Oedipus

OEDIPUS, JOCASTA

OEDIPUS: Now Titan, doubtful, returns, the night driven off, and rises mournful with a squalid cloud, and, bearing a sad light with mourning flame, will look upon homes laid waste by the greedy plague, and day will reveal the slaughter that the night has made. Does anyone rejoice in a throne? O deceitful good, how many evils you hide beneath so smiling a face! As lofty ridges ever receive the winds, and as the wave of the boundless sea, however calm, beats the cliff that with its rocks divides the straits, so do lofty empires lie exposed to Fortune. How well had I fled the scepter of my father Polybus! Free of cares, an exile, fearless, wandering (heaven and the gods I call to witness), I fell upon a throne: I dread unspeakable things — lest by my hand my father be slain; this the Delphic laurels warn me, and they foretell to me another, greater crime. Is there any crime greater than a father slaughtered? O wretched filial love (I am ashamed to speak my fate), Phoebus threatens the son with his mother's marriage-chamber and dread bed, with incestuous, impious torch. This fear drove me from my father's realm. Not as a fugitive did I leave my household gods: trusting little in myself, I set your laws, Nature, in safety. When you dread great things, fear even what you think cannot happen: I quake at everything, and do not trust myself to myself.

Already, already the fates prepare to plot something against us; for what am I to think, when this plague, hostile to the Cadmean race, spread so wide in slaughter, spares me alone? For what evil are we reserved? Amid the ruins of the city, and funerals ever to be wept with new tears, and the heaped-up bodies of the people, I stand unharmed — Phoebus' prisoner, no doubt. Could you have hoped that to crimes so great a healthful realm should be given? I have made the heaven guilty.

No gentle breeze with chill breath soothes my heart, panting with flames; no light Zephyrs breathe, but Titan increases the fires of the heat-bringing dog, pressing the back of the Nemean lion. The moisture has deserted the rivers, and color the grasses, and Dirce is dry; Ismenos flows thin and barely wets its bare shoals with a scant wave. Phoebus' sister glides dark through the sky, and the sad world grows pale with a cloudy day. No star gleams on the clear nights, but a heavy, black vapor broods over the lands: an infernal aspect has covered the citadels of the gods and the highest dwellings. Ripened Ceres denies her fruit, and though the grain wave golden with tall ears, the barren crop dies on the parched stalk. Nor is any age exempt and free from destruction, but every age alike and either sex falls, and the deadly plague joins the young to the old, and fathers to their sons. One torch burns the marriage-beds; and the funerals lack bitter weeping and lament. Nay, the disaster, persistent in so great an evil, has dried the eyes, and, as is wont at the last, the tears have perished: the sick father carries this one to the last fire, the maddened mother bears that one and hastens to seek another for the same pyre. Nay, in the very mourning new mourning arises, and round the funeral fall new obsequies; then they burn their own bodies on others' flames; the fire is snatched away: there is no shame for the wretched. No hallowed bones lie in separate tombs: to have burned is enough — how small a part goes to ashes? Earth fails for the tombs, now the woods deny pyres, no prayers, no art relieve the stricken: the healers fall, the disease draws aid to itself.

Cast down before the altars I stretch out suppliant hands, demanding an early fate, that I may outrun, first, my falling country, nor fall after all, and become the last funeral of my realm. O too savage powers, O heavy fate! Is death, so ready for all this people, denied to me alone? Spurn realms touched by a deadly hand, leave the tears, the funerals, the wasting taints of the sky which you bring with you, ill-omened guest; flee at once, more quickly — or to your parents.

JOCASTA: What does it profit, husband, to weigh down evils with complaint? This very thing I deem kingly: to face adversity, and the more doubtful the state and the more the mass of a falling empire totters, the more firmly to stand brave on a sure footing; it is no manly thing to turn one's back on Fortune.

OEDIPUS: Far off is the charge and reproach of cowardice, and my valor knows not base fears: if drawn weapons against me, if the dread force of Mavors rushed upon me — against the fierce Giants, bold, I would bear my hands to meet them. Nor did I flee the Sphinx, weaving her words in dark measures: I bore the bloody jaws of the abominable seer and the ground white with scattered bones; and when, from her rock above, already looming over her prey, she fitted her wings and, lashing and moving her tail in the manner of a savage lion, conceived her threats, I demanded her riddle: it sounded horribly overhead, her jaws gnashed, and, impatient of delay, she tore at the rocks with her claw, awaiting my entrails: the knotty words of the riddle and the entangled snares and the grim song of the winged beast I solved.

JOCASTA: Why now, madman, do you make late prayers for death? You might have perished; this scepter is the prize of your praise, and this reward is given for the slain Sphinx.

OEDIPUS: That, that dire ash of the cunning monster makes war on us again; that plague, now slain, destroys Thebes. One hope of safety now remains, if Phoebus shows any road to safety.

CHORUS OF THEBANS

You fall, noble offspring of Cadmus, with all your city; you look on lands widowed of their tillers, pitiable Thebe. Death plucks away that soldier of yours, Bacchus, your comrade even to the farthest Indians, who dared to ride on the Eastern plains and plant your standards in the first part of the world: he saw the Arabs blessed with cinnamon-forests and the riders turned in flight, their backs dreadful with the arrows of the treacherous Parthian; he entered the shore of the reddening sea: hence Phoebus brings forth his rising and opens the light and, with a nearer flame, stains the naked Indians.

We perish, the race of an unconquered stock, we sink, as savage fate snatches us away; ever a new procession is led to Death: a long line of the mournful host hastens to the shades, and the sad train sticks fast, and the seven gates have not lain open enough for the throng seeking the tombs. The heavy heap stands still, and funeral is pressed on funeral.

