Sophocles Oedipustrilogy

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The Oedipus Trilogy.

Sophocles.

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About the author
Sophocles (496 BC - 406

BC), was an Athenian
dramatist and politician. He is
known as the second of the
three great Greek tragedians,
preceded by Aeschylus and
followed by Euripides.
He distinguished himself
at an early age: At the Athe-
nian celebration of the victory
at Salamis (480 BC), the 16-
year-old Sophocles was the
leader of the chorus of dancing
and singing naked boys.
A long line of scholars, beginning with Aristotle, considered

Sophocles to be the greatest playwright among the ancients. He also
won the Festival of Dionysus, an ancient dramatic festival, more
times than any other. Records indicate that none of his plays earned
anything lower than second place.
Contents
Contents
Oedipus. Click on a number in the list

Oedipus at Colonus. to go to the first page of that
play in the trilogy.
Antigone.
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Sophocles. The Oedipus Trilogy. http://collegebookshelf.net 1
1.
OEDIPUS THE KING
The Oedipus Argument.
To Laius, King of Thebes, an oracle foretold that the child born
Triology. to him by his queen Jocasta would slay his father and wed his
mother. So when in time a son was born the infant’s feet were riveted
together and he was left to die on Mount Cithaeron. But a shepherd
Translated by F. Storr found the babe and tended him, and delivered him to another
shepherd who took him to his master, the King or Corinth. Polybus
being childless adopted the boy, who grew up believing that he was
indeed the King’s son. Afterwards doubting his parentage he
inquired of the Delphic god and heard himself the weird declared
before to Laius. Wherefore he fled from what he deemed his father’s
house and in his flight he encountered and unwillingly slew his
father Laius. Arriving at Thebes he answered the riddle of the
NOTICE Sphinx and the grateful Thebans made their deliverer king. So he
Copyright © 2004 thewritedirection.net reigned in the room of Laius, and espoused the widowed queen.
Contents
Please note that although the text of this ebook is in the public domain, Children were born to them and Thebes prospered under his rule,
this pdf edition is a copyrighted publication.
FOR COMPLETE DETAILS, SEE but again a grievous plague fell upon the city. Again the oracle was
COLLEGEBOOKSHELF.NET/COPYRIGHTS consulted and it bade them purge themselves of blood-guiltiness.
2 3
Oedipus denounces the crime of which he is unaware, and under- Ho! aged sire, whose venerable locks
takes to track out the criminal. Step by step it is brought home to him Proclaim thee spokesman of this company,
that he is the man. The closing scene reveals Jocasta slain by her own Explain your mood and purport. Is it dread
hand and Oedipus blinded by his own act and praying for death or Of ill that moves you or a boon ye crave?
exile. My zeal in your behalf ye cannot doubt;
Ruthless indeed were I and obdurate
Translated by F. Storr If such petitioners as you I spurned.
PRIEST
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Yea, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,
Thou seest how both extremes of age besiege
Oedipus.
Thy palace altars—fledglings hardly winged,
The Priest of Zeus.
and greybeards bowed with years; priests, as am I
Creon.
of Zeus, and these the flower of our youth.
Chorus of Theban Elders.
Meanwhile, the common folk, with wreathed boughs
Teiresias.
Crowd our two market-places, or before
Jocasta.
Both shrines of Pallas congregate, or where
Messenger.
Ismenus gives his oracles by fire.
Herd of Laius.
For, as thou seest thyself, our ship of State,
Second Messenger.
Sore buffeted, can no more lift her head,
Scene: Thebes. Before the Palace of Oedipus. Foundered beneath a weltering surge of blood.
Suppliants of all ages are seated round the altar at the palace doors, A blight is on our harvest in the ear,
at their head a PRIEST OF ZEUS. To them enter OEDIPUS. A blight upon the grazing flocks and herds,
A blight on wives in travail; and withal
OEDIPUS Armed with his blazing torch the God of Plague
My children, latest born to Cadmus old, Hath swooped upon our city emptying
Why sit ye here as suppliants, in your hands The house of Cadmus, and the murky realm
Branches of olive filleted with wool? Of Pluto is full fed with groans and tears.
What means this reek of incense everywhere, Therefore, O King, here at thy hearth we sit,
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And everywhere laments and litanies? I and these children; not as deeming thee
Children, it were not meet that I should learn A new divinity, but the first of men;
From others, and am hither come, myself, First in the common accidents of life,
I Oedipus, your world-renowned king.
4 5
And first in visitations of the Gods. Him and none other, but I grieve at once
Art thou not he who coming to the town Both for the general and myself and you.
of Cadmus freed us from the tax we paid Therefore ye rouse no sluggard from day-dreams.
To the fell songstress? Nor hadst thou received Many, my children, are the tears I’ve wept,
Prompting from us or been by others schooled; And threaded many a maze of weary thought.
No, by a god inspired (so all men deem, Thus pondering one clue of hope I caught,
And testify) didst thou renew our life. And tracked it up; I have sent Menoeceus’ son,
And now, O Oedipus, our peerless king, Creon, my consort’s brother, to inquire
All we thy votaries beseech thee, find Of Pythian Phoebus at his Delphic shrine,
Some succor, whether by a voice from heaven How I might save the State by act or word.
Whispered, or haply known by human wit. And now I reckon up the tale of days
Tried counselors, methinks, are aptest found [1] Since he set forth, and marvel how he fares.
To furnish for the future pregnant rede. ’Tis strange, this endless tarrying, passing strange.
Upraise, O chief of men, upraise our State! But when he comes, then I were base indeed,
Look to thy laurels! for thy zeal of yore If I perform not all the god declares.
Our country’s savior thou art justly hailed:
PRIEST
O never may we thus record thy reign:—
Thy words are well timed; even as thou speakest
“He raised us up only to cast us down.”
That shouting tells me Creon is at hand.
Uplift us, build our city on a rock.
Thy happy star ascendant brought us luck, OEDIPUS
O let it not decline! If thou wouldst rule O King Apollo! may his joyous looks
This land, as now thou reignest, better sure Be presage of the joyous news he brings!
To rule a peopled than a desert realm. PRIEST
Nor battlements nor galleys aught avail, As I surmise, ’tis welcome; else his head
If men to man and guards to guard them tail. Had scarce been crowned with berry-laden bays.
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Ah! my poor children, known, ah, known too well, We soon shall know; he’s now in earshot range.
The quest that brings you hither and your need.
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[Enter CREON]
Ye sicken all, well wot I, yet my pain, My royal cousin, say, Menoeceus’ child,
How great soever yours, outtops it all. What message hast thou brought us from the god?
Your sorrow touches each man severally,
CREON
6 7
Good news, for e’en intolerable ills, CREON

Finding right issue, tend to naught but good. He fell; and now the god’s command is plain:
Punish his takers-off, whoe’er they be.
OEDIPUS
How runs the oracle? thus far thy words OEDIPUS
Give me no ground for confidence or fear. Where are they? Where in the wide world to find
The far, faint traces of a bygone crime?
CREON
If thou wouldst hear my message publicly, CREON
I’ll tell thee straight, or with thee pass within. In this land, said the god; “who seeks shall find;
Who sits with folded hands or sleeps is blind.”
OEDIPUS
Speak before all; the burden that I bear OEDIPUS
Is more for these my subjects than myself. Was he within his palace, or afield,
Or traveling, when Laius met his fate?
CREON
Let me report then all the god declared. CREON
King Phoebus bids us straitly extirpate Abroad; he started, so he told us, bound
A fell pollution that infests the land, For Delphi, but he never thence returned.
And no more harbor an inveterate sore.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS Came there no news, no fellow-traveler
What expiation means he? What’s amiss? To give some clue that might be followed up?
CREON CREON
Banishment, or the shedding blood for blood. But one escape, who flying for dear life,
This stain of blood makes shipwreck of our state. Could tell of all he saw but one thing sure.
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Whom can he mean, the miscreant thus denounced? And what was that? One clue might lead us far,
With but a spark of hope to guide our quest.
CREON
Before thou didst assume the helm of State, CREON
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The sovereign of this land was Laius. Robbers, he told us, not one bandit but
A troop of knaves, attacked and murdered him.
OEDIPUS
I heard as much, but never saw the man. OEDIPUS
8 9
Did any bandit dare so bold a stroke, And may the god who sent this oracle
Unless indeed he were suborned from Thebes? Save us withal and rid us of this pest.
[Exeunt PRIEST and SUPPLIANTS]
CREON
So ’twas surmised, but none was found to avenge CHORUS
His murder mid the trouble that ensued. (Str. 1)
Sweet-voiced daughter of Zeus from thy gold-paved Pythian shrine
OEDIPUS
Wafted to Thebes divine,
What trouble can have hindered a full quest,
What dost thou bring me? My soul is racked and shivers with fear.
When royalty had fallen thus miserably?
(Healer of Delos, hear!)
CREON Hast thou some pain unknown before,
The riddling Sphinx compelled us to let slide Or with the circling years renewest a penance of yore?
The dim past and attend to instant needs. Offspring of golden Hope, thou voice immortal, O tell me.
OEDIPUS (Ant. 1)
Well, I will start afresh and once again First on Athene I call; O Zeus-born goddess, defend!
Make dark things clear. Right worthy the concern Goddess and sister, befriend,
Of Phoebus, worthy thine too, for the dead; Artemis, Lady of Thebes, high-throned in the midst of our mart!
I also, as is meet, will lend my aid Lord of the death-winged dart!
To avenge this wrong to Thebes and to the god. Your threefold aid I crave
Not for some far-off kinsman, but myself, From death and ruin our city to save.
Shall I expel this poison in the blood; If in the days of old when we nigh had perished, ye drave
For whoso slew that king might have a mind From our land the fiery plague, be near us now and defend us!
To strike me too with his assassin hand. (Str. 2)
Therefore in righting him I serve myself. Ah me, what countless woes are mine!
Up, children, haste ye, quit these altar stairs, All our host is in decline;
Take hence your suppliant wands, go summon hither Weaponless my spirit lies.
The Theban commons. With the god’s good help Earth her gracious fruits denies;
Success is sure; ’tis ruin if we fail. Women wail in barren throes;
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[Exeunt OEDIPUS and CREON] Life on life downstriken goes,

PRIEST Swifter than the wind bird’s flight,
Come, children, let us hence; these gracious words Swifter than the Fire-God’s might,
Forestall the very purpose of our suit. To the westering shores of Night.
10 11
(Ant. 2) Thee too I call with golden-snooded hair,

Wasted thus by death on death Whose name our land doth bear,
All our city perisheth. Bacchus to whom thy Maenads Evoe shout;
Corpses spread infection round; Come with thy bright torch, rout,
None to tend or mourn is found. Blithe god whom we adore,
Wailing on the altar stair The god whom gods abhor.
Wives and grandams rend the air— [Enter OEDIPUS.]
Long-drawn moans and piercing cries OEDIPUS
Blent with prayers and litanies. Ye pray; ’tis well, but would ye hear my words
Golden child of Zeus, O hear And heed them and apply the remedy,
Let thine angel face appear! Ye might perchance find comfort and relief.
(Str. 3) Mind you, I speak as one who comes a stranger
And grant that Ares whose hot breath I feel, To this report, no less than to the crime;
Though without targe or steel For how unaided could I track it far
He stalks, whose voice is as the battle shout, Without a clue? Which lacking (for too late
May turn in sudden rout, Was I enrolled a citizen of Thebes)
To the unharbored Thracian waters sped, This proclamation I address to all:—
Or Amphitrite’s bed. Thebans, if any knows the man by whom
For what night leaves undone, Laius, son of Labdacus, was slain,
Smit by the morrow’s sun I summon him to make clean shrift to me.
Perisheth. Father Zeus, whose hand And if he shrinks, let him reflect that thus
Doth wield the lightning brand, Confessing he shall ‘scape the capital charge;
Slay him beneath thy levin bold, we pray, For the worst penalty that shall befall him
Slay him, O slay! Is banishment—unscathed he shall depart.
(Ant. 3) But if an alien from a foreign land
O that thine arrows too, Lycean King, Be known to any as the murderer,
From that taut bow’s gold string, Let him who knows speak out, and he shall have
Due recompense from me and thanks to boot.
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Might fly abroad, the champions of our rights;

Yea, and the flashing lights But if ye still keep silence, if through fear
Of Artemis, wherewith the huntress sweeps For self or friends ye disregard my hest,
Across the Lycian steeps. Hear what I then resolve; I lay my ban
12 13
On the assassin whosoe’er he be. And for the disobedient thus I pray:
Let no man in this land, whereof I hold May the gods send them neither timely fruits
The sovereign rule, harbor or speak to him; Of earth, nor teeming increase of the womb,
Give him no part in prayer or sacrifice But may they waste and pine, as now they waste,
Or lustral rites, but hound him from your homes. Aye and worse stricken; but to all of you,
For this is our defilement, so the god My loyal subjects who approve my acts,
Hath lately shown to me by oracles. May Justice, our ally, and all the gods
Thus as their champion I maintain the cause Be gracious and attend you evermore.
Both of the god and of the murdered King.
CHORUS
And on the murderer this curse I lay
The oath thou profferest, sire, I take and swear.
(On him and all the partners in his guilt):—
I slew him not myself, nor can I name
Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness!
The slayer. For the quest, ‘twere well, methinks
And for myself, if with my privity
That Phoebus, who proposed the riddle, himself
He gain admittance to my hearth, I pray
Should give the answer—who the murderer was.
The curse I laid on others fall on me.
See that ye give effect to all my hest, OEDIPUS
For my sake and the god’s and for our land, Well argued; but no living man can hope
A desert blasted by the wrath of heaven. To force the gods to speak against their will.
For, let alone the god’s express command, CHORUS
It were a scandal ye should leave unpurged May I then say what seems next best to me?
The murder of a great man and your king,
OEDIPUS
Nor track it home. And now that I am lord,
Aye, if there be a third best, tell it too.
Successor to his throne, his bed, his wife,
(And had he not been frustrate in the hope CHORUS
Of issue, common children of one womb My liege, if any man sees eye to eye
Had forced a closer bond twixt him and me, With our lord Phoebus, ’tis our prophet, lord
But Fate swooped down upon him), therefore I Teiresias; he of all men best might guide
His blood-avenger will maintain his cause A searcher of this matter to the light.
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As though he were my sire, and leave no stone OEDIPUS

Unturned to track the assassin or avenge Here too my zeal has nothing lagged, for twice
The son of Labdacus, of Polydore, At Creon’s instance have I sent to fetch him,
Of Cadmus, and Agenor first of the race.
14 15
And long I marvel why he is not here. The purport of the answer that the God
Returned to us who sought his oracle,
CHORUS
The messengers have doubtless told thee—how
I mind me too of rumors long ago—
One course alone could rid us of the pest,
Mere gossip.
To find the murderers of Laius,
OEDIPUS And slay them or expel them from the land.
Tell them, I would fain know all. Therefore begrudging neither augury
CHORUS Nor other divination that is thine,
’Twas said he fell by travelers. O save thyself, thy country, and thy king,
Save all from this defilement of blood shed.
OEDIPUS
On thee we rest. This is man’s highest end,
So I heard,
To others’ service all his powers to lend.
But none has seen the man who saw him fall.
TEIRESIAS
CHORUS
Alas, alas, what misery to be wise
Well, if he knows what fear is, he will quail
When wisdom profits nothing! This old lore
And flee before the terror of thy curse.
I had forgotten; else I were not here.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
Words scare not him who blenches not at deeds.
What ails thee? Why this melancholy mood?
CHORUS
TEIRESIAS
But here is one to arraign him. Lo, at length
Let me go home; prevent me not; ‘twere best
They bring the god-inspired seer in whom
That thou shouldst bear thy burden and I mine.
Above all other men is truth inborn.
[Enter TEIRESIAS, led by a boy.] OEDIPUS
For shame! no true-born Theban patriot
OEDIPUS
Would thus withhold the word of prophecy.
Teiresias, seer who comprehendest all,
Lore of the wise and hidden mysteries, TEIRESIAS
High things of heaven and low things of the earth, _Thy_ words, O king, are wide of the mark, and I
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Thou knowest, though thy blinded eyes see naught, For fear lest I too trip like thee...
What plague infects our city; and we turn OEDIPUS
To thee, O seer, our one defense and shield. Oh speak,
16 17
Withhold not, I adjure thee, if thou know’st, OEDIPUS

Thy knowledge. We are all thy suppliants. Yea, I am wroth, and will not stint my words,
But speak my whole mind. Thou methinks thou art he,
TEIRESIAS
Who planned the crime, aye, and performed it too,
Aye, for ye all are witless, but my voice
All save the assassination; and if thou
Will ne’er reveal my miseries—or thine. [2]
Hadst not been blind, I had been sworn to boot
OEDIPUS That thou alone didst do the bloody deed.
What then, thou knowest, and yet willst not speak!
TEIRESIAS
Wouldst thou betray us and destroy the State?
Is it so? Then I charge thee to abide
TEIRESIAS By thine own proclamation; from this day
I will not vex myself nor thee. Why ask Speak not to these or me. Thou art the man,
Thus idly what from me thou shalt not learn? Thou the accursed polluter of this land.
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Monster! thy silence would incense a flint. Vile slanderer, thou blurtest forth these taunts,
Will nothing loose thy tongue? Can nothing melt thee, And think’st forsooth as seer to go scot free.
Or shake thy dogged taciturnity?
TEIRESIAS
TEIRESIAS Yea, I am free, strong in the strength of truth.
Thou blam’st my mood and seest not thine own
OEDIPUS
Wherewith thou art mated; no, thou taxest me.
Who was thy teacher? not methinks thy art.
OEDIPUS
TEIRESIAS
And who could stay his choler when he heard
Thou, goading me against my will to speak.
How insolently thou dost flout the State?
OEDIPUS
TEIRESIAS
What speech? repeat it and resolve my doubt.
Well, it will come what will, though I be mute.
TEIRESIAS
OEDIPUS
Didst miss my sense wouldst thou goad me on?
Since come it must, thy duty is to tell me.
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OEDIPUS
TEIRESIAS
I but half caught thy meaning; say it again.
I have no more to say; storm as thou willst,
And give the rein to all thy pent-up rage. TEIRESIAS
18 19
I say thou art the murderer of the man OEDIPUS

Whose murderer thou pursuest. Is this a plot of Creon, or thine own?
OEDIPUS TEIRESIAS
Thou shalt rue it Not Creon, thou thyself art thine own bane.
Twice to repeat so gross a calumny.
OEDIPUS
TEIRESIAS O wealth and empiry and skill by skill
Must I say more to aggravate thy rage? Outwitted in the battlefield of life,
What spite and envy follow in your train!
OEDIPUS
See, for this crown the State conferred on me.
Say all thou wilt; it will be but waste of breath.
A gift, a thing I sought not, for this crown
TEIRESIAS The trusty Creon, my familiar friend,
I say thou livest with thy nearest kin Hath lain in wait to oust me and suborned
In infamy, unwitting in thy shame. This mountebank, this juggling charlatan,
OEDIPUS This tricksy beggar-priest, for gain alone
Think’st thou for aye unscathed to wag thy tongue? Keen-eyed, but in his proper art stone-blind.
Say, sirrah, hast thou ever proved thyself
TEIRESIAS
A prophet? When the riddling Sphinx was here
Yea, if the might of truth can aught prevail.
Why hadst thou no deliverance for this folk?
OEDIPUS
And yet the riddle was not to be solved
With other men, but not with thee, for thou
By guess-work but required the prophet’s art;
In ear, wit, eye, in everything art blind.
Wherein thou wast found lacking; neither birds
TEIRESIAS Nor sign from heaven helped thee, but _I_ came,
Poor fool to utter gibes at me which all The simple Oedipus; _I_ stopped her mouth
Here present will cast back on thee ere long. By mother wit, untaught of auguries.
OEDIPUS This is the man whom thou wouldst undermine,
Offspring of endless Night, thou hast no power In hope to reign with Creon in my stead.
O’er me or any man who sees the sun. Methinks that thou and thine abettor soon
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Will rue your plot to drive the scapegoat out.

TEIRESIAS Thank thy grey hairs that thou hast still to learn
No, for thy weird is not to fall by me. What chastisement such arrogance deserves.
I leave to Apollo what concerns the god.
20 21
CHORUS Must I endure this fellow’s insolence?

To us it seems that both the seer and thou, A murrain on thee! Get thee hence! Begone
O Oedipus, have spoken angry words. Avaunt! and never cross my threshold more.
This is no time to wrangle but consult
TEIRESIAS
How best we may fulfill the oracle.
I ne’er had come hadst thou not bidden me.
TEIRESIAS
OEDIPUS
King as thou art, free speech at least is mine
I know not thou wouldst utter folly, else
To make reply; in this I am thy peer.
Long hadst thou waited to be summoned here.
I own no lord but Loxias; him I serve
And ne’er can stand enrolled as Creon’s man. TEIRESIAS
Thus then I answer: since thou hast not spared Such am I—as it seems to thee a fool,
To twit me with my blindness—thou hast eyes, But to the parents who begat thee, wise.
Yet see’st not in what misery thou art fallen, OEDIPUS
Nor where thou dwellest nor with whom for mate. What sayest thou—”parents”? Who begat me, speak?
Dost know thy lineage? Nay, thou know’st it not,
TEIRESIAS
And all unwitting art a double foe
This day shall be thy birth-day, and thy grave.
To thine own kin, the living and the dead;
Aye and the dogging curse of mother and sire OEDIPUS
One day shall drive thee, like a two-edged sword, Thou lov’st to speak in riddles and dark words.
Beyond our borders, and the eyes that now TEIRESIAS
See clear shall henceforward endless night. In reading riddles who so skilled as thou?
Ah whither shall thy bitter cry not reach,
What crag in all Cithaeron but shall then OEDIPUS
Reverberate thy wail, when thou hast found Twit me with that wherein my greatness lies.
With what a hymeneal thou wast borne TEIRESIAS
Home, but to no fair haven, on the gale! And yet this very greatness proved thy bane.
Aye, and a flood of ills thou guessest not
OEDIPUS
Shall set thyself and children in one line.
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No matter if I saved the commonwealth.

Flout then both Creon and my words, for none
Of mortals shall be striken worse than thou. TEIRESIAS
’Tis time I left thee. Come, boy, take me home.
OEDIPUS
22 23
OEDIPUS Like sleuth-hounds too

Aye, take him quickly, for his presence irks The Fates pursue.
And lets me; gone, thou canst not plague me more. (Ant. 1)
TEIRESIAS Yea, but now flashed forth the summons
I go, but first will tell thee why I came. from Parnassus’ snowy peak,
Thy frown I dread not, for thou canst not harm me. “Near and far the undiscovered doer of this murder seek!”
Hear then: this man whom thou hast sought to arrest Now like a sullen bull he roves
With threats and warrants this long while, the wretch Through forest brakes and upland groves,
Who murdered Laius—that man is here. And vainly seeks to fly
He passes for an alien in the land The doom that ever nigh
But soon shall prove a Theban, native born. Flits o’er his head,
And yet his fortune brings him little joy; Still by the avenging Phoebus sped,
For blind of seeing, clad in beggar’s weeds, The voice divine,
For purple robes, and leaning on his staff, From Earth’s mid shrine.
To a strange land he soon shall grope his way. (Str. 2)
And of the children, inmates of his home, Sore perplexed am I by the words of the master seer.
He shall be proved the brother and the sire, Are they true, are they false? I know not and bridle
Of her who bare him son and husband both, my tongue for fear,
Co-partner, and assassin of his sire. Fluttered with vague surmise; nor present nor future is clear.
Go in and ponder this, and if thou find Quarrel of ancient date or in days still near know I none
That I have missed the mark, henceforth declare Twixt the Labdacidan house and our ruler, Polybus’ son.
I have no wit nor skill in prophecy. Proof is there none: how then can I challenge our King’s good name,
[Exeunt TEIRESIAS and OEDIPUS] How in a blood-feud join for an untracked deed of shame?
CHORUS (Ant. 2)
(Str. 1) All wise are Zeus and Apollo, and nothing is hid from their ken;
Who is he by voice immortal named from Pythia’s rocky cell, They are gods; and in wits a man may surpass his fellow men;
Doer of foul deeds of bloodshed, horrors that no tongue can tell? But that a mortal seer knows more than I know—where
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A foot for flight he needs Hath this been proven? Or how without sign assured, can I blame
Fleeter than storm-swift steeds, Him who saved our State when the winged songstress came,
For on his heels doth follow, Tested and tried in the light of us all, like gold assayed?
Armed with the lightnings of his Sire, Apollo. How can I now assent when a crime is on Oedipus laid?
24 25
CREON My murderer and the filcher of my crown?

