Oedipus Tyrannus
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 1: The Oedipus Tyrannus. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1887.
- Be gone, to your ruin; be gone this instant! Will you not turn your back and leave this house?
- I would not have come if you had not called me.
- I did not know you would speak foolishly, for otherwise it would have been a long time before I summoned you to my home.
- I was born like this—as you think, a fool, but in the opinion of the parents who bore you, quite sane.
- What parents? Wait. What man is my father?
- This day will reveal your birth and bring your ruin.
- What riddles, what dark words you always say.
- Are you not the best at unravelling mysteries?
- Reproach me in what you will find me to be great.
- Yet it was just that fortune that undid you.
- But if it saved this city I care not.
- I will take my leave. You, boy, lead me.
- Yes, let him take you: while here, you are a hindrance, a source of trouble. When you have gone, you will vex me no more.
- I will go when I have performed the errand for which I came, fearless of your frown: you can never destroy me. I tell you: the man whom you have been seeking this long while,
- uttering threats and proclaiming a search into the murder of Laius, is here, ostensibly an alien sojourner, but soon to be found a native of Thebes; nor will he enjoy his fortune. A blind man, though now he sees,
- a beggar, though now rich, he will make his way to a foreign land, feeling the ground before him with his staff. And he will be discovered to be at once brother and father of the children with whom he consorts; son and husband of the woman who bore him;
- heir to his father’s bed, shedder of his father’s blood. So go in and evaluate this, and if you find that I am wrong, say then that I have no wit in prophecy.
- Who is he of whom the divine voice from the Delphian rock has said
- to have wrought with blood-red hands horrors that no tongue can tell? It is time that he ply in flight a foot stronger than the feet of storm-swift steeds.
- The son of Zeus is springing upon him with fiery lightning, and with him come the dread unerring Fates.