4
Priest: “Your own eyes / Must tell you: Thebes is tossed on a murdering sea /
And can not lift her head from the death surge. / A rust consumes the buds and fruits of the earth; /
The herds are sick; children die unborn, / And labor is vain.”
5
Oedipus: “I know that you are deathly sick; and yet, / Sick as you are, not one is as sick as I.”
6
Oedipus: “I was not sleeping, you are not waking me. / No, I have been in tears for a long while /
And in my restless thought walked many ways. / In all my search, I found one helpful course, …“
9
Creon: “He said that a band of highwaymen attacked them, / Outnumbered them, and overwhelmed the King.”
14
Oedipus: “Thus I associate myself with the oracle / And take the side of the murdered king.
As for the criminal, I pray to God— / Whether it be a lurking thief or one of a number— /
I pray that that man’s life be consumed in evil and / wretchedness.”
16
Choragos: “But there is one man who may detect the criminal. /
This is Teiresias, this is the holy prophet / In whom, alone of all men, truth was born.”
17
Oedipus: “What you say is ungracious and unhelpful / To your native country. / Do not refuse to speak.”
18
Oedipus: “Why, / Who would not feel as I do? Who could endure / Your arrogance toward the city?“
19
Oedipus: “You planned it, you had it done, you all but /
Killed him with your own hands: if you had eyes, /
I’d say the crime was yours, and yours alone.”
Teiresias: “So? I charge you, then, / … / You yourself are the pollution of this country.”
20
Teiresias: “I say you live in hideous shame with those / Most dear to you. / You can not see the evil.”
21
Oedipus: “If Creon, whom I trusted, Creon my friend, / For this great office which the city once /
Put in my hands unsought—if for this power / Creon desires in secret to destroy me!“
22
Oedipus: “Oedipus, the simple man, who knows nothing— / I thought it out for myself, no birds helped me!
And this is the man you think you can destroy, / That you may be close to Creon when he’s king!”
Choragos: “We can not see that his words or yours / Have been spoken except in anger, Oedipus”
23
Oedipus: “Could I have told that you’d talk nonsense, that /
You’d come here to make a fool of yourself, and of me?”
Teiresias: “A fool? Your parents thought me sane enough.”
27
Choragos: “He may have spoken in anger, not from his mind.”
Creon: “But did you not hear him say I was the one / Who seduced the old prophet into lying?“
28
Oedipus “You are the fool, Creon, are you not? hoping /
Without support or friends to get a throne?“
30
Oedipus: “If he were not involved with you, he could not / say / That it was I who murdered Laïos”
Creon: “I do not know; and I am the kind of man /
Who holds his tongue when he has no facts to go on.”
31
Creon: “If I were king, I should be a slave to policy. / … /
I hate anarchy / And never would deal with any man who likes it.”
32
Creon: “A true friend thrown aside—why, life itself / Is not more precious!“
35
Choragos: “Respect Creon’s word. He has spoken like a / fool, / And now he has sworn an oath.”
Oedipus: “Then let him go. And let me die, if I must, /
Or be driven by him in shame from the land of / Thebes.”
36
Creon: “I can. / You do not know me; but the city knows me, /
And in its eyes I am just, if not in yours.”
37
Jocasta: “In God’s name, Oedipus, inform your wife as well: / Why are you so set in this hard anger?“
40
Oedipus: “I am not sure that the blind man can not see. / But I should know better if you were to tell me—“
42
Oedipus: “I went to the shrine at Delphi. / The god dismissed my question without reply; /
He spoke of other things. / Some were clear, / Full of wretchedness, dreadful, unbearable:“
43
Oedipus: “But as this charioteer lurched over towards me / I struck him in my rage. The old man saw me /
And brought his double goad down upon my head / As I came abreast. / … / I killed him.”
48
Messenger: “I am from Corinth. / The news I brought ought to mean joy to you, /
Though it may be you will find some grief in it.”
51
Jocasta: “Yet this news of your father’s death is wonderful.”
Oedipus: “Wonderful. But I fear the living woman.”
52
Oedipus: “Apollo said through his prophet that I was the man /
Who should marry his own mother, shed his father’s blood / With his own hands.”
57
Jocasta: “Ah, miserable! / That is the only word I have for you now. / That is the only word I can ever have.”
59
Choragos: “I know him, he was Laïos’ man. You can trust him.”
65
Chorus: “And now of all men ever known / most pitiful is this man’s story: /
His fortunes are most changed, his state / Fallen to a low slave’s /
Ground under bitter fate.”
67
Second Messenger: “The Queen is dead.”
Choragos: “Iocastê? Dead? But at whose hand?”
Second Messenger: “Her own. / The full horror of what happened you can not / know”
70
Choragos: “What madness came upon you, what daemon / Leaped on your life with heavier /
Punishment than a mortal man can bear?”