by Sophocles
You were a bird from god, you brought good luck
the day you rescued us. Be that man now!
If you want to rule us, it’s better
to rule the living than a barren waste.
Walled cities and ships are worthless—
when they’ve been emptied of people.
OEDIPUS
I do pity you, children. Don’t think I’m unaware.
I know what need brings you: this sickness
ravages all of you. Yet, sick as you are, 70
not one of you suffers a sickness like mine.
Yours is a private grief, you feel
only what touches you. But my heart grieves
for you, for myself, and for our city.
You’ve come to wake me to all this.
There was no need. I haven’t been sleeping.
I have wept tears enough, for long enough.
My mind has raced down every twisting path.
And after careful thought, I’ve set in motion
the only cure I could find: I’ve sent Kreon, 80
my wife’s brother, to Phoibos at Delphi,
to hear what action or what word of mine
will save this town. Already, counting the days,
I’m worried: what is Kreon doing?
He takes too long, more time than he needs.
But when he comes, I’ll be the guilty one—
if I don’t do all the gods show me to do.
PRIEST
Well timed! The moment you spoke,
your men gave the sign: Kreon’s arriving.
OEDIPUS
O Lord Apollo 90
may the luck he brings save us! Luck so bright
we can see it—just as we see him now.
KREON enters from the countryside, wearing a laurel crown speckled with red.
PRIEST
He must bring pleasing news. If not, why would
he wear laurel dense with berries?
OEDIPUS
We’ll know very soon. He’s within earshot.
Prince! Brother kinsman, son of Menoikeos!
What kind of answer have you brought from god?
KREON
A good one. No matter how dire, if troubles
turn out well, everything will be fine.
OEDIPUS
What did the god say? Nothing you’ve said 100
so far alarms or reassures me.
KREON
Do you want me to speak in front of these men?
If so, I will. If not, let’s go inside.
OEDIPUS
Speak here, to all of us. I suffer
more for them than for my own life.
KREON
Then I’ll report what I heard from Apollo.
He made his meaning very clear.
He commands we drive out what corrupts us,
what sickens our city. We now harbor
something incurable. He says: purge it. 110
OEDIPUS
Tell me the source of our trouble.
How do we cleanse ourselves?
KREON
By banishing a man or killing him. It’s blood—
kin murder—that brings this storm on our city.
OEDIPUS
Who is the man god wants us to punish?
KREON
As you know, King, our city was ruled once
by Laios, before you came to take the helm.
OEDIPUS
I’ve heard as much. Though I never saw him.
KREON
Well, Laios was murdered. Now god tells you
plainly: with your own hands punish 120
the very men whose hands killed Laios.
OEDIPUS
Where do I find these men? How do I track
vague footprints from a bygone crime?
KREON
The god said: here, in our own land.
What we look for we can capture.
What we ignore goes free.
OEDIPUS
Was Laios killed at home? Or in the fields?
Or did they murder him on foreign ground?
KREON
He told us his journey would take him
into god’s presence. He never came back. 130
OEDIPUS
Did none of his troop see and report
what happened? Isn’t there anyone
to question whose answers might help?
KREON
All killed but a single terrified
survivor, able to tell us but one fact.
OEDIPUS
What was it? One fact might lead to many,
if we had one small clue to give us hope.
KREON
They had the bad luck, he said, to meet bandits
who struck them with a force many hands strong.
This wasn’t the violence of one man only. 140
OEDIPUS
What bandit would dare commit such a crime . . .
unless somebody here had hired him?
KREON
That was our thought, but after Laios
died, we were mired in new troubles—
and no avenger came.
OEDIPUS
But here was your kingship murdered!
What kind of trouble could have blocked your search?
KREON
The Sphinx’s song. So wily, so baffling!
She forced us to forget the dark past,
to confront what lay at our feet. 150
OEDIPUS
Then I’ll go back, start fresh,
and light up that darkness.
Apollo was exactly right, and so were you,
to turn our minds back to the murdered man.
It’s time I joined your search for vengeance.
Our country and the god deserve no less.
This won’t be on behalf of distant kin—
I’ll banish this plague for my own sake.
Laios’ killer might one day come for me,
exacting vengeance with that same hand. 160
Defending the dead man serves my interest.