Friends, countrymen, I learn King Oedipus Come, answer this, didst thou detect in me
Hath laid against me a most grievous charge, Some touch of cowardice or witlessness,
And come to you protesting. If he deems That made thee undertake this enterprise?
That I have harmed or injured him in aught I seemed forsooth too simple to perceive
By word or deed in this our present trouble, The serpent stealing on me in the dark,
I care not to prolong the span of life, Or else too weak to scotch it when I saw.
Thus ill-reputed; for the calumny This thou art witless seeking to possess
Hits not a single blot, but blasts my name, Without a following or friends the crown,
If by the general voice I am denounced A prize that followers and wealth must win.
False to the State and false by you my friends.
CREON
CHORUS Attend me. Thou hast spoken, ’tis my turn
This taunt, it well may be, was blurted out To make reply. Then having heard me, judge.
In petulance, not spoken advisedly.
OEDIPUS
CREON Thou art glib of tongue, but I am slow to learn
Did any dare pretend that it was I Of thee; I know too well thy venomous hate.
Prompted the seer to utter a forged charge?
CREON
CHORUS First I would argue out this very point.
Such things were said; with what intent I know not.
OEDIPUS
CREON O argue not that thou art not a rogue.
Were not his wits and vision all astray
CREON
When upon me he fixed this monstrous charge?
If thou dost count a virtue stubbornness,
CHORUS Unschooled by reason, thou art much astray.
I know not; to my sovereign’s acts I am blind.
OEDIPUS
But lo, he comes to answer for himself.
If thou dost hold a kinsman may be wronged,
[Enter OEDIPUS.]
And no pains follow, thou art much to seek.
Contents
OEDIPUS
CREON
Sirrah, what mak’st thou here? Dost thou presume
Therein thou judgest rightly, but this wrong
To approach my doors, thou brazen-faced rogue,
That thou allegest—tell me what it is.
26 27
OEDIPUS CREON
Didst thou or didst thou not advise that I I know not, and not knowing hold my tongue.
Should call the priest?
OEDIPUS
CREON This much thou knowest and canst surely tell.
Yes, and I stand to it.
CREON
OEDIPUS What’s mean’st thou? All I know I will declare.
Tell me how long is it since Laius...
OEDIPUS
CREON But for thy prompting never had the seer
Since Laius...? I follow not thy drift. Ascribed to me the death of Laius.
OEDIPUS CREON
By violent hands was spirited away. If so he thou knowest best; but I
Would put thee to the question in my turn.
CREON
In the dim past, a many years agone. OEDIPUS
Question and prove me murderer if thou canst.
OEDIPUS
Did the same prophet then pursue his craft? CREON
Then let me ask thee, didst thou wed my sister?
CREON
Yes, skilled as now and in no less repute. OEDIPUS
A fact so plain I cannot well deny.
OEDIPUS
Did he at that time ever glance at me? CREON
And as thy consort queen she shares the throne?
CREON
Not to my knowledge, not when I was by. OEDIPUS
I grant her freely all her heart desires.
OEDIPUS
But was no search and inquisition made? CREON
And with you twain I share the triple rule?
CREON
Contents
Surely full quest was made, but nothing learnt. OEDIPUS

Yea, and it is that proves thee a false friend.
OEDIPUS
Why failed the seer to tell his story _then_? CREON
28 29
Not so, if thou wouldst reason with thyself, The thing he counts most precious, his own life,
As I with myself. First, I bid thee think, As spurn a true friend. Thou wilt learn in time
Would any mortal choose a troubled reign The truth, for time alone reveals the just;
Of terrors rather than secure repose, A villain is detected in a day.
If the same power were given him? As for me,
CHORUS
I have no natural craving for the name
To one who walketh warily his words
Of king, preferring to do kingly deeds,
Commend themselves; swift counsels are not sure.
And so thinks every sober-minded man.
Now all my needs are satisfied through thee, OEDIPUS
And I have naught to fear; but were I king, When with swift strides the stealthy plotter stalks
My acts would oft run counter to my will. I must be quick too with my counterplot.
How could a title then have charms for me To wait his onset passively, for him
Above the sweets of boundless influence? Is sure success, for me assured defeat.
I am not so infatuate as to grasp CREON
The shadow when I hold the substance fast. What then’s thy will? To banish me the land?
Now all men cry me Godspeed! wish me well,
OEDIPUS
And every suitor seeks to gain my ear,
I would not have thee banished, no, but dead,
If he would hope to win a grace from thee.
That men may mark the wages envy reaps.
Why should I leave the better, choose the worse?
That were sheer madness, and I am not mad. CREON
No such ambition ever tempted me, I see thou wilt not yield, nor credit me.
Nor would I have a share in such intrigue. OEDIPUS
And if thou doubt me, first to Delphi go, [None but a fool would credit such as thou.] [3]
There ascertain if my report was true
Of the god’s answer; next investigate CREON
If with the seer I plotted or conspired, Thou art not wise.
And if it prove so, sentence me to death, OEDIPUS
Not by thy voice alone, but mine and thine. Wise for myself at least.
Contents
But O condemn me not, without appeal,

CREON
On bare suspicion. ’Tis not right to adjudge
Why not for me too?
Bad men at random good, or good men bad.
I would as lief a man should cast away OEDIPUS
30 31
Why for such a knave? Yes, lady; I have caught him practicing
Against my royal person his vile arts.
CREON
Suppose thou lackest sense. CREON
May I ne’er speed but die accursed, if I
OEDIPUS
In any way am guilty of this charge.
Yet kings must rule.
JOCASTA
CREON
Believe him, I adjure thee, Oedipus,
Not if they rule ill.
First for his solemn oath’s sake, then for mine,
OEDIPUS And for thine elders’ sake who wait on thee.
Oh my Thebans, hear him!
CHORUS
CREON (Str. 1)
Thy Thebans? am not I a Theban too? Hearken, King, reflect, we pray thee, but not stubborn but relent.
CHORUS OEDIPUS
Cease, princes; lo there comes, and none too soon, Say to what should I consent?
Jocasta from the palace. Who so fit
CHORUS
As peacemaker to reconcile your feud?
Respect a man whose probity and troth
[Enter JOCASTA.]
Are known to all and now confirmed by oath.
JOCASTA
OEDIPUS
Misguided princes, why have ye upraised
Dost know what grace thou cravest?
This wordy wrangle? Are ye not ashamed,
While the whole land lies striken, thus to voice CHORUS
Your private injuries? Go in, my lord; Yea, I know.
Go home, my brother, and forebear to make
OEDIPUS
A public scandal of a petty grief.
Declare it then and make thy meaning plain.
CREON
CHORUS
My royal sister, Oedipus, thy lord,
Contents
Brand not a friend whom babbling tongues assail;

Hath bid me choose (O dread alternative!)
Let not suspicion ‘gainst his oath prevail.
An outlaw’s exile or a felon’s death.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
Bethink you that in seeking this ye seek
32 33
In very sooth my death or banishment? JOCASTA
Tell me first how rose the fray.
CHORUS
No, by the leader of the host divine! CHORUS
(Str. 2) Rumors bred unjust suspicious and injustice rankles sore.
Witness, thou Sun, such thought was never mine,
JOCASTA
Unblest, unfriended may I perish,
Were both at fault?
If ever I such wish did cherish!
But O my heart is desolate CHORUS
Musing on our striken State, Both.
Doubly fall’n should discord grow JOCASTA
Twixt you twain, to crown our woe. What was the tale?
OEDIPUS CHORUS
Well, let him go, no matter what it cost me, Ask me no more. The land is sore distressed;
Or certain death or shameful banishment, ‘Twere better sleeping ills to leave at rest.
For your sake I relent, not his; and him,
OEDIPUS
Where’er he be, my heart shall still abhor.
Strange counsel, friend! I know thou mean’st me well,
CREON And yet would’st mitigate and blunt my zeal.
Thou art as sullen in thy yielding mood
CHORUS
As in thine anger thou wast truculent.
(Ant. 2)
Such tempers justly plague themselves the most.
King, I say it once again,
OEDIPUS Witless were I proved, insane,
Leave me in peace and get thee gone. If I lightly put away
CREON Thee my country’s prop and stay,
I go, Pilot who, in danger sought,
By thee misjudged, but justified by these. To a quiet haven brought
[Exeunt CREON] Our distracted State; and now
Contents
Who can guide us right but thou?

CHORUS
(Ant. 1) JOCASTA
Lady, lead indoors thy consort; wherefore longer here delay? Let me too, I adjure thee, know, O king,
34 35
What cause has stirred this unrelenting wrath. By others on the trackless mountain side.
So then Apollo brought it not to pass
OEDIPUS
The child should be his father’s murderer,
I will, for thou art more to me than these.
Or the dread terror find accomplishment,
Lady, the cause is Creon and his plots.
And Laius be slain by his own son.
JOCASTA Such was the prophet’s horoscope. O king,
But what provoked the quarrel? make this clear. Regard it not. Whate’er the god deems fit
OEDIPUS To search, himself unaided will reveal.
He points me out as Laius’ murderer. OEDIPUS
JOCASTA What memories, what wild tumult of the soul
Of his own knowledge or upon report? Came o’er me, lady, as I heard thee speak!
OEDIPUS JOCASTA
He is too cunning to commit himself, What mean’st thou? What has shocked and startled thee?
And makes a mouthpiece of a knavish seer. OEDIPUS
JOCASTA Methought I heard thee say that Laius
Then thou mayest ease thy conscience on that score. Was murdered at the meeting of three roads.
Listen and I’ll convince thee that no man JOCASTA
Hath scot or lot in the prophetic art. So ran the story that is current still.
Here is the proof in brief. An oracle
OEDIPUS
Once came to Laius (I will not say
Where did this happen? Dost thou know the place?
’Twas from the Delphic god himself, but from
His ministers) declaring he was doomed JOCASTA
To perish by the hand of his own son, Phocis the land is called; the spot is where
A child that should be born to him by me. Branch roads from Delphi and from Daulis meet.
Now Laius—so at least report affirmed—
OEDIPUS
Was murdered on a day by highwaymen,
And how long is it since these things befell?
No natives, at a spot where three roads meet.
Contents
As for the child, it was but three days old, JOCASTA

When Laius, its ankles pierced and pinned ’Twas but a brief while were thou wast proclaimed
Together, gave it to be cast away Our country’s ruler that the news was brought.
36 37
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
O Zeus, what hast thou willed to do with me! Alas! ’tis clear as noonday now. But say,
Lady, who carried this report to Thebes?
JOCASTA
What is it, Oedipus, that moves thee so? JOCASTA
A serf, the sole survivor who returned.
OEDIPUS
Ask me not yet; tell me the build and height OEDIPUS
Of Laius? Was he still in manhood’s prime? Haply he is at hand or in the house?
JOCASTA JOCASTA
Tall was he, and his hair was lightly strewn No, for as soon as he returned and found
With silver; and not unlike thee in form. Thee reigning in the stead of Laius slain,
He clasped my hand and supplicated me
OEDIPUS
To send him to the alps and pastures, where
O woe is me! Mehtinks unwittingly
He might be farthest from the sight of Thebes.
I laid but now a dread curse on myself.
And so I sent him. ’Twas an honest slave
JOCASTA And well deserved some better recompense.
What say’st thou? When I look upon thee, my king,
OEDIPUS
I tremble.
Fetch him at once. I fain would see the man.
OEDIPUS
JOCASTA
’Tis a dread presentiment
He shall be brought; but wherefore summon him?
That in the end the seer will prove not blind.
One further question to resolve my doubt. OEDIPUS
Lady, I fear my tongue has overrun
JOCASTA
Discretion; therefore I would question him.
I quail; but ask, and I will answer all.
JOCASTA
OEDIPUS
Well, he shall come, but may not I too claim
Had he but few attendants or a train
To share the burden of thy heart, my king?
Of armed retainers with him, like a prince?
Contents
OEDIPUS
JOCASTA
And thou shalt not be frustrate of thy wish.
They were but five in all, and one of them
Now my imaginings have gone so far.
A herald; Laius in a mule-car rode.
38 39
Who has a higher claim that thou to hear Watched till I passed and from his car brought down
My tale of dire adventures? Listen then. Full on my head the double-pointed goad.
My sire was Polybus of Corinth, and Yet was I quits with him and more; one stroke
My mother Merope, a Dorian; Of my good staff sufficed to fling him clean
And I was held the foremost citizen, Out of the chariot seat and laid him prone.
Till a strange thing befell me, strange indeed, And so I slew them every one. But if
Yet scarce deserving all the heat it stirred. Betwixt this stranger there was aught in common
A roisterer at some banquet, flown with wine, With Laius, who more miserable than I,
Shouted “Thou art not true son of thy sire.” What mortal could you find more god-abhorred?
It irked me, but I stomached for the nonce Wretch whom no sojourner, no citizen
The insult; on the morrow I sought out May harbor or address, whom all are bound
My mother and my sire and questioned them. To harry from their homes. And this same curse
They were indignant at the random slur Was laid on me, and laid by none but me.
Cast on my parentage and did their best Yea with these hands all gory I pollute
To comfort me, but still the venomed barb The bed of him I slew. Say, am I vile?
Rankled, for still the scandal spread and grew. Am I not utterly unclean, a wretch
So privily without their leave I went Doomed to be banished, and in banishment
To Delphi, and Apollo sent me back Forgo the sight of all my dearest ones,
Baulked of the knowledge that I came to seek. And never tread again my native earth;
But other grievous things he prophesied, Or else to wed my mother and slay my sire,
Woes, lamentations, mourning, portents dire; Polybus, who begat me and upreared?
To wit I should defile my mother’s bed If one should say, this is the handiwork
And raise up seed too loathsome to behold, Of some inhuman power, who could blame
And slay the father from whose loins I sprang. His judgment? But, ye pure and awful gods,
Then, lady,—thou shalt hear the very truth— Forbid, forbid that I should see that day!
As I drew near the triple-branching roads, May I be blotted out from living men
A herald met me and a man who sat Ere such a plague spot set on me its brand!
In a car drawn by colts—as in thy tale—
CHORUS
Contents
The man in front and the old man himself

We too, O king, are troubled; but till thou
Threatened to thrust me rudely from the path,
Hast questioned the survivor, still hope on.
Then jostled by the charioteer in wrath
I struck him, and the old man, seeing this, OEDIPUS
40 41
My hope is faint, but still enough survives Thou reasonest well. Still I would have thee send
To bid me bide the coming of this herd. And fetch the bondsman hither. See to it.
JOCASTA JOCASTA
Suppose him here, what wouldst thou learn of him? That will I straightway. Come, let us within.
I would do nothing that my lord mislikes.
OEDIPUS
[Exeunt OEDIPUS and JOCASTA]
I’ll tell thee, lady; if his tale agrees
With thine, I shall have ‘scaped calamity. CHORUS
(Str. 1)
JOCASTA
My lot be still to lead
And what of special import did I say?
The life of innocence and fly
OEDIPUS Irreverence in word or deed,
In thy report of what the herdsman said To follow still those laws ordained on high
Laius was slain by robbers; now if he Whose birthplace is the bright ethereal sky
Still speaks of robbers, not a robber, I No mortal birth they own,
Slew him not; “one” with “many” cannot square. Olympus their progenitor alone:
But if he says one lonely wayfarer, Ne’er shall they slumber in oblivion cold,
The last link wanting to my guilt is forged. The god in them is strong and grows not old.
JOCASTA (Ant. 1)
Well, rest assured, his tale ran thus at first, Of insolence is bred
Nor can he now retract what then he said; The tyrant; insolence full blown,
Not I alone but all our townsfolk heard it. With empty riches surfeited,
E’en should he vary somewhat in his story, Scales the precipitous height and grasps the throne.
He cannot make the death of Laius Then topples o’er and lies in ruin prone;
In any wise jump with the oracle. No foothold on that dizzy steep.
For Loxias said expressly he was doomed But O may Heaven the true patriot keep
To die by my child’s hand, but he, poor babe, Who burns with emulous zeal to serve the State.
He shed no blood, but perished first himself. God is my help and hope, on him I wait.
Contents
So much for divination. Henceforth I (Str. 2)

Will look for signs neither to right nor left. But the proud sinner, or in word or deed,
OEDIPUS That will not Justice heed,
42 43
Nor reverence the shrine To any croaker if he augurs ill.
Of images divine, Since then my counsels naught avail, I turn
Perdition seize his vain imaginings, To thee, our present help in time of trouble,
If, urged by greed profane, Apollo, Lord Lycean, and to thee
He grasps at ill-got gain, My prayers and supplications here I bring.
And lays an impious hand on holiest things. Lighten us, lord, and cleanse us from this curse!
Who when such deeds are done For now we all are cowed like mariners
Can hope heaven’s bolts to shun? Who see their helmsman dumbstruck in the storm.
If sin like this to honor can aspire, [Enter Corinthian MESSENGER.]
Why dance I still and lead the sacred choir?
MESSENGER
(Ant. 2) My masters, tell me where the palace is
No more I’ll seek earth’s central oracle, Of Oedipus; or better, where’s the king.
Or Abae’s hallowed cell,
CHORUS
Nor to Olympia bring
Here is the palace and he bides within;
My votive offering.
This is his queen the mother of his children.
If before all God’s truth be not bade plain.
O Zeus, reveal thy might, MESSENGER
King, if thou’rt named aright All happiness attend her and the house,
Omnipotent, all-seeing, as of old; Blessed is her husband and her marriage-bed.
For Laius is forgot; JOCASTA
His weird, men heed it not; My greetings to thee, stranger; thy fair words
Apollo is forsook and faith grows cold. Deserve a like response. But tell me why
[Enter JOCASTA.] Thou comest—what thy need or what thy news.
JOCASTA MESSENGER
My lords, ye look amazed to see your queen Good for thy consort and the royal house.
With wreaths and gifts of incense in her hands.
I had a mind to visit the high shrines, JOCASTA
What may it be? Whose messenger art thou?
Contents
For Oedipus is overwrought, alarmed

With terrors manifold. He will not use MESSENGER
His past experience, like a man of sense, The Isthmian commons have resolved to make
To judge the present need, but lends an ear Thy husband king—so ’twas reported there.
44 45
JOCASTA What? let me have it, stranger, from thy mouth.
What! is not aged Polybus still king?
MESSENGER
MESSENGER If I must first make plain beyond a doubt
No, verily; he’s dead and in his grave. My message, know that Polybus is dead.
JOCASTA OEDIPUS
What! is he dead, the sire of Oedipus? By treachery, or by sickness visited?
MESSENGER MESSENGER
If I speak falsely, may I die myself. One touch will send an old man to his rest.
JOCASTA OEDIPUS
Quick, maiden, bear these tidings to my lord. So of some malady he died, poor man.
Ye god-sent oracles, where stand ye now!
MESSENGER
This is the man whom Oedipus long shunned,
Yes, having measured the full span of years.
In dread to prove his murderer; and now
He dies in nature’s course, not by his hand. OEDIPUS
[Enter OEDIPUS.] Out on it, lady! why should one regard
The Pythian hearth or birds that scream i’ the air?
OEDIPUS
Did they not point at me as doomed to slay
My wife, my queen, Jocasta, why hast thou
My father? but he’s dead and in his grave
Summoned me from my palace?
And here am I who ne’er unsheathed a sword;
JOCASTA Unless the longing for his absent son
Hear this man, Killed him and so _I_ slew him in a sense.
And as thou hearest judge what has become But, as they stand, the oracles are dead—
Of all those awe-inspiring oracles. Dust, ashes, nothing, dead as Polybus.
OEDIPUS JOCASTA
Who is this man, and what his news for me? Say, did not I foretell this long ago?
JOCASTA OEDIPUS
Contents
He comes from Corinth and his message this: Thou didst: but I was misled by my fear.
Thy father Polybus hath passed away.
JOCASTA
OEDIPUS Then let I no more weigh upon thy soul.
46 47
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Must I not fear my mother’s marriage bed. Aye, ’tis no secret. Loxias once foretold
That I should mate with mine own mother, and shed
JOCASTA
With my own hands the blood of my own sire.
Why should a mortal man, the sport of chance,
Hence Corinth was for many a year to me
With no assured foreknowledge, be afraid?
A home distant; and I trove abroad,
Best live a careless life from hand to mouth.
But missed the sweetest sight, my parents’ face.
This wedlock with thy mother fear not thou.
How oft it chances that in dreams a man MESSENGER
Has wed his mother! He who least regards Was this the fear that exiled thee from home?
Such brainsick phantasies lives most at ease.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS Yea, and the dread of slaying my own sire.
I should have shared in full thy confidence,
MESSENGER
Were not my mother living; since she lives
Why, since I came to give thee pleasure, King,
Though half convinced I still must live in dread.
Have I not rid thee of this second fear?
JOCASTA
OEDIPUS
And yet thy sire’s death lights out darkness much.
Well, thou shalt have due guerdon for thy pains.
OEDIPUS
MESSENGER
Much, but my fear is touching her who lives.
Well, I confess what chiefly made me come
MESSENGER Was hope to profit by thy coming home.
Who may this woman be whom thus you fear?
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS Nay, I will ne’er go near my parents more.
Merope, stranger, wife of Polybus.
MESSENGER
MESSENGER My son, ’tis plain, thou know’st not what thou doest.
And what of her can cause you any fear?
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS How so, old man? For heaven’s sake tell me all.
Contents
A heaven-sent oracle of dread import.

MESSENGER
MESSENGER If this is why thou dreadest to return.
A mystery, or may a stranger hear it?
OEDIPUS
48 49
Yea, lest the god’s word be fulfilled in me. A childless man till then, he warmed to thee.
MESSENGER OEDIPUS
Lest through thy parents thou shouldst be accursed? A foundling or a purchased slave, this child?
OEDIPUS MESSENGER
This and none other is my constant dread. I found thee in Cithaeron’s wooded glens.
MESSENGER OEDIPUS
Dost thou not know thy fears are baseless all? What led thee to explore those upland glades?
OEDIPUS MESSENGER
How baseless, if I am their very son? My business was to tend the mountain flocks.
MESSENGER OEDIPUS
Since Polybus was naught to thee in blood. A vagrant shepherd journeying for hire?
OEDIPUS MESSENGER
What say’st thou? was not Polybus my sire? True, but thy savior in that hour, my son.
MESSENGER OEDIPUS
As much thy sire as I am, and no more. My savior? from what harm? what ailed me then?
OEDIPUS MESSENGER
My sire no more to me than one who is naught? Those ankle joints are evidence enow.
MESSENGER OEDIPUS
Since I begat thee not, no more did he. Ah, why remind me of that ancient sore?
OEDIPUS MESSENGER
What reason had he then to call me son? I loosed the pin that riveted thy feet.
MESSENGER OEDIPUS
Know that he took thee from my hands, a gift. Yes, from my cradle that dread brand I bore.
Contents
OEDIPUS MESSENGER
Yet, if no child of his, he loved me well. Whence thou deriv’st the name that still is thine.
MESSENGER OEDIPUS
50 51
Who did it? I adjure thee, tell me who Methinks he means none other than the hind
Say, was it father, mother? Whom thou anon wert fain to see; but that
Our queen Jocasta best of all could tell.
MESSENGER
I know not. OEDIPUS
The man from whom I had thee may know more. Madam, dost know the man we sent to fetch?
Is the same of whom the stranger speaks?
OEDIPUS
What, did another find me, not thyself? JOCASTA
Who is the man? What matter? Let it be.
MESSENGER
‘Twere waste of thought to weigh such idle words.
Not I; another shepherd gave thee me.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
No, with such guiding clues I cannot fail
Who was he? Would’st thou know again the man?
To bring to light the secret of my birth.
MESSENGER
JOCASTA
He passed indeed for one of Laius’ house.
Oh, as thou carest for thy life, give o’er
OEDIPUS This quest. Enough the anguish _I_ endure.
The king who ruled the country long ago?
OEDIPUS
MESSENGER Be of good cheer; though I be proved the son
The same: he was a herdsman of the king. Of a bondwoman, aye, through three descents
OEDIPUS Triply a slave, thy honor is unsmirched.
And is he living still for me to see him? JOCASTA
MESSENGER Yet humor me, I pray thee; do not this.
His fellow-countrymen should best know that. OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS I cannot; I must probe this matter home.
Doth any bystander among you know JOCASTA
The herd he speaks of, or by seeing him ’Tis for thy sake I advise thee for the best.
Contents
Afield or in the city? answer straight!

