It must not happen that, with such clues in my grasp, I fail to bring my birth to light.IocastaFor the gods’ sake, if you have any care for your own life, do not continue this search! My anguish is enough.OedipusBe of good courage. Even if I should be found the son of a servile mother—a slave by three descents—you will not be proven baseborn.IocastaHear me, I implore you: do not do this.OedipusI will not hear of not discovering the whole truth.IocastaYet I wish you well—I counsel you for the best.OedipusThese best counsels, then, vex my patience.IocastaOh ill-fated man, may you never know who you are!OedipusGo, some one, fetch me the herdsman.Leave this woman to glory in her princely stock.IocastaAlas, alas, miserable man—that word alone can I say to you—and no other word ever again. She rushes into the palace. ChorusWhy has this woman gone, Oedipus, rushing off in wild grief? I feara storm of sorrow will soon break forth from this silence.OedipusBreak forth what will! Be my race ever so lowly, I crave to learn it. That woman perhaps—for she is proud with more than a woman’s pride—feels ashamed of my lowly origin. But I, who hold myself son of Fortunethat gives good, will not be dishonored. She is the mother from whom I spring, and the months, my kinsmen, have marked me sometimes lowly, sometimes great. Such being my heritage, never more can I provefalse to it, or keep from searching out the secret of my birth.

ChorusIf I am a seer or wise of heart,Cithaeron, you will not fail—by heaven, you will not—to know at tomorrow’s full moon that Oedipus honors you as native to him, as his nurse, and his mother, and that you are celebrated in our dance and song,because you are well-pleasing to our prince. O Phoebus to whom we cry, may these things find favor in your sight!

ChorusWho was it, my son, who of the race whose years are many, that bore you in wedlock withPan, the mountain-roaming father? Or was it a bride of Loxias that bore you? For dear to him are all the upland pastures.Or perhaps it was Cyllene’s lord, or the Bacchants’ god, dweller on the hill-tops, that received you, a new-born joy, from one of the nymphs of Helicon, with whom he most often sports.

OedipusElders, if it is right for me, who have never met the man, to guess, I think I see the herdsman we have been looking for for a lone time. In his venerable old age he tallies with this stranger’s years, and moreover I recognize those who bring him, I think, as servants of mine.But perhaps you have an advantage in knowledge over me, if you have seen the herdsman before.ChorusYes, I know him, be sure. He was in the service of Laius—trusty as any shepherd.The herdsman is brought in.OedipusI ask you first, Corinthian stranger, if this is the man you mean.MessengerHe is, the one you are looking at.OedipusYou, old man—look this way and answer all that I ask—were you once in the service of Laius?ServantI was—not a bought slave, but reared in his house.OedipusEmployed in what labor, or what way of life?