Rise, children, quick, up from the altar,
pick up those branches that appeal to god.
Someone go call the people of Kadmos—
tell them I’m ready to do anything.
With god’s help our good luck
is assured. Without it we’re doomed.
Exit OEDIPUS, into the palace.
PRIEST
Stand up, children. He has proclaimed
himself the cure we came to find.
May god Apollo, who sent the oracle, 170
be our savior and end this plague!
The Delegation of Thebans leaves; the CHORUS enters.
CHORUS
What will you say to Thebes,
Voice from Zeus? What sweet sounds
convey your will from golden Delphi
to our bright city?
We’re at the breaking point,
our minds are wracked with dread.
Our wild cries reach out to you,
Healing God from Delos—
in holy fear we ask: does your will 180
bring a new threat, or has an old doom
come round again as the years wheel by?
Say it, Great Voice,
you who answer us always,
speak as Hope’s golden child.
Athena, immortal daughter of Zeus,
your help is the first we ask—
then Artemis, your sister
who guards our land, throned
in the heart of our city. 190
And Apollo, whose arrows
strike from far off! Our three
defenders against death: come now!
Once before, when ruin threatened,
you drove the flames of fever from our city.
Come to us now!
The troubles I suffer are endless.
The plague attacks our troops.
I can think of no weapo
n
that will keep a man safe. 200
Our rich earth shrivels what it grows.
Women in labor scream, but no
children are born to ease their pain.
One life after another flies—
you see them pass—
like birds driving their strong wings
faster than flash-fire
to the Deathgod’s western shore.
Our city dies as its people die
these countless deaths, her children 210
rot in the streets, unmourned,
spreading more death.
Young wives and gray mothers
wash to our altars, their cries
carry from all sides, sobbing
for help, each lost in her pain.
A hymn rings out to the Healer—
an oboe answers,
keening in a courtyard.
Against all this, Goddess, 220
golden child of Zeus,
send us the bright shining
face of courage.
Force that raging killer, the god Ares,
to turn his back and run from our land.
He wields no weapons of war to kill us,
but burning with his fever,
we shout in the hot blast of his charge.
Blow Ares to the vast sea-room
of Amphitritê, banish him 230
under a booming wind
to jagged harbors in the roiling
seas off Thrace. If night
doesn’t finish the god’s black work,
the day will finish it.
Lightning lurks
in your fiery will,
O Zeus, our Father. Blast it
into the god who kills us.
Apollo, lord of the morning light, 240
draw back your taut, gold-twined
bowstring, fire the sure arrows
that rake our attackers and keep them at bay.
Artemis, bring your radiance
into battle on bright quick feet
down through the morning hills.
I call on the god whose hair
is bound with gold,
the god who gave us our name,
Bakkhos!—the wine-flushed—who answers 250
the maenads’ cries, running
beside them! Bakkhos,
come here on fire,
pine-torch flaring.
Face with us the one god
all the gods hate: Ares!
OEDIPUS has entered while the CHORUS was singing.
OEDIPUS
I heard your prayer. It will be answered
if you trust and obey my words:
pull hard with me, bear down on the one cure
that will stop this plague. Help 260
will come, the evils will be gone.
I hereby outlaw the killer
myself, by my own words, though I’m a stranger
both to the crime and to accounts of it.
But unless I can mesh some clue I hold
with something known of the killer, I will
be tracking him alone, on a cold trail.
Since I’ve come late to your ranks, Thebans,
and the crime is past history,
there are some things that you, 270
the sons of Kadmos, must tell me.
If any one of you knows how Laios,
son of Labdakos, died, he must
tell me all that he knows.
He should not be afraid to name
himself the guilty one: I swear
he’ll suffer nothing worse than exile.
Or if you know of someone else—
a foreigner—who struck the blow, speak up.
I will reward you now. I will thank you always. 280
But if you know the killer and don’t speak—
out of fear—to shield kin or yourself,
listen to what that silence will cost you.
I order everyone in my land,
where I hold power and sit as king:
don’t let that man under your roof,
don’t speak with him, no matter who he is.
Don’t pray or sacrifice with him,
don’t pour purifying water for him.
I say this to all my people: 290
drive him from your houses.
He is our sickness. He poisons us.
This the Pythian god has shown me.
