Part IV, Chapter 21: "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles

These suppliants are holding branches of laurel or olive which have strips of wool wrapped around them.

I thought it wrong, my sons, to hear your words
through emissaries, and have come out myself,
I, Oedipus, a name that all men know.

Old man—for it is fitting that you speak
for all—what is your mood as you entreat me,
fear or trust?

Our city, as you see yourself, is tossed
too much, and can no longer lift its head
above the troughs of billows red with death.

The bird of omen was auspicious then,
when you brought that luck; be that same man again!

A towered city or a ship is nothing
if desolate and no man lives within.

And yet, though you are sick,
there is not one of you so sick as I.
For your affliction comes to each alone,
for him and no one else, but my soul mourns
for me and for you, too, and for the city.

One person after another
you may see, like flying birds,
faster than indomitable fire, sped
to the shore of the god that is the sunset.

Do not begrudge us what you may learn from birds
or any other prophet's path you know!

I see your understanding comes to you
inopportunely.

Now I am angry enough to come right out
with this conjecture: you, I think, helped plot
the deed; you did it—even if your hand
cannot have struck the blow.

...my loyal Creon, colleague from the start,
longs to sneak up in secret and dethrone me.
So he's suborned this fortuneteller—schemer!

I came along, yes I,
Oedipus the ignorant, and stopped her—
by using thought, not augury from birds.

What place will not be harbor to your cry,
or what Cithaeron not reverberate
when you have heard the bride-song in your palace
to which you sailed?

Stupid I seem to you, yet to your parents
who gave you natural birth I seemed quite shrewd.

He wanders, hidden by wild
forests, up through caves
and rocks, like a bull,
anxious, with an anxious foot, forlorn.

If you consider mindless willfulness
a prized possession, you are not thinking sense.

I'm not the kind of man who falls in love
with kingship. I am content with a king's power.
And so would any man who's wise and prudent.

I get all things from you, with no distress;
as king I would have onerous duties, too.

Treason's a thought I'm not enamored of;
nor could I join a man who acted so.

Then, if you find I plotted with that portent
reader, don't have me put to death by your vote
only—I'll vote myself for my conviction.

Believe his words, for the god's sake, Oedipus,
in deference above all to his oath
to the gods.

Ah then, absolve yourself of what he charges!

Was his retinue small, or did he travel
with a great troop, as would befit a prince?

Unclean?—if I am banished and even
in exile I may not see my own parents,
or set foot in my homeland, or else be yoked
in marriage to my mother, and kill my father

You said he spoke of robbers as the ones
who killed him. Now: if he continues still
to speak of many, then I could not have killed him.
One man and many men just do not jibe.

But if a man proceeds disdainfully
in deeds of hand or word
and has no fear of Justice
or reverence for shrines of the divinities
(may a bad fate catch him
for his luckless wantonness!)

No longer shall I visit and revere
Earth's navel the untouchable,
nor visit Abae's temple,
or Olympia,
if the prophecies are not matched by events
for all the world to point to.

Your fear is groundless.

OEDIPUS: Same? One who begot me and one who didn't?
MESSENGER: He didn't beget you any more than I did.

A fearful rebuke those tokens left for me!

And yet, in real knowledge,
you can outstrip me, surely: you've seen him.

Oh generations of mortal men,
while you are living, I will
appraise your lives at zero!

What man
comes closer to seizing lasting blessedness
than merely to seize its semblance,
and after living in this semblance, to plunge?

Now I'm without a god,
child of a polluted parent,
fellow progenitor with him
who gave me birth in misery.

For I, all-wretched,
most nobly raised—as no one else in Thebes—
deprived myself of these when I ordained
that all expel the impious one—god-shown
to be polluted, and the dead king's son!

For I, all-wretched,
most nobly raised—as no one else in Thebes—
deprived myself of these when I ordained
that all expel the impious one—god-shown
to be polluted, and the dead king's son!

Polybus, Corinth, halls—ancestral,
they told me—how beautiful was your ward,
a scar that held back festering disease!

If blood kin only see and hear their own
afflictions, we'll have no impious defilement.

You see how young they are,
bereft of everyone, except for you.