OEDIPUS
The hour hath come to clear this business up.
I grow impatient of this best advice.
CHORUS
JOCASTA
52 53
Ah mayst thou ne’er discover who thou art! Phoebus, may my words find grace!
OEDIPUS (Ant.)
Go, fetch me here the herd, and leave yon woman Child, who bare thee, nymph or goddess? sure thy sure was more
To glory in her pride of ancestry. than man,
Haply the hill-roamer Pan.
JOCASTA
Of did Loxias beget thee, for he haunts the upland wold;
O woe is thee, poor wretch! With that last word
Or Cyllene’s lord, or Bacchus, dweller on the hilltops cold?
I leave thee, henceforth silent evermore.
Did some Heliconian Oread give him thee, a new-born joy?
[Exit JOCASTA]
Nymphs with whom he love to toy?
CHORUS
OEDIPUS
Why, Oedipus, why stung with passionate grief
Elders, if I, who never yet before
Hath the queen thus departed? Much I fear
Have met the man, may make a guess, methinks
From this dead calm will burst a storm of woes.
I see the herdsman who we long have sought;
OEDIPUS His time-worn aspect matches with the years
Let the storm burst, my fixed resolve still holds, Of yonder aged messenger; besides
To learn my lineage, be it ne’er so low. I seem to recognize the men who bring him
It may be she with all a woman’s pride As servants of my own. But you, perchance,
Thinks scorn of my base parentage. But I Having in past days known or seen the herd,
Who rank myself as Fortune’s favorite child, May better by sure knowledge my surmise.
The giver of good gifts, shall not be shamed.
CHORUS
She is my mother and the changing moons
I recognize him; one of Laius’ house;
My brethren, and with them I wax and wane.
A simple hind, but true as any man.
Thus sprung why should I fear to trace my birth?
[Enter HERDSMAN.]
Nothing can make me other than I am.
OEDIPUS
CHORUS
Corinthian, stranger, I address thee first,
(Str.)
Is this the man thou meanest!
If my soul prophetic err not, if my wisdom aught avail,
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Thee, Cithaeron, I shall hail, MESSENGER

As the nurse and foster-mother of our Oedipus shall greet This is he.
Ere tomorrow’s full moon rises, and exalt thee as is meet. OEDIPUS
Dance and song shall hymn thy praises, lover of our royal race.
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And now old man, look up and answer all I led mine home, he his to Laius’ folds.
I ask thee. Wast thou once of Laius’ house? Did these things happen as I say, or no?
HERDSMAN HERDSMAN
I was, a thrall, not purchased but home-bred. ’Tis long ago, but all thou say’st is true.
OEDIPUS MESSENGER
What was thy business? how wast thou employed? Well, thou mast then remember giving me
A child to rear as my own foster-son?
HERDSMAN
The best part of my life I tended sheep. HERDSMAN
Why dost thou ask this question? What of that?
OEDIPUS
What were the pastures thou didst most frequent? MESSENGER
Friend, he that stands before thee was that child.
HERDSMAN
Cithaeron and the neighboring alps. HERDSMAN
A plague upon thee! Hold thy wanton tongue!
OEDIPUS
Then there OEDIPUS
Thou must have known yon man, at least by fame? Softly, old man, rebuke him not; thy words
Are more deserving chastisement than his.
HERDSMAN
Yon man? in what way? what man dost thou mean? HERDSMAN
O best of masters, what is my offense?
OEDIPUS
The man here, having met him in past times... OEDIPUS
Not answering what he asks about the child.
HERDSMAN
Off-hand I cannot call him well to mind. HERDSMAN
He speaks at random, babbles like a fool.
MESSENGER
No wonder, master. But I will revive OEDIPUS
His blunted memories. Sure he can recall If thou lack’st grace to speak, I’ll loose thy tongue.
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What time together both we drove our flocks,

HERDSMAN
He two, I one, on the Cithaeron range,
For mercy’s sake abuse not an old man.
For three long summers; I his mate from spring
Till rose Arcturus; then in winter time OEDIPUS
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Arrest the villain, seize and pinion him! HERDSMAN
Well then—it was a child of Laius’ house.
HERDSMAN
Alack, alack! OEDIPUS
What have I done? what wouldst thou further learn? Slave-born or one of Laius’ own race?
OEDIPUS HERDSMAN
Didst give this man the child of whom he asks? Ah me!
I stand upon the perilous edge of speech.
HERDSMAN
I did; and would that I had died that day! OEDIPUS
And I of hearing, but I still must hear.
OEDIPUS
And die thou shalt unless thou tell the truth. HERDSMAN
Know then the child was by repute his own,
HERDSMAN
But she within, thy consort best could tell.
But, if I tell it, I am doubly lost.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
What! she, she gave it thee?
The knave methinks will still prevaricate.
HERDSMAN
HERDSMAN
’Tis so, my king.
Nay, I confessed I gave it long ago.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
With what intent?
Whence came it? was it thine, or given to thee?
HERDSMAN
HERDSMAN
To make away with it.
I had it from another, ’twas not mine.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
What, she its mother.
From whom of these our townsmen, and what house?
HERDSMAN
HERDSMAN
Fearing a dread weird.
Forbear for God’s sake, master, ask no more.
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OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
What weird?
If I must question thee again, thou’rt lost.
HERDSMAN
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’Twas told that he should slay his sire. Was quelled, her witchery laid;
He rose our savior and the land’s strong tower.
OEDIPUS
We hailed thee king and from that day adored
What didst thou give it then to this old man?
Of mighty Thebes the universal lord.
HERDSMAN
(Str. 2)
Through pity, master, for the babe. I thought
O heavy hand of fate!
He’d take it to the country whence he came;
Who now more desolate,
But he preserved it for the worst of woes.
Whose tale more sad than thine, whose lot more dire?
For if thou art in sooth what this man saith,
O Oedipus, discrowned head,
God pity thee! thou wast to misery born.
Thy cradle was thy marriage bed;
OEDIPUS One harborage sufficed for son and sire.
Ah me! ah me! all brought to pass, all true! How could the soil thy father eared so long
O light, may I behold thee nevermore! Endure to bear in silence such a wrong?
I stand a wretch, in birth, in wedlock cursed,
(Ant. 2)
A parricide, incestuously, triply cursed!
All-seeing Time hath caught
[Exit OEDIPUS]
Guilt, and to justice brought
CHORUS The son and sire commingled in one bed.
(Str. 1) O child of Laius’ ill-starred race
Races of mortal man Would I had ne’er beheld thy face;
Whose life is but a span, I raise for thee a dirge as o’er the dead.
I count ye but the shadow of a shade! Yet, sooth to say, through thee I drew new breath,
For he who most doth know And now through thee I feel a second death.
Of bliss, hath but the show; [Enter SECOND MESSENGER.]
A moment, and the visions pale and fade.
SECOND MESSENGER
Thy fall, O Oedipus, thy piteous fall
Most grave and reverend senators of Thebes,
Warns me none born of women blest to call.
What Deeds ye soon must hear, what sights behold
(Ant. 1) How will ye mourn, if, true-born patriots,
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For he of marksmen best, Ye reverence still the race of Labdacus!

O Zeus, outshot the rest, Not Ister nor all Phasis’ flood, I ween,
And won the prize supreme of wealth and power. Could wash away the blood-stains from this house,
By him the vulture maid The ills it shrouds or soon will bring to light,
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Ills wrought of malice, not unwittingly. Burst on us Oedipus; all eyes were fixed
The worst to bear are self-inflicted wounds. On Oedipus, as up and down he strode,
Nor could we mark her agony to the end.
CHORUS
For stalking to and fro “A sword!” he cried,
Grievous enough for all our tears and groans
“Where is the wife, no wife, the teeming womb
Our past calamities; what canst thou add?
That bore a double harvest, me and mine?”
SECOND MESSENGER And in his frenzy some supernal power
My tale is quickly told and quickly heard. (No mortal, surely, none of us who watched him)
Our sovereign lady queen Jocasta’s dead. Guided his footsteps; with a terrible shriek,
CHORUS As though one beckoned him, he crashed against
Alas, poor queen! how came she by her death? The folding doors, and from their staples forced
The wrenched bolts and hurled himself within.
SECOND MESSENGER
Then we beheld the woman hanging there,
By her own hand. And all the horror of it,
A running noose entwined about her neck.
Not having seen, yet cannot comprehend.
But when he saw her, with a maddened roar
Nathless, as far as my poor memory serves,
He loosed the cord; and when her wretched corpse
I will relate the unhappy lady’s woe.
Lay stretched on earth, what followed—O ’twas dread!
When in her frenzy she had passed inside
He tore the golden brooches that upheld
The vestibule, she hurried straight to win
Her queenly robes, upraised them high and smote
The bridal-chamber, clutching at her hair
Full on his eye-balls, uttering words like these:
With both her hands, and, once within the room,
“No more shall ye behold such sights of woe,
She shut the doors behind her with a crash.
Deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought;
“Laius,” she cried, and called her husband dead
Henceforward quenched in darkness shall ye see
Long, long ago; her thought was of that child
Those ye should ne’er have seen; now blind to those
By him begot, the son by whom the sire
Whom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know.”
Was murdered and the mother left to breed
Such was the burden of his moan, whereto,
With her own seed, a monstrous progeny.
Not once but oft, he struck with his hand uplift
Then she bewailed the marriage bed whereon
His eyes, and at each stroke the ensanguined orbs
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Poor wretch, she had conceived a double brood,

Bedewed his beard, not oozing drop by drop,
Husband by husband, children by her child.
But one black gory downpour, thick as hail.
What happened after that I cannot tell,
Such evils, issuing from the double source,
Nor how the end befell, for with a shriek
Have whelmed them both, confounding man and wife.
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Till now the storied fortune of this house Horror-struck away I turn.
Was fortunate indeed; but from this day
OEDIPUS
Woe, lamentation, ruin, death, disgrace,
Ah me! ah woe is me!
All ills that can be named, all, all are theirs.
Ah whither am I borne!
CHORUS How like a ghost forlorn
But hath he still no respite from his pain? My voice flits from me on the air!
On, on the demon goads. The end, ah where?
SECOND MESSENGER
He cries, “Unbar the doors and let all Thebes CHORUS
Behold the slayer of his sire, his mother’s—” An end too dread to tell, too dark to see.
That shameful word my lips may not repeat.
OEDIPUS
He vows to fly self-banished from the land,
(Str. 1)
Nor stay to bring upon his house the curse
Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud,
Himself had uttered; but he has no strength
Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.
Nor one to guide him, and his torture’s more
Ah me, ah me! What spasms athwart me shoot,
Than man can suffer, as yourselves will see.
What pangs of agonizing memory?
For lo, the palace portals are unbarred,
And soon ye shall behold a sight so sad CHORUS
That he who must abhorred would pity it. No marvel if in such a plight thou feel’st
[Enter OEDIPUS blinded.] The double weight of past and present woes.
CHORUS OEDIPUS
Woeful sight! more woeful none (Ant. 1)
These sad eyes have looked upon. Ah friend, still loyal, constant still and kind,
Whence this madness? None can tell Thou carest for the blind.
Who did cast on thee his spell, I know thee near, and though bereft of eyes,
prowling all thy life around, Thy voice I recognize.
Leaping with a demon bound. CHORUS
Hapless wretch! how can I brook O doer of dread deeds, how couldst thou mar
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On thy misery to look? Thy vision thus? What demon goaded thee?
Though to gaze on thee I yearn,
OEDIPUS
Much to question, much to learn,
(Str. 2)
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Apollo, friend, Apollo, he it was The monstrous offspring of a womb defiled,
That brought these ills to pass; Co-mate of him who gendered me, and child.
But the right hand that dealt the blow Was ever man before afflicted thus,
Was mine, none other. How, Like Oedipus.
How, could I longer see when sight
CHORUS
Brought no delight?
I cannot say that thou hast counseled well,
CHORUS For thou wert better dead than living blind.
Alas! ’tis as thou sayest.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS What’s done was well done. Thou canst never shake
Say, friends, can any look or voice My firm belief. A truce to argument.
Or touch of love henceforth my heart rejoice? For, had I sight, I know not with what eyes
Haste, friends, no fond delay, I could have met my father in the shades,
Take the twice cursed away Or my poor mother, since against the twain
Far from all ken, I sinned, a sin no gallows could atone.
The man abhorred of gods, accursed of men. Aye, but, ye say, the sight of children joys
A parent’s eyes. What, born as mine were born?
CHORUS
No, such a sight could never bring me joy;
O thy despair well suits thy desperate case.
Nor this fair city with its battlements,
Would I had never looked upon thy face!
Its temples and the statues of its gods,
OEDIPUS Sights from which I, now wretchedst of all,
(Ant. 2) Once ranked the foremost Theban in all Thebes,
My curse on him whoe’er unrived By my own sentence am cut off, condemned
The waif ’s fell fetters and my life revived! By my own proclamation ‘gainst the wretch,
He meant me well, yet had he left me there, The miscreant by heaven itself declared
He had saved my friends and me a world of care. Unclean—and of the race of Laius.
CHORUS Thus branded as a felon by myself,
I too had wished it so. How had I dared to look you in the face?
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Nay, had I known a way to choke the springs

OEDIPUS
Of hearing, I had never shrunk to make
Then had I never come to shed
A dungeon of this miserable frame,
My father’s blood nor climbed my mother’s bed;
Cut off from sight and hearing; for ’tis bliss
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to bide in regions sorrow cannot reach. Is left the State’s sole guardian in thy stead.
Why didst thou harbor me, Cithaeron, why
OEDIPUS
Didst thou not take and slay me? Then I never
Ah me! what words to accost him can I find?
Had shown to men the secret of my birth.
What cause has he to trust me? In the past
O Polybus, O Corinth, O my home,
I have bee proved his rancorous enemy.
Home of my ancestors (so wast thou called)
How fair a nursling then I seemed, how foul CREON
The canker that lay festering in the bud! Not in derision, Oedipus, I come
Now is the blight revealed of root and fruit. Nor to upbraid thee with thy past misdeeds.
Ye triple high-roads, and thou hidden glen, (To BYSTANDERS)
Coppice, and pass where meet the three-branched ways, But shame upon you! if ye feel no sense
Ye drank my blood, the life-blood these hands spilt, Of human decencies, at least revere
My father’s; do ye call to mind perchance The Sun whose light beholds and nurtures all.
Those deeds of mine ye witnessed and the work Leave not thus nakedly for all to gaze at
I wrought thereafter when I came to Thebes? A horror neither earth nor rain from heaven
O fatal wedlock, thou didst give me birth, Nor light will suffer. Lead him straight within,
And, having borne me, sowed again my seed, For it is seemly that a kinsman’s woes
Mingling the blood of fathers, brothers, children, Be heard by kin and seen by kin alone.
Brides, wives and mothers, an incestuous brood, OEDIPUS
All horrors that are wrought beneath the sun, O listen, since thy presence comes to me
Horrors so foul to name them were unmeet. A shock of glad surprise—so noble thou,
O, I adjure you, hide me anywhere And I so vile—O grant me one small boon.
Far from this land, or slay me straight, or cast me I ask it not on my behalf, but thine.
Down to the depths of ocean out of sight.
CREON
Come hither, deign to touch an abject wretch;
And what the favor thou wouldst crave of me?
Draw near and fear not; I myself must bear
The load of guilt that none but I can share. OEDIPUS
[Enter CREON.] Forth from thy borders thrust me with all speed;
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Set me within some vasty desert where

CREON
No mortal voice shall greet me any more.
Lo, here is Creon, the one man to grant
Thy prayer by action or advice, for he CREON
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This had I done already, but I deemed But my unhappy children—for my sons
It first behooved me to consult the god. Be not concerned, O Creon, they are men,
And for themselves, where’er they be, can fend.
OEDIPUS
But for my daughters twain, poor innocent maids,
His will was set forth fully—to destroy
Who ever sat beside me at the board
The parricide, the scoundrel; and I am he.
Sharing my viands, drinking of my cup,
CREON For them, I pray thee, care, and, if thou willst,
Yea, so he spake, but in our present plight O might I feel their touch and make my moan.
‘Twere better to consult the god anew. Hear me, O prince, my noble-hearted prince!
OEDIPUS Could I but blindly touch them with my hands
Dare ye inquire concerning such a wretch? I’d think they still were mine, as when I saw.
[ANTIGONE and ISMENE are led in.]
CREON
What say I? can it be my pretty ones
Yea, for thyself wouldst credit now his word.
Whose sobs I hear? Has Creon pitied me
OEDIPUS And sent me my two darlings? Can this be?
Aye, and on thee in all humility
CREON
I lay this charge: let her who lies within
’Tis true; ’twas I procured thee this delight,
Receive such burial as thou shalt ordain;
Knowing the joy they were to thee of old.
Such rites ’tis thine, as brother, to perform.
But for myself, O never let my Thebes, OEDIPUS
The city of my sires, be doomed to bear God speed thee! and as meed for bringing them
The burden of my presence while I live. May Providence deal with thee kindlier
No, let me be a dweller on the hills, Than it has dealt with me! O children mine,
On yonder mount Cithaeron, famed as mine, Where are ye? Let me clasp you with these hands,
My tomb predestined for me by my sire A brother’s hands, a father’s; hands that made
And mother, while they lived, that I may die Lack-luster sockets of his once bright eyes;
Slain as they sought to slay me, when alive. Hands of a man who blindly, recklessly,
This much I know full surely, nor disease Became your sire by her from whom he sprang.
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Shall end my days, nor any common chance; Though I cannot behold you, I must weep
For I had ne’er been snatched from death, unless In thinking of the evil days to come,
I was predestined to some awful doom. The slights and wrongs that men will put upon you.
So be it. I reck not how Fate deals with me Where’er ye go to feast or festival,
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No merrymaking will it prove for you, Weep not, everything must have its day.
But oft abashed in tears ye will return.
OEDIPUS
And when ye come to marriageable years,
Well I go, but on conditions.
Where’s the bold wooers who will jeopardize
To take unto himself such disrepute CREON
As to my children’s children still must cling, What thy terms for going, say.
For what of infamy is lacking here? OEDIPUS
“Their father slew his father, sowed the seed Send me from the land an exile.
Where he himself was gendered, and begat
CREON
These maidens at the source wherefrom he sprang.”
Ask this of the gods, not me.
Such are the gibes that men will cast at you.
Who then will wed you? None, I ween, but ye OEDIPUS
Must pine, poor maids, in single barrenness. But I am the gods’ abhorrence.
O Prince, Menoeceus’ son, to thee, I turn, CREON
With the it rests to father them, for we Then they soon will grant thy plea.
Their natural parents, both of us, are lost.
O leave them not to wander poor, unwed, OEDIPUS
Thy kin, nor let them share my low estate. Lead me hence, then, I am willing.
O pity them so young, and but for thee CREON
All destitute. Thy hand upon it, Prince. Come, but let thy children go.
To you, my children I had much to say,
OEDIPUS
Were ye but ripe to hear. Let this suffice:
Rob me not of these my children!
Pray ye may find some home and live content,
And may your lot prove happier than your sire’s. CREON
Crave not mastery in all,
CREON
For the mastery that raised thee was thy bane and wrought thy
Thou hast had enough of weeping; pass within.
fall.
OEDIPUS
CHORUS
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I must obey,
Look ye, countrymen and Thebans, this is Oedipus the great,
Though ’tis grievous.
He who knew the Sphinx’s riddle and was mightiest in our state.
CREON Who of all our townsmen gazed not on his fame
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with envious eyes?
Now, in what a sea of troubles sunk and overwhelmed he lies!
Therefore wait to see life’s ending ere thou count
one mortal blest;
Wait till free from pain and sorrow he has gained his final rest.
Footnotes
————
1. Dr. Kennedy and others render “Since to men of experience I
see that also comparisons of their counsels are in most lively use.”
2.
2. Literally “not to call them thine,” but the Greek may be OEDIPUS AT COLONUS
rendered “In order not to reveal thine.” Translation by F. Storr, BA
3. The Greek text that occurs in this place has been lost.
Argument.
Oedipus, the blind and banished King of Thebes, has come in

his wanderings to Colonus, a deme of Athens, led by his daughter
Antigone. He sits to rest on a rock just within a sacred grove of the
Furies and is bidden depart by a passing native. But Oedipus,
instructed by an oracle that he had reached his final resting-place,
refuses to stir, and the stranger consents to go and consult the Elders
of Colonus (the Chorus of the Play). Conducted to the spot they
pity at first the blind beggar and his daughter, but on learning his
name they are horror-striken and order him to quit the land. He
appeals to the world-famed hospitality of Athens and hints at the
blessings that his coming will confer on the State. They agree to
await the decision of King Theseus. From Theseus Oedipus craves
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protection in life and burial in Attic soil; the benefits that will accrue
shall be told later. Theseus departs having promised to aid and
befriend him. No sooner has he gone than Creon enters with an
armed guard who seize Antigone and carry her off (Ismene, the
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other sister, they have already captured) and he is about to lay hands Enter the blind OEDIPUS led by his daughter, ANTIGONE.
on Oedipus, when Theseus, who has heard the tumult, hurries up
OEDIPUS
and, upbraiding Creon for his lawless act, threatens to detain him till
Child of an old blind sire, Antigone,
he has shown where the captives are and restored them. In the next
What region, say, whose city have we reached?
scene Theseus returns bringing with him the rescued maidens. He
Who will provide today with scanted dole
informs Oedipus that a stranger who has taken sanctuary at the altar
This wanderer? ’Tis little that he craves,
of Poseidon wishes to see him. It is Polyneices who has come to crave
And less obtains—that less enough for me;
his father’s forgiveness and blessing, knowing by an oracle that
For I am taught by suffering to endure,
victory will fall to the side that Oedipus espouses. But Oedipus
And the long years that have grown old with me,
spurns the hypocrite, and invokes a dire curse on both his unnatural
And last not least, by true nobility.
sons. A sudden clap of thunder is heard, and as peal follows peal,
My daughter, if thou seest a resting place
Oedipus is aware that his hour is come and bids Antigone summon
On common ground or by some sacred grove,
Theseus. Self-guided he leads the way to the spot where death
Stay me and set me down. Let us discover
should overtake him, attended by Theseus and his daughters.
Where we have come, for strangers must inquire
Halfway he bids his daughters farewell, and what followed none but
Of denizens, and do as they are bid.
Theseus knew. He was not (so the Messenger reports) for the gods
took him. ANTIGONE
Long-suffering father, Oedipus, the towers
Dramatis personae. That fence the city still are faint and far;
But where we stand is surely holy ground;
OEDIPUS, banished King of Thebes. A wilderness of laurel, olive, vine;
ANTIGONE, his daughter. Within a choir or songster nightingales
ISMENE, his daughter. Are warbling. On this native seat of rock
THESEUS, King of Athens. Rest; for an old man thou hast traveled far.
CREON, brother of Jocasta, now reigning at Thebes. OEDIPUS
POLYNEICES, elder son of Oedipus. Guide these dark steps and seat me there secure.
STRANGER, a native of Colonus.
ANTIGONE
MESSENGER, an attendant of Theseus.
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If time can teach, I need not to be told.

CHORUS, citizens of Colonus.
OEDIPUS
Scene: In front of the grove of the Eumenides. Say, prithee, if thou knowest, where we are.
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ANTIGONE Dread brood of Earth and Darkness, here abide.
Athens I recognize, but not the spot.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS Tell me the awful name I should invoke?
That much we heard from every wayfarer.
STRANGER
ANTIGONE The Gracious Ones, All-seeing, so our folk
Shall I go on and ask about the place? Call them, but elsewhere other names are rife.
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Yes, daughter, if it be inhabited. Then may they show their suppliant grace, for I
From this your sanctuary will ne’er depart.
ANTIGONE
Sure there are habitations; but no need STRANGER
To leave thee; yonder is a man hard by. What word is this?
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
What, moving hitherward and on his way? The watchword of my fate.
ANTIGONE STRANGER
Say rather, here already. Ask him straight Nay, ’tis not mine to bid thee hence without
The needful questions, for the man is here. Due warrant and instruction from the State.
[Enter STRANGER]
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS Now in God’s name, O stranger, scorn me not
O stranger, as I learn from her whose eyes As a wayfarer; tell me what I crave.
Must serve both her and me, that thou art here
STRANGER
Sent by some happy chance to serve our doubts—
Ask; your request shall not be scorned by me.
STRANGER
OEDIPUS
First quit that seat, then question me at large:
How call you then the place wherein we bide?
The spot thou treadest on is holy ground.
STRANGER
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OEDIPUS
Whate’er I know thou too shalt know; the place
What is the site, to what god dedicate?
Is all to great Poseidon consecrate.
STRANGER Hard by, the Titan, he who bears the torch,
Inviolable, untrod; goddesses, Prometheus, has his worship; but the spot
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Thou treadest, the Brass-footed Threshold named, The blind man’s words will be instinct with sight.
Is Athens’ bastion, and the neighboring lands
STRANGER
Claim as their chief and patron yonder knight
Heed then; I fain would see thee out of harm;
Colonus, and in common bear his name.
For by the looks, marred though they be by fate,
Such, stranger, is the spot, to fame unknown,
I judge thee noble; tarry where thou art,
But dear to us its native worshipers.
While I go seek the burghers—those at hand,
OEDIPUS Not in the city. They will soon decide
Thou sayest there are dwellers in these parts? Whether thou art to rest or go thy way.
[Exit STRANGER]
STRANGER
Surely; they bear the name of yonder god. OEDIPUS
Tell me, my daughter, has the stranger gone?
OEDIPUS
Ruled by a king or by the general voice? ANTIGONE
Yes, he has gone; now we are all alone,
STRANGER
And thou may’st speak, dear father, without fear.
The lord of Athens is our over-lord.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
Stern-visaged queens, since coming to this land
Who is this monarch, great in word and might?
First in your sanctuary I bent the knee,
STRANGER Frown not on me or Phoebus, who, when erst
Theseus, the son of Aegeus our late king. He told me all my miseries to come,
OEDIPUS Spake of this respite after many years,
Might one be sent from you to summon him? Some haven in a far-off land, a rest
Vouchsafed at last by dread divinities.
STRANGER
“There,” said he, “shalt thou round thy weary life,
Wherefore? To tell him aught or urge his coming?
A blessing to the land wherein thou dwell’st,
OEDIPUS But to the land that cast thee forth, a curse.”
Say a slight service may avail him much. And of my weird he promised signs should come,
Contents
STRANGER Earthquake, or thunderclap, or lightning flash.

