Oedipus Tyrannus
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 1: The Oedipus Tyrannus. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1887.
- It must not happen that, with such clues in my grasp, I fail to bring my birth to light.
- For the gods’ sake, if you have any care for your own life, do not continue this search! My anguish is enough.
- Be of good courage. Even if I should be found the son of a servile mother—a slave by three descents—you will not be proven baseborn.
- Hear me, I implore you: do not do this.
- I will not hear of not discovering the whole truth.
- Yet I wish you well—I counsel you for the best.
- These best counsels, then, vex my patience.
- Oh ill-fated man, may you never know who you are!
- Go, some one, fetch me the herdsman.
- Leave this woman to glory in her princely stock.
- Alas, alas, miserable man—that word alone can I say to you—and no other word ever again.She rushes into the palace.
- Why has this woman gone, Oedipus, rushing off in wild grief? I fear
- a storm of sorrow will soon break forth from this silence.
- Break forth what will! Be my race ever so lowly, I crave to learn it. That woman perhaps—for she is proud with more than a woman’s pride—feels ashamed of my lowly origin. But I, who hold myself son of Fortune
- that gives good, will not be dishonored. She is the mother from whom I spring, and the months, my kinsmen, have marked me sometimes lowly, sometimes great. Such being my heritage, never more can I prove
- false to it, or keep from searching out the secret of my birth.
- If I am a seer or wise of heart,
- Cithaeron, you will not fail—by heaven, you will not—to know at tomorrow’s full moon that Oedipus honors you as native to him, as his nurse, and his mother, and that you are celebrated in our dance and song,
- because you are well-pleasing to our prince. O Phoebus to whom we cry, may these things find favor in your sight!
- Who was it, my son, who of the race whose years are many, that bore you in wedlock with