This knowledge makes me an ally—
of both the god and the dead king.
I pray god that the unseen killer,
whoever he is, and whether he killed
alone or had help, be cursed with a life
as evil as he is, a life
of utter human deprivation. 300
I pray this, too: if he’s found at my hearth,
inside my house, and I know he’s there,
may the curses I aimed at others punish me.
I charge you all—act on my words,
for my sake and the god’s, for our dead land
stripped barren of its harvests,
abandoned by its gods.
Even if god had not forced the issue,
this crime should not have gone uncleansed.
You should have looked to it! The dead man 310
was not only noble, he was your king!
But as my luck would have it,
I have his power, his bed—a wife
who shares our seed. And had she borne
the children of us both, she might
have linked us closer still. But Laios
had no luck fathering children, and Fate
itself came down on his head.
These concerns make me fight for Laios
as I would for my own father. 320
I’ll stop at nothing to trace his murder
back to the killer’s hand.
I act in this for Labdakos and Polydoros,
for Kadmos and Agenor—all our kings.
I warn those who would disobey me:
god make their fields harvest dust,
their women’s bodies harvest death.
O you gods,
let them die from the plague that kills
us now, or die from something worse.
As for the rest of you, who are 330
the loyal sons of Kadmos:
may Justice fight with us,
the gods be always at your side.
CHORUS
King, your curse forces me to speak.
None of us is the killer.
And none of us can point to him.
Apollo ordered us to search.
It’s up to him to find the killer.
OEDIPUS
So he must. But what man can force
the gods to act against their will? 340
LEADER
May I suggest a second course of action?
OEDIPUS
Don’t stop at two. Not if you have more.
LEADER
Tiresias is the man whose power of seeing
shows him most nearly what Apollo sees.
If we put our questions to him, King,
he could give us the clearest answers.
OEDIPUS
But I’ve seen to this already.
At Kreon’s urging I’ve sent for him—twice now.
I find it strange that he still hasn’t come.
LEADER
There were rumors—too faint and old to be much help. 350
OEDIPUS
What were they? I’ll examine every word.
LEADER
They say Laios was killed by some travelers.
OEDIPUS
That’s something even I have heard.
But the man who did it—no one sees him.
LEADER
If fear has any hold on him
he won’t linger in Thebes, not after
he hears threats of the kind you made.
OEDIPUS
If murder didn’t scare
him, my words won’t.
LEADER
There’s the man who will convict him:
god’s own prophet, led here at last. 360
God gave to him what he gave no one else:
the truth—it’s living in his mind.
Enter TIRESIAS, led by a Boy.
OEDIPUS
Tiresias, you are master of the hidden world.
You can read earth and sky. You know
what knowledge to reveal and what to hide.
Though your eyes can’t see it,
your mind is well aware of the plague
that afflicts us. Against it, we have no
savior or defense but you, my Lord.
If you haven’t heard it from messengers, 370
we now have Apollo’s answer: to end
this plague we must root out Laios’ killers.
Find them, then kill or banish them.
Help us do this. Don’t begrudge us
what you divine from bird cries, show us
everything prophecy has shown you.
Save Thebes! Save yourself ! Save me!
Wipe out what defiles us, keep
the poison of our king’s murder
from poisoning the rest of us. 380
We’re in your hands. The best use a man
makes of his powers is to help others.
TIRESIAS
The most terrible knowledge is the kind
it pays no wise man to possess.
I knew this, but I forgot it.
I should never have come here.
OEDIPUS
What? You’ve come, but with no stomach for this?
TIRESIAS
Let me go home. Your life will then
be easier to bear—and so will mine.
OEDIPUS
It’s neither lawful nor humane 390
to hold back god’s crucial guidance
from the city that raised you.
TIRESIAS
What you’ve said has made matters worse.
I won’t let that happen to me.
OEDIPUS
For god’s sake, if you know something,
don’t turn your back on us! We’re on our knees.
TIRESIAS
You don’t understand! If I spoke
of my grief, then it would be yours.
OEDIPUS
What did you say? You know and won’t help?
You would betray us all and destroy Thebes? 400
TIRESIAS
I’ll cause no grief to you or me. Why ask
futile questions? You’ll learn nothing.
OEDIPUS
So the traitor won’t answer.
You would enrage a rock.