How can he profit from a sightless man? And now I recognize as yours the sign
That led my wanderings to this your grove;
OEDIPUS Else had I never lighted on you first,
80 81
A wineless man on your seat of native rock. Whose name no voice betrays nor cry,
O goddesses, fulfill Apollo’s word, And as we pass them with averted eye,
Grant me some consummation of my life, We move hushed lips in reverent piety.
If haply I appear not all too vile, But now some godless man,
A thrall to sorrow worse than any slave. ’Tis rumored, here abides;
Hear, gentle daughters of primeval Night, The precincts through I scan,
Hear, namesake of great Pallas; Athens, first Yet wot not where he hides,
Of cities, pity this dishonored shade, The wretch profane!
The ghost of him who once was Oedipus. I search and search in vain.
ANTIGONE OEDIPUS
Hush! for I see some grey-beards on their way, I am that man; I know you near
Their errand to spy out our resting-place. Ears to the blind, they say, are eyes.
OEDIPUS CHORUS
I will be mute, and thou shalt guide my steps O dread to see and dread to hear!
Into the covert from the public road,
OEDIPUS
Till I have learned their drift. A prudent man
Oh sirs, I am no outlaw under ban.
Will ever shape his course by what he learns.
[Enter CHORUS] CHORUS
Who can he be—Zeus save us!—this old man?
CHORUS
(Str. 1) OEDIPUS
Ha! Where is he? Look around! No favorite of fate,
Every nook and corner scan! That ye should envy his estate,
He the all-presumptuous man, O, Sirs, would any happy mortal, say,
Whither vanished? search the ground! Grope by the light of other eyes his way,
A wayfarer, I ween, Or face the storm upon so frail a stay?
A wayfarer, no countryman of ours, CHORUS
That old man must have been; (Ant. 1)
Contents
Never had native dared to tempt the Powers, Wast thou then sightless from thy birth?
Or enter their demesne, Evil, methinks, and long
The Maids in awe of whom each mortal cowers, Thy pilgrimage on earth.
82 83
Yet add not curse to curse and wrong to wrong. CHORUS
I warn thee, trespass not Aye.
Within this hallowed spot,
OEDIPUS
Lest thou shouldst find the silent grassy glade
What further still?
Where offerings are laid,
Bowls of spring water mingled with sweet mead. CHORUS
Thou must not stay, Lead maiden, thou canst guide him where we will.
Come, come away, ANTIGONE [1]
Tired wanderer, dost thou heed? ******
(We are far off, but sure our voice can reach.)
OEDIPUS
If aught thou wouldst beseech,
******
Speak where ’tis right; till then refrain from speech.
ANTIGONE
OEDIPUS
******
Daughter, what counsel should we now pursue?
Follow with blind steps, father, as I lead.
ANTIGONE
OEDIPUS
We must obey and do as here they do.
******
OEDIPUS
Thy hand then! CHORUS
In a strange land strange thou art;
ANTIGONE
To her will incline thy heart;
Here, O father, is my hand,
Honor whatso’er the State
OEDIPUS Honors, all she frowns on hate.
O Sirs, if I come forth at your command,
OEDIPUS
Let me not suffer for my confidence.
Guide me child, where we may range
CHORUS Safe within the paths of right;
(Str. 2) Counsel freely may exchange
Against thy will no man shall drive thee hence.
Contents
Nor with fate and fortune fight.

OEDIPUS CHORUS
Shall I go further? (Ant. 2)
84 85
Halt! Go no further than that rocky floor. OEDIPUS
Forbear, nor urge me further to reveal—
OEDIPUS
Stay where I now am? CHORUS
Why this reluctance?
CHORUS
Yes, advance no more. OEDIPUS
Dread my lineage.
OEDIPUS
May I sit down? CHORUS
Say!
CHORUS
Move sideways towards the ledge, OEDIPUS
And sit thee crouching on the scarped edge. What must I answer, child, ah welladay!
ANTIGONE CHORUS
This is my office, father, O incline— Say of what stock thou comest, what man’s son—
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Ah me! ah me! Ah me, my daughter, now we are undone!
ANTIGONE ANTIGONE
Thy steps to my steps, lean thine aged frame on mine. Speak, for thou standest on the slippery verge.
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Woe on my fate unblest! I will; no plea for silence can I urge.
CHORUS CHORUS
Wanderer, now thou art at rest, Will neither speak? Come, Sir, why dally thus!
Tell me of thy birth and home,
OEDIPUS
From what far country art thou come,
Know’st one of Laius’—
Led on thy weary way, declare!
CHORUS
OEDIPUS
Ha? Who!
Contents
Strangers, I have no country. O forbear—

OEDIPUS
CHORUS
Seed of Labdacus—
What is it, old man, that thou wouldst conceal?
86 87
CHORUS ANTIGONE
Oh Zeus! O sirs! ye suffered not my father blind,
Albeit gracious and to ruth inclined,
OEDIPUS
Knowing the deeds he wrought, not innocent,
The hapless Oedipus.
But with no ill intent;
CHORUS Yet heed a maiden’s moan
Art he? Who pleads for him alone;
OEDIPUS My eyes, not reft of sight,
Whate’er I utter, have no fear of me. Plead with you as a daughter’s might
You are our providence,
CHORUS
O make us not go hence!
Begone!
O with a gracious nod
OEDIPUS Grant us the nigh despaired-of boon we crave?
O wretched me! Hear us, O hear,
CHORUS But all that ye hold dear,
Begone! Wife, children, homestead, hearth and God!
Where will you find one, search ye ne’er so well.
OEDIPUS Who ‘scapes perdition if a god impel!
O daughter, what will hap anon?
CHORUS
CHORUS Surely we pity thee and him alike
Forth from our borders speed ye both! Daughter of Oedipus, for your distress;
OEDIPUS But as we reverence the decrees of Heaven
How keep you then your troth? We cannot say aught other than we said.
CHORUS OEDIPUS
Heaven’s justice never smites O what avails renown or fair repute?
Him who ill with ill requites. Are they not vanity? For, look you, now
But if guile with guile contend, Athens is held of States the most devout,
Contents
Bane, not blessing, is the end. Athens alone gives hospitality

Arise, begone and take thee hence straightway, And shelters the vexed stranger, so men say.
Lest on our land a heavier curse thou lay. Have I found so? I whom ye dislodged
First from my seat of rock and now would drive
88 89
Forth from your land, dreading my name alone; Must leave the issue with the ruling powers.
For me you surely dread not, nor my deeds,
OEDIPUS
Deeds of a man more sinned against than sinning,
Where is he, strangers, he who sways the realm?
As I might well convince you, were it meet
To tell my mother’s story and my sire’s, CHORUS
The cause of this your fear. Yet am I then In his ancestral seat; a messenger,
A villain born because in self-defense, The same who sent us here, is gone for him.
Striken, I struck the striker back again? OEDIPUS
E’en had I known, no villainy ’twould prove: And think you he will have such care or thought
But all unwitting whither I went, I went— For the blind stranger as to come himself?
To ruin; my destroyers knew it well,
CHORUS
Wherefore, I pray you, sirs, in Heaven’s name,
Aye, that he will, when once he learns thy name.
Even as ye bade me quit my seat, defend me.
O pay not a lip service to the gods OEDIPUS
And wrong them of their dues. Bethink ye well, But who will bear him word!
The eye of Heaven beholds the just of men, CHORUS
And the unjust, nor ever in this world The way is long,
Has one sole godless sinner found escape. And many travelers pass to speed the news.
Stand then on Heaven’s side and never blot Be sure he’ll hear and hasten, never fear;
Athens’ fair scutcheon by abetting wrong. So wide and far thy name is noised abroad,
I came to you a suppliant, and you pledged That, were he ne’er so spent and loth to move,
Your honor; O preserve me to the end, He would bestir him when he hears of thee.
O let not this marred visage do me wrong!
A holy and god-fearing man is here OEDIPUS
Whose coming purports comfort for your folk. Well, may he come with blessing to his State
And when your chief arrives, whoe’er he be, And me! Who serves his neighbor serves himself. [2]
Then shall ye have my story and know all. ANTIGONE
Meanwhile I pray you do me no despite. Zeus! What is this? What can I say or think?
Contents
CHORUS OEDIPUS
The plea thou urgest, needs must give us pause, What now, Antigone?
Set forth in weighty argument, but we
ANTIGONE
90 91
I see a woman Touch me, my child.
Riding upon a colt of Aetna’s breed;
ISMENE
She wears for headgear a Thessalian hat
I give a hand to both.
To shade her from the sun. Who can it be?
She or a stranger? Do I wake or dream? OEDIPUS
‘This she; ’tis not—I cannot tell, alack; O children—sisters!
It is no other! Now her bright’ning glance ISMENE
Greets me with recognition, yes, ’tis she, O disastrous plight!
Herself, Ismene!
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS Her plight and mine?
Ha! what say ye, child?
ISMENE
ANTIGONE Aye, and my own no less.
That I behold thy daughter and my sister,
OEDIPUS
And thou wilt know her straightway by her voice.
What brought thee, daughter?
[Enter ISMENE]
ISMENE
ISMENE
Father, care for thee.
Father and sister, names to me most sweet,
How hardly have I found you, hardly now OEDIPUS
When found at last can see you through my tears! A daughter’s yearning?
OEDIPUS ISMENE
Art come, my child? Yes, and I had news
I would myself deliver, so I came
ISMENE
With the one thrall who yet is true to me.
O father, sad thy plight!
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
Thy valiant brothers, where are they at need?
Child, thou art here?
ISMENE
Contents
ISMENE
They are—enough, ’tis now their darkest hour.
Yes, ’twas a weary way.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
Out on the twain! The thoughts and actions all
92 93
Are framed and modeled on Egyptian ways. Thus to remove the inveterate curse of old,
For there the men sit at the loom indoors A canker that infected all thy race.
While the wives slave abroad for daily bread. But now some god and an infatuate soul
So you, my children—those whom I behooved Have stirred betwixt them a mad rivalry
To bear the burden, stay at home like girls, To grasp at sovereignty and kingly power.
While in their stead my daughters moil and drudge, Today the hot-branded youth, the younger born,
Lightening their father’s misery. The one Is keeping Polyneices from the throne,
Since first she grew from girlish feebleness His elder, and has thrust him from the land.
To womanhood has been the old man’s guide The banished brother (so all Thebes reports)
And shared my weary wandering, roaming oft Fled to the vale of Argos, and by help
Hungry and footsore through wild forest ways, Of new alliance there and friends in arms,
In drenching rains and under scorching suns, Swears he will stablish Argos straight as lord
Careless herself of home and ease, if so Of the Cadmeian land, or, if he fail,
Her sire might have her tender ministry. Exalt the victor to the stars of heaven.
And thou, my child, whilom thou wentest forth, This is no empty tale, but deadly truth,
Eluding the Cadmeians’ vigilance, My father; and how long thy agony,
To bring thy father all the oracles Ere the gods pity thee, I cannot tell.
Concerning Oedipus, and didst make thyself
OEDIPUS
My faithful lieger, when they banished me.
Hast thou indeed then entertained a hope
And now what mission summons thee from home,
The gods at last will turn and rescue me?
What news, Ismene, hast thou for thy father?
This much I know, thou com’st not empty-handed, ISMENE
Without a warning of some new alarm. Yea, so I read these latest oracles.
ISMENE OEDIPUS
The toil and trouble, father, that I bore What oracles? What hath been uttered, child?
To find thy lodging-place and how thou faredst, ISMENE
I spare thee; surely ‘twere a double pain Thy country (so it runs) shall yearn in time
To suffer, first in act and then in telling;
Contents
To have thee for their weal alive or dead.

’Tis the misfortune of thine ill-starred sons
OEDIPUS
I come to tell thee. At the first they willed
And who could gain by such a one as I?
To leave the throne to Creon, minded well
94 95
ISMENE OEDIPUS
On thee, ’tis said, their sovereignty depends. Mean they to shroud my bones in Theban dust?
OEDIPUS ISMENE
So, when I cease to be, my worth begins. Nay, father, guilt of kinsman’s blood forbids.
ISMENE OEDIPUS
The gods, who once abased, uplift thee now. Then never shall they be my masters, never!
OEDIPUS ISMENE
Poor help to raise an old man fallen in youth. Thebes, thou shalt rue this bitterly some day!
ISMENE OEDIPUS
Howe’er that be, ’tis for this cause alone When what conjunction comes to pass, my child?
That Creon comes to thee—and comes anon.
ISMENE
OEDIPUS Thy angry wraith, when at thy tomb they stand. [3]
With what intent, my daughter? Tell me plainly.
OEDIPUS
ISMENE And who hath told thee what thou tell’st me, child?
To plant thee near the Theban land, and so
ISMENE
Keep thee within their grasp, yet now allow
Envoys who visited the Delphic hearth.
Thy foot to pass beyond their boundaries.
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
Hath Phoebus spoken thus concerning me?
What gain they, if I lay outside?
ISMENE
OEDIPUS
So say the envoys who returned to Thebes.
Thy tomb,
If disappointed, brings on them a curse. OEDIPUS
And can a son of mine have heard of this?
OEDIPUS
It needs no god to tell what’s plain to sense. ISMENE
Yea, both alike, and know its import well.
Contents
ISMENE
Therefore they fain would have thee close at hand, OEDIPUS
Not where thou wouldst be master of thyself. They knew it, yet the ignoble greed of rule
Outweighed all longing for their sire’s return.
96 97
ISMENE Nor will this Theban kingship bring them gain;
Grievous thy words, yet I must own them true. That know I from this maiden’s oracles,
And those old prophecies concerning me,
OEDIPUS
Which Phoebus now at length has brought to pass.
Then may the gods ne’er quench their fatal feud,
Come Creon then, come all the mightiest
And mine be the arbitrament of the fight,
In Thebes to seek me; for if ye my friends,
For which they now are arming, spear to spear;
Championed by those dread Powers indigenous,
That neither he who holds the scepter now
Espouse my cause; then for the State ye gain
May keep this throne, nor he who fled the realm
A great deliverer, for my foemen bane.
Return again. _They_ never raised a hand,
When I their sire was thrust from hearth and home, CHORUS
When I was banned and banished, what recked they? Our pity, Oedipus, thou needs must move,
Say you ’twas done at my desire, a grace Thou and these maidens; and the stronger plea
Which the state, yielding to my wish, allowed? Thou urgest, as the savior of our land,
Not so; for, mark you, on that very day Disposes me to counsel for thy weal.
When in the tempest of my soul I craved
OEDIPUS
Death, even death by stoning, none appeared
Aid me, kind sirs; I will do all you bid.
To further that wild longing, but anon,
When time had numbed my anguish and I felt CHORUS
My wrath had all outrun those errors past, First make atonement to the deities,
Then, then it was the city went about Whose grove by trespass thou didst first profane.
By force to oust me, respited for years; OEDIPUS
And then my sons, who should as sons have helped, After what manner, stranger? Teach me, pray.
Did nothing: and, one little word from them
CHORUS
Was all I needed, and they spoke no word,
Make a libation first of water fetched
But let me wander on for evermore,
With undefiled hands from living spring.
A banished man, a beggar. These two maids
Their sisters, girls, gave all their sex could give, OEDIPUS
Food and safe harborage and filial care; And after I have gotten this pure draught?
Contents
While their two brethren sacrificed their sire CHORUS

For lust of power and sceptred sovereignty. Bowls thou wilt find, the carver’s handiwork;
No! me they ne’er shall win for an ally, Crown thou the rims and both the handles crown—
98 99
OEDIPUS To grant the suppliant their saving grace.
With olive shoots or blocks of wool, or how? So pray thyself or whoso pray for thee,
In whispered accents, not with lifted voice;
CHORUS
Then go and look back. Do as I bid,
With wool from fleece of yearling freshly shorn.
And I shall then be bold to stand thy friend;
OEDIPUS Else, stranger, I should have my fears for thee.
What next? how must I end the ritual?
OEDIPUS
CHORUS Hear ye, my daughters, what these strangers say?
Pour thy libation, turning to the dawn.
ANTIGONE
OEDIPUS We listened, and attend thy bidding, father.
Pouring it from the urns whereof ye spake?
OEDIPUS
CHORUS I cannot go, disabled as I am
Yea, in three streams; and be the last bowl drained Doubly, by lack of strength and lack of sight;
To the last drop. But one of you may do it in my stead;
OEDIPUS For one, I trow, may pay the sacrifice
And wherewith shall I fill it, Of thousands, if his heart be leal and true.
Ere in its place I set it? This too tell. So to your work with speed, but leave me not
Untended; for this frame is all too week
CHORUS
To move without the help of guiding hand.
With water and with honey; add no wine.
ISMENE
OEDIPUS
Then I will go perform these rites, but where
And when the embowered earth hath drunk thereof?
To find the spot, this have I yet to learn.
CHORUS
CHORUS
Then lay upon it thrice nine olive sprays
Beyond this grove; if thou hast need of aught,
With both thy hands, and offer up this prayer.
The guardian of the close will lend his aid.
OEDIPUS
ISMENE
Contents
I fain would hear it; that imports the most.

I go, and thou, Antigone, meanwhile
CHORUS Must guard our father. In a parent’s cause
That, as we call them Gracious, they would deign Toil, if there be toil, is of no account.
100 101
[Exit ISMENE] (Ant. 1)
Know then I suffered ills most vile, but none
CHORUS
(So help me Heaven!) from acts in malice done.
(Str. 1)
Ill it is, stranger, to awake CHORUS
Pain that long since has ceased to ache, Say how.
And yet I fain would hear—
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS The State around
What thing? An all unwitting bridegroom bound
An impious marriage chain;
CHORUS
That was my bane.
Thy tale of cruel suffering
For which no cure was found, CHORUS
The fate that held thee bound. Didst thou in sooth then share
A bed incestuous with her that bare—
OEDIPUS
O bid me not (as guest I claim OEDIPUS
This grace) expose my shame. It stabs me like a sword,
That two-edged word,
CHORUS
O stranger, but these maids—my own—
The tale is bruited far and near,
And echoes still from ear to ear. CHORUS
The truth, I fain would hear. Say on.
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Ah me! Two daughters, curses twain.
CHORUS CHORUS
I prithee yield. Oh God!
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Ah me! Sprang from the wife and mother’s travail-pain.
Contents
CHORUS CHORUS
Grant my request, I granted all to thee. (Str. 2)
What, then thy offspring are at once—
OEDIPUS
102 103
OEDIPUS A father’s?
Too true.
OEDIPUS
Their father’s very sister’s too.
Flood on flood
CHORUS Whelms me; that word’s a second mortal blow.
Oh horror!
CHORUS
OEDIPUS Murderer!
Horrors from the boundless deep
OEDIPUS
Back on my soul in refluent surges sweep.
Yes, a murderer, but know—
CHORUS
CHORUS
Thou hast endured—
What canst thou plead?
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
Intolerable woe.
A plea of justice.
CHORUS
CHORUS
And sinned—
How?
OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS
I sinned not.
I slew who else would me have slain;
CHORUS I slew without intent,
How so? A wretch, but innocent
In the law’s eye, I stand, without a stain.
OEDIPUS
I served the State; would I had never won CHORUS
That graceless grace by which I was undone. Behold our sovereign, Theseus, Aegeus’ son,
Comes at thy summons to perform his part.
CHORUS
[Enter THESEUS]
(Ant. 2)
And next, unhappy man, thou hast shed blood? THESEUS
Contents
Oft had I heard of thee in times gone by—

OEDIPUS
The bloody mutilation of thine eyes—
Must ye hear more?
And therefore know thee, son of Laius.
CHORUS All that I lately gathered on the way
104 105
Made my conjecture doubly sure; and now Hereafter thou shalt learn, not yet, methinks.
Thy garb and that marred visage prove to me
THESEUS
That thou art he. So pitying thine estate,
When may we hope to reap the benefit?
Most ill-starred Oedipus, I fain would know
What is the suit ye urge on me and Athens, OEDIPUS
Thou and the helpless maiden at thy side. When I am dead and thou hast buried me.
Declare it; dire indeed must be the tale THESEUS
Whereat _I_ should recoil. I too was reared, Thou cravest life’s last service; all before—
Like thee, in exile, and in foreign lands Is it forgotten or of no account?
Wrestled with many perils, no man more.
OEDIPUS
Wherefore no alien in adversity
Yea, the last boon is warrant for the rest.
Shall seek in vain my succor, nor shalt thou;
I know myself a mortal, and my share THESEUS
In what the morrow brings no more than thine. The grace thou cravest then is small indeed.
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Theseus, thy words so apt, so generous Nay, weigh it well; the issue is not slight.
So comfortable, need no long reply THESEUS
Both who I am and of what lineage sprung, Thou meanest that betwixt thy sons and me?
And from what land I came, thou hast declared.
So without prologue I may utter now OEDIPUS
My brief petition, and the tale is told. Prince, they would fain convey me back to Thebes.
THESEUS THESEUS
Say on, and tell me what I fain would learn. If there be no compulsion, then methinks
To rest in banishment befits not thee.
OEDIPUS
I come to offer thee this woe-worn frame, OEDIPUS
A gift not fair to look on; yet its worth Nay, when _I_ wished it _they_ would not consent.
More precious far than any outward show. THESEUS
Contents
THESEUS For shame! such temper misbecomes the faller.

What profit dost thou proffer to have brought? OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS Chide if thou wilt, but first attend my plea.
106 107
THESEUS There is no constancy ‘twixt friend and friend,
Say on, I wait full knowledge ere I judge. Or city and city; be it soon or late,
Sweet turns to bitter, hate once more to love.
OEDIPUS
If now ’tis sunshine betwixt Thebes and thee
O Theseus, I have suffered wrongs on wrongs.
And not a cloud, Time in his endless course
THESEUS Gives birth to endless days and nights, wherein
Wouldst tell the old misfortune of thy race? The merest nothing shall suffice to cut
OEDIPUS With serried spears your bonds of amity.
No, that has grown a byword throughout Greece. Then shall my slumbering and buried corpse
In its cold grave drink their warm life-blood up,
THESEUS
If Zeus be Zeus and Phoebus still speak true.
What then can be this more than mortal grief?
No more: ’tis ill to tear aside the veil
OEDIPUS Of mysteries; let me cease as I began:
My case stands thus; by my own flesh and blood Enough if thou wilt keep thy plighted troth,
I was expelled my country, and can ne’er Then shall thou ne’er complain that Oedipus
Thither return again, a parricide. Proved an unprofitable and thankless guest,
THESEUS Except the gods themselves shall play me false.
Why fetch thee home if thou must needs obey. CHORUS
THESEUS The man, my lord, has from the very first
What are they threatened by the oracle? Declared his power to offer to our land
These and like benefits.
OEDIPUS
Destruction that awaits them in this land. THESEUS
Who could reject
THESEUS The proffered amity of such a friend?
What can beget ill blood ‘twixt them and me? First, he can claim the hospitality
OEDIPUS To which by mutual contract we stand pledged:
Dear son of Aegeus, to the gods alone Next, coming here, a suppliant to the gods,
Contents
Is given immunity from eld and death; He pays full tribute to the State and me;
But nothing else escapes all-ruinous time. His favors therefore never will I spurn,
Earth’s might decays, the might of men decays, But grant him the full rights of citizen;
Honor grows cold, dishonor flourishes, And, if it suits the stranger here to bide,
108 109
I place him in your charge, or if he please OEDIPUS
Rather to come with me—choose, Oedipus, My foes will come—
Which of the two thou wilt. Thy choice is mine.
THESEUS
OEDIPUS Our friends will look to that.
Zeus, may the blessing fall on men like these!
OEDIPUS
THESEUS But if thou leave me?
What dost thou then decide—to come with me?
THESEUS
OEDIPUS Teach me not my duty.
Yea, were it lawful—but ’tis rather here—
OEDIPUS
THESEUS ’Tis fear constrains me.
What wouldst thou here? I shall not thwart thy wish.
THESEUS
OEDIPUS _My_ soul knows no fear!
Here shall I vanquish those who cast me forth.
OEDIPUS
THESEUS Thou knowest not what threats—
Then were thy presence here a boon indeed.
THESEUS
OEDIPUS I know that none
Such shall it prove, if thou fulfill’st thy pledge. Shall hale thee hence in my despite. Such threats
Vented in anger oft, are blusterers,
THESEUS
An idle breath, forgot when sense returns.
Fear not for me; I shall not play thee false.
And for thy foemen, though their words were brave,
OEDIPUS Boasting to bring thee back, they are like to find
No need to back thy promise with an oath. The seas between us wide and hard to sail.
THESEUS Such my firm purpose, but in any case
An oath would be no surer than my word. Take heart, since Phoebus sent thee here. My name,
Though I be distant, warrants thee from harm.
OEDIPUS
Contents
How wilt thou act then? CHORUS

(Str. 1)
THESEUS
Thou hast come to a steed-famed land for rest,
What is it thou fear’st?
110 111
O stranger worn with toil, ’Tis the grey-leaved olive that feeds our boys;
To a land of all lands the goodliest Nor youth nor withering age destroys
Colonus’ glistening soil. The plant that the Olive Planter tends
’Tis the haunt of the clear-voiced nightingale, And the Grey-eyed Goddess herself defends.
Who hid in her bower, among
(Ant. 2)
The wine-dark ivy that wreathes the vale,
Yet another gift, of all gifts the most
Trilleth her ceaseless song;
Prized by our fatherland, we boast—
And she loves, where the clustering berries nod
The might of the horse, the might of the sea;
O’er a sunless, windless glade,
Our fame, Poseidon, we owe to thee,
The spot by no mortal footstep trod,
Son of Kronos, our king divine,
The pleasance kept for the Bacchic god,
Who in these highways first didst fit
Where he holds each night his revels wild
For the mouth of horses the iron bit;
With the nymphs who fostered the lusty child.
Thou too hast taught us to fashion meet
(Ant. 1) For the arm of the rower the oar-blade fleet,
And fed each morn by the pearly dew Swift as the Nereids’ hundred feet
The starred narcissi shine, As they dance along the brine.
And a wreath with the crocus’ golden hue
ANTIGONE
For the Mother and Daughter twine.
Oh land extolled above all lands, ’tis now
And never the sleepless fountains cease
For thee to make these glorious titles good.
That feed Cephisus’ stream,
But they swell earth’s bosom with quick increase, OEDIPUS
And their wave hath a crystal gleam. Why this appeal, my daughter?
And the Muses’ quire will never disdain ANTIGONE
To visit this heaven-favored plain, Father, lo!
Nor the Cyprian queen of the golden rein. Creon approaches with his company.
(Str. 2) OEDIPUS
And here there grows, unpruned, untamed, Fear not, it shall be so; if we are old,
Contents
Terror to foemen’s spear, This country’s vigor has no touch of age.