The priest had stood, about to slay the necks: while his hand prepares the sure wound, on high, the bull, with its gold-gleaming horn, sinks sluggish; the neck, loosened under the blow of the vast weight, lay open: nor did blood stain the iron: a foul gore, poured out, fouled the deep wound. The steed, slower in its course, fell down in the very ring, and betrayed its master by its drooping shoulder.

The first force touched the sluggish sheep: the woolly flock cropped the rich grasses ill; the bull droops, his herd perishing: the herdsman fails, his flock diminished, dying among the wasting bullocks. The cattle, left behind, lie heavy on the fields; the deer do not fear the ravening wolves, the roaring of the angry lion ceases, no fierceness is in the shaggy bears; the lurking serpent has lost its venom-plague: dry, it dies with its venom parched.

The wood, not adorned with its own foliage, pours no shady shadows over the mountains, the fields are not green with the richness of the soil, the vine, not full with its own Bacchus, does not bend its arms: all things have felt our evil.

The bars of deep Erebus have broken: the throng of the sisters with Tartarean torch, and Phlegethon changes its bank: it has mingled the Styx with the Sidonian streams. Black Death opens the greedy gaping of its mouth and spreads all its wings; and he who guards the turbid rivers in his roomy boat, the ferryman, hard with raw old age, scarcely brings back his arms, wearied by the ceaseless pole, worn out with ferrying the new throng. Nay, the rumor is that the dog has broken the chains of Taenarian iron and wanders in our places, that the ground has bellowed, that wandering specters of men through the groves . . . greater than men, that twice the Cadmean grove trembled, its snow shaken off, that twice Dirce was troubled with blood, that in the silent night the dogs of Amphion howled.

O dire face of a strange death, heavier than death: a sluggish languor binds the idle limbs, and a flush is on the sick face, and slight spots have sprinkled the skin; then a flaming heat burns the very citadel of the body and stretches the cheeks with much blood, and the eyes grow rigid, the ears ring, and a black gore drips from the hooked nostril and bursts the gaping veins; a frequent groan, hissing, shakes the inmost vitals, and the sacred fire feeds on the limbs, and now, in a close embrace, they weary the cold stones; and those whom a freer house, the keeper borne off, allows, seek the springs, and thirst is fed by the water poured in. The throng lies prostrate at the altars and prays to die: this alone the gods, easy to grant, have given; they seek the shrines, not that they may please the gods with prayer, but it pleases them to sate the very gods.

OEDIPUS, CHORUS, CREON

OEDIPUS: Who is that who seeks the palace with hurried step? Is it the famous Creon, near in blood and in deeds, or does my sick soul see false things for true?

CHORUS: Creon, sought by all our prayers, is here.

OEDIPUS: I am shaken with horror, fearing whither the fates incline, and my trembling breast wavers with a twofold feeling: where glad things lie mixed with hard in doubt, the uncertain soul, though it desires to know, fears. Brother of my wife, if you bring back any aid to the weary, tell it with hurried voice.

CREON: The responses lie perplexed in a doubtful answer.

OEDIPUS: He who gives doubtful safety to the afflicted denies it.

CREON: It is the Delphic god's custom to hide his secrets in winding riddle.

OEDIPUS: Speak, though it be doubtful: to Oedipus alone is it given to know ambiguous things.

CREON: The god bids the royal slaughter be expiated by exile, and Laius, slain, be avenged: not before will the bright day run in the sky and give safe draughts of the pure air.

OEDIPUS: And who was the slayer of the noble king? Tell whom Phoebus names, that he may pay the penalty.

CREON: May it be safe, I pray, to have told things horrible to see and to hear; a torpor has settled through my limbs, my cold blood congeals. When with suppliant foot I entered the hallowed temple of Phoebus and, having duly prayed to the deity, lowered my pious hands, the twin peak of snowy Parnassus gave a grim roar; the laurel of Phoebus, hanging over, trembled and moved its leaves, and suddenly the sacred water of the Castalian fountain stood still. The Letoan priestess begins to scatter her bristling hair and to suffer Phoebus, stirred; she had not yet reached the cavern when a sound greater than human flashed forth with a vast crash: "The gentle stars will return to Cadmean Thebes, if, a fugitive, you leave Ismenian Dirce, guest, guilty of the king's slaughter, known to Phoebus from infancy. Nor for you do the long joys of the wicked slaughter remain: you will wage war with yourself, leaving wars also to your sons, shameful, rolled back again into your mother's origins."

OEDIPUS: What at the gods' bidding I prepare to do, it had befitted to give to the ashes of the dead king, that no one might violate the sacred scepter by guile. A king must most of all guard the safety of kings: no one cares for the slain whom he feared when safe.

CREON: A greater fear shook off the care of the slain.

OEDIPUS: Did any fear hinder the pious duty?

CREON: The Sphinx and the grim threats of her abominable song.

OEDIPUS: Now let the crime be expiated at the deity's command. Whoever of the gods looks, appeased, on the realms: you, you in whose hands are the laws of the headlong sky, and you, O greatest glory of the serene world, who with your varied course traverse the twelve signs, who unroll the slow ages with a swift wheel, and you, sister ever meeting your brother, night-wandering Phoebe, and you, lord of the winds, who drive your sea-blue chariots through the deep sea, and you who order the homes that lack the light, be present: he by whose right hand Laius fell, let no quiet roofs, no faithful household gods, no hospitable land bear in his exile; let him grieve in shameful marriage and impious offspring; let him too slay his parent with his own hand, and let him do (can anything heavier be wished?) whatever I have fled — there shall be no place for pardon: by the realms I swear, those I now hold as a guest and those I left, and by the household gods, by you, father Neptune, who with your brief wave play on either side of our land, twofold; and come yourself, a witness to my words, moving the prophetic mouth of the Cirrhaean priestess: so may my father lead a gentle old age and render his last day, untroubled, on a high throne, and may Merope know the marriage-torches of Polybus alone, as no favor shall snatch the guilty one from me. But in what place was the abominable deed committed, tell me: does he lie by open war or by ambush?

