has no strength
Nor one to guide him, and his torture's more
Than man can suffer, as yourselves will see.
For lo, the palace portals are unbarred,
And soon you shall behold a sight so sad
That he who must abhorred would pity it.
CHORUS
Woeful sight! more woeful none
These sad eyes have looked upon.
Whence this madness? None can tell
Who did cast on you his spell,
prowling all your life around,
Leaping with a demon bound.
Hapless wretch! how can I brook
On your misery to look?
Though to gaze on you I yearn,
Much to question, much to learn,
Horror-struck away I turn.
OEDIPUS
Ah me! ah woe is me!
Ah whither am I borne!
How like a ghost forlorn
My voice flits from me on the air!
On, on the demon goads. The end, ah where?
CHORUS
An end too dread to tell, too dark to see.
OEDIPUS
Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud,
Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.
Ah me, ah me! What spasms athwart me shoot,
What pangs of agonizing memory?
CHORUS
No marvel if in such a plight you feel
The double weight of past and present woes.
OEDIPUS
Ah friend, still loyal, constant still and kind,
You care for the blind.
I know you near, and though bereft of eyes,
Your voice I recognize.
CHORUS
O doer of dread deeds, how couldst you mar
Your vision thus? What demon goaded you?
OEDIPUS
Apollo, friend, Apollo, he it was
That brought these ills to pass;
But the right hand that dealt the blow
Was mine, none other. How,
How, could I longer see when sight
Brought no delight?
CHORUS
Alas! it is as you say.
OEDIPUS
Say, friends, can any look or voice
Or touch of love henceforth my heart rejoice?
Haste, friends, no fond delay,
Take the twice cursed away
Far from all ken,
The man abhorred of gods, accursed of men.
CHORUS
O your despair well suits your desperate case.
Would I had never looked upon your face!
OEDIPUS
(Ant. 2)
My curse on him whomever unrived
The waif's fell fetters and my life revived!
He meant me well, yet had he left me there,
He had saved my friends and me a world of care.
CHORUS
I too had wished it so.
OEDIPUS
Then had I never come to shed
My father's blood nor climbed my mother's bed;
The monstrous offspring of a womb defiled,
Co-mate of him who gendered me, and child.
Was ever man before afflicted thus,
Like Oedipus.
CHORUS
I cannot say that you have counseled well,
For you wert better dead than living blind.
OEDIPUS
What's done was well done. You can never shake
My firm belief. A truce to argument.
For, had I sight, I know not with what eyes
I could have met my father in the shades,
Or my poor mother, since against the twain
I sinned, a sin no gallows could atone.
Yes, but, you say, the sight of children joys
A parent's eyes. What, born as mine were born?
No, such a sight could never bring me joy;
Nor this fair city with its battlements,
Its temples and the statues of its gods,
Sights from which I, now wretchedst of all,
Once ranked the foremost Theban in all Thebes,
By my own sentence am cut off, condemned
By my own proclamation 'gainst the wretch,
The miscreant by heaven itself declared
Unclean--and of the race of Laios.
Thus branded as a felon by myself,
How had I dared to look you in the face?
Nay, had I known a way to choke the springs
Of hearing, I had never shrunk to make
A dungeon of this miserable frame,
Cut off from sight and hearing; for it is bliss
to bide in regions sorrow cannot reach.
Why did you harbor me, Cithaeron, why
Did you not take and slay me? Then I never
Had shown to men the secret of my birth.
O Polubos, O Korinth, O my home,
Home of my ancestors (so wast you called)
How fair a nursling then I seemed, how foul
The canker that lay festering in the bud!
Now is the blight revealed of root and fruit.
You triple high-roads, and you hidden glen,
Coppice, and pass where meet the three-branched ways,
You drank my blood, the life-blood these hands spilt,
My father's; do you call to mind perchance
Those deeds of mine you witnessed and the work
I wrought thereafter when I came to Thebes?
O fatal wedlock, you did give me birth,
And, having borne me, sowed again my seed,
Mingling the blood of fathers, brothers, children,
Brides, wives and mothers, an incestuous brood,
All horrors that are wrought beneath the sun,
Horrors so foul to name them were unmeet.
O, I adjure you, hide me anywhere
Far from this land, or slay me straight, or cast me
Down to the depths of ocean out of sight.
Come hither, deign to touch an abject wretch;
Draw near and fear not; I myself must bear
The load of guilt that none but I can share.
KREON
Lo, here is Kreon, the one man to grant
Your prayer by action or advice, for he
Is left the City's sole guardian in your stead.
OEDIPUS
Ah me! what words to accost him can I find?
What cause has he to trust me? In the past
I have bee proved his rancorous enemy.
KREON
Not in derision, Oedipus, I come
Nor to upbraid you with your past misdeeds.