A tree in Asian soil unnamed, [Enter CREON with attendants]
By Pelops’ Dorian isle unclaimed,
CREON
Self-nurtured year by year;
112 113
Burghers, my noble friends, ye take alarm
OEDIPUS
At my approach (I read it in your eyes),
O front of brass, thy subtle tongue would twist
Fear nothing and refrain from angry words.
To thy advantage every plea of right
I come with no ill purpose; I am old,
Why try thy arts on me, why spread again
And know the city whither I am come,
Toils where ’twould gall me sorest to be snared?
Without a peer amongst the powers of Greece.
In old days when by self-wrought woes distraught,
It was by reason of my years that I
I yearned for exile as a glad release,
Was chosen to persuade your guest and bring
Thy will refused the favor then I craved.
Him back to Thebes; not the delegate
But when my frenzied grief had spent its force,
Of one man, but commissioned by the State,
And I was fain to taste the sweets of home,
Since of all Thebans I have most bewailed,
Then thou wouldst thrust me from my country, then
Being his kinsman, his most grievous woes.
These ties of kindred were by thee ignored;
O listen to me, luckless Oedipus,
And now again when thou behold’st this State
Come home! The whole Cadmeian people claim
And all its kindly people welcome me,
With right to have thee back, I most of all,
Thou seek’st to part us, wrapping in soft words
For most of all (else were I vile indeed)
Hard thoughts. And yet what pleasure canst thou find
I mourn for thy misfortunes, seeing thee
In forcing friendship on unwilling foes?
An aged outcast, wandering on and on,
Suppose a man refused to grant some boon
A beggar with one handmaid for thy stay.
When you importuned him, and afterwards
Ah! who had e’er imagined she could fall
When you had got your heart’s desire, consented,
To such a depth of misery as this,
Granting a grace from which all grace had fled,
To tend in penury thy stricken frame,
Would not such favor seem an empty boon?
A virgin ripe for wedlock, but unwed,
Yet such the boon thou profferest now to me,
A prey for any wanton ravisher?
Fair in appearance, but when tested false.
Seems it not cruel this reproach I cast
Yea, I will proved thee false, that these may hear;
On thee and on myself and all the race?
Thou art come to take me, not to take me home,
Aye, but an open shame cannot be hid.
But plant me on thy borders, that thy State
Hide it, O hide it, Oedipus, thou canst.
May so escape annoyance from this land.
Contents
O, by our fathers’ gods, consent I pray;

_That_ thou shalt never gain, but _this_ instead—
Come back to Thebes, come to thy father’s home,
My ghost to haunt thy country without end;
Bid Athens, as is meet, a fond farewell;
And for my sons, this heritage—no more—
Thebes thy old foster-mother claims thee first.
114 115
Just room to die in. Have not I more skill OEDIPUS
Than thou to draw the horoscope of Thebes? Depart! I bid thee in these burghers’ name,
Are not my teachers surer guides than thine— And prowl no longer round me to blockade
Great Phoebus and the sire of Phoebus, Zeus? My destined harbor.
Thou art a messenger suborned, thy tongue
CREON
Is sharper than a sword’s edge, yet thy speech
I protest to these,
Will bring thee more defeats than victories.
Not thee, and for thine answer to thy kin,
Howbeit, I know I waste my words—begone,
If e’er I take thee—
And leave me here; whate’er may be my lot,
He lives not ill who lives withal content. OEDIPUS
Who against their will
CREON
Could take me?
Which loses in this parley, I o’erthrown
By thee, or thou who overthrow’st thyself? CREON
Though untaken thou shalt smart.
OEDIPUS
I shall be well contented if thy suit OEDIPUS
Fails with these strangers, as it has with me. What power hast thou to execute this threat?
CREON CREON
Unhappy man, will years ne’er make thee wise? One of thy daughters is already seized,
Must thou live on to cast a slur on age? The other I will carry off anon.
OEDIPUS OEDIPUS
Thou hast a glib tongue, but no honest man, Woe, woe!
Methinks, can argue well on any side. CREON
CREON This is but prelude to thy woes.
’Tis one thing to speak much, another well. OEDIPUS
OEDIPUS Hast thou my child?
Thy words, forsooth, are few and all well aimed!
Contents
CREON
CREON And soon shall have the other.
Not for a man indeed with wits like thine. OEDIPUS
Ho, friends! ye will not surely play me false?
116 117
Chase this ungodly villain from your land. What means this, sirrah? quick unhand her, or
We’ll fight it out.
CHORUS
Hence, stranger, hence avaunt! Thou doest wrong CREON
In this, and wrong in all that thou hast done. Back!
CREON (to his guards) CHORUS
’Tis time by force to carry off the girl, Not till thou forbear.
If she refuse of her free will to go.
CREON
ANTIGONE ’Tis war with Thebes if I am touched or harmed.
Ah, woe is me! where shall I fly, where find
OEDIPUS
Succor from gods or men?
Did I not warn thee?
CHORUS
CHORUS
What would’st thou, stranger?
Quick, unhand the maid!
CREON
CREON
I meddle not with him, but her who is mine.
Command your minions; I am not your slave.
OEDIPUS
CHORUS
O princes of the land!
Desist, I bid thee.
CHORUS
CREON (to the guard)
Sir, thou dost wrong.
And O bid thee march!
CREON
CHORUS
Nay, right.
To the rescue, one and all!
CHORUS Rally, neighbors to my call!
How right? See, the foe is at the gate!
Rally to defend the State.
CREON
I take but what is mine. ANTIGONE
Contents
Ah, woe is me, they drag me hence, O friends.

OEDIPUS
Help, Athens! OEDIPUS
Where art thou, daughter?
CHORUS
118 119
ANTIGONE CHORUS
Haled along by force. What canst thou further?
OEDIPUS CREON
Thy hands, my child! Carry off this man.
ANTIGONE CHORUS
They will not let me, father. Brave words!
CREON CREON
Away with her! And deeds forthwith shall make them good.
OEDIPUS CHORUS
Ah, woe is me, ah woe! Unless perchance our sovereign intervene.
CREON OEDIPUS
So those two crutches shall no longer serve thee O shameless voice! Would’st lay an hand on me?
For further roaming. Since it pleaseth thee
CREON
To triumph o’er thy country and thy friends
Silence, I bid thee!
Who mandate, though a prince, I here discharge,
Enjoy thy triumph; soon or late thou’lt find OEDIPUS
Thou art an enemy to thyself, both now Goddesses, allow
And in time past, when in despite of friends Thy suppliant to utter yet one curse!
Thou gav’st the rein to passion, still thy bane. Wretch, now my eyes are gone thou hast torn away
The helpless maiden who was eyes to me;
CHORUS
For these to thee and all thy cursed race
Hold there, sir stranger!
May the great Sun, whose eye is everywhere,
CREON Grant length of days and old age like to mine.
Hands off, have a care.
CREON
CHORUS Listen, O men of Athens, mark ye this?
Restore the maidens, else thou goest not.
Contents
OEDIPUS
CREON They mark us both and understand that I
Then Thebes will take a dearer surety soon; Wronged by the deeds defend myself with words.
I will lay hands on more than these two maids.
CREON
120 121
Nothing shall curb my will; though I be old Quickly to the rescue come
And single-handed, I will have this man. Ere the robbers get them home.
[Enter THESEUS]
OEDIPUS
O woe is me! THESEUS
Why this outcry? What is forward? wherefore was I called away
CHORUS
From the altar of Poseidon, lord of your Colonus? Say!
Thou art a bold man, stranger, if thou think’st
On what errand have I hurried hither without stop or stay.
To execute thy purpose.
OEDIPUS
CREON
Dear friend—those accents tell me who thou art—
So I do.
Yon man but now hath done me a foul wrong.
CHORUS
THESEUS
Then shall I deem this State no more a State.
What is this wrong and who hath wrought it? Speak.
CREON
OEDIPUS
With a just quarrel weakness conquers might.
Creon who stands before thee. He it is
OEDIPUS Hath robbed me of my all, my daughters twain.
Ye hear his words?
THESEUS
CHORUS What means this?
Aye words, but not yet deeds,
OEDIPUS
Zeus knoweth!
Thou hast heard my tale of wrongs.
CREON
THESEUS
Zeus may haply know, not thou.
Ho! hasten to the altars, one of you.
CHORUS Command my liegemen leave the sacrifice
Insolence! And hurry, foot and horse, with rein unchecked,
CREON To where the paths that packmen use diverge,
Insolence that thou must bear. Lest the two maidens slip away, and I
Contents
Become a mockery to this my guest,

CHORUS
As one despoiled by force. Quick, as I bid.
Haste ye princes, sound the alarm!
As for this stranger, had I let my rage,
Men of Athens, arm ye, arm!
Justly provoked, have play, he had not ‘scaped
122 123
Scathless and uncorrected at my hands. I tell thee home and what I say, I mean.
But now the laws to which himself appealed,
CHORUS
These and none others shall adjudicate.
Thy case is perilous; though by birth and race
Thou shalt not quit this land, till thou hast fetched
Thou should’st be just, thou plainly doest wrong.
The maidens and produced them in my sight.
Thou hast offended both against myself CREON
And thine own race and country. Having come Not deeming this city void of men
Unto a State that champions right and asks Or counsel, son of Aegeus, as thou say’st
For every action warranty of law, I did what I have done; rather I thought
Thou hast set aside the custom of the land, Your people were not like to set such store
And like some freebooter art carrying off by kin of mine and keep them ‘gainst my will.
What plunder pleases thee, as if forsooth Nor would they harbor, so I stood assured,
Thou thoughtest this a city without men, A godless parricide, a reprobate
Or manned by slaves, and me a thing of naught. Convicted of incestuous marriage ties.
Yet not from Thebes this villainy was learnt; For on her native hill of Ares here
Thebes is not wont to breed unrighteous sons, (I knew your far-famed Areopagus)
Nor would she praise thee, if she learnt that thou Sits Justice, and permits not vagrant folk
Wert robbing me—aye and the gods to boot, To stay within your borders. In that faith
Haling by force their suppliants, poor maids. I hunted down my quarry; and e’en then
Were I on Theban soil, to prosecute i had refrained but for the curses dire
The justest claim imaginable, I Wherewith he banned my kinsfolk and myself:
Would never wrest by violence my own Such wrong, methought, had warrant for my act.
Without sanction of your State or King; Anger has no old age but only death;
I should behave as fits an outlander The dead alone can feel no touch of spite.
Living amongst a foreign folk, but thou So thou must work thy will; my cause is just
Shamest a city that deserves it not, But weak without allies; yet will I try,
Even thine own, and plentitude of years Old as I am, to answer deeds with deeds.
Have made of thee an old man and a fool. OEDIPUS
Contents
Therefore again I charge thee as before, O shameless railer, think’st thou this abuse
See that the maidens are restored at once, Defames my grey hairs rather than thine own?
Unless thou would’st continue here by force Murder and incest, deeds of horror, all
And not by choice a sojourner; so much
124 125
Thou blurtest forth against me, all I have borne, Would’st thou, O man of justice, first inquire
No willing sinner; so it pleased the gods If the assassin was perchance thy sire,
Wrath haply with my sinful race of old, Or turn upon him? As thou lov’st thy life,
Since thou could’st find no sin in me myself On thy aggressor thou would’st turn, no stay
For which in retribution I was doomed Debating, if the law would bear thee out.
To trespass thus against myself and mine. Such was my case, and such the pass whereto
Answer me now, if by some oracle The gods reduced me; and methinks my sire,
My sire was destined to a bloody end Could he come back to life, would not dissent.
By a son’s hand, can this reflect on me, Yet thou, for just thou art not, but a man
Me then unborn, begotten by no sire, Who sticks at nothing, if it serve his plea,
Conceived in no mother’s womb? And if Reproachest me with this before these men.
When born to misery, as born I was, It serves thy turn to laud great Theseus’ name,
I met my sire, not knowing whom I met And Athens as a wisely governed State;
or what I did, and slew him, how canst thou Yet in thy flatteries one thing is to seek:
With justice blame the all-unconscious hand? If any land knows how to pay the gods
And for my mother, wretch, art not ashamed, Their proper rites, ’tis Athens most of all.
Seeing she was thy sister, to extort This is the land whence thou wast fain to steal
From me the story of her marriage, such Their aged suppliant and hast carried off
A marriage as I straightway will proclaim. My daughters. Therefore to yon goddesses,
For I will speak; thy lewd and impious speech I turn, adjure them and invoke their aid
Has broken all the bonds of reticence. To champion my cause, that thou mayest learn
She was, ah woe is me! she was my mother; What is the breed of men who guard this State.
I knew it not, nor she; and she my mother
CHORUS
Bare children to the son whom she had borne,
An honest man, my liege, one sore bestead
A birth of shame. But this at least I know
By fortune, and so worthy our support.
Wittingly thou aspersest her and me;
But I unwitting wed, unwilling speak. THESEUS
Nay neither in this marriage or this deed Enough of words; the captors speed amain,
Contents
Which thou art ever casting in my teeth— While we the victims stand debating here.
A murdered sire—shall I be held to blame. CREON
Come, answer me one question, if thou canst: What would’st thou? What can I, a feeble man?
If one should presently attempt thy life,
126 127
THESEUS (Str. 1)
Show us the trail, and I’ll attend thee too, O when the flying foe,
That, if thou hast the maidens hereabouts, Turning at last to bay,
Thou mayest thyself discover them to me; Soon will give blow for blow,
But if thy guards outstrip us with their spoil, Might I behold the fray;
We may draw rein; for others speed, from whom Hear the loud battle roar
They will not ‘scape to thank the gods at home. Swell, on the Pythian shore,
Lead on, I say, the captor’s caught, and fate Or by the torch-lit bay,
Hath ta’en the fowler in the toils he spread; Where the dread Queen and Maid
So soon are lost gains gotten by deceit. Cherish the mystic rites,
And look not for allies; I know indeed Rites they to none betray,
Such height of insolence was never reached Ere on his lips is laid
Without abettors or accomplices; Secrecy’s golden key
Thou hast some backer in thy bold essay, By their own acolytes,
But I will search this matter home and see Priestly Eumolpidae.
One man doth not prevail against the State.
There I might chance behold
Dost take my drift, or seem these words as vain
Theseus our captain bold
As seemed our warnings when the plot was hatched?
Meet with the robber band,
CREON Ere they have fled the land,
Nothing thou sayest can I here dispute, Rescue by might and main
But once at home I too shall act my part. Maidens, the captives twain.
THESEUS (Ant. 1)
Threaten us and—begone! Thou, Oedipus, Haply on swiftest steed,
Stay here assured that nothing save my death Or in the flying car,
Will stay my purpose to restore the maids. Now they approach the glen,
West of white Oea’s scaur.
OEDIPUS
They will be vanquished:
Heaven bless thee, Theseus, for thy nobleness
Contents
Dread are our warriors, dread

And all thy loving care in my behalf.
Theseus our chieftain’s men.
[Exeunt THESEUS and CREON]
Flashes each bridle bright,
CHORUS Charges each gallant knight,
128 129
All that our Queen adore, O wayfarer, thou wilt not have to tax
Pallas their patron, or The friends who watch for thee with false presage,
Him whose wide floods enring For lo, an escort with the maids draws near.
Earth, the great Ocean-king [Enter ANTIGONE and ISMENE with THESEUS]
Whom Rhea bore.
OEDIPUS
(Str. 2) Where, where? what sayest thou?
Fight they or now prepare
ANTIGONE
To fight? a vision rare
O father, father,
Tells me that soon again
Would that some god might grant thee eyes to see
I shall behold the twain
This best of men who brings us back again.
Maidens so ill bestead,
By their kin buffeted. OEDIPUS
Today, today Zeus worketh some great thing My child! and are ye back indeed!
This day shall victory bring. ANTIGONE
O for the wings, the wings of a dove, Yes, saved
To be borne with the speed of the gale, By Theseus and his gallant followers.
Up and still upwards to sail
OEDIPUS
And gaze on the fray from the clouds above.
Come to your father’s arms, O let me feel
(Ant. 2)
A child’s embrace I never hoped for more.
All-seeing Zeus, O lord of heaven,
To our guardian host be given ANTIGONE
Might triumphant to surprise Thou askest what is doubly sweet to give.
Flying foes and win their prize. OEDIPUS
Hear us, Zeus, and hear us, child Where are ye then?
Of Zeus, Athene undefiled,
Hear, Apollo, hunter, hear, ANTIGONE
Huntress, sister of Apollo, We come together both.
Who the dappled swift-foot deer
Contents
OEDIPUS
O’er the wooded glade dost follow; My precious nurslings!
Help with your two-fold power
ANTIGONE
Athens in danger’s hour!
Fathers aye were fond.
130 131
One fallen like me to utter wretchedness,
OEDIPUS
Corrupt and tainted with a thousand ills?
Props of my age!
Oh no, I would not let thee if thou would’st.
ANTIGONE They only who have known calamity
So sorrow sorrow props. Can share it. Let me greet thee where thou art,
OEDIPUS And still befriend me as thou hast till now.
I have my darlings, and if death should come, THESEUS
Death were not wholly bitter with you near. I marvel not if thou hast dallied long
Cling to me, press me close on either side, In converse with thy children and preferred
There rest ye from your dreary wayfaring. Their speech to mine; I feel no jealousy,
Now tell me of your ventures, but in brief; I would be famous more by deeds than words.
Brief speech suffices for young maids like you. Of this, old friend, thou hast had proof; my oath
ANTIGONE I have fulfilled and brought thee back the maids
Here is our savior; thou should’st hear the tale Alive and nothing harmed for all those threats.
From his own lips; so shall my part be brief. And how the fight was won, ‘twere waste of words
To boast—thy daughters here will tell thee all.
OEDIPUS
But of a matter that has lately chanced
I pray thee do not wonder if the sight
On my way hitherward, I fain would have
Of children, given o’er for lost, has made
Thy counsel—slight ’twould seem, yet worthy thought.
My converse somewhat long and tedious.
A wise man heeds all matters great or small.
Full well I know the joy I have of them
Is due to thee, to thee and no man else; OEDIPUS
Thou wast their sole deliverer, none else. What is it, son of Aegeus? Let me hear.
The gods deal with thee after my desire, Of what thou askest I myself know naught.
With thee and with this land! for fear of heaven THESEUS
I found above all peoples most with you, ’Tis said a man, no countryman of thine,
And righteousness and lips that cannot lie. But of thy kin, hath taken sanctuary
I speak in gratitude of what I know, Beside the altar of Poseidon, where
Contents
For all I have I owe to thee alone. I was at sacrifice when called away.
Give me thy hand, O Prince, that I may touch it,
OEDIPUS
And if thou wilt permit me, kiss thy cheek.
What is his country? what the suitor’s prayer?
What say I? Can I wish that thou should’st touch
132 133
THESEUS Of all men’s most would jar upon my ears.
I know but one thing; he implores, I am told,
THESEUS
A word with thee—he will not trouble thee.
Thou sure mightest listen. If his suit offend,
OEDIPUS No need to grant it. Why so loth to hear him?
What seeks he? If a suppliant, something grave.
OEDIPUS
THESEUS That voice, O king, grates on a father’s ears;
He only waits, they say, to speak with thee, I have come to loathe it. Force me not to yield.
And then unharmed to go upon his way.
THESEUS
OEDIPUS But he hath found asylum. O beware,
I marvel who is this petitioner. And fail not in due reverence to the god.
THESEUS ANTIGONE
Think if there be not any of thy kin O heed me, father, though I am young in years.
At Argos who might claim this boon of thee. Let the prince have his will and pay withal
What in his eyes is service to the god;
OEDIPUS
For our sake also let our brother come.
Dear friend, forbear, I pray.
If what he urges tend not to thy good
THESEUS He cannot surely wrest perforce thy will.
What ails thee now? To hear him then, what harm? By open words
OEDIPUS A scheme of villainy is soon bewrayed.
Ask it not of me. Thou art his father, therefore canst not pay
In kind a son’s most impious outrages.
THESEUS
O listen to him; other men like thee
Ask not what? explain.
Have thankless children and are choleric,
OEDIPUS But yielding to persuasion’s gentle spell
Thy words have told me who the suppliant is. They let their savage mood be exorcised.
THESEUS Look thou to the past, forget the present, think
Contents
Who can he be that I should frown on him? On all the woe thy sire and mother brought thee;
Thence wilt thou draw this lesson without fail,
OEDIPUS Of evil passion evil is the end.
My son, O king, my hateful son, whose words Thou hast, alas, to prick thy memory,
134 135
Stern monitors, these ever-sightless orbs. (Ant.)
O yield to us; just suitors should not need Not to be born at all
To be importunate, nor he that takes Is best, far best that can befall,
A favor lack the grace to make return. Next best, when born, with least delay
To trace the backward way.
OEDIPUS
For when youth passes with its giddy train,
Grievous to me, my child, the boon ye win
Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils,
By pleading. Let it be then; have your way
Pain, pain for ever pain;
Only if come he must, I beg thee, friend,
And none escapes life’s coils.
Let none have power to dispose of me.
Envy, sedition, strife,
THESEUS Carnage and war, make up the tale of life.
No need, Sir, to appeal a second time. Last comes the worst and most abhorred stage
It likes me not to boast, but be assured Of unregarded age,
Thy life is safe while any god saves mine. Joyless, companionless and slow,
[Exit THESEUS] Of woes the crowning woe.
CHORUS (Epode)
(Str.) Such ills not I alone,
Who craves excess of days, He too our guest hath known,
Scorning the common span E’en as some headland on an iron-bound shore,
Of life, I judge that man Lashed by the wintry blasts and surge’s roar,
A giddy wight who walks in folly’s ways. So is he buffeted on every side
For the long years heap up a grievous load, By drear misfortune’s whelming tide,
Scant pleasures, heavier pains, By every wind of heaven o’erborne
Till not one joy remains Some from the sunset, some from orient morn,
For him who lingers on life’s weary road Some from the noonday glow.
And come it slow or fast, Some from Rhipean gloom of everlasting snow.
One doom of fate
ANTIGONE
Doth all await,
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Father, methinks I see the stranger coming,