CREON: Seeking the leafy groves of holy Castalia, he trod a narrow road, overgrown with brambles, where the way scatters itself threefold into the plains. One cuts the soil of Phocis, dear to Bacchus, whence, leaving the fields, seeking the sky, two-peaked Parnassus rises on a gently sloping hill; but one goes to the lands of two-sea'd Sisyphus; a third path, creeping by a hollow valley into the Olenian fields, touches the wandering waters and divides the cold shoal of the Elean river: here, trusting in peace, a sudden band of robbers attacked him with the sword and did a hidden deed.

In the very nick of time, roused by Phoebus' oracle, Tiresias hastens, slow with trembling knee, and Manto, his companion, leading him bereft of light.

OEDIPUS, TIRESIAS, MANTO

OEDIPUS: Consecrated to the gods, head nearest to Phoebus, unfold the responses; tell, whom the penalties seek.

TIRESIAS: That my tongue is slow to speak, that it seeks delays, it does not befit you, great-souled one, to wonder at: I lack sight! A great part of the truth lies hidden. But where my country calls me, where Phoebus, I will follow: let the fates be dug out; if I had green and warm blood, I would receive the god in my breast. Bring to the altars a bull, white of back, its neck never bowed under the curved yoke. You, daughter, guiding your father bereft of light, report the manifest signs of the prophetic rite.

MANTO: A rich victim has stood before the holy altars.

TIRESIAS: Call the gods above to our prayers with solemn voice, and pile the altars with the gift of Eastern incense.

MANTO: Now I have heaped the incense on the sacred hearths of the gods.

TIRESIAS: What of the flame? Does it now seize the rich feast?

MANTO: It shone with a sudden light and suddenly died.

TIRESIAS: Did the fire stand bright and clear and upright, bearing its pure peak to the sky, and, poured aloft into the air, unfold its topmost crest? Or does it creep about the sides, uncertain of its way, and totter, turbid, with wavering smoke?

MANTO: There was not one face of the shifting flame: as rain-bearing Iris weaves to herself her varied colors, which, curved over a great part of the sky, announce showers with painted fold (you would doubt what color is lacking to it or what is there), the blue wandered, mixed with tawny spots, then blood-red; the last passes into darkness. But see, the pugnacious fire divides into two parts and splits itself, the ash of one sacrifice discordant — father, I shudder to behold it: the libated gifts of Bacchus turn to gore, and a dense smoke rings the king's head about and settles thicker round the very face and hid the foul light with a dense cloud. What it is, father, tell.

TIRESIAS: What can I tell, wandering amid the tumult of my stunned mind? What shall I say? Dire things there are, but evil deep down; the gods' wrath is wont to be shown by sure signs: what is this that they wish to be brought forth and again do not wish, and hide their grim wrath? The gods are ashamed of I know not what. Bring quickly hither and sprinkle the necks of the bulls with the salted meal. Do they suffer the rites and the hands brought near with a placid face?

MANTO: The bull, lifting his head on high, set toward the first risings, dreaded the day and, trembling, turns his face aside and flees the rays.

TIRESIAS: Do they fall to the ground, struck by one wound?

MANTO: The heifer threw herself upon the steel set against her and fell by one wound, but the bull, having endured two blows, rushed this way and that, doubtful, and, weary, scarce forced out his struggling life.

TIRESIAS: Does the blood spurt swiftly through a narrow wound, or does it sluggishly soak the deep gashes?

MANTO: From this one, through the very path where the breast lies open, the stream poured forth; this one's heavy blows are stained with a scant shower; but, turned backward, much blood flows back through the mouth and the eyes.

TIRESIAS: The ill-omened rites stir up great terrors. But tell me the sure marks of the entrails.

MANTO: Father, what is this? The entrails, stirred, tremble with no light motion, as they are wont, but shake my whole hands, and new blood spurts from the veins. The heart, sick, withers deep within and lies sunk and hidden, and the veins are livid; a great part of the fibers is lacking, and the wasting liver foams with black gall, and (ever an omen heavy for sole rule) see, twin heads rise up with equal lobes; but a thin membrane hides each severed head: denying a hiding-place to hidden things, the hostile side rises up with strong vigor and stretches its seven veins; an oblique line, forbidding all these to return back, cuts them. The order is changed, nothing lies in its proper seat, but all is driven backward: not holding the breath, the bloody lung lies in the right part, the region of the heart is not on the left, nor with soft compass do the fat caul-membranes spread over the entrails: nature is reversed, no law remains in the womb. Let us search whence comes this great rigidity in the entrails. What wickedness is this? The conception of an unmated cow, and not placed in the wonted manner, in another's place, fills its parent; with a groan it moves its limbs, its weak parts quiver with trembling rigor; the livid gore has stained the black fibers, and the foul trunks try a moving step, and the empty body rises and seeks the holy ministers with its horn; the entrails flee the hand. Nor is that voice which struck you the heavy voice of the herd, nor do the frightened flocks resound anywhere: the fire bellows on the altars and the hearths tremble.

OEDIPUS: What these signs of the terrifying rite portend, declare: I will drink your words with no timid ear.

TIRESIAS: You will envy these evils for which you seek aid.

OEDIPUS: Tell the one thing the gods wish to be known: who has stained his hands with the slaughtered king.

TIRESIAS: Neither the high birds that cleave the sky with light wing, nor the fiber torn from living breasts can call forth the name; another way must be tried: he himself must be summoned from the regions of eternal night, sent forth from Erebus to point out the author of the slaughter. The earth must be unbarred, the implacable deity of Dis prayed to, the people of the infernal Styx dragged hither: tell to whom you entrust the rite; for it is wickedness for you, in whose hands the highest of realms, to visit the shades.

