Oedipus Tyrannus (1400-1480)

you who drank my father’s blood from my own hands—do you remember, perhaps, what deeds I have performed in your sight, and then what fresh deeds I went on to do when I came here? Oh marriage rites, you gave me birth, and when you had brought me forth,

you again bore children to your child, you created an incestuous kinship of fathers, brothers, sons, brides, wives, and mothers—all the foulest deeds that are wrought among men! But it is improper to mention what it is improper to do—

hurry, for the love of the gods, hide me somewhere beyond the land, or slay me, or cast me into the sea, where you will never behold me any longer! Approach—deign to lay your hands on a wretched man—listen and fear not: my plague can rest

on no other mortal.

But here is Creon in good time to plan and perform that which you request. He alone is left to guard the land in your place.

Ah, me, how will I address him?

What claim to credence can be shown on my part? For in the past I proved to be wholly false to him.

I have not come to mock or reproach you with any any past fault.

But you, if you no longer respect the children of men,

revere at least the all-nurturing flame of our lord the Sun, and don’t show so openly such a pollution as this, one which neither earth, nor holy rain, nor the light itself can welcome. Take him into the house as quickly as you can: it best accords with pity that

kinfolk alone should see and hear a kinsman’s woes.

For the gods’ love—since you have done a gentle violence to my prediction and come in a spirit so noble to me, a man most vile—grant me a favor: I will speak for your own good, not mine.

And what do you wish so eagerly to get from me?

Cast me out of this land with all speed, to a place where no mortal shall be found to greet me.

This I could have done, to be sure, except I craved first to learn from the god all my duty.

But his pronouncement has been set forth in full—to let me perish, the parricide, unholy one that I am.

Thus it was said. But since we have come to such a pass, it is better to learn clearly what should be done.

Will you, then, seek a response on behalf of such a wretch as I?

Yes, for even you yourself will now surely put faith in the god.

Yes. And on you I lay this charge, to you I make this entreaty: give to the woman within such burial as you wish—you will properly render the last rites to your own. But never let this city of my father be condemned

to have me dwelling within, as long as I live. No, allow me to live in the hills, where Cithaeron, famed as mine, sits, which my mother and father, while they lived, fixed as my appointed tomb, so that I may die according to the decree of those who sought to slay me.

And yet I know this much, that neither sickness nor anything else can destroy me; for I would never have been snatched from death, except in order to suffer some strange doom. But let my fate go where it will. Regarding my children, Creon, I beg you to take no care of my sons:

they are men, so that they will never lack the means to live wherever they should be. My two girls, poor hapless ones—who never knew my table spread separately, or lacked their father’s presence, but always had a share of all that

reached my hands—I implore you to take care of them. And, if you can, allow me to touch them with my hands, and to indulge my grief. Grant it, prince, grant it, noble heart. Ah, if I could but once touch them with my hands, I would think that I had them

just as when I had sight.

What is this? Oh, gods, can it be my loved ones that I hear sobbing, can Creon have taken pity on me and sent my children, my darlings?

Am I right?

You are. I have brought this about, for I knew the joy which you have long had from them—the joy you now have.

Bless you, and for this errand may the god prove a kinder guardian to you than he has to me.

My children, where are you? Come, here, here to the hands of the one whose mother was your own, the hands that have made your father’s once bright eyes to be such orbs as these—his, who seeing nothing, knowing nothing,