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.
- Oh!
- —And the race of the Labdacidae?
- O Zeus!
- —and the pitiful Oedipus?
- You are he?
- Have no fear of any words that I speak—
- Ah, no, no!
- Unhappy that I am!
- Oh, oh!
- Daughter, what is about to happen?
- Out with you! Go forth from the land!
- And your promise—to what fulfillment will you bring it?
- No man is visited by the punishment of fate if he requites deeds which were first done to himself.
- Deceit on the one part matches deceits on the other, and gives pain instead of pleasure for reward. And you—back with you! Out from your seat!
- Away from my land with all speed, that you may not fasten some heavier burden on my city!
- Reverent strangers, since you have not endured my aged father—knowing, as you do,
- the rumor of his unintended deeds—pity at least my poor self, I implore you, who supplicate you for my father alone. I beg you with eyes that can still look
- on your own, like one sprung from your own blood, that this sufferer may meet with reverent treatment. On you, as on a god, we depend in our misery. But come, grant the favor for which we hardly dare hope!
- I implore you by everything that you hold dear at home: by child, by wife, or treasure, or god! Look well and you will not find the mortal who, if a god should lead him on, could escape.
- Feel sure, daughter of Oedipus, that we pity you and him alike