OEDIPUS: You, Creon, this task demands, to whom my realms look as second.

TIRESIAS: While we loosen the bars of the deep Styx, let a song sound, the people's, in the praises of Bacchus.

CHORUS

Bind your streaming hair with the nodding ivy-cluster, your soft arms armed with the Nysaean thyrsi! Bright glory of the sky, come hither to the prayers which your noble Thebes, Bacchus, your own, bring to you with suppliant palms. Turn hither your maiden head, favoring, with your starry face scatter the clouds and the sad threats of Erebus and greedy fate. It befits you to bind your hair with spring flowers, to confine your head with a Tyrian turban, or to wreathe your soft brow with berry-bearing ivy. You may scatter your locks, streaming, without rule, and again recall them with a drawn-up knot; as, fearing your angry stepmother, you had grown up, imitating a false form, a feigned maiden with golden hair, a yellow girdle holding your dress: hence such soft adornments pleased you, and the loose folds and the flowing robe. Seated on your golden car, when with a long robe you covered your lions, all the vast region of the Eastern land saw you, whoever drinks the Ganges and whoever breaks the snowy Araxes. Old Silenus follows you on his ugly ass, his swollen temples wreathed with vine-clusters; the wanton initiates lead on the hidden orgies. The escorting troop of Bassarids now beat with Edonian foot the soil of Pangaeus, now the Thracian peak of Pindus; now, among the Cadmean mothers, the impious Maenad comes, companion of Ogygian Iacchus, her flank girt with the sacred fawn-skin and brandishing the light thyrsus with her hand; for you the stirred mothers have shaken out their hair. Now, after the torn limbs of Pentheus, the Thyiads, their limbs released from the frenzy, looked, as on an unknown horror. The aunt of bright Bacchus holds the realms of the sea, and Cadmean Ino is ringed by the choirs of the Nereids; a stranger boy has right over the waves of the great sea, the kinsman of Bacchus, no cheap deity, Palaemon. You, boy, a Tyrrhenian band snatched away, but Nereus laid low the swollen sea, exchanging the dark straits for meadows: hence the plane-tree is green with spring leaf and the laurel, a grove dear to Phoebus; the chattering bird sounds through the branches; the oar holds living ivy, the vine binds the topmost mast-tops. At the prow an Idaean lion roared, at the stern sits a Gangetic tigress. Then the pirate, frightened, swims in the strait, and a new shape has the drowned: first the arms fall from the robbers, and their breast, struck against the belly, joins together, a tiny hand hangs from the side, and they pass under the wave with curved back, their crescent tail cleaves the sea: and the curved dolphin follows the fleeing canvas. Lydian Pactolus bore you with its rich wave, drawing down golden streams along its scorching bank; the Massagetes, who mixes his milky cups with blood, loosened his conquered bows and Getic arrows; the realms of axe-bearing Lycurgus felt Bacchus; the fierce lands of the Zalaces felt him, and those whom neighboring Boreas strikes, changing their fields, and the nations which Maeotis washes with its cold wave, and those whom from its topmost peak the Arcadian star and the twin Wain look down upon. He tamed the scattered Geloni, he stripped the arms from the fierce maidens: with downcast face they sought the earth, the Thermodontian bands, and, their light arrows laid aside at last, became Maenads. Sacred Cithaeron flowed with blood and Ophionian slaughter; the daughters of Proetus sought the woods, and Argos, the stepmother present, worshipped Bacchus. Naxos, ringed by the Aegean sea, gave to your marriage-bed the maiden left behind, compensating her loss with a better husband: from the dry pumice . . . flowed the Nyctelian liquid; the chattering brooks cut the grass, the deep earth drank in the sweet juices and the white fountains of snowy milk and Lesbian wine mixed with fragrant thyme. The new bride is led to the great heaven: Phoebus sings the solemn song, his hair flowing over his shoulder, and twin Cupid shakes the torches. Jupiter laid aside his fiery weapon and hates the bolt when Bacchus comes. While the bright stars run on of the aged world, while Ocean girds the closed orb with its waves, and while the full Moon gathers again her dismissed fires, while Lucifer foretells the morning risings, and while the high Bear knows not the blue Nereus, we will revere the bright face of beautiful Lyaeus.

OEDIPUS, CREON

OEDIPUS: Though your face itself shows tearful marks, declare by whose head we appease the gods.

CREON: You bid me speak what fear urges to keep silent.

OEDIPUS: If Thebes, paying the penalty, does not move you enough, let the fallen scepter of a kindred house move you.

CREON: You will wish you had not known what you too much seek to know.

OEDIPUS: Ignorance is a sluggish remedy for evils. Will you thus bury even the sign of the public safety?

CREON: Where the cure is base, it irks one to be healed.

OEDIPUS: Tell what you have heard, or, mastered by a heavy ill, you will learn what the arms of an angry king can do.

CREON: Kings hate the words they bid be spoken.

OEDIPUS: I will send you to Erebus, a cheap head for all, unless you reveal the secrets of the rite with your own voice.

CREON: Let me be allowed to be silent: is any lesser freedom sought from a king?

OEDIPUS: Often a mute freedom, more than the tongue, harms the king and the realm.

CREON: Where it is not allowed to be silent, what is allowed to anyone?

OEDIPUS: He who is silent when bidden to speak undoes commands.

CREON: I pray you, placid, receive these constrained words.

OEDIPUS: Was any man ever punished for a word forced out?

