Oedipus at Colonus (725-816)

the final proof of my salvation!

Courage! It will be yours. For even if I am aged, this country’s strength has not grown old.

Gentlemen, noble dwellers in this land, I see from your eyes that a sudden fear has troubled you at my coming;

but do not shrink back from me, and let no evil word escape you. I am here with no thought of force; I am old, and I know that the city to which I have come is mighty, if any in Hellas has might.

No, I have been sent, aged as I am, to plead with this man to return with me to the land of Cadmus. I am not one man’s envoy, but have a mandate from all our people; since it belonged to me, by family, beyond all other Thebans to mourn his woes.

Unhappy Oedipus, hear us, and come home! Justly are you summoned by all the Cadmeans, and most of all by me, since I—unless I am the worst of all men born—feel most sorrow for your woes, old man,

when I see you, unhappy as you are, a stranger and a wanderer evermore, roaming in beggary, with one handmaid for your support. Ah, me, I had not thought that she could fall to such a depth of misery as that to which she has fallen—

this poor girl!—as she tends forever your dark life amid poverty; in ripe youth, but unwed: a prize for the first passerby to seize. Is it not a cruel reproach—alas!—that I have cast at you, and me, and all our race?

But indeed an open shame cannot be hidden. Oedipus, in the name of your ancestral gods, listen to me! Hide it, and consent to return to the city and the house of your ancestors, after bidding a kind farewell to this city. Athens is worthy; yet your own city has the first claim on your reverence,

since it was Thebes that nurtured you long ago.

You who will dare anything, who from any just plea would derive a crafty trick, why do you make this attempt on me, and seek once more to snare me in your trap where I would feel most grief?

Long ago, when I labored under the sickness of my self-made evils, and I yearned to be cast out of the land, you refused to grant the favor. But when my fierce anger had spent its force, and seclusion in the house was sweet to me,

it was then that you thrust me from the house and cast me from the land. And this common race that you mention—that was not at all dear to you then. Now, in turn, when you see that I have a kindly welcome from this city and all its race, you try to pluck me away, wrapping your cruel thoughts in soft words.

And yet what pleasure do you find in this, in treating me as dear against my will? As if a man should refuse you a gift, bring you no aid, when you continually begged for it; but after your heart was sated with your desires, he should grant it then, when the favor could bring no joy

—would you not find your delight in this empty? Yet such is the nature of your own offers to me: noble in appearance, but in substance base. And I will declare it to these men too, to show you up as base. You have come to get me,

not to bring me home, but to plant me near your borders, so that your city might escape uninjured by evils from this land. That fate is not for you, but this one: the brooding of my vengeful spirit on your land forever; and for my sons, this heirloom:

just so much soil in my realm in which to die. Am I not wiser than you in the fortunes of Thebes? Yes, far wiser, by as much as the sources of my knowledge are truer: Phoebus I mean, and his father, Zeus himself. But you have come here with fraud on your lips, yes,

and with a tongue keener than the edge of a sword; yet by their use you may well reap more sorrow than salvation. Still, since I know that I cannot persuade you of this, go! Allow us to live on here; for even in this plight our life would not be bad, if we should be content with it.

Which of us, do you think, suffers more in this exchange—I by your action, or you by your own?

For me, it is enough if your pleading fails both with me and with these men nearby.

Unhappy man, will you let everyone see that even in your years you have gained no sense?

Must you live on to disgrace your old age?

You have a clever tongue, but I know no just man who can produce from every side a pretty speech.

Words may be many, and yet not to the point.

As if yours, indeed, were few, but on the mark.

They cannot be, not for one whose mind is such as yours.

Begone! I will say it for these men too. And do not besiege me with a jealous watch where I am destined to remain.

I call these men, and not you, to witness the tenor of your words to your friends. And if I ever catch you—

And who could catch me against the will of these allies?

I promise you, soon you will be pained even without that.