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.
- We have listened. Tell us what to do.
- I cannot make the trip; for I am disabled by lack of strength and lack of sight, twin evils. But let one of you two go and do these things. For I think that one soul suffices to pay this debt for ten thousand, if it comes with good will.
- Act, then, with speed. But do not abandon me, for my body would not have the strength to move, without help or a guiding hand.
- Then I will go to perform the rite; but where I am to find the place—this I wish to learn.
- On the further side of this grove, stranger. And if you have need of anything, there is a guardian of the place. He will direct you.
- Off to my task. But you, Antigone, watch our father here. In the case of parents, if we toil, we must not keep a memory of it.Ismene exits.
- Terrible it is, stranger, to arouse the old woe that has for so long been laid to rest: and yet I yearn to hear—
- What now?
- —Of that grief-filled anguish, cureless, with which you have wrestled.
- By your hospitality, do not uncover the shame that I have suffered!
- Seeing that the tale is wide-spread and in no way weakens, I wish, friend, to hear it straight.
- Ah me!
- Grant the favor, I beg!
- Alas, alas!
- Grant my wish, as I have granted yours to the full.
- I have suffered the greatest misery, strangers—suffered it through unintended deeds—may the god know it! No part was of my own choice.
- But in what way?
- In an evil marriage, the city bound me, unknowing, to ruin.
- Is it true, as I hear, that you made your mother the partner of your bed, to its infamy?
- Ah, me! These words, strangers, are like death to my ears. And those two maidens of mine—