CREON: There is, far from the city, a grove black with holm-oaks, near the watered places of the Dircaean valley. A cypress, lifting its head above the tall woods, binds the grove with its ever-green trunk, and an aged oak stretches its curved boughs, rotten with decay: the side of this devouring age has broken off; that one, now falling on its weary root, hangs, propped by another's trunk. The laurel bitter with berries, and the light lindens, and the Paphian myrtle, and the alder that will move its oars over the boundless sea, and the pine, meeting Phoebus, setting its knotless side against the Zephyrs: in the midst stands a vast tree, and with its heavy shade presses the lesser woods, and, spreading its boughs in a great circle, alone guards the grove. Beneath it, knowing not the light or Phoebus, a sad water stands stagnant, rigid with eternal cold; a slimy marsh surrounds the sluggish fountain. Hither when the aged priest brought his step, he did not delay: the place furnished the night. Then the earth is dug out, and over it fires snatched from pyres are cast; the seer himself covers his body with a deadly cloak and shakes a branch; a mournful robe pours over his lowest feet; in squalid garb the sad old man advances, deadly yew binds his hoary hair. Sheep with black fleece and black oxen are dragged inside, the flame preys on the feast, and the living flock trembles in the funeral fire. Then he calls the shades, and you who rule the shades, and him who besets the bars of the Lethaean lake, and he rolls out a magic song and, threatening, chants from his raging mouth whatever either appeases or compels the light shades; he pours blood on the hearths, and burns the whole victims, and saturates the cavern with much gore; he pours besides a snow-white draught of milk, and pours out wine with his left hand, and chants again and, gazing on the earth, summons the shades with a heavier and frenzied voice. The throng of Hecate barked; thrice the hollow valleys sounded mournfully, the whole earth, the ground shaken, was struck. "I am heard," the seer says, "I have poured out effective words: the blind chaos is broken and a road is given to the peoples of Dis to the upper world." All the wood crouched down and raised its foliage, the oaks were rent with cracks, and a horror shook the whole grove, the earth gave way back and groaned deep within: either Acheron took it ill, deep, that its hidden depths were tried with no equal mind, or the earth itself, that it might give a way to the dead, its frame broken, sounded; or, raging with anger, three-headed Cerberus moved his heavy chains. Suddenly the earth gaped, and, loosened with an immense gulf, lay open — I myself saw the sluggish lakes amid the shades, I myself the pale gods and the true night; my blood stood cold in my veins and stuck fast. A savage cohort leaped forth and stood in arms, the whole viperous race, the bands of brothers sown from the Dircaean tooth. Then grim Erinys sounded, and blind Fury and Horror, and all that the eternal darkness creates and hides: Mourning, tearing her hair, and Disease, scarcely sustaining her weary head, heavy Old Age, a burden to herself, and hanging Fear, and Pestilence, the greedy evil of the Ogygian people. Our spirit left us; the seer himself, who knew the rites and arts of the old man, was stunned, but, undaunted, his father, bold in his loss, summons the bloodless throng of fierce Dis; at once, like light clouds, they flit about and draw the air of the open sky. Not so many falling leaves does Eryx bring forth, nor so many flowers does Hybla create in mid-spring, when the swarm is knit in a thick mass, nor does the Ionian sea break so many waves, nor does the bird, fleeing the threats of cold Strymon, change so many winters and, cleaving the sky, balance the northern snows with the warm Nile, as the peoples that the seer's voice led forth. Eagerly they seek the hiding-places of the shady grove, the trembling souls. First emerges from the ground, pressing with his right hand the bull fierce with horns, Zethus, and holding with his left hand the lyre, Amphion, who drew the rocks with sweet sound; and among her sons at last Tantalis, proud, safely bears her head, heavy with disdain, and numbers her shades. A worse mother is present than she, frenzied Agave, whom the whole band follows, who divided their king; mangled Pentheus follows the Bacchae too, and, savage, even now holds his threats. At last, often summoned, he lifted his shamefaced head and stands apart, far from all the throng, and hides himself (the priest presses on, and doubles his Stygian prayers, until he brings into the open the hidden face) — Laius. I shudder to speak it: he stood, horrid in his limbs with shed blood, his squalid hair covered with foul filth, and with raging mouth speaks: "O house of Cadmus, savage, ever glad in kindred blood, brandish your thyrsi, with god-filled hand tear your sons rather — the greatest crime in Thebes is a mother's love. My country, not by the wrath of the gods but by crime you are snatched away: not with heavy blast does the mourning Auster harm you, nor the earth, unsatisfied with too little rain, harm you with its dry breath, but a bloody king, who as the price of savage slaughter seizes the scepter and the abominable marriage-bed of his father and drove himself back into his own origins and rendered impious offspring to his mother, and who, what is scarce a custom even for beasts, himself begot brothers for himself — an entangled evil and a monster more perplexed than his own Sphinx. Hateful offspring: but yet the parent worse than the son, heavy again with an ill-omened womb. You, you who bear the bloody scepter in your right hand, you I, your unavenged father, will seek with the whole city, and will draw with me the Erinys, the bridesmaid of the marriage, I will draw the resounding scourges, I will overturn the incestuous house and crush the household gods with impious war. Therefore quickly drive out the king, expelled from your borders, an exile, with whatever deadly step; let him leave the soil: green with flower-bearing spring, it will renew the grasses, the vital air will give pure breath, and beauty will come to the woods; Death and Plague, Mortality, Toil, Wasting, Pain, a fit train for him, will go forth together; and he himself with swift steps will wish to flee our seats, but I will add heavy delays to his feet and hold him: he shall creep, uncertain of his way, feeling his sad path before him with an old man's staff: take from him the earth — I, his father, will take away the sky."

OEDIPUS: An icy trembling has seized both my bones and my limbs; whatever I feared to do, I am charged with having done — but Merope, joined to Polybus, denies the abomination of the marriage-bed; Polybus, safe, absolves my hands: each parent clears me of the slaughter and the debauchery. What place is left for guilt? Long before I touched the Boeotian places with my step, Thebes bewailed Laius lost. Is the old man false, or the god heavy on Thebes? — Now, now I hold the partners of a cunning trick: this seer lies, putting forward the gods to cloak his fraud, and betroths my scepter to you.

