Oedipus Tyrannus
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 1: The Oedipus Tyrannus. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1887.
- This very thing, old man, this constantly frightens me.
- Do you know, then, that your fears are wholly in vain?
- ---How so, if I was born of those parents?
- Because you had no blood in common with Polybus.
- What are you saying? Was Polybus not my father?
- Just as much, and no more, than he who speaks to you.
- And how can my father be equal to him who is as though nothing to me?
- But he did not father you, any more than I did.
- How, then, did he call me his son?
- Long ago he received you as a gift from my hands.
- And yet he loved me so dearly, who came from another’s hand?
- His former childlessness won him over.
- And had you bought me or found me by chance, when you gave me to him?
- I found you in Cithaeron’s winding glens.
- And why were you roaming those regions?
- I was in charge of mountain flocks.
- What, you were a shepherd—a vagrant hireling?
- But your savior, my son, in that hour.
- And what was my pain when you took me in your arms?
- The ankles of your feet might bear witness.