Oedipus Tyrannus
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 1: The Oedipus Tyrannus. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1887.
- You are truly sullen in yielding, as you are vehement in the excesses of your wrath. But such natures are
- justly most difficult for themselves to bear.
- Will you not be gone and leave me in peace?
- I will go on my way. I have found you undiscerning, but in the view of these men I am just.He exits.
- Lady, why do you hesitate to take this man into the house?
- I will, when I have learned what has happened.
- Blind suspicion, bred of talk, arose, and injustice inflicts wounds.
- On both sides?
- Yes.
- And what was the story?
- It is enough, I think, enough, when our land is already vexed, that the matter should rest where it stopped.
- Do you see to what you have come, for all your noble intent, in seeking to slacken and blunt my zeal?
- King, I have said it more than once—
- be sure that I would have proved myself a madman, bankrupt in sane counsel, if I forsook you—you, who gave a true course to my beloved country when it was
- distraught with troubles, and who now are likely to prove our prospering guide.
- In the name of the gods, tell me, king, the reason that you have conceived this steadfast wrath.
- That I will do, for I honor you, lady, above these men. Creon is the cause, and the plots he has laid against me.
- Come, tell me how the argument began.
- He says that I stand guilty of Laius’ blood.
- On his own knowledge or on hearsay from another?