CREON: Should I wish my sister to be driven from her realm? If the hallowed faith of a kindred house did not hold me fixed in my own station: yet fortune itself, ever anxious, would terrify me too much. Let it be allowed you safely to put off this burden, lest, as it recedes, it crush you: now you will set yourself more safely in a lesser place.

OEDIPUS: Do you even urge me, of my own accord, to lay aside realms so heavy?

CREON: This I would counsel those whose state is still free toward either course: for you it is now necessary to bear your fortune.

OEDIPUS: It is the surest road for one who desires to reign, to praise moderation and to talk of ease and sleep; the restless often feign quiet.

CREON: Does my long-tried faith defend me too little?

OEDIPUS: Faith offers an opening for harm to the treacherous.

CREON: Freed of the royal burden, I enjoy the goods of the kingdom, and my house thrives with the throng of citizens, nor does any day rise in alternate turns on which the gifts of a kindred scepter do not flow to our household; rich attire, opulent feasts, favor granted to many, our protection: what would I think wanting to a fortune so blessed?

OEDIPUS: What is wanting: prosperity never has a measure.

CREON: So shall I, my cause unheard, fall as a guilty man?

OEDIPUS: Was an account of my life rendered to you? Was our cause heard by Tiresias? Yet I am thought guilty. You set the example: I follow.

CREON: What if I am innocent?

OEDIPUS: Kings are wont to fear doubtful things as sure.

CREON: He who quakes at empty fears deserves true ones.

OEDIPUS: Whoever has been in guilt, released, hates: let all that is doubtful fall.

CREON: Thus hatreds are made.

OEDIPUS: He who fears hatreds too much knows not how to reign: fear guards realms.

CREON: He who, savage, rules the scepter with harsh sway, fears those who fear: fear returns upon its author.

OEDIPUS: Keep the guilty man shut in a rocky cave; I myself will carry my step back to the royal household.

CHORUS

Not you are the cause of such great dangers, not from this do the fates seek out the line of Labdacus, but the ancient wraths of the gods follow: the Castalian grove gave shade to the Sidonian guest, and Dirce washed the Tyrian settlers, as soon as the son of great Agenor, weary of pursuing through the city the thefts of Jove, stood, trembling, beneath our tree, revering his own robber, and, at Phoebus' warning, bidden to go as companion to a wandering cow, which neither the plowshare had bent nor the curved yoke of the slow wagon, left off his flight and gave the nation its name from the ill-omened cow. From that time the earth ever brought forth new monsters: either a serpent, born in the lowest valleys, hisses above the aged oaks and overtops the pines: higher than the Chaonian trees it raised its blue head, though it lay back with a greater part of itself; or the teeming earth, with impious birth, poured forth arms: the trumpet sounded from the bent horn, and the clarion forced out shrill strains from its hooked bronze, . . . those who before had not tried their nimble tongues and mouths of an unknown voice but first in hostile shout: the kindred ranks held the plains, and the offspring, worthy of the cast seed, having measured their lifetime in a single day, born after the courses of Lucifer fell before the Hesperian risings. The stranger shudders at such great monsters and fears the wars of the new people, until the savage youth fell and the mother saw the nurslings just brought forth restored to her own bosom. By this may civil wickedness have passed away! That strife of brothers let Theban Thebes, the city of Hercules, know. What of the fate of Cadmus' grandson, when the horns of the long-lived stag covered his brow with new branches and his dogs drove their own master? Headlong, swift, Actaeon fled the woods and the mountains and, wandering with nimbler foot through the glades and rocks, feared the feathers stirred by the zephyrs and shunned the nets he himself had set: until in the wave of the placid fountain he saw his horns and his wild face; there the goddess of too savage modesty had bathed her maiden limbs.

OEDIPUS, JOCASTA

OEDIPUS: My mind revolves my cares and resumes its fears. The gods above and below declare that Laius died by our crime, but my mind, against this, innocent, and known better to itself than to the gods, denies it. Memory returns through a faint trace: that one, met upon my way, fell by the stroke of my staff and was given to Dis, when an old man, proud in his chariot, was driving the youth before him, far from Thebes, where the Phocian region cuts its threefold ways. O wife of one soul, unravel, I pray, my errors: what span of life did Laius bear in dying? Did he fall green in his first age, or broken?

JOCASTA: Between an old man and a youth, but nearer the old.

OEDIPUS: Did a thronging crowd gird the royal side?

JOCASTA: The error of the doubtful road deceived most; the faithful toil joined a few to his chariots.

OEDIPUS: Did anyone fall, a companion of the royal fate?

JOCASTA: One whom faith and valor added as his consort.

OEDIPUS: I hold the guilty one: the number fits, the place: but add the time.

JOCASTA: Now the tenth harvest is measured out.

CORINTHIAN OLD MAN, JOCASTA

OLD MAN: The Corinthian people calls you to your father's realm: Polybus holds eternal rest.

OEDIPUS: How on every side savage Fortune rushes upon me! Tell on, then, by what fate my father falls.

OLD MAN: A gentle slumber loosed his aged soul.

OEDIPUS: My father lies dead without any slaughter. I call to witness — now I may lift to heaven, in piety, hands pure and fearing no crimes, but the more fearful part of the fates remains.

OLD MAN: Your father's realm will scatter all your fear.

OEDIPUS: I will seek again my father's realm; but I dread my mother.

OLD MAN: Do you fear a parent who, seeking your return, hangs anxious?

OEDIPUS: My very piety drives me away.

OLD MAN: Will you leave her a widow?

OEDIPUS: There — you touch my very fears.

OLD MAN: Speak out what fear presses, gnawing, on your mind; I am wont to give kings a silent faith.

OEDIPUS: At Delphi's warning I tremble at marriage with my mother.

