Oedipus Tyrannus
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 1: The Oedipus Tyrannus. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1887.
- He seems to bring comfort, since otherwise he would not be coming crowned so thickly with berry-laden bay.
- We will soon know: he is within hearing-range.
- Prince, my kinsman, child of Menoeceus, what news have you brought us from the god?
- Good news. I tell you that even troubles hard to bear will end in perfect peace if they find the right issue.
- But what is the oracle ? So far, your words
- neither encourage nor frighten me.
- If you want to hear in the presence of these people, I am ready to speak: otherwise we can go inside.
- Speak to all. The sorrow that I bear for these is more than for my own life.
- I will tell you what I heard from the god. Phoebus our lord clearly commands us to drive out the defilement which he said was harbored in this land, and not to nourish it so that it cannot be healed.
- With what sort of purification? What is the manner of the misfortune?
- By banishing the man, or by paying back bloodshed with bloodshed, since it is this blood which brings the tempest on our city.
- And who is the man whose fate he thus reveals?
- Laius, my lord, was the leader of our land before you assumed control of this state.
- I know it well—by hearsay, for I never saw him.
- He was slain, and the god now bids us to take vengeance on his murderers, whoever they are.
- Where on earth are they? Where shall the dim track of this old crime be found?
- In this land, the god said. What is sought for can be caught; only that which is not watched escapes.
- Was it in the house, or in the field, or on foreign soil that Laius met his bloody end?
- He left our land, as he said, on a mission to Delphi.
- And once he had set forth, he never again returned.