Oedipus at Colonus
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 2: The Oedipus at Colonus. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889.
- How we are to go home, I cannot tell.
- Do not seek to go.
- Trouble surrounds us.
- And previously it bore heavily.
- Then it was desperate, but now even crueler.
- Vast, then, is the sea of your troubles.
- Alas, alas! Zeus, where shall we turn?
- To what last hope does the divinity now drive us?
Enter Theseus.Theseus Antigone Theseus Antigone Theseus Antigone Theseus Antigone Theseus
- Cease your lament, children! Where the favor of the nether night is stored up, there is no room for sorrow; divine retribution would follow.
- Son of Aegeus, we supplicate you!
- To obtain what desire, my children?
- We want look with our own eyes upon our father’s tomb.
- It is not right to go there.
- What do you mean, lord, ruler of Athens?
- Children, he told me that no one should draw near that place, or approach with prayer the sacred tomb in which he sleeps. He said that, so long as I saw to this, I would always keep the country free from pain.
- The divinity heard me say these things, as did the all-seeing Oath of Zeus.
- If this is his intention, we must be content with it.
- Send us to ancient Thebes, in case we may somehow stop the bloodshed that threatens our brothers.
- I will do both this and whatever other favorable service I can, for you
- and for the newly-departed under the earth, according to the gratitude I owe. I am bound to spare no pains.