OLD MAN: Cease to fear vain things and lay aside base fears: Merope was not your true parent.

OEDIPUS: What reward did she seek by a substituted son?

OLD MAN: Children bind the proud faith of kings.

OEDIPUS: Tell in what way you came by the secret of the chamber.

OLD MAN: These hands gave you, a little one, to your parent.

OEDIPUS: You gave me to my parent; but who gave me to you?

OLD MAN: A shepherd, beneath the snowy ridge of Cithaeron.

OEDIPUS: What chance brought you into those groves?

OLD MAN: On that mountain I was following the horned flocks.

OEDIPUS: Now add sure marks of my body.

OLD MAN: You had borne your feet pierced through with iron, and you got your name from the swelling and the defect of your feet.

OEDIPUS: Who that man was who gave me as a gift, I ask.

OLD MAN: He pastured the royal flocks; under him was a lesser throng of shepherds.

OEDIPUS: Tell his name.

OLD MAN: The first memory of old men grows faint, weary, slipping away under long decay.

OEDIPUS: Can you know the man by his face and look?

OLD MAN: Perhaps I shall know him: often a slight mark recalls a memory grown old, buried by time.

OEDIPUS: Let all the flock, driven to the rites and the altars, have its keepers follow it; go, quickly fetch, servants, those in whose hands the charge of the flocks rests.

OLD MAN: Whether reason or fortune hides these things, suffer to lie hidden always what has long lain hidden: often the truth has come to light to the harm of one who digs it out.

OEDIPUS: Can any evil greater be feared, twice over?

OLD MAN: Know that it is great that is sought with great effort; on that side the public safety meets, on this the king's: both are equal; hold your hands midway, provoke nothing, let the fates unfold themselves.

OEDIPUS: It is not expedient to shake a happy state: whatever is in the last place is moved in safety.

OLD MAN: Do you seek something nobler than royal birth? See that the finding of your parent not bring you grief.

OEDIPUS: I will seek the proof even of a blood to be repented of, if it is sure to know it. See, an aged old man, under whom the charge of the royal flock had been, Phorbas. Do you call up the name or the face of the old man?

OLD MAN: His form strikes my mind; nor is he known enough, nor again is that face unknown to me.

OEDIPUS: When Laius held the realm, did you, a servant, drive the rich flocks beneath the region of Cithaeron?

PHORBAS, OEDIPUS

PHORBAS: Glad Cithaeron, ever with new pasture, yields its summer meadows to our flock.

OLD MAN: Do you know me?

PHORBAS: My doubtful memory wavers.

OEDIPUS: Was some boy once handed over by you to this man? Speak. Do you hesitate? Why does the color of your cheeks change? Why do you seek words? Truth hates delays.

PHORBAS: You stir things covered over by a long stretch of time.

OEDIPUS: Confess, lest pain compel you to the truth.

PHORBAS: I gave him a useless gift, that infant: he could not enjoy the light, nor the sky.

OLD MAN: Far be the omen. He lives and may he live, I pray.

OEDIPUS: Why do you deny that the infant handed over survives?

PHORBAS: A thin iron, driven through both his feet, bound his limbs; a swelling, grown in the wound, burned the boyish body with a foul plague.

OEDIPUS: Why do you seek further? The fates now draw near. Tell who that infant was.

PHORBAS: My faith forbids it.

OEDIPUS: Bring fire, someone, hither! The flame will now shake out your faith.

PHORBAS: Shall the truth be sought by ways so bloody? Pardon me, I beg.

OEDIPUS: If I seem savage to you and ungoverned, vengeance is ready in your hand: tell the truth: who was he? Or of what father begotten? Born of what mother?

PHORBAS: He was born of your wife.

OEDIPUS: Gape open, earth; and you, lord of the darkness, ruler of the shades, snatch into lowest Tartarus, turned backward, the reversed order of race and stock. Heap, citizens, your stones upon this abominable head, slay me with weapons: let a parent seek me with the sword, let a son, let wives arm their hands against me, and brothers, and let the sick people hurl the fires snatched from their pyres. I wander, the crime of the age, the hatred of the gods, the ruin of sacred law, from the day I first drank the untaught breath, already worthy of death. Now render keen spirits, now dare something worthy of your crimes. Go, go on, with hurried step seek the palace: congratulate your mother on her house enlarged with children.

CHORUS

If it were allowed me to shape my fates at my own will, I would temper my sails to a light zephyr, lest the yardarms, pressed by a heavy breath, tremble: let a gentle breeze, flowing moderately, nor heeling the side, lead the untroubled ship; let a safe life bear me, running down the middle road. Fearing the Gnosian king, while, deranged, he sought the stars, trusting in his new arts, the boy strove to surpass the true birds and commanded too much of his false wings: he gave his name to the sea. The cunning old man Daedalus, balancing his course in the middle, stood beneath the middle cloud, awaiting his winged son (as the bird that flees the threats of the hawk and in fear gathers her scattered brood), until in the sea the boy moved his hands, entangled in the fetter of his bold way. Whatever has passed the measure hangs in an unstable place. But what is this? The doors sound; see, a mournful royal servant shakes his head with his hand. Tell what new thing you bring.