(To BYSTANDERS)
But shame upon you! if you feel no sense
Of human decencies, at least revere
The Sun whose light beholds and nurtures all.
Leave not thus nakedly for all to gaze at
A horror neither earth nor rain from heaven
Nor light will suffer. Lead him straight within,
For it is seemly that a kinsman's woes
Be heard by kin and seen by kin alone.
OEDIPUS
O listen, since your presence comes to me
A shock of glad surprise--so noble you,
And I so vile--O grant me one small boon.
I ask it not on my behalf, but your.
KREON
And what the favor you would crave of me?
OEDIPUS
Forth from your borders thrust me with all speed;
Set me within some vasty desert where
No mortal voice shall greet me any more.
KREON
This had I done already, but I deemed
It first behooved me to consult the god.
OEDIPUS
His will was set forth fully--to destroy
The parricide, the scoundrel; and I am he.
KREON
Yes, so he spake, but in our present plight
'Twere better to consult the god anew.
OEDIPUS
Dare you inquire concerning such a wretch?
KREON
Yes, for yourself would credit now his word.
OEDIPUS
Yes, and on you in all humility
I lay this charge: let her who lies within
Receive such burial as you shalt ordain;
Such rites it is your, as brother, to perform.
But for myself, O never let my Thebes,
The city of my sires, be doomed to bear
The burden of my presence while I live.
No, let me be a dweller on the hills,
On yonder mount Cithaeron, famed as mine,
My tomb predestined for me by my father
And mother, while they lived, that I may die
Slain as they sought to slay me, when alive.
This much I know full surely, nor disease
Shall end my days, nor any common chance;
For I had never been snatched from death, unless
I was predestined to some awful doom.
So be it. I reck not how Fate deals with me But my unhappy children--for my sons Be not concerned, O Kreon, they are men, And for themselves, where'er they be, can fend. But for my daughters twain, poor innocent maids, Who ever sat beside me at the board Sharing my viands, drinking of my cup, For them, I pray you, care, and, if you will, O might I feel their touch and make my moan. Hear me, O prince, my noble-hearted prince! Could I but blindly touch them with my hands I'd think they still were mine, as when I saw. [ANTIGONE and ISMENE are led in.] What say I? can it be my pretty ones Whose sobs I hear? Has Kreon pitied me And sent me my two darlings? Can this be?
KREON
It is true; it was I procured you this delight,
Knowing the joy they were to you of old.
OEDIPUS
God speed you! and as meed for bringing them
May Providence deal with you kindlier
Than it has dealt with me! O children mine,
Where are you? Let me clasp you with these hands,
A brother's hands, a father's; hands that made
Lack-luster sockets of his once bright eyes;
Hands of a man who blindly, recklessly,
Became your father by her from whom he sprang.
Though I cannot behold you, I must weep
In thinking of the evil days to come,
The slights and wrongs that men will put upon you.
Where'er you go to feast or festival,
No merrymaking will it prove for you,
But often abashed in tears you will return.
And when you come to marriageable years,
Where's the bold wooers who will jeopardize
To take unto himself such disrepute
As to my children's children still must cling,
For what of infamy is lacking here?
"Their father slew his father, sowed the seed
Where he himself was gendered, and begat
These maidens at the source wherefrom he sprang."
Such are the gibes that men will cast at you.
Who then will wed you? None, I ween, but you
Must pine, poor maids, in single barrenness.
O Prince, Menoikeus' son, to you, I turn,
With the it rests to father them, for we
Their natural parents, both of us, are lost.
O leave them not to wander poor, unwed,
Your kin, nor let them share my low estate.
O pity them so young, and but for you
All destitute. Your hand upon it, Prince.
To you, my children I had much to say,
Were you but ripe to hear. Let this suffice:
Pray you may find some home and live content,
And may your lot prove happier than your father's.
KREON
You have had enough of weeping; pass within.
OEDIPUS
I must obey,
Though it is grievous.
KREON
Weep not, everything must have its day.
OEDIPUS
Well I go, but on conditions.
KREON
What your terms for going, say.
OEDIPUS
Send me from the land an exile.
KREON
Ask this of the gods, not me.
OEDIPUS
But I am the gods' abhorrence.
KREON
Then they soon will grant your plea.
OEDIPUS
Lead me hence, then, I am willing.
KREON
Come, but let your children go.
OEDIPUS
Rob me not of these my children!
KREON
Crave not mastery in all,
For the mastery that raised you was your bane and wrought your fall.
CHORUS
Look you, countrymen and Thebans, this is Oedipus the great,
He who knew the Sphinx's riddle and was mightiest in our state.
Who of all our townsmen gazed not on his fame with envious eyes?
Now, in what a sea of troubles sunk and overwhelmed he lies!
Therefore, wait to see life's ending ere you count one mortal blest;
Wait till free from pain and sorrow he has gained his final rest.