Oedipus

O snow-capped Cithaeron, dear to Artemis, holy vale of leaves, crowded with wild animals, would that you had never reared the one exposed to die, Oedipus, Jocasta’s child, when as a baby he was cast forth from his home, marked with a golden brooch;

Now when Oedipus, who endured so much, learned that he was married to his mother, he inflicted a dreadful slaughter upon his eyes, making the pupils bloody with a golden brooch.

and so did Laius, my husband, seeking to learn if the child he had exposed was dead.

Child of a blind old man, Antigone, to what region have we come, or to what city of men?

Only keep your own pledge good, and never will you say that in vain you welcomed Oedipus to dwell in this land—if indeed the gods do not deceive me.

I have suffered the greatest misery, strangers—suffered it through unintended deeds—may the god know it!

But what I forgot to say about Oedipus, that he did not go to Delphi to consult the oracle, but, having met with Teiresias, reaped great evils from that man's divination through his own ignorance.

The others, then, perceive their own folly somewhat more, but Oedipus, having thought himself the wisest and to have escaped the Sphinx, and having persuaded the other Thebans of this, perished most wretchedly.

Have you not heard that the Sphinx bade him know himself, that he is a man?

for around the gates of Cadmus have they lost their seven noble sons, whom on a day Adrastus, king of Argos, led thither, eager to secure for exiled Polynices, his son-in-law, a share in the heritage of Oedipus;

By reason of his father’s curse, not to spill his brother’s blood.

The curse of Oedipus, fraught with sorrow, after desolating his house, is come on thee.

Think, sister, how our father perished in hatred and infamy, when, because of the crimes that he himself detected, he smashed both his eyes with self-blinding hand;

Ismene, my sister, true child of my own mother, do you know any evil out of all the evils bequeathed by Oedipus that Zeus will not fulfil for the two of us in our lifetime?

For now that dazzling ray of hope that had been spread over the last roots in the house of Oedipus—that hope, in its turn, the blood-stained dust of the gods infernal and mindlessness in speech and frenzy at the mind cuts down.

Now, Oedipus, king glorious in our eyes, we, your suppliants, beseech you to find some defence for us, whether you hear it from some divine omen, or learn of it from some mortal.

Fellow citizens, having learned that Oedipus the king lays dire charges against me, I have come in indignation.

Oedipus, ruler of my land, you see the age of those who sit on your altars—some, nestlings still too tender for flight, others, bowed with age, priests, like me of Zeus, and some, these here, the chosen youth.

They keep silence, then, and accept it, and break out in no Thyestean or Oedipal tragedy, and do not drag it forth before the people.

But the Macedonians too — this is what they made plain — openly do it, since, when first the Oedipus of theirs came on the stage, slaughtered as to his eyes, they received him with laughter and derision.

Oedipus, Aegisthus, or what?

When the stork father has reared his young and has taught them to fly, the young must in their turn support the father.

No, no, young friend, since you have come to us with such willingness, I am going to give you these black wings, as though you were an orphan bird;

according to us, he who dares to strike his father, while still a chick, is a brave fellow.

Therefore Apollo could not have predicted concerning Oedipus, since there were no causes laid down in the nature of things why his father must necessarily be killed by him, nor anything of that sort.

for the matter is combined and “cofated”—so he calls it, because it is so fated both that Laius will lie with his wife and that he will beget Oedipus by her—' just as, if it had been said, “Milo will wrestle at Olympia,” and someone should rejoin, “Therefore, whether he has an adversary or has not, he will wrestle,” he would be in error;

Indeed a certain vision moved me toward the deeper memory of Oedipus coming hither, and asking in that most tender song what these very places were — vainly, of course, but yet it moved me.

and we harbored Oedipus and his family when they were banished;

Scaeus the son of Hippocoon, if he is indeed the dedicator and not another of the same name, would have lived at the time of Oedipus son of Laius.

Grim war and dread battle destroyed a part of them, some in the land of Cadmus at seven-gated Thebes when they fought for the flocks of Oedipus, and some, when it had brought them in ships over the great sea gulf to Troy for rich-haired Helen's sake:

Mekisteus went once to Thebes after the fall of Oedipus, to attend his funeral, and he beat all the people of Cadmus.

"I also saw fair Epikaste mother of king Oedipus whose awful lot it was to marry her own son without suspecting it in her noos.

and the story of Oedipus, and the madness of Heracles, and the story of Theseus and Ariadne.

And the Macedonians too were suspected, because, when first they heard the tragedy of Oedipus, mocking the incestuous man's grief, they would say, "Drive on against the mother.