Oedipus Tyrannus
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 1: The Oedipus Tyrannus. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1887.
- But there is, except not for you. You do not have that strength, since you are maimed in your ears, in your wit, and in your eyes.
- And you are a poor wretch to utter taunts that every man here will soon hurl at you.
- Night, endless night has you in her keeping, so that you can never hurt me,
- or any man that sees the light of the sun.
- No, it is not your fate to fall at my hands, since Apollo, to whom this matter is a concern, is sufficient.
- Are these Creon’s devices, or your own?
- Creon is no trouble for you: you are your own.
- O wealth, and empire, and skill surpassing skill in life’s keen rivalries, how great is the envy in your keeping, if for the sake of this office which the city has entrusted to me, a gift unsought,
- Creon the trustworthy, Creon, my old friend, has crept upon me by stealth, yearning to overthrow me, and has suborned such a scheming juggler as this, a tricky quack, who has eyes only for profit, but is blind in his art!
- Come, tell me, where have you proved yourself a seer? Why, when the watchful dog who wove dark song was here, did you say nothing to free the people? Yet the riddle, at least, was not for the first comer to read: there was need of a seer’s help,
- and you were discovered not to have this art, either from birds, or known from some god. But rather I, Oedipus the ignorant, stopped her, having attained the answer through my wit alone, untaught by birds. It is I whom you are trying to oust, assuming that
- you will have great influence in Creon’s court. But I think that you and the one who plotted these things will rue your zeal to purge the land: if you did not seem to be an old man, you would have learned to your cost how haughty you are.
- To our way of thinking, these words, both his and yours, Oedipus,
- have been said in anger. We have no need of this, but rather we must seek how we shall best discharge the mandates of the god.
- Though you are king, the right of reply must be considered the same for both: over that I have control.
- For I do not live as your slave, but as Loxias’. I will not stand enrolled as Creon’s client. And I tell you, since you have taunted my blindness, that though you have sight, you do not see what a state of misery you are in, or where you dwell, or with whom.
- Do you know who your parents are? You have been an unwitting enemy to your own kin, both in the Underworld and on the earth above, and the double lash of your mother’s and your father’s curse will one day drive you from this land in dreadful haste, with darkness upon those eyes of yours which now can see.
- What place will be harbor to your cries, what part of all Cithaeron will not ring with them soon, when you have learned the meaning of the nuptials in which, within that house, you found a fatal haven, after a voyage so fair? And you have not guessed at a throng of other ills
- which will bring you level with your true self and with your own children. Therefore heap your scorn upon Creon and upon my message: for no man will ever be crushed more miserably than you.
- Are these taunts to be endured from him?