For dance and marriage bell,
Alone he comes and weeping plenteous tears.
The dirge and funeral knell.
Death the deliverer freeth all at last. OEDIPUS
Who may he be?
136 137
For large discourse may send a thrill of joy,
ANTIGONE
Or stir a chord of wrath or tenderness,
The same that we surmised.
And to the tongue-tied somehow give a tongue.
From the outset—Polyneices. He is here.
[Enter POLYNEICES] POLYNEICES
Well dost thou counsel, and I will speak out.
POLYNEICES
First will I call in aid the god himself,
Ah me, my sisters, shall I first lament
Poseidon, from whose altar I was raised,
My own afflictions, or my aged sire’s,
With warrant from the monarch of this land,
Whom here I find a castaway, with you,
To parley with you, and depart unscathed.
In a strange land, an ancient beggar clad
These pledges, strangers, I would see observed
In antic tatters, marring all his frame,
By you and by my sisters and my sire.
While o’er the sightless orbs his unkept locks
Now, father, let me tell thee why I came.
Float in the breeze; and, as it were to match,
I have been banished from my native land
He bears a wallet against hunger’s pinch.
Because by right of primogeniture
All this too late I learn, wretch that I am,
I claimed possession of thy sovereign throne
Alas! I own it, and am proved most vile
Wherefrom Etocles, my younger brother,
In my neglect of thee: I scorn myself.
Ousted me, not by weight of precedent,
But as almighty Zeus in all he doth
Nor by the last arbitrament of war,
Hath Mercy for co-partner of this throne,
But by his popular acts; and the prime cause
Let Mercy, father, also sit enthroned
Of this I deem the curse that rests on thee.
In thy heart likewise. For transgressions past
So likewise hold the soothsayers, for when
May be amended, cannot be made worse.
I came to Argos in the Dorian land
Why silent? Father, speak, nor turn away, And took the king Adrastus’ child to wife,
Hast thou no word, wilt thou dismiss me then Under my standard I enlisted all
In mute disdain, nor tell me why thou art wrath? The foremost captains of the Apian isle,
O ye his daughters, sisters mine, do ye To levy with their aid that sevenfold host
This sullen, obstinate silence try to move. Of spearmen against Thebes, determining
Let him not spurn, without a single word To oust my foes or die in a just cause.
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Of answer, me the suppliant of the god. Why then, thou askest, am I here today?
ANTIGONE Father, I come a suppliant to thee
Tell him thyself, unhappy one, thine errand; Both for myself and my allies who now
138 139
With squadrons seven beneath their seven spears
CHORUS
Beleaguer all the plain that circles Thebes.
For the king’s sake who sent him, Oedipus,
Foremost the peerless warrior, peerless seer,
Dismiss him not without a meet reply.
Amphiaraiis with his lightning lance;
Next an Aetolian, Tydeus, Oeneus’ son; OEDIPUS
Eteoclus of Argive birth the third; Nay, worthy seniors, but for Theseus’ sake
The fourth Hippomedon, sent to the war Who sent him hither to have word of me.
By his sire Talaos; Capaneus, the fifth, Never again would he have heard my voice;
Vaunts he will fire and raze the town; the sixth But now he shall obtain this parting grace,
Parthenopaeus, an Arcadian born An answer that will bring him little joy.
Named of that maid, longtime a maid and late O villain, when thou hadst the sovereignty
Espoused, Atalanta’s true-born child; That now thy brother holdeth in thy stead,
Last I thy son, or thine at least in name, Didst thou not drive me, thine own father, out,
If but the bastard of an evil fate, An exile, cityless, and make we wear
Lead against Thebes the fearless Argive host. This beggar’s garb thou weepest to behold,
Thus by thy children and thy life, my sire, Now thou art come thyself to my sad plight?
We all adjure thee to remit thy wrath Nothing is here for tears; it must be borne
And favor one who seeks a just revenge By _me_ till death, and I shall think of thee
Against a brother who has banned and robbed him. As of my murderer; thou didst thrust me out;
For victory, if oracles speak true, ’Tis thou hast made me conversant with woe,
Will fall to those who have thee for ally. Through thee I beg my bread in a strange land;
So, by our fountains and familiar gods And had not these my daughters tended me
I pray thee, yield and hear; a beggar I I had been dead for aught of aid from thee.
And exile, thou an exile likewise; both They tend me, they preserve me, they are men
Involved in one misfortune find a home Not women in true service to their sire;
As pensioners, while he, the lord of Thebes, But ye are bastards, and no sons of mine.
O agony! makes a mock of thee and me. Therefore just Heaven hath an eye on thee;
I’ll scatter with a breath the upstart’s might, Howbeit not yet with aspect so austere
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And bring thee home again and stablish thee, As thou shalt soon experience, if indeed
And stablish, having cast him out, myself. These banded hosts are moving against Thebes.
This will thy goodwill I will undertake, That city thou canst never storm, but first
Without it I can scare return alive. Shall fall, thou and thy brother, blood-imbrued.
140 141
Such curse I lately launched against you twain, My sisters, ye his daughters, ye have heard
Such curse I now invoke to fight for me, The prayers of our stern father, if his curse
That ye may learn to honor those who bear thee Should come to pass and ye some day return
Nor flout a sightless father who begat To Thebes, O then disown me not, I pray,
Degenerate sons—these maidens did not so. But grant me burial and due funeral rites.
Therefore my curse is stronger than thy “throne,” So shall the praise your filial care now wins
Thy “suppliance,” if by right of laws eterne Be doubled for the service wrought for me.
Primeval Justice sits enthroned with Zeus.
ANTIGONE
Begone, abhorred, disowned, no son of mine,
One boon, O Polyneices, let me crave.
Thou vilest of the vile! and take with thee
This curse I leave thee as my last bequest:— POLYNEICES
Never to win by arms thy native land, What would’st thou, sweet Antigone? Say on.
No, nor return to Argos in the Vale, ANTIGONE
But by a kinsman’s hand to die and slay Turn back thy host to Argos with all speed,
Him who expelled thee. So I pray and call And ruin not thyself and Thebes as well.
On the ancestral gloom of Tartarus
POLYNEICES
To snatch thee hence, on these dread goddesses
That cannot be. How could I lead again
I call, and Ares who incensed you both
An army that had seen their leader quail?
To mortal enmity. Go now proclaim
What thou hast heard to the Cadmeians all, ANTIGONE
Thy staunch confederates—this the heritage But, brother, why shouldst thou be wroth again?
that Oedipus divideth to his sons. What profit from thy country’s ruin comes?
CHORUS POLYNEICES
Thy errand, Polyneices, liked me not ’Tis shame to live in exile, and shall I
From the beginning; now go back with speed. The elder bear a younger brother’s flouts?
POLYNEICES ANTIGONE
Woe worth my journey and my baffled hopes! Wilt thou then bring to pass his prophecies
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Woe worth my comrades! What a desperate end Who threatens mutual slaughter to you both?
To that glad march from Argos! Woe is me! POLYNEICES
I dare not whisper it to my allies Aye, so he wishes:—but I must not yield.
Or turn them back, but mute must meet my doom.
142 143
ANTIGONE It may not be; forbear.
O woe is me! but say, will any dare,
ANTIGONE
Hearing his prophecy, to follow thee?
Then woe is me,
POLYNEICES If I must lose thee.
I shall not tell it; a good general
POLYNEICES
Reports successes and conceals mishaps.
Nay, that rests with fate,
ANTIGONE Whether I live or die; but for you both
Misguided youth, thy purpose then stands fast! I pray to heaven ye may escape all ill;
For ye are blameless in the eyes of all.
POLYNEICES
[Exit POLYNEICES]
’Tis so, and stay me not. The road I choose,
Dogged by my sire and his avenging spirit, CHORUS
Leads me to ruin; but for you may Zeus (Str. 1)
Make your path bright if ye fulfill my hest Ills on ills! no pause or rest!
When dead; in life ye cannot serve me more. Come they from our sightless guest?
Now let me go, farewell, a long farewell! Or haply now we see fulfilled
Ye ne’er shall see my living face again. What fate long time hath willed?
For ne’er have I proved vain
ANTIGONE
Aught that the heavenly powers ordain.
Ah me!
Time with never sleeping eye
POLYNEICES Watches what is writ on high,
Bewail me not. Overthrowing now the great,
ANTIGONE Raising now from low estate.
Who would not mourn Hark! How the thunder rumbles! Zeus defend us!
Thee, brother, hurrying to an open pit! OEDIPUS
POLYNEICES Children, my children! will no messenger
If I must die, I must. Go summon hither Theseus my best friend?
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ANTIGONE ANTIGONE
Nay, hear me plead. And wherefore, father, dost thou summon him?
POLYNEICES OEDIPUS
144 145
This winged thunder of the god must bear me OEDIPUS
Anon to Hades. Send and tarry not. Is the prince coming? Will he when he comes
Find me yet living and my senses clear!
CHORUS
(Ant. 1) ANTIGONE
Hark! with louder, nearer roar What solemn charge would’st thou impress on him?
The bolt of Zeus descends once more.
OEDIPUS
My spirit quails and cowers: my hair
For all his benefits I would perform
Bristles for fear. Again that flare!
The promise made when I received them first.
What doth the lightning-flash portend?
Ever it points to issues grave. CHORUS
Dread powers of air! Save, Zeus, O save! (Ant. 2)
Hither haste, my son, arise,
OEDIPUS
Altar leave and sacrifice,
Daughters, upon me the predestined end
If haply to Poseidon now
Has come; no turning from it any more.
In the far glade thou pay’st thy vow.
ANTIGONE For our guest to thee would bring
How knowest thou? What sign convinces thee? And thy folk and offering,
Thy due guerdon. Haste, O King!
OEDIPUS
[Enter THESEUS]
I know full well. Let some one with all speed
Go summon hither the Athenian prince. THESEUS
Wherefore again this general din? at once
CHORUS
My people call me and the stranger calls.
(Str. 2)
Is it a thunderbolt of Zeus or sleet
Ha! once more the deafening sound
Of arrowy hail? a storm so fierce as this
Peals yet louder all around
Would warrant all surmises of mischance.
If thou darkenest our land,
Lightly, lightly lay thy hand; OEDIPUS
Grace, not anger, let me win, Thou com’st much wished for, Prince, and sure some god
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If upon a man of sin Hath bid good luck attend thee on thy way.
I have looked with pitying eye,
THESEUS
Zeus, our king, to thee I cry!
What, son of Laius, hath chanced of new?
146 147
OEDIPUS Can I reveal what thou must guard alone,
My life hath turned the scale. I would do all And whisper to thy chosen heir alone,
I promised thee and thine before I die. So to be handed down from heir to heir.
Thus shalt thou hold this land inviolate
THESEUS
From the dread Dragon’s brood. [4] The justest State
What sign assures thee that thine end is near?
By countless wanton neighbors may be wronged,
OEDIPUS For the gods, though they tarry, mark for doom
The gods themselves are heralds of my fate; The godless sinner in his mad career.
Of their appointed warnings nothing fails. Far from thee, son of Aegeus, be such fate!
THESEUS But to the spot—the god within me goads—
How sayest thou they signify their will? Let us set forth no longer hesitate.
Follow me, daughters, this way. Strange that I
OEDIPUS
Whom you have led so long should lead you now.
This thunder, peal on peal, this lightning hurled
Oh, touch me not, but let me all alone
Flash upon flash, from the unconquered hand.
Find out the sepulcher that destiny
THESEUS Appoints me in this land. Hither, this way,
I must believe thee, having found thee oft For this way Hermes leads, the spirit guide,
A prophet true; then speak what must be done. And Persephassa, empress of the dead.
OEDIPUS O light, no light to me, but mine erewhile,
O son of Aegeus, for this state will I Now the last time I feel thee palpable,
Unfold a treasure age cannot corrupt. For I am drawing near the final gloom
Myself anon without a guiding hand Of Hades. Blessing on thee, dearest friend,
Will take thee to the spot where I must end. On thee and on thy land and followers!
This secret ne’er reveal to mortal man, Live prosperous and in your happy state
Neither the spot nor whereabouts it lies, Still for your welfare think on me, the dead.
So shall it ever serve thee for defense [Exit THESEUS followed by ANTIGONE and ISMENE]
Better than native shields and near allies. CHORUS
But those dread mysteries speech may not profane (Str.)
Contents
Thyself shalt gather coming there alone; If mortal prayers are heard in hell,
Since not to any of thy subjects, nor Hear, Goddess dread, invisible!
To my own children, though I love them dearly, Monarch of the regions drear,
148 149
Aidoneus, hear, O hear!

MESSENGER
By a gentle, tearless doom
Thy question hits the marvel of the tale.
Speed this stranger to the gloom,
How he moved hence, you saw him and must know;
Let him enter without pain
Without a friend to lead the way, himself
The all-shrouding Stygian plain.
Guiding us all. So having reached the abrupt
Wrongfully in life oppressed,
Earth-rooted Threshold with its brazen stairs,
Be he now by Justice blessed.
He paused at one of the converging paths,
(Ant.) Hard by the rocky basin which records
Queen infernal, and thou fell The pact of Theseus and Peirithous.
Watch-dog of the gates of hell, Betwixt that rift and the Thorician rock,
Who, as legends tell, dost glare, The hollow pear-tree and the marble tomb,
Gnarling in thy cavernous lair Midway he sat and loosed his beggar’s weeds;
At all comers, let him go Then calling to his daughters bade them fetch
Scathless to the fields below. Of running water, both to wash withal
For thy master orders thus, And make libation; so they clomb the steep;
The son of earth and Tartarus; And in brief space brought what their father bade,
In his den the monster keep, Then laved and dressed him with observance due.
Giver of eternal sleep. But when he had his will in everything,
[Enter MESSENGER] And no desire was left unsatisfied,
It thundered from the netherworld; the maids
MESSENGER
Shivered, and crouching at their father’s knees
Friends, countrymen, my tidings are in sum
Wept, beat their breast and uttered a long wail.
That Oedipus is gone, but the event
He, as he heard their sudden bitter cry,
Was not so brief, nor can the tale be brief.
Folded his arms about them both and said,
CHORUS “My children, ye will lose your sire today,
What, has he gone, the unhappy man? For all of me has perished, and no more
MESSENGER Have ye to bear your long, long ministry;
A heavy load, I know, and yet one word
Contents
Know well
That he has passed away from life to death. Wipes out all score of tribulations—_love_.
And love from me ye had—from no man more;
CHORUS
But now must live without me all your days.”
How? By a god-sent, painless doom, poor soul?
150 151
So clinging to each other sobbed and wept A moment later, and we saw him bend
Father and daughters both, but when at last In prayer to Earth and prayer to Heaven at once.
Their mourning had an end and no wail rose, But by what doom the stranger met his end
A moment there was silence; suddenly No man save Theseus knoweth. For there fell
A voice that summoned him; with sudden dread No fiery bold that reft him in that hour,
The hair of all stood up and all were ‘mazed; Nor whirlwind from the sea, but he was taken.
For the call came, now loud, now low, and oft. It was a messenger from heaven, or else
“Oedipus, Oedipus, why tarry we? Some gentle, painless cleaving of earth’s base;
Too long, too long thy passing is delayed.” For without wailing or disease or pain
But when he heard the summons of the god, He passed away—and end most marvelous.
He prayed that Theseus might be brought, and when And if to some my tale seems foolishness
The Prince came nearer: “O my friend,” he cried, I am content that such could count me fool.
“Pledge ye my daughters, giving thy right hand—
CHORUS
And, daughters, give him yours—and promise me
Where are the maids and their attendant friends?
Thou never wilt forsake them, but do all
That time and friendship prompt in their behoof.” MESSENGER
And he of his nobility repressed They cannot be far off; the approaching sound
His tears and swore to be their constant friend. Of lamentation tells they come this way.
This promise given, Oedipus put forth [Enter ANTIGONE and ISMENE]
Blind hands and laid them on his children, saying, ANTIGONE
“O children, prove your true nobility (Str. 1)
And hence depart nor seek to witness sights Woe, woe! on this sad day
Unlawful or to hear unlawful words. We sisters of one blasted stock
Nay, go with speed; let none but Theseus stay, must bow beneath the shock,
Our ruler, to behold what next shall hap.” Must weep and weep the curse that lay
So we all heard him speak, and weeping sore On him our sire, for whom
We companied the maidens on their way. In life, a life-long world of care
After brief space we looked again, and lo ’Twas ours to bear,
Contents
The man was gone, evanished from our eyes; In death must face the gloom
Only the king we saw with upraised hand That wraps his tomb.
Shading his eyes as from some awful sight, What tongue can tell
That no man might endure to look upon.
152 153
That sight ineffable? Love can turn past pain to bliss,
What seemed bitter now is sweet.
CHORUS
Ah me! that happy toil is sweet.
What mean ye, maidens?
The guidance of those dear blind feet.
ANTIGONE Dear father, wrapt for aye in nether gloom,
All is but surmise. E’en in the tomb
CHORUS Never shalt thou lack of love repine,
Is he then gone? Her love and mine.
ANTIGONE CHORUS
Gone as ye most might wish. His fate—
Not in battle or sea storm, ANTIGONE
But reft from sight, Is even as he planned.
By hands invisible borne
CHORUS
To viewless fields of night.
How so?
Ah me! on us too night has come,
The night of mourning. Wither roam ANTIGONE
O’er land or sea in our distress He died, so willed he, in a foreign land.
Eating the bread of bitterness? Lapped in kind earth he sleeps his long last sleep,
And o’er his grave friends weep.
ISMENE
How great our lost these streaming eyes can tell,
I know not. O that Death
This sorrow naught can quell.
Might nip my breath,
Thou hadst thy wish ‘mid strangers thus to die,
And let me share my aged father’s fate.
But I, ah me, not by.
I cannot live a life thus desolate.
ISMENE
CHORUS
Alas, my sister, what new fate
Best of daughters, worthy pair,
Befalls us orphans desolate?
What heaven brings ye needs must bear,
Fret no more ‘gainst Heaven’s will; CHORUS
Contents
Fate hath dealt with you not ill. His end was blessed; therefore, children, stay
Your sorrow. Man is born to fate a prey.
ANTIGONE
(Ant. 1) ANTIGONE
154 155
(Str. 2) How shall I unhappy fare,
Sister, let us back again. Friendless, helpless, how drag on
A life of misery alone?
ISMENE
Why return? CHORUS
(Ant. 2)
ANTIGONE
Fear not, maids—
My soul is fain—
ISMENE ANTIGONE
Is fain? Ah, whither flee?
ANTIGONE CHORUS
To see the earthy bed. Refuge hath been found.
ISMENE ANTIGONE
Sayest thou? For me?
ANTIGONE CHORUS
Where our sire is laid. Where thou shalt be safe from harm.
ISMENE ANTIGONE
Nay, thou can’st not, dost not see— I know it.
ANTIGONE CHORUS
Sister, wherefore wroth with me? Why then this alarm?
ISMENE ANTIGONE
Know’st not—beside— How again to get us home
I know not.
ANTIGONE
More must I hear? CHORUS
Why then this roam?
ISMENE
Tombless he died, none near. ANTIGONE
Contents
Troubles whelm us—

ANTIGONE
Lead me thither; slay me there. CHORUS
As of yore.
ISMENE
156 157
ANTIGONE What say’st thou, King?
Worse than what was worse before.
THESEUS
CHORUS My children, he
Sure ye are driven on the breakers’ surge. Charged me straitly that no moral
Should approach the sacred portal,
ANTIGONE
Or greet with funeral litanies
Alas! we are.
The hidden tomb wherein he lies;
CHORUS Saying, “If thou keep’st my hest
Alas! ’tis so. Thou shalt hold thy realm at rest.”
ANTIGONE The God of Oaths this promise heard,
Ah whither turn, O Zeus? No ray And to Zeus I pledged my word.
Of hope to cheer the way ANTIGONE
Whereon the fates our desperate voyage urge. Well, if he would have it so,
[Enter THESEUS] We must yield. Then let us go
THESEUS Back to Thebes, if yet we may
Dry your tears; when grace is shed Heal this mortal feud and stay
On the quick and on the dead The self-wrought doom
By dark Powers beneficent, That drives our brothers to their tomb.
Over-grief they would resent. THESEUS
ANTIGONE Go in peace; nor will I spare
Aegeus’ child, to thee we pray. Ought of toil and zealous care,
But on all your needs attend,
THESEUS
Gladdening in his grave my friend.
What the boon, my children, say.
CHORUS
ANTIGONE
Wail no more, let sorrow rest,
With our own eyes we fain would see
All is ordered for the best.
Our father’s tomb.
Contents
THESEUS
FOOTNOTES
That may not be.
————
ANTIGONE
158 159
1. The Greek text for the passages marked here and later in the
text have been lost.
2. To avoid the blessing, still a secret, he resorts to a common-
place; literally, “For what generous man is not (in befriending others)
a friend to himself?”
3. Creon desires to bury Oedipus on the confines of Thebes so
as to avoid the pollution and yet offer due rites at his tomb. Ismene
tells him of the latest oracle and interprets to him its purport, that
some day the Theban invaders of Athens will be routed in a battle
near the grave of Oedipus.
3.
4. The Thebans sprung from the Dragon’s teeth sown by ANTIGONE
Cadmus.
Argument.
Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, the late king of Thebes, in

defiance of Creon who rules in his stead, resolves to bury her brother
Polyneices, slain in his attack on Thebes. She is caught in the act by
Creon’s watchmen and brought before the king. She justifies her
action, asserting that she was bound to obey the eternal laws of right
and wrong in spite of any human ordinance. Creon, unrelenting,
condemns her to be immured in a rock-hewn chamber. His son
Haemon, to whom Antigone is betrothed, pleads in vain for her life
and threatens to die with her. Warned by the seer Teiresias Creon
repents him and hurries to release Antigone from her rocky prison.
But he is too late: he finds lying side by side Antigone who had
hanged herself and Haemon who also has perished by his own
hand. Returning to the palace he sees within the dead body of his
Contents
queen who on learning of her son’s death has stabbed herself to the
heart.
160 161
DRAMATIS PERSONAE ANTIGONE
ANTIGONE and ISMENE - daughters of Oedipus and sisters I know ’twas so, and therefore summoned thee
of Polyneices and Eteocles. Beyond the gates to breathe it in thine ear.
CREON, King of Thebes. ISMENE
HAEMON, Son of Creon, betrothed to Antigone. What is it? Some dark secret stirs thy breast.
EURYDICE, wife of Creon.
ANTIGONE
TEIRESIAS, the prophet.
What but the thought of our two brothers dead,
CHORUS, of Theban elders.
The one by Creon graced with funeral rites,
A WATCHMAN
The other disappointed? Eteocles
A MESSENGER
He hath consigned to earth (as fame reports)
A SECOND MESSENGER
With obsequies that use and wont ordain,
So gracing him among the dead below.
ANTIGONE and ISMENE before the Palace gates.
But Polyneices, a dishonored corse,
ANTIGONE (So by report the royal edict runs)
Ismene, sister of my blood and heart, No man may bury him or make lament—
See’st thou how Zeus would in our lives fulfill Must leave him tombless and unwept, a feast
The weird of Oedipus, a world of woes! For kites to scent afar and swoop upon.
For what of pain, affliction, outrage, shame, Such is the edict (if report speak true)
Is lacking in our fortunes, thine and mine? Of Creon, our most noble Creon, aimed
And now this proclamation of today At thee and me, aye me too; and anon
Made by our Captain-General to the State, He will be here to promulgate, for such
What can its purport be? Didst hear and heed, As have not heard, his mandate; ’tis in sooth
Or art thou deaf when friends are banned as foes? No passing humor, for the edict says
ISMENE Whoe’er transgresses shall be stoned to death.
To me, Antigone, no word of friends So stands it with us; now ’tis thine to show
Has come, or glad or grievous, since we twain If thou art worthy of thy blood or base.
Were reft of our two brethren in one day ISMENE
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By double fratricide; and since i’ the night But how, my rash, fond sister, in such case
Our Argive leaguers fled, no later news Can I do anything to make or mar?
Has reached me, to inspirit or deject.
ANTIGONE
162 163
Say, wilt thou aid me and abet? Decide. We must obey his orders, these or worse.
Therefore I plead compulsion and entreat
ISMENE
The dead to pardon. I perforce obey
In what bold venture? What is in thy thought?
The powers that be. ’Tis foolishness, I ween,
ANTIGONE To overstep in aught the golden mean.
Lend me a hand to bear the corpse away.
ANTIGONE
ISMENE I urge no more; nay, wert thou willing still,
What, bury him despite the interdict? I would not welcome such a fellowship.
ANTIGONE Go thine own way; myself will bury him.
My brother, and, though thou deny him, thine How sweet to die in such employ, to rest,—
No man shall say that _I_ betrayed a brother. Sister and brother linked in love’s embrace—
A sinless sinner, banned awhile on earth,
ISMENE
But by the dead commended; and with them
Wilt thou persist, though Creon has forbid?
I shall abide for ever. As for thee,
ANTIGONE Scorn, if thou wilt, the eternal laws of Heaven.
What right has he to keep me from my own?
ISMENE
ISMENE I scorn them not, but to defy the State
Bethink thee, sister, of our father’s fate, Or break her ordinance I have no skill.
Abhorred, dishonored, self-convinced of sin,
ANTIGONE
Blinded, himself his executioner.
A specious pretext. I will go alone
Think of his mother-wife (ill sorted names)
To lap my dearest brother in the grave.
Done by a noose herself had twined to death
And last, our hapless brethren in one day, ISMENE
Both in a mutual destiny involved, My poor, fond sister, how I fear for thee!
Self-slaughtered, both the slayer and the slain. ANTIGONE
Bethink thee, sister, we are left alone; O waste no fears on me; look to thyself.
Shall we not perish wretchedest of all,
ISMENE
Contents
If in defiance of the law we cross

At least let no man know of thine intent,
A monarch’s will?—weak women, think of that,
But keep it close and secret, as will I.
Not framed by nature to contend with men.
Remember this too that the stronger rules; ANTIGONE
164 165
O tell it, sister; I shall hate thee more Speeding upon their headlong homeward course,
If thou proclaim it not to all the town. Far quicker than they came, the Argive force;
Putting to flight
ISMENE
The argent shields, the host with scutcheons white.
Thou hast a fiery soul for numbing work.
Against our land the proud invader came
ANTIGONE To vindicate fell Polyneices’ claim.
I pleasure those whom I would liefest please. Like to an eagle swooping low,
ISMENE On pinions white as new fall’n snow.
If thou succeed; but thou art doomed to fail. With clanging scream, a horsetail plume his crest,
The aspiring lord of Argos onward pressed.
ANTIGONE
When strength shall fail me, yes, but not before. (Ant. 1)
Hovering around our city walls he waits,
ISMENE His spearmen raven at our seven gates.
But, if the venture’s hopeless, why essay? But ere a torch our crown of towers could burn,
ANTIGONE Ere they had tasted of our blood, they turn
Sister, forbear, or I shall hate thee soon, Forced by the Dragon; in their rear
And the dead man will hate thee too, with cause. The din of Ares panic-struck they hear.
Say I am mad and give my madness rein For Zeus who hates the braggart’s boast
To wreck itself; the worst that can befall Beheld that gold-bespangled host;
Is but to die an honorable death. As at the goal the paean they upraise,
He struck them with his forked lightning blaze.
ISMENE
Have thine own way then; ’tis a mad endeavor, (Str. 2)
Yet to thy lovers thou art dear as ever. To earthy from earth rebounding, down he crashed;
[Exeunt] The fire-brand from his impious hand was dashed,
As like a Bacchic reveler on he came,
CHORUS
Outbreathing hate and flame,
(Str. 1)
And tottered. Elsewhere in the field,
Sunbeam, of all that ever dawn upon
Contents
Here, there, great Area like a war-horse wheeled;

