Oedipus the King (9 page)

Authors: Sophocles,Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles

Tags: #Drama, #Ancient & Classical, #Literary Collections, #Poetry, #test

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160 I don't do it to placate any distant kin,
I will dispel this poison for my own sake.
Laius' killer might one day come for me,
exacting vengeance with that same hand.
So to defend the dead man serves my interest.
Rise, children, quick, up from the altar,
raise those branches that appeal to god.
Someone go call the people of Kadmos here.
Tell them I'm ready to do anything.
If god is with us, we will survive.
170 If not, our ruin has already happened.

(Exit Oedipus, into the palace.)

PRIEST Stand, children. The thing we came for
the king himself has promised to do.
Let god Apollo, who commands us to act,
lift this plague off our lives! Apollo our savior!

(The Theban suppliants leave; the Chorus enters.)

CHORUS What will you say to Thebes,
Voice from Zeus? What sweet sounds
bring your will from golden Delphi
to our bright city?
We're at the breaking point,
180 terror ranges through our minds.
Our wild cries reach for you,
Healing God from Delos
in holy dread we ask: does your will
bring a new threat, or an old doom
come back as the years wheel by?
Say it, Great Voice,
you who answer us always,
speak as Hope's golden child.

Athena, your help is the first we ask,
190 immortal daughter of Zeus,
then Artemis your sister
who protects our land, sitting throned
in the heart of our marketplace.
And Apollo, whose shots
hit from far off! Our three
defenders from death: come now!
If once you fought off destruction
by blowing away the fires of our pain,
come to us now!

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200 The blows I suffer are past count.
Plague kills my friends,
thought finds no spear
to keep a man safe.
Our rich earth shrivels what it grows,
our women in labor scream
but nothing's born. One life
after another flies,
you see them go
birds driving their strong wings
210 faster than flash-fire
to the shore of the sunset god.

Our city dies as its people die
those countless deaths, her children
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.
220 A hymn shining to the Healer
is darkened by a grieving voice,
a flute in a courtyard.
Help us, Goddess,
golden child of Zeus,
send us the bright face
we need: Strength.

Force that raging killer, the god Ares,
to turn his back and run from our land.
He murders without armor now
230 but we, the victims of his fever,
shout in the hot blast of his charge.
Blow Ares to the great searoom
of Amphitrité, banish him
under a booming wind
to jagged harbors in the seas
roiling off Thrace. If night
doesn't finish the god's black work,
the day will finish it.
The lightning waits
240 in your fiery will,
Zeus, Father. Send its blast
to kill the god killing us.

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Apollo,
lord of the morning light, draw back
your curving bowstring
of twined goldfire the sure arrows
that rake our attackers and keep them at bay.
Artemis, carry your radiance
into battle, on bright quick feet
250 down through the morning hills.
I call on the god whose hair
flows through its golden band,
whose name is our country's own,
Bakkhos!the wine-flushed!who comes
to the maenads' cries, who runs
in their midst: Bakkhos!
come here on fire,
a pine-torch flaring,
to face with us the one god
260 all the gods hate: Ares!

(Oedipus has entered while the Chorus was singing. Now he speaks.)

OEDIPUS I heard your prayer. Prayer may save you yet
if you will trust me and do what I say:
work with me toward the one cure
this plague demands of us.
Help will come, the plague will lift.
I now outlaw the killer myself, by these words.
I act as a stranger, not familiar
either with this crime or accounts of it.
Unless I can mesh some clue I hold
270 with something known of the killer,
I will be tracking him alone, on a cold trail.
Since I came later to join your ranks,
when the crime itself was past history,
there are some things that you,
the sons of Kadmos, must tell me.
If any of you knows how Laius,.
son of Labdacus, died, he must
instantly tell me all he knows.
He must not be frightened of naming
280 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.

