What is this? What universal truth are you announcing?Teiresias—by how much the most precious of our possessions is
the power to reason wisely?CreonBy as much, I think, as senselessness is the greatest
affliction.TeiresiasYet you came into being full of that disease.CreonI have no desire to trade insults with the seer.TeiresiasYet that is what you do in saying that I prophesy
falsely.CreonYes, for the prophet-clan was ever fond of money.TeiresiasAnd the race sprung from tyrants loves shameful gain.CreonDo you know that you ramble so about your king?TeiresiasI am aware, since through me you have saved this city.CreonYou are a wise seer, but fond of doing injustice.TeiresiasYou will stir me to utter the dire secret in my
soul.CreonOut with it! But only if it is not for gain that you speak
it.TeiresiasIndeed, I think I speak without mention of gain—where you
are concerned.CreonBe certain that you will not trade in my will.TeiresiasThen know, yes, know it well! You will not live through
many more courses of the sun’s swift chariot, before you will
give in return one sprung from your own loins, a corpse in requital for
corpses. For you have thrust below one of those of the upper air and
irreverently lodged a living soul in the grave, while you detain in this world that which belongs to
the infernal gods, a corpse unburied, unmourned, unholy. In the dead you
have no part, nor do the gods above, but in this you do them violence.
For these crimes the avenging destroyers, the Furies of Hades and of the gods, lie in ambush for
you, waiting to seize you in these same sufferings. And look closely if
I tell you this with a silvered palm. A time not long to be delayed will
reveal in your house wailing over men and over women. All the cities are stirred up in hostility, whose
mangled corpses the dogs, or the wild beasts or some winged bird buried,
carrying an unholy stench to the city that held each man’s hearth.
There, now, are arrows for your heart, since you provoke me,