Oedipus Tyrannus

Sophocles

Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 1: The Oedipus Tyrannus. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1887.

  1. Alas, countless are the sorrows I bear.
  2. A plague is on all our people, and thought can find no weapon for defense. The fruits of the glorious earth do not grow; by no birth of offspring do women surmount the pangs in which they shriek.
  3. You can see life after life speed away, like a bird on the wing, swifter than irresistible fire, to the shore of the western god.
Chorus
  1. With such deaths, past numbering, the city perishes.
  2. Unpitied, her children lie on the ground, spreading pestilence, with no one to mourn them. Meanwhile young wives and grey-haired mothers raise a wail at the steps of the altars, some here, some there,
  3. and groan in supplication for their terrible woes. The prayers to the Healer ring clear, and with them the voice of lamentation. For which things, golden daughter of Zeus, send us the bright face of comfort.
Chorus
  1. Grant that the fierce god of death, who now without the bronze of shields, though among cries like those of battle, wraps me in the flames of his onset, may turn his back in speedy flight from our land, borne by a favorable wind to the great chamber of Amphitrite,
  2. or to the Thracian waves, those waters where none find haven. For if night leaves anything undone in the working of destruction, day follows to accomplish it. You who wield the
  3. powers of fiery lightning, Zeus our father, slay him beneath your thunder-bolt.
Chorus
  1. Lycean Lord, would that the shafts from your bent bow’s string of woven gold might
  2. go forth in their might, our champions in the face of the foe, and the flashing fires of Artemis too, with which she darts through the Lycian hills. I call him whose locks are bound with gold,
  3. who is named with the name of this land, ruddy Bacchus to whom Bacchants cry, to draw near with the blaze of his shining torch,
  4. our ally against the god unhonored among the gods.
Oedipus
  1. You pray. And in answer to your prayer, if you will give a loyal reception to my words and minister to your own disease, you may hope to find help and relief from woes. These words I will speak publicly, as one who was a stranger to the report,
  2. a stranger to the deed. I would not go far on the trail if I were tracing it alone, without a clue. But as it is—since it was only after the event that I was counted a Theban among Thebans—to you, Cadmeans all, I do thus proclaim: Whoever knows
  3. by whom Laius son of Labdacus was slain, I order him to declare all to me. And if he is afraid, I order him to remove the danger of indictment from his path by denouncing himself: he will suffer no other punishment, but will only leave this land, unhurt.
  4. If anyone knows the assassin to be an alien, from another land, let him not keep silent. I will reward him, and my thanks shall rest with him besides. But if he keeps silent, if anyone, through fear, seeks to screen himself or a friend from my orders,
  5. then hear what I shall do: I charge you that no resident of this land, which I rule, give shelter to or address that murderer, whoever he is, or make him a partner in prayer or sacrifice,
  6. or give him a share of the lustral rite. Ban him from your houses, all of you, knowing that this is the defilement, as the oracle of the Pythian god has recently shown to me. In this way
  7. I am an ally both to the god and to the dead man. And I pray solemnly that the slayer, whoever he is, whether he alone is guilty or he has partners, may, in the horrible way he deserves, wear out his unblest life. And for myself I pray that if he should,