Our seven-gated Thebes the brightest ray,
Beneath his car down thrust
O eye of golden day,
Our foemen bit the dust.
How fair thy light o’er Dirce’s fountain shone,
Seven captains at our seven gates
166 167
Thundered; for each a champion waits, Again, when Oedipus restored our State,
Each left behind his armor bright, Both while he ruled and when his rule was o’er,
Trophy for Zeus who turns the fight; Ye still were constant to the royal line.
Save two alone, that ill-starred pair Now that his two sons perished in one day,
One mother to one father bare, Brother by brother murderously slain,
Who lance in rest, one ‘gainst the other By right of kinship to the Princes dead,
Drave, and both perished, brother slain by brother. I claim and hold the throne and sovereignty.
(Ant. 2) Yet ’tis no easy matter to discern
Now Victory to Thebes returns again The temper of a man, his mind and will,
And smiles upon her chariot-circled plain. Till he be proved by exercise of power;
Now let feast and festal should And in my case, if one who reigns supreme
Memories of war blot out. Swerve from the highest policy, tongue-tied
Let us to the temples throng, By fear of consequence, that man I hold,
Dance and sing the live night long. And ever held, the basest of the base.
God of Thebes, lead thou the round. And I contemn the man who sets his friend
Bacchus, shaker of the ground! Before his country. For myself, I call
Let us end our revels here; To witness Zeus, whose eyes are everywhere,
Lo! Creon our new lord draws near, If I perceive some mischievous design
Crowned by this strange chance, our king. To sap the State, I will not hold my tongue;
What, I marvel, pondering? Nor would I reckon as my private friend
Why this summons? Wherefore call A public foe, well knowing that the State
Us, his elders, one and all, Is the good ship that holds our fortunes all:
Bidding us with him debate, Farewell to friendship, if she suffers wreck.
On some grave concern of State? Such is the policy by which I seek
[Enter CREON] To serve the Commons and conformably
I have proclaimed an edict as concerns
CREON The sons of Oedipus; Eteocles
Elders, the gods have righted one again Who in his country’s battle fought and fell,
Contents
Our storm-tossed ship of state, now safe in port. The foremost champion—duly bury him
But you by special summons I convened With all observances and ceremonies
As my most trusted councilors; first, because That are the guerdon of the heroic dead.
I knew you loyal to Laius of old; But for the miscreant exile who returned
168 169
Minded in flames and ashes to blot out CREON
His father’s city and his father’s gods, The penalty _is_ death: yet hope of gain
And glut his vengeance with his kinsmen’s blood, Hath lured men to their ruin oftentimes.
Or drag them captive at his chariot wheels— [Enter GUARD]
For Polyneices ’tis ordained that none
GUARD
Shall give him burial or make mourn for him,
My lord, I will not make pretense to pant
But leave his corpse unburied, to be meat
And puff as some light-footed messenger.
For dogs and carrion crows, a ghastly sight.
In sooth my soul beneath its pack of thought
So am I purposed; never by my will
Made many a halt and turned and turned again;
Shall miscreants take precedence of true men,
For conscience plied her spur and curb by turns.
But all good patriots, alive or dead,
“Why hurry headlong to thy fate, poor fool?”
Shall be by me preferred and honored.
She whispered. Then again, “If Creon learn
CHORUS This from another, thou wilt rue it worse.”
Son of Menoeceus, thus thou will’st to deal Thus leisurely I hastened on my road;
With him who loathed and him who loved our State. Much thought extends a furlong to a league.
Thy word is law; thou canst dispose of us But in the end the forward voice prevailed,
The living, as thou will’st, as of the dead. To face thee. I will speak though I say nothing.
For plucking courage from despair methought,
CREON
‘Let the worst hap, thou canst but meet thy fate.’
See then ye execute what I ordain.
CREON
CHORUS
What is thy news? Why this despondency?
On younger shoulders lay this grievous charge.
GUARD
CREON
Let me premise a word about myself?
Fear not, I’ve posted guards to watch the corpse.
I neither did the deed nor saw it done,
CHORUS Nor were it just that I should come to harm.
What further duty would’st thou lay on us?
CREON
CREON
Contents
Thou art good at parry, and canst fence about

Not to connive at disobedience. Some matter of grave import, as is plain.
CHORUS GUARD
No man is mad enough to court his death. The bearer of dread tidings needs must quake.
170 171
For there was no gainsaying him nor way
CREON
To escape perdition: _Ye_are_bound_to_tell_
Then, sirrah, shoot thy bolt and get thee gone.
_The_King,_ye_cannot_hide_it_; so he spake.
GUARD And he convinced us all; so lots were cast,
Well, it must out; the corpse is buried; someone And I, unlucky scapegoat, drew the prize.
E’en now besprinkled it with thirsty dust, So here I am unwilling and withal
Performed the proper ritual—and was gone. Unwelcome; no man cares to hear ill news.
CREON CHORUS
What say’st thou? Who hath dared to do this thing? I had misgivings from the first, my liege,
GUARD Of something more than natural at work.
I cannot tell, for there was ne’er a trace CREON
Of pick or mattock—hard unbroken ground, O cease, you vex me with your babblement;
Without a scratch or rut of chariot wheels, I am like to think you dote in your old age.
No sign that human hands had been at work. Is it not arrant folly to pretend
When the first sentry of the morning watch That gods would have a thought for this dead man?
Gave the alarm, we all were terror-stricken. Did they forsooth award him special grace,
The corpse had vanished, not interred in earth, And as some benefactor bury him,
But strewn with dust, as if by one who sought Who came to fire their hallowed sanctuaries,
To avert the curse that haunts the unburied dead: To sack their shrines, to desolate their land,
Of hound or ravening jackal, not a sign. And scout their ordinances? Or perchance
Thereat arose an angry war of words; The gods bestow their favors on the bad.
Guard railed at guard and blows were like to end it, No! no! I have long noted malcontents
For none was there to part us, each in turn Who wagged their heads, and kicked against the yoke,
Suspected, but the guilt brought home to none, Misliking these my orders, and my rule.
From lack of evidence. We challenged each ’Tis they, I warrant, who suborned my guards
The ordeal, or to handle red-hot iron, By bribes. Of evils current upon earth
Or pass through fire, affirming on our oath The worst is money. Money ’tis that sacks
Contents
Our innocence—we neither did the deed Cities, and drives men forth from hearth and home;
Ourselves, nor know who did or compassed it. Warps and seduces native innocence,
Our quest was at a standstill, when one spake And breeds a habit of dishonesty.
And bowed us all to earth like quivering reeds, But they who sold themselves shall find their greed
172 173
Out-shot the mark, and rue it soon or late. CREON
Yea, as I still revere the dread of Zeus, Twice guilty, having sold thy soul for gain.
By Zeus I swear, except ye find and bring
GUARD
Before my presence here the very man
Alas! how sad when reasoners reason wrong.
Who carried out this lawless burial,
Death for your punishment shall not suffice. CREON
Hanged on a cross, alive ye first shall make Go, quibble with thy reason. If thou fail’st
Confession of this outrage. This will teach you To find these malefactors, thou shalt own
What practices are like to serve your turn. The wages of ill-gotten gains is death.
There are some villainies that bring no gain. [Exit CREON]
For by dishonesty the few may thrive, GUARD
The many come to ruin and disgrace. I pray he may be found. But caught or not
GUARD (And fortune must determine that) thou never
May I not speak, or must I turn and go Shalt see me here returning; that is sure.
Without a word?— For past all hope or thought I have escaped,
And for my safety owe the gods much thanks.
CREON
Begone! canst thou not see CHORUS
That e’en this question irks me? (Str. 1)
Many wonders there be, but naught more wondrous than man;
GUARD
Over the surging sea, with a whitening south wind wan,
Where, my lord?
Through the foam of the firth, man makes his perilous way;
Is it thy ears that suffer, or thy heart?
And the eldest of deities Earth that knows not toil nor decay
CREON Ever he furrows and scores, as his team, year in year out,
Why seek to probe and find the seat of pain? With breed of the yoked horse, the ploughshare turneth about.
GUARD (Ant. 1)
I gall thine ears—this miscreant thy mind. The light-witted birds of the air, the beasts of the weald
and the wood
CREON
Contents
He traps with his woven snare, and the brood of the briny flood.
What an inveterate babbler! get thee gone!
Master of cunning he: the savage bull, and the hart
GUARD Who roams the mountain free, are tamed by his infinite art;
Babbler perchance, but innocent of the crime. And the shaggy rough-maned steed is broken to bear the bit.
174 175
(Str. 2) Why is my presence timely? What has chanced?
Speech and the wind-swift speed of counsel and civic wit,
GUARD
He hath learnt for himself all these; and the arrowy rain to fly
No man, my lord, should make a vow, for if
And the nipping airs that freeze, ‘neath the open winter sky.
He ever swears he will not do a thing,
He hath provision for all: fell plague he hath learnt to endure;
His afterthoughts belie his first resolve.
Safe whate’er may befall: yet for death he hath found no cure.
When from the hail-storm of thy threats I fled
(Ant. 2) I sware thou wouldst not see me here again;
Passing the wildest flight thought are the cunning and skill, But the wild rapture of a glad surprise
That guide man now to the light, but now to counsels of ill. Intoxicates, and so I’m here forsworn.
If he honors the laws of the land, and reveres the Gods of the And here’s my prisoner, caught in the very act,
State Decking the grave. No lottery this time;
Proudly his city shall stand; but a cityless outcast I rate This prize is mine by right of treasure-trove.
Whoso bold in his pride from the path of right doth depart; So take her, judge her, rack her, if thou wilt.
Ne’er may I sit by his side, or share the thoughts of his heart. She’s thine, my liege; but I may rightly claim
What strange vision meets my eyes, Hence to depart well quit of all these ills.
Fills me with a wild surprise? CREON
Sure I know her, sure ’tis she, Say, how didst thou arrest the maid, and where?
The maid Antigone.
Hapless child of hapless sire, GUARD
Didst thou recklessly conspire, Burying the man. There’s nothing more to tell.
Madly brave the King’s decree? CREON
Therefore are they haling thee? Hast thou thy wits? Or know’st thou what thou say’st?
[Enter GUARD bringing ANTIGONE]
GUARD
GUARD I saw this woman burying the corpse
Here is the culprit taken in the act Against thy orders. Is that clear and plain?
Of giving burial. But where’s the King?
CREON
CHORUS But how was she surprised and caught in the act?
Contents
There from the palace he returns in time.

GUARD
[Enter CREON]
It happened thus. No sooner had we come,
CREON Driven from thy presence by those awful threats,
176 177
Than straight we swept away all trace of dust, Does thou plead guilty or deny the deed?
And bared the clammy body. Then we sat
ANTIGONE
High on the ridge to windward of the stench,
Guilty. I did it, I deny it not.
While each man kept he fellow alert and rated
Roundly the sluggard if he chanced to nap. CREON (to GUARD)
So all night long we watched, until the sun Sirrah, begone whither thou wilt, and thank
Stood high in heaven, and his blazing beams Thy luck that thou hast ‘scaped a heavy charge.
Smote us. A sudden whirlwind then upraised (To ANTIGONE)
A cloud of dust that blotted out the sky, Now answer this plain question, yes or no,
And swept the plain, and stripped the woodlands bare, Wast thou acquainted with the interdict?
And shook the firmament. We closed our eyes ANTIGONE
And waited till the heaven-sent plague should pass. I knew, all knew; how should I fail to know?
At last it ceased, and lo! there stood this maid.
CREON
A piercing cry she uttered, sad and shrill,
And yet wert bold enough to break the law?
As when the mother bird beholds her nest
Robbed of its nestlings; even so the maid ANTIGONE
Wailed as she saw the body stripped and bare, Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus,
And cursed the ruffians who had done this deed. And she who sits enthroned with gods below,
Anon she gathered handfuls of dry dust, Justice, enacted not these human laws.
Then, holding high a well-wrought brazen urn, Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man,
Thrice on the dead she poured a lustral stream. Could’st by a breath annul and override
We at the sight swooped down on her and seized The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven.
Our quarry. Undismayed she stood, and when They were not born today nor yesterday;
We taxed her with the former crime and this, They die not; and none knoweth whence they sprang.
She disowned nothing. I was glad—and grieved; I was not like, who feared no mortal’s frown,
For ’tis most sweet to ‘scape oneself scot-free, To disobey these laws and so provoke
And yet to bring disaster to a friend The wrath of Heaven. I knew that I must die,
Is grievous. Take it all in all, I deem E’en hadst thou not proclaimed it; and if death
Contents
A man’s first duty is to serve himself. Is thereby hastened, I shall count it gain.
For death is gain to him whose life, like mine,
CREON
Is full of misery. Thus my lot appears
Speak, girl, with head bent low and downcast eyes,
Not sad, but blissful; for had I endured
178 179
To leave my mother’s son unburied there, ANTIGONE
I should have grieved with reason, but not now. Would’st thou do more than slay thy prisoner?
And if in this thou judgest me a fool,
CREON
Methinks the judge of folly’s not acquit.
Not I, thy life is mine, and that’s enough.
CHORUS
ANTIGONE
A stubborn daughter of a stubborn sire,
Why dally then? To me no word of thine
This ill-starred maiden kicks against the pricks.
Is pleasant: God forbid it e’er should please;
CREON Nor am I more acceptable to thee.
Well, let her know the stubbornest of wills And yet how otherwise had I achieved
Are soonest bended, as the hardest iron, A name so glorious as by burying
O’er-heated in the fire to brittleness, A brother? so my townsmen all would say,
Flies soonest into fragments, shivered through. Where they not gagged by terror, Manifold
A snaffle curbs the fieriest steed, and he A king’s prerogatives, and not the least
Who in subjection lives must needs be meek. That all his acts and all his words are law.
But this proud girl, in insolence well-schooled,
CREON
First overstepped the established law, and then—
Of all these Thebans none so deems but thou.
A second and worse act of insolence—
She boasts and glories in her wickedness. ANTIGONE
Now if she thus can flout authority These think as I, but bate their breath to thee.
Unpunished, I am woman, she the man. CREON
But though she be my sister’s child or nearer Hast thou no shame to differ from all these?
Of kin than all who worship at my hearth,
ANTIGONE
Nor she nor yet her sister shall escape
To reverence kith and kin can bring no shame.
The utmost penalty, for both I hold,
As arch-conspirators, of equal guilt. CREON
Bring forth the older; even now I saw her Was his dead foeman not thy kinsman too?
Within the palace, frenzied and distraught. ANTIGONE
Contents
The workings of the mind discover oft One mother bare them and the self-same sire.
Dark deeds in darkness schemed, before the act.
More hateful still the miscreant who seeks CREON
When caught, to make a virtue of a crime. Why cast a slur on one by honoring one?
180 181
ANTIGONE With a flush of angry red.
The dead man will not bear thee out in this.
CREON
CREON Woman, who like a viper unperceived
Surely, if good and evil fare alive. Didst harbor in my house and drain my blood,
Two plagues I nurtured blindly, so it proved,
ANTIGONE
To sap my throne. Say, didst thou too abet
The slain man was no villain but a brother.
This crime, or dost abjure all privity?
CREON
ISMENE
The patriot perished by the outlaw’s brand.
I did the deed, if she will have it so,
ANTIGONE And with my sister claim to share the guilt.
Nathless the realms below these rites require.
ANTIGONE
CREON That were unjust. Thou would’st not act with me
Not that the base should fare as do the brave. At first, and I refused thy partnership.
ANTIGONE ISMENE
Who knows if this world’s crimes are virtues there? But now thy bark is stranded, I am bold
CREON To claim my share as partner in the loss.
Not even death can make a foe a friend. ANTIGONE
ANTIGONE Who did the deed the under-world knows well:
My nature is for mutual love, not hate. A friend in word is never friend of mine.
CREON ISMENE
Die then, and love the dead if thou must; O sister, scorn me not, let me but share
No woman shall be the master while I live. Thy work of piety, and with thee die.
[Enter ISMENE] ANTIGONE
CHORUS Claim not a work in which thou hadst no hand;
Lo from out the palace gate, One death sufficeth. Wherefore should’st thou die?
Contents
Weeping o’er her sister’s fate, ISMENE

Comes Ismene; see her brow, What would life profit me bereft of thee?
Once serene, beclouded now,
ANTIGONE
See her beauteous face o’erspread
182 183
Ask Creon, he’s thy kinsman and best friend. The wisest even lose their mother wit.
ISMENE CREON
Why taunt me? Find’st thou pleasure in these gibes? I’ faith thy wit forsook thee when thou mad’st
Thy choice with evil-doers to do ill.
ANTIGONE
’Tis a sad mockery, if indeed I mock. ISMENE
What life for me without my sister here?
ISMENE
O say if I can help thee even now. CREON
Say not thy sister here: thy sister’s dead.
ANTIGONE
No, save thyself; I grudge not thy escape. ISMENE
What, wilt thou slay thy own son’s plighted bride?
ISMENE
Is e’en this boon denied, to share thy lot? CREON
Aye, let him raise him seed from other fields.
ANTIGONE
Yea, for thou chosed’st life, and I to die. ISMENE
No new espousal can be like the old.
ISMENE
Thou canst not say that I did not protest. CREON
A plague on trulls who court and woo our sons.
ANTIGONE
Well, some approved thy wisdom, others mine. ANTIGONE
O Haemon, how thy sire dishonors thee!
ISMENE
But now we stand convicted, both alike. CREON
A plague on thee and thy accursed bride!
ANTIGONE
Fear not; thou livest, I died long ago CHORUS
Then when I gave my life to save the dead. What, wilt thou rob thine own son of his bride?
CREON CREON
Both maids, methinks, are crazed. One suddenly ’Tis death that bars this marriage, not his sire.
Contents
Has lost her wits, the other was born mad.

CHORUS
ISMENE So her death-warrant, it would seem, is sealed.
Yea, so it falls, sire, when misfortune comes,
184 185
CREON That crowns Olympus’ height,
By you, as first by me; off with them, guards, Thou reignest King, omnipotent, sublime.
And keep them close. Henceforward let them learn Past, present, and to be,
To live as women use, not roam at large. All bow to thy decree,
For e’en the bravest spirits run away All that exceeds the mean by Fate
When they perceive death pressing on life’s heels. Is punished, Love or Hate.
CHORUS (Ant. 2)
(Str. 1) Hope flits about never-wearying wings;
Thrice blest are they who never tasted pain! Profit to some, to some light loves she brings,
If once the curse of Heaven attaint a race, But no man knoweth how her gifts may turn,
The infection lingers on and speeds apace, Till ‘neath his feet the treacherous ashes burn.
Age after age, and each the cup must drain. Sure ’twas a sage inspired that spake this word;
So when Etesian blasts from Thrace downpour If evil good appear
Sweep o’er the blackening main and whirl to land To any, Fate is near;
From Ocean’s cavernous depths his ooze and sand, And brief the respite from her flaming sword.
Billow on billow thunders on the shore. Hither comes in angry mood
(Ant. 1) Haemon, latest of thy brood;
On the Labdacidae I see descending Is it for his bride he’s grieved,
Woe upon woe; from days of old some god Or her marriage-bed deceived,
Laid on the race a malison, and his rod Doth he make his mourn for thee,
Scourges each age with sorrows never ending. Maid forlorn, Antigone?
[Enter HAEMON]
The light that dawned upon its last born son
Is vanished, and the bloody axe of Fate CREON
Has felled the goodly tree that blossomed late. Soon shall we know, better than seer can tell.
O Oedipus, by reckless pride undone! Learning may fixed decree anent thy bride,
(Str. 2) Thou mean’st not, son, to rave against thy sire?
Thy might, O Zeus, what mortal power can quell? Know’st not whate’er we do is done in love?
Contents
Not sleep that lays all else beneath its spell, HAEMON
Nor moons that never tier: untouched by Time, O father, I am thine, and I will take
Throned in the dazzling light Thy wisdom as the helm to steer withal.
186 187
Therefore no wedlock shall by me be held I warrant such a one in either case
More precious than thy loving goverance. Would shine, as King or subject; such a man
Would in the storm of battle stand his ground,
CREON
A comrade leal and true; but Anarchy—
Well spoken: so right-minded sons should feel,
What evils are not wrought by Anarchy!
In all deferring to a father’s will.
She ruins States, and overthrows the home,
For ’tis the hope of parents they may rear
She dissipates and routs the embattled host;
A brood of sons submissive, keen to avenge
While discipline preserves the ordered ranks.
Their father’s wrongs, and count his friends their own.
Therefore we must maintain authority
But who begets unprofitable sons,
And yield to title to a woman’s will.
He verily breeds trouble for himself,
Better, if needs be, men should cast us out
And for his foes much laughter. Son, be warned
Than hear it said, a woman proved his match.
And let no woman fool away thy wits.
Ill fares the husband mated with a shrew, CHORUS
And her embraces very soon wax cold. To me, unless old age have dulled wits,
For what can wound so surely to the quick Thy words appear both reasonable and wise.
As a false friend? So spue and cast her off,
HAEMON
Bid her go find a husband with the dead.
Father, the gods implant in mortal men
For since I caught her openly rebelling,
Reason, the choicest gift bestowed by heaven.
Of all my subjects the one malcontent,
’Tis not for me to say thou errest, nor
I will not prove a traitor to the State.
Would I arraign thy wisdom, if I could;
She surely dies. Go, let her, if she will,
And yet wise thoughts may come to other men
Appeal to Zeus the God of Kindred, for
And, as thy son, it falls to me to mark
If thus I nurse rebellion in my house,
The acts, the words, the comments of the crowd.
Shall not I foster mutiny without?
The commons stand in terror of thy frown,
For whoso rules his household worthily,
And dare not utter aught that might offend,
Will prove in civic matters no less wise.
But I can overhear their muttered plaints,
But he who overbears the laws, or thinks
Know how the people mourn this maiden doomed
To overrule his rulers, such as one
Contents
For noblest deeds to die the worst of deaths.

I never will allow. Whome’er the State
When her own brother slain in battle lay
Appoints must be obeyed in everything,
Unsepulchered, she suffered not his corse
But small and great, just and unjust alike.
To lie for carrion birds and dogs to maul:
188 189
Should not her name (they cry) be writ in gold? Lessoned in prudence by a beardless boy?
Such the low murmurings that reach my ear.
HAEMON
O father, nothing is by me more prized
I plead for justice, father, nothing more.
Than thy well-being, for what higher good
Weigh me upon my merit, not my years.
Can children covet than their sire’s fair fame,
As fathers too take pride in glorious sons? CREON
Therefore, my father, cling not to one mood, Strange merit this to sanction lawlessness!
And deemed not thou art right, all others wrong. HAEMON
For whoso thinks that wisdom dwells with him, For evil-doers I would urge no plea.
That he alone can speak or think aright,
CREON
Such oracles are empty breath when tried.
Is not this maid an arrant law-breaker?
The wisest man will let himself be swayed
By others’ wisdom and relax in time. HAEMON
See how the trees beside a stream in flood The Theban commons with one voice say, No.
Save, if they yield to force, each spray unharmed, CREON
But by resisting perish root and branch. What, shall the mob dictate my policy?
The mariner who keeps his mainsheet taut,
And will not slacken in the gale, is like HAEMON
To sail with thwarts reversed, keel uppermost. ’Tis thou, methinks, who speakest like a boy.
Relent then and repent thee of thy wrath; CREON
For, if one young in years may claim some sense, Am I to rule for others, or myself?
I’ll say ’tis best of all to be endowed
HAEMON
With absolute wisdom; but, if that’s denied,
A State for one man is no State at all.
(And nature takes not readily that ply)
Next wise is he who lists to sage advice. CREON
The State is his who rules it, so ’tis held.
CHORUS
If he says aught in season, heed him, King. HAEMON
(To HAEMON) As monarch of a desert thou wouldst shine.
Contents
Heed thou thy sire too; both have spoken well. CREON
CREON This boy, methinks, maintains the woman’s cause.
What, would you have us at our age be schooled,
190 191
HAEMON CREON
If thou be’st woman, yes. My thought’s for thee. Vain fool to instruct thy betters; thou shall rue it.
CREON HAEMON
O reprobate, would’st wrangle with thy sire? Wert not my father, I had said thou err’st.
HAEMON CREON
Because I see thee wrongfully perverse. Play not the spaniel, thou a woman’s slave.
CREON HAEMON
And am I wrong, if I maintain my rights? When thou dost speak, must no man make reply?
HAEMON CREON
Talk not of rights; thou spurn’st the due of Heaven This passes bounds. By heaven, thou shalt not rate
And jeer and flout me with impunity.
CREON
Off with the hateful thing that she may die
O heart corrupt, a woman’s minion thou!
At once, beside her bridegroom, in his sight.
HAEMON
HAEMON
Slave to dishonor thou wilt never find me.
Think not that in my sight the maid shall die,
CREON Or by my side; never shalt thou again
Thy speech at least was all a plea for her. Behold my face hereafter. Go, consort
HAEMON With friends who like a madman for their mate.
And thee and me, and for the gods below. [Exit HAEMON]
CREON CHORUS
Living the maid shall never be thy bride. Thy son has gone, my liege, in angry haste.
Fell is the wrath of youth beneath a smart.
HAEMON
So she shall die, but one will die with her. CREON
Let him go vent his fury like a fiend:
CREON
These sisters twain he shall not save from death.
Hast come to such a pass as threaten me?
Contents
CHORUS
HAEMON
Surely, thou meanest not to slay them both?
What threat is this, vain counsels to reprove?
CREON
192 193
I stand corrected; only her who touched Death’s bower with the dead to share.
The body.
ANTIGONE
CHORUS (Str. 1)
And what death is she to die? Friends, countrymen, my last farewell I make;
My journey’s done.
CREON
One last fond, lingering, longing look I take
She shall be taken to some desert place
At the bright sun.
By man untrod, and in a rock-hewn cave,
For Death who puts to sleep both young and old
With food no more than to avoid the taint
Hales my young life,
That homicide might bring on all the State,
And beckons me to Acheron’s dark fold,
Buried alive. There let her call in aid
An unwed wife.
The King of Death, the one god she reveres,
No youths have sung the marriage song for me,
Or learn too late a lesson learnt at last:
My bridal bed
’Tis labor lost, to reverence the dead.
No maids have strewn with flowers from the lea,
CHORUS ’Tis Death I wed.
(Str.)
CHORUS
Love resistless in fight, all yield at a glance of thine eye,
But bethink thee, thou art sped,
Love who pillowed all night on a maiden’s cheek dost lie,
Great and glorious, to the dead.
Over the upland holds. Shall mortals not yield to thee?
Thou the sword’s edge hast not tasted,
(Ant). No disease thy frame hath wasted.
Mad are thy subjects all, and even the wisest heart Freely thou alone shalt go
Straight to folly will fall, at a touch of thy poisoned dart. Living to the dead below.
Thou didst kindle the strife, this feud of kinsman with kin,
By the eyes of a winsome wife, and the yearning her heart to win. ANTIGONE
For as her consort still, enthroned with Justice above, (Ant. 1)
Thou bendest man to thy will, O all invincible Love. Nay, but the piteous tale I’ve heard men tell
Of Tantalus’ doomed child,
Lo I myself am borne aside,
Chained upon Siphylus’ high rocky fell,
Contents
From Justice, as I view this bride.