MESSENGER

MESSENGER: When Oedipus detected the foretold fates and his abominable lineage, and condemned himself, convicted of crime, seeking the palace, hostile, he entered the hated roof with hurried step, as the Libyan lion rages through the fields, shaking his tawny mane with threatening brow; his face is grim with frenzy, and his eyes savage, a groaning and a deep murmur, and a cold sweat flows over his limbs; he foams and rolls his threats, and his great grief, sunk deep, overflows. Savage, he prepares for himself some great thing, I know not what, like his own fates: "Why do I delay my punishment?" he says; "let someone seek this guilty breast with the sword, or tame it with burning fire or with a stone. What tigress, or what savage bird will rush upon my vitals? You yourself, capable of crimes, holy Cithaeron, either send forth your beasts against me from your woods, or send your rabid dogs — now bring back Agave. My soul, why do you fear death? Death alone snatches the innocent from Fortune." Having said this, he fits his impious hand to the hilt and draws his sword: "What, thus? Do you pay brief penalties for crimes so great, and balance all with one stroke? You die: this is enough for your father; what then will you give to your mother, what to the children ill brought to the light, what to her, your country, who pays your crime with a great ruin, weeping? You cannot pay: that Nature which in Oedipus alone turned her fixed laws aside, contriving new births, let her be renewed for my punishments too. Let me live again and die again, be born ever, that so often you may pay new penalties — use your wit, wretched one: what often cannot be done, let it be done for long; let a long death be chosen, let a way be sought by which, neither mingled with the buried nor yet removed from the living, you may wander: die, but short of your father. Do you delay, my soul?" See, a sudden shower poured forth weighs down his face and waters his cheeks with weeping. "And is it enough to weep? Shall my eyes pour forth only this light liquid? Driven from their seats, let them follow the tears: gods of marriage, is that enough? Let the eyes be dug out!" he said, and rages with anger: his threatening cheeks burn with a fierce fire, and his eyes scarce keep themselves in their seats; his face is violent, bold, angry, fierce, only that of a frenzied man. He groaned, and, raging horribly, turned his hands upon his face; but, on the other hand, his savage eyes stood firm and, intent, of their own accord follow his hand, run to meet their own wound. Greedy, with hooked hands he searches out his eyes, and at once tears out the orbs, plucked from their lowest root; his hand sticks fast in the empty socket and, fixed deep, with its nails lacerates the hollow recesses of the eyes, deep down, and the empty cavities, and rages in vain and frenzies more than enough. The test of the light is made; he lifts his head and, surveying the regions of the sky with his hollow orbs, tries the night. Whatever ill hangs from his dug-out eyes he breaks off, and, victorious, cries aloud to all the gods: "Spare now, I pray, my country: now I have done justice, I have borne the penalties owed; a night worthy of my marriage is found at last." A foul shower waters his face, and his torn head vomits much blood from the burst veins.

CHORUS

By the fates we are driven: yield to the fates; no anxious cares can change the threads of the fixed spindle. Whatever we suffer, the mortal race, whatever we do, comes from on high, and Lachesis keeps the decrees of her distaff, unrolled by no hand. All things go on by their cut path, and the first day has given the last: not for the god is it allowed to turn those things which, knit, run by their own causes. For each there goes a fixed order, moved by no prayer: to many, the very fear has done harm; many have come to their fate while they feared the fates. The doors have sounded, and he himself, with no leader, attempts his way, bereft of light.

OEDIPUS, CHORUS, JOCASTA

OEDIPUS: It is well, it is done: I have paid the due to my father. The darkness delights me. What god, appeased at last, pours a black cloud over my head? Who pardons my crimes? I have escaped the conscious day. Nothing, parricide, do you owe to your right hand: the light fled you; this face befits Oedipus.

CHORUS: But see, with rapid step savage Jocasta leaped forth, frenzied, as the stunned and raging Cadmean mother who tore off her son's head and felt that she had snatched it, hesitates over the stricken man, desires and fears. Now shame has yielded to her evils, but the first word sticks in her mouth.

JOCASTA: What shall I call you? My son? Do you hesitate? You are my son: are you ashamed of your son? Speak, unwilling son — where do you turn your head and your empty face?

OEDIPUS: Who forbids me to enjoy the darkness? Who gives me back my eyes? My mother's, see, my mother's voice! We have wasted our labor; it is no longer right for us to meet. Let the vast sea divide the abominable pair, and let the hidden earth part us, and whatever world, turned beneath this, to other stars and a far-off sun, hangs, bear one of us to the other.

JOCASTA: This is the fault of fate: no one becomes guilty by fate.

OEDIPUS: Now spare your words, mother, and spare my ears: by these relics of a maimed body I beg, by the ill-omened pledge of my blood, by all that is right and wrong of our name.

JOCASTA: Why, my soul, are you numb? Why do you refuse to pay the penalty, a partner in the crimes? Through you, incestuous one, all the glory of human law, confounded, perishes: die, and drive out your abominable breath with the sword. Not if the very father of the gods, shaking the world, should hurl his flashing, savage weapons with his hand, would I ever pay penalties equal to my crimes, an abominable mother. Death pleases me: let the way of death be sought. Come, then, lend a hand to your mother, if you are a parricide. This last of your work remains: let the sword be snatched up; by this steel lies my husband — why do you not call him by his true name? He is my father-in-law. Shall I fix the weapon in my breast or plunge it, buried, in my open throat? You know not how to choose the wound: this, my hand, this seek, this capacious womb, which bore my husband and my sons.

CHORUS: She lies dead. Her hand dies in the wound, and the excess of blood has cast out the steel with itself.

OEDIPUS: You, prophetic one, you, the guardian and god of truth, I arraign: to the fates I owed only my father; twice a parricide, and more guilty than I feared, I have slain my mother: she is destroyed by my crime. O lying Phoebus, I have surpassed the impious fates. With trembling step follow the pallid ways; lifting your feet, poised on your soles, with trembling right hand rule the blind night. Go on headlong, setting slippery steps, flee, depart — halt, lest you fall upon your mother. Whoever, weary in body and heavy with disease, drag your half-dead breasts, see, I flee, I go out: lift your necks, a gentler state of the sky follows behind me: whoever, lying, retains his slender life, let him lightly draw the living draughts of air. Go, bring aid to the abandoned: the deadly taints of the lands I draw away with me. Violent Fates, and the horrid trembling of Disease, and Wasting, and black Pestilence, and rabid Pain, go with me, with me; it pleases me to use these as my guides.