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I will reward you now, I will thank you always.
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:
290 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:
drive him from your houses.
He is our sickness. He poisons us.
This the Pythian god has shown me.
Believe me, I am the ally in this
both of the god and the dead king.
300 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.
I pray this, too: if he's found at my hearth,
inside my house, and I know that he's there,
may the curses I aimed at others punish me.
I charge you allgive my words force,
for my sake and the god's, for our dead land
310 stripped barren of its harvests,
forsaken 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
not only being noble, but your king.
But as my luck would have it,
I have his power, his beda wife
who shares our seed, and had she borne
the children of us both, she
320 might have linked us closer still. But Laius
had no luck fathering children, and fate
itself soon struck a blow at his head.
It's these concerns make me defend Laius
as I would my own father. There is nothing
I won't try, to trace his murder
back to the killer's hand.
I act in this for Labdacus and Polydorus,
for Kadmos and Agenorfor our whole line of kings.

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I warn those who disobey me:
330 god make their fields harvest dust,
their women's bodies harvest death.
O you gods,
kill them with something worse
than this plague killing us now.
For all the rest of us, who are
loyal sons of Kadmos:
may Justice fight with us,
the gods be always at our side.

CHORUS King, your curse forces me to speak.
340 None of us is the killer.
And none of us can point to him.
Apollo ordered us to search,
now
he
must find the killer.

OEDIPUS So he must. But what man could force
a god against his will?

LEADER Let me suggest a second course of action.

OEDIPUS Don't stop at two if you have more.

LEADER Tiresias is the man whose power of seeing
shows him most nearly what Apollo sees.
350 King, he might make brilliantly clear
what you most want to learn.

OEDIPUS I've acted already not to lose this chance.
At Kreon's urging I've sent for himtwice now.
The fact that he still hasn't come I find strange.

LEADER There were some old rumorstoo faint to help us now.

OEDIPUS I'll study every word. What did those rumors say?

LEADER That Laius was killed by some travelers.

OEDIPUS That's something even I have heard. But the man
who actually did itno one sees.

LEADER If fear means anything to him
360 he won't linger in Thebes
once he has heard that curse of yours.

OEDIPUS If murder didn't frighten him, my words won't.

LEADER There is the man who will convict him:
god's prophet, led here at last.
God gave to him what he gave no one else.

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The truth is 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
370 what omens to expound, what to keep secret.
Though your eyes can't see it,
you are aware of the plague
attacking us. To fight it, we can find
no savior or defense but you, my Lord.
For we now have Apollo's answer
you will have heard it from others:
to end this plague we must root out Laius' killers.
Find them, then kill them or banish them.
Help us do it. Don't begrudge us
380 what you divine from birdcries, show us
any escape prophecy has shown you.
Rescue Thebes! Rescue yourself, and me!
Take charge of our defilement, and stop
this poison from the murdered man
which sickens and destroys us.
We're in your hands. To help another
is the best use a man can make of his powers.

TIRESIAS The most terrible knowledge is the kind
it would pay no wise man to use.
390 I knew this, but I forgot it.
I should never have come.

OEDIPUS What's this? You've comebut with no desire to help?

TIRESIAS Let me go home. Take my advice now. Your life
will be easier to bearso will mine.

OEDIPUS Strange words. And hardly kindto hold back
god's crucial guidance from your own people.

TIRESIAS I see that you've spoken out today
when silence was called for. I'm silent now
to spare me your mistake.

400 OEDIPUS For god's sake do not turn your back
if you understand any of this! We kneel and beg.

TIRESIAS You beg out of ignorance. I'll never speak.
If I made my griefs plain, you would see your own.

OEDIPUS Then you know and won't help us? You intend
to betray us all and destroy Thebes?

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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.
410 Still won't speak?
Are you without feelingsor beyond their reach?

TIRESIAS You blame this rage on me, do you? Rage?
You haven't seen her yet, the kind
that's married to your life.
You
find fault with
me
?

OEDIPUS Who wouldn't be enraged at the words
you're using to insult Thebes?

TIRESIAS Truth will come. My silence can't hide it.

OEDIPUS Must it come? Good reason to speak it now.

TIRESIAS I prefer not to speak. Rage at that, if you like,
420 with the most savage fury your heart knows.

OEDIPUS I'm angry enough now to speak my mind.
I think you helped plot the murder. No,
you can't have struck the blow itself.
Had you eyes, though, I would have said
you alone were