That clung like ivy wild,
(O sight an eye in tears to drown)
Drenched by the pelting rain and whirling snow,
Antigone, so young, so fair,
Left there to pine,
Thus hurried down
194 195
While on her frozen breast the tears aye flow— (Ant. 2)
Her fate is mine. At this thou touchest my most poignant pain,
My ill-starred father’s piteous disgrace,
CHORUS
The taint of blood, the hereditary stain,
She was sprung of gods, divine,
That clings to all of Labdacus’ famed race.
Mortals we of mortal line.
Woe worth the monstrous marriage-bed where lay
Like renown with gods to gain
A mother with the son her womb had borne,
Recompenses all thy pain.
Therein I was conceived, woe worth the day,
Take this solace to thy tomb
Fruit of incestuous sheets, a maid forlorn,
Hers in life and death thy doom.
And now I pass, accursed and unwed,
ANTIGONE To meet them as an alien there below;
(Str. 2) And thee, O brother, in marriage ill-bestead,
Alack, alack! Ye mock me. Is it meet ’Twas thy dead hand that dealt me this death-blow.
Thus to insult me living, to my face?
CHORUS
Cease, by our country’s altars I entreat,
Religion has her chains, ’tis true,
Ye lordly rulers of a lordly race.
Let rite be paid when rites are due.
O fount of Dirce, wood-embowered plain
Yet is it ill to disobey
Where Theban chariots to victory speed,
The powers who hold by might the sway.
Mark ye the cruel laws that now have wrought my bane,
Thou hast withstood authority,
The friends who show no pity in my need!
A self-willed rebel, thou must die.
Was ever fate like mine? O monstrous doom,
Within a rock-built prison sepulchered, ANTIGONE
To fade and wither in a living tomb, Unwept, unwed, unfriended, hence I go,
And alien midst the living and the dead. No longer may I see the day’s bright eye;
Not one friend left to share my bitter woe,
CHORUS
And o’er my ashes heave one passing sigh.
(Str. 3)
In thy boldness over-rash CREON
Madly thou thy foot didst dash If wail and lamentation aught availed
Contents
‘Gainst high Justice’ altar stair. To stave off death, I trow they’d never end.
Thou a father’s guild dost bear. Away with her, and having walled her up
In a rock-vaulted tomb, as I ordained,
ANTIGONE
196 197
Leave her alone at liberty to die, By Creon guilty of a heinous crime.
Or, if she choose, to live in solitude, And now he drags me like a criminal,
The tomb her dwelling. We in either case A bride unwed, amerced of marriage-song
Are guiltless as concerns this maiden’s blood, And marriage-bed and joys of motherhood,
Only on earth no lodging shall she find. By friends deserted to a living grave.
What ordinance of heaven have I transgressed?
ANTIGONE
Hereafter can I look to any god
O grave, O bridal bower, O prison house
For succor, call on any man for help?
Hewn from the rock, my everlasting home,
Alas, my piety is impious deemed.
Whither I go to join the mighty host
Well, if such justice is approved of heaven,
Of kinsfolk, Persephassa’s guests long dead,
I shall be taught by suffering my sin;
The last of all, of all more miserable,
But if the sin is theirs, O may they suffer
I pass, my destined span of years cut short.
No worse ills than the wrongs they do to me.
And yet good hope is mine that I shall find
A welcome from my sire, a welcome too, CHORUS
From thee, my mother, and my brother dear; The same ungovernable will
From with these hands, I laved and decked your limbs Drives like a gale the maiden still.
In death, and poured libations on your grave.
CREON
And last, my Polyneices, unto thee
Therefore, my guards who let her stay
I paid due rites, and this my recompense!
Shall smart full sore for their delay.
Yet am I justified in wisdom’s eyes.
For even had it been some child of mine, ANTIGONE
Or husband mouldering in death’s decay, Ah, woe is me! This word I hear
I had not wrought this deed despite the State. Brings death most near.
What is the law I call in aid? ’Tis thus CHORUS
I argue. Had it been a husband dead I have no comfort. What he saith,
I might have wed another, and have borne Portends no other thing than death.
Another child, to take the dead child’s place.
ANTIGONE
But, now my sire and mother both are dead,
Contents
My fatherland, city of Thebes divine,

No second brother can be born for me.
Ye gods of Thebes whence sprang my line,
Thus by the law of conscience I was led
Look, puissant lords of Thebes, on me;
To honor thee, dear brother, and was judged
The last of all your royal house ye see.
198 199
Martyred by men of sin, undone. Where stretcheth Salmydessus’ plain
Such meed my piety hath won. In the wild Thracian land,
[Exit ANTIGONE] There on his borders Ares witnessed
The vengeance by a jealous step-dame ta’en
CHORUS
The gore that trickled from a spindle red,
(Str. 1)
The sightless orbits of her step-sons twain.
Like to thee that maiden bright,
Danae, in her brass-bound tower, (Ant. 2)
Once exchanged the glad sunlight Wasting away they mourned their piteous doom,
For a cell, her bridal bower. The blasted issue of their mother’s womb.
And yet she sprang of royal line, But she her lineage could trace
My child, like thine, To great Erecththeus’ race;
And nursed the seed Daughter of Boreas in her sire’s vast caves
By her conceived Reared, where the tempest raves,
Of Zeus descending in a golden shower. Swift as his horses o’er the hills she sped;
Strange are the ways of Fate, her power A child of gods; yet she, my child, like thee,
Nor wealth, nor arms withstand, nor tower; By Destiny
Nor brass-prowed ships, that breast the sea That knows not death nor age—she too was vanquished.
From Fate can flee. [Enter TEIRESIAS and BOY]
(Ant. 1) TEIRESIAS
Thus Dryas’ child, the rash Edonian King, Princes of Thebes, two wayfarers as one,
For words of high disdain Having betwixt us eyes for one, we are here.
Did Bacchus to a rocky dungeon bring, The blind man cannot move without a guide.
To cool the madness of a fevered brain.
CREON
His frenzy passed,
Why tidings, old Teiresias?
He learnt at last
’Twas madness gibes against a god to fling. TEIRESIAS
For once he fain had quenched the Maenad’s fire; I will tell thee;
And when thou hearest thou must heed the seer.
Contents
And of the tuneful Nine provoked the ire.

(Str. 2) CREON
By the Iron Rocks that guard the double main, Thus far I ne’er have disobeyed thy rede.
On Bosporus’ lone strand,
200 201
TEIRESIAS By what has filled the maw of dogs and crows,
So hast thou steered the ship of State aright. The flesh of Oedipus’ unburied son.
Therefore the angry gods abominate
CREON
Our litanies and our burnt offerings;
I know it, and I gladly own my debt.
Therefore no birds trill out a happy note,
TEIRESIAS Gorged with the carnival of human gore.
Bethink thee that thou treadest once again O ponder this, my son. To err is common
The razor edge of peril. To all men, but the man who having erred
CREON Hugs not his errors, but repents and seeks
What is this? The cure, is not a wastrel nor unwise.
Thy words inspire a dread presentiment. No fool, the saw goes, like the obstinate fool.
Let death disarm thy vengeance. O forbear
TEIRESIAS
To vex the dead. What glory wilt thou win
The divination of my arts shall tell.
By slaying twice the slain? I mean thee well;
Sitting upon my throne of augury,
Counsel’s most welcome if I promise gain.
As is my wont, where every fowl of heaven
Find harborage, upon mine ears was borne CREON
A jargon strange of twitterings, hoots, and screams; Old man, ye all let fly at me your shafts
So knew I that each bird at the other tare Like anchors at a target; yea, ye set
With bloody talons, for the whirr of wings Your soothsayer on me. Peddlers are ye all
Could signify naught else. Perturbed in soul, And I the merchandise ye buy and sell.
I straight essayed the sacrifice by fire Go to, and make your profit where ye will,
On blazing altars, but the God of Fire Silver of Sardis change for gold of Ind;
Came not in flame, and from the thigh bones dripped Ye will not purchase this man’s burial,
And sputtered in the ashes a foul ooze; Not though the winged ministers of Zeus
Gall-bladders cracked and spurted up: the fat Should bear him in their talons to his throne;
Melted and fell and left the thigh bones bare. Not e’en in awe of prodigy so dire
Such are the signs, taught by this lad, I read— Would I permit his burial, for I know
No human soilure can assail the gods;
Contents
As I guide others, so the boy guides me—

The frustrate signs of oracles grown dumb. This too I know, Teiresias, dire’s the fall
O King, thy willful temper ails the State, Of craft and cunning when it tries to gloss
For all our shrines and altars are profaned Foul treachery with fair words for filthy gain.
202 203
TEIRESIAS CREON
Alas! doth any know and lay to heart— Say on, but see it be not said for gain.
CREON TEIRESIAS
Is this the prelude to some hackneyed saw? Such thou, methinks, till now hast judged my words.
TEIRESIAS CREON
How far good counsel is the best of goods? Be sure thou wilt not traffic on my wits.
CREON TEIRESIAS
True, as unwisdom is the worst of ills. Know then for sure, the coursers of the sun
Not many times shall run their race, before
TEIRESIAS
Thou shalt have given the fruit of thine own loins
Thou art infected with that ill thyself.
In quittance of thy murder, life for life;
CREON For that thou hast entombed a living soul,
I will not bandy insults with thee, seer. And sent below a denizen of earth,
TEIRESIAS And wronged the nether gods by leaving here
And yet thou say’st my prophesies are frauds. A corpse unlaved, unwept, unsepulchered.
Herein thou hast no part, nor e’en the gods
CREON
In heaven; and thou usurp’st a power not thine.
Prophets are all a money-getting tribe.
For this the avenging spirits of Heaven and Hell
TEIRESIAS Who dog the steps of sin are on thy trail:
And kings are all a lucre-loving race. What these have suffered thou shalt suffer too.
CREON And now, consider whether bought by gold
Dost know at whom thou glancest, me thy lord? I prophesy. For, yet a little while,
And sound of lamentation shall be heard,
TEIRESIAS Of men and women through thy desolate halls;
Lord of the State and savior, thanks to me. And all thy neighbor States are leagues to avenge
CREON Their mangled warriors who have found a grave
Skilled prophet art thou, but to wrong inclined. I’ the maw of wolf or hound, or winged bird
Contents
That flying homewards taints their city’s air.

TEIRESIAS
These are the shafts, that like a bowman I
Take heed, thou wilt provoke me to reveal
Provoked to anger, loosen at thy breast,
The mystery deep hidden in my breast.
204 205
Unerring, and their smart thou shalt not shun. My heart’s resolve; but Fate is ill to fight.
Boy, lead me home, that he may vent his spleen
CHORUS
On younger men, and learn to curb his tongue
Go, trust not others. Do it quick thyself.
With gentler manners than his present mood.
[Exit TEIRESIAS] CREON
I go hot-foot. Bestir ye one and all,
CHORUS
My henchmen! Get ye axes! Speed away
My liege, that man hath gone, foretelling woe.
To yonder eminence! I too will go,
And, O believe me, since these grizzled locks
For all my resolution this way sways.
Were like the raven, never have I known
’Twas I that bound, I too will set her free.
The prophet’s warning to the State to fail.
Almost I am persuaded it is best
CREON To keep through life the law ordained of old.
I know it too, and it perplexes me. [Exit CREON]
To yield is grievous, but the obstinate soul
CHORUS
That fights with Fate, is smitten grievously.
(Str. 1)
CHORUS Thou by many names adored,
Son of Menoeceus, list to good advice. Child of Zeus the God of thunder,
Of a Theban bride the wonder,
CHORUS
Fair Italia’s guardian lord;
What should I do. Advise me. I will heed.
In the deep-embosomed glades
CHORUS
Of the Eleusinian Queen
Go, free the maiden from her rocky cell;
Haunt of revelers, men and maids,
And for the unburied outlaw build a tomb.
Dionysus, thou art seen.
CREON Where Ismenus rolls his waters,
Is that your counsel? You would have me yield? Where the Dragon’s teeth were sown,
CHORUS Where the Bacchanals thy daughters
Yea, king, this instant. Vengeance of the gods Round thee roam,
Contents
Is swift to overtake the impenitent. There thy home;

Thebes, O Bacchus, is thine own.
CREON
Ah! what a wrench it is to sacrifice (Ant. 1)
Thee on the two-crested rock
206 207
Lurid-flaming torches see; Of Cadmus and Amphion. No man’s life
Where Corisian maidens flock, As of one tenor would I praise or blame,
Thee the springs of Castaly. For Fortune with a constant ebb and rise
By Nysa’s bastion ivy-clad, Casts down and raises high and low alike,
By shores with clustered vineyards glad, And none can read a mortal’s horoscope.
There to thee the hymn rings out, Take Creon; he, methought, if any man,
And through our streets we Thebans shout, Was enviable. He had saved this land
All hall to thee Of Cadmus from our enemies and attained
Evoe, Evoe! A monarch’s powers and ruled the state supreme,
While a right noble issue crowned his bliss.
(Str. 2)
Now all is gone and wasted, for a life
Oh, as thou lov’st this city best of all,
Without life’s joys I count a living death.
To thee, and to thy Mother levin-stricken,
You’ll tell me he has ample store of wealth,
In our dire need we call;
The pomp and circumstance of kings; but if
Thou see’st with what a plague our townsfolk sicken.
These give no pleasure, all the rest I count
Thy ready help we crave,
The shadow of a shade, nor would I weigh
Whether adown Parnassian heights descending,
His wealth and power ‘gainst a dram of joy.
Or o’er the roaring straits thy swift was wending,
Save us, O save! CHORUS
(Ant. 2) What fresh woes bring’st thou to the royal house?
Brightest of all the orbs that breathe forth light, MESSENGER
Authentic son of Zeus, immortal king, Both dead, and they who live deserve to die.
Leader of all the voices of the night,
CHORUS
Come, and thy train of Thyiads with thee bring,
Who is the slayer, who the victim? speak.
Thy maddened rout
Who dance before thee all night long, and shout, MESSENGER
Thy handmaids we, Haemon; his blood shed by no stranger hand.
Evoe, Evoe! CHORUS
Contents
[Enter MESSENGER] What mean ye? by his father’s or his own?

MESSENGER MESSENGER
Attend all ye who dwell beside the halls His own; in anger for his father’s crime.
208 209
CHORUS Laid it on fresh-lopped branches, lit a pyre,
O prophet, what thou spakest comes to pass. And to his memory piled a mighty mound
Of mother earth. Then to the caverned rock,
MESSENGER
The bridal chamber of the maid and Death,
So stands the case; now ’tis for you to act.
We sped, about to enter. But a guard
CHORUS Heard from that godless shrine a far shrill wail,
Lo! from the palace gates I see approaching And ran back to our lord to tell the news.
Creon’s unhappy wife, Eurydice. But as he nearer drew a hollow sound
Comes she by chance or learning her son’s fate? Of lamentation to the King was borne.
[Enter EURYDICE] He groaned and uttered then this bitter plaint:
EURYDICE “Am I a prophet? miserable me!
Ye men of Thebes, I overheard your talk. Is this the saddest path I ever trod?
As I passed out to offer up my prayer ’Tis my son’s voice that calls me. On press on,
To Pallas, and was drawing back the bar My henchmen, haste with double speed to the tomb
To open wide the door, upon my ears Where rocks down-torn have made a gap, look in
There broke a wail that told of household woe And tell me if in truth I recognize
Stricken with terror in my handmaids’ arms The voice of Haemon or am heaven-deceived.”
I fell and fainted. But repeat your tale So at the bidding of our distraught lord
To one not unacquaint with misery. We looked, and in the craven’s vaulted gloom
I saw the maiden lying strangled there,
MESSENGER
A noose of linen twined about her neck;
Dear mistress, I was there and will relate
And hard beside her, clasping her cold form,
The perfect truth, omitting not one word.
Her lover lay bewailing his dead bride
Why should we gloze and flatter, to be proved
Death-wedded, and his father’s cruelty.
Liars hereafter? Truth is ever best.
When the King saw him, with a terrible groan
Well, in attendance on my liege, your lord,
He moved towards him, crying, “O my son
I crossed the plain to its utmost margin, where
What hast thou done? What ailed thee? What mischance
The corse of Polyneices, gnawn and mauled,
Has reft thee of thy reason? O come forth,
Contents
Was lying yet. We offered first a prayer

Come forth, my son; thy father supplicates.”
To Pluto and the goddess of cross-ways,
But the son glared at him with tiger eyes,
With contrite hearts, to deprecate their ire.
Spat in his face, and then, without a word,
Then laved with lustral waves the mangled corse,
Drew his two-hilted sword and smote, but missed
210 211
His father flying backwards. Then the boy, Evidence he with him bears
Wroth with himself, poor wretch, incontinent ‘Gainst himself (ah me! I quake
Fell on his sword and drove it through his side ‘Gainst a king such charge to make)
Home, but yet breathing clasped in his lax arms But all must own,
The maid, her pallid cheek incarnadined The guilt is his and his alone.
With his expiring gasps. So there they lay
CREON
Two corpses, one in death. His marriage rites
(Str. 1)
Are consummated in the halls of Death:
Woe for sin of minds perverse,
A witness that of ills whate’er befall
Deadly fraught with mortal curse.
Mortals’ unwisdom is the worst of all.
Behold us slain and slayers, all akin.
[Exit EURYDICE]
Woe for my counsel dire, conceived in sin.
CHORUS Alas, my son,
What makest thou of this? The Queen has gone Life scarce begun,
Without a word importing good or ill. Thou wast undone.
The fault was mine, mine only, O my son!
MESSENGER
I marvel too, but entertain good hope. CHORUS
’Tis that she shrinks in public to lament Too late thou seemest to perceive the truth.
Her son’s sad ending, and in privacy
CREON
Would with her maidens mourn a private loss.
(Str. 2)
Trust me, she is discreet and will not err.
By sorrow schooled. Heavy the hand of God,
CHORUS Thorny and rough the paths my feet have trod,
I know not, but strained silence, so I deem, Humbled my pride, my pleasure turned to pain;
Is no less ominous than excessive grief. Poor mortals, how we labor all in vain!
[Enter SECOND MESSENGER]
MESSENGER
Well, let us to the house and solve our doubts, SECOND MESSENGER
Whether the tumult of her heart conceals Sorrows are thine, my lord, and more to come,
Contents
Some fell design. It may be thou art right: One lying at thy feet, another yet
Unnatural silence signifies no good. More grievous waits thee, when thou comest home.
CHORUS CREON
Lo! the King himself appears. What woe is lacking to my tale of woes?
212 213
I shudder with affright
SECOND MESSENGER
O for a two-edged sword to slay outright
Thy wife, the mother of thy dead son here,
A wretch like me,
Lies stricken by a fresh inflicted blow.
Made one with misery.
CREON
SECOND MESSENGER
(Ant. 1)
’Tis true that thou wert charged by the dead Queen
How bottomless the pit!
As author of both deaths, hers and her son’s.
Does claim me too, O Death?
What is this word he saith, CREON
This woeful messenger? Say, is it fit In what wise was her self-destruction wrought?
To slay anew a man already slain?
SECOND MESSENGER
Is Death at work again,
Hearing the loud lament above her son
Stroke upon stroke, first son, then mother slain?
With her own hand she stabbed herself to the heart.
CHORUS
CREON
Look for thyself. She lies for all to view.
(Str. 4)
CREON I am the guilty cause. I did the deed,
(Ant. 2) Thy murderer. Yea, I guilty plead.
Alas! another added woe I see. My henchmen, lead me hence, away, away,
What more remains to crown my agony? A cipher, less than nothing; no delay!
A minute past I clasped a lifeless son,
CHORUS
And now another victim Death hath won.
Well said, if in disaster aught is well
Unhappy mother, most unhappy son!
His past endure demand the speediest cure.
SECOND MESSENGER
CREON
Beside the altar on a keen-edged sword
(Ant. 3)
She fell and closed her eyes in night, but erst
Come, Fate, a friend at need,
She mourned for Megareus who nobly died
Come with all speed!
Long since, then for her son; with her last breath
Come, my best friend,
Contents
She cursed thee, the slayer of her child.

And speed my end!
CREON Away, away!
(Str. 3) Let me not look upon another day!
214 215
CHORUS
This for the morrow; to us are present needs
That they whom it concerns must take in hand.
CREON
I join your prayer that echoes my desire.
CHORUS
O pray not, prayers are idle; from the doom
Of fate for mortals refuge is there none.
CREON
(Ant. 4)
Away with me, a worthless wretch who slew
Unwitting thee, my son, thy mother too.
Whither to turn I know now; every way
Leads but astray,
And on my head I feel the heavy weight
Of crushing Fate.
CHORUS
Of happiness the chiefest part
Is a wise heart:
And to defraud the gods in aught
With peril’s fraught.
Swelling words of high-flown might
Mightily the gods do smite.
Chastisement for errors past
Wisdom brings to age at last.
Contents
Contents 216 217
Contents 218 219
Contents 220 221
Contents 222 223
Contents 224 225
Contents 226 227
Contents 228 229
Contents 230 231
Contents 232 233
Contents 234 235
Contents 236 237
Contents 238 239
Contents 240 241

Sophocles Oedipustrilogy

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Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf Editions.

The Oedipus Trilogy.

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About the author

Sophocles (496 BC - 406

A long line of scholars, beginning with Aristotle, considered

Oedipus. Click on a number in the list

The Oedipus Argument.

To Laius, King of Thebes, an oracle foretold that the child born

Good news, for e’en intolerable ills, CREON

[Exeunt OEDIPUS and CREON] Life on life downstriken goes,

(Ant. 2) Thee too I call with golden-snooded hair,

Might fly abroad, the champions of our rights;

As though he were my sire, and leave no stone OEDIPUS

Withhold not, I adjure thee, if thou know’st, OEDIPUS

I say thou art the murderer of the man OEDIPUS

Will rue your plot to drive the scapegoat out.

CHORUS Must I endure this fellow’s insolence?

No matter if I saved the commonwealth.

OEDIPUS Like sleuth-hounds too

CREON My murderer and the filcher of my crown?

Surely full quest was made, but nothing learnt. OEDIPUS

But O condemn me not, without appeal,

Brand not a friend whom babbling tongues assail;

Who can guide us right but thou?

As for the child, it was but three days old, JOCASTA

The man in front and the old man himself

So much for divination. Henceforth I (Str. 2)

For Oedipus is overwrought, alarmed

A heaven-sent oracle of dread import.

Afield or in the city? answer straight!

Thee, Cithaeron, I shall hail, MESSENGER

What time together both we drove our flocks,

For he of marksmen best, Ye reverence still the race of Labdacus!

Poor wretch, she had conceived a double brood,

Nay, had I known a way to choke the springs

Set me within some vasty desert where

Oedipus, the blind and banished King of Thebes, has come in

If time can teach, I need not to be told.

STRANGER Earthquake, or thunderclap, or lightning flash.

Nor with fate and fortune fight.

Strangers, I have no country. O forbear—

Bane, not blessing, is the end. Athens alone gives hospitality

To have thee for their weal alive or dead.

While their two brethren sacrificed their sire CHORUS

I fain would hear it; that imports the most.

Oft had I heard of thee in times gone by—

THESEUS For shame! such temper misbecomes the faller.

How wilt thou act then? CHORUS

Terror to foemen’s spear, This country’s vigor has no touch of age.

O, by our fathers’ gods, consent I pray;

Ah, woe is me, they drag me hence, O friends.

Become a mockery to this my guest,

Dread are our warriors, dread

Father, methinks I see the stranger coming,

Aidoneus, hear, O hear!

Troubles whelm us—

Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, the late king of Thebes, in

If in defiance of the law we cross

Here, there, great Area like a war-horse wheeled;

Thou art good at parry, and canst fence about

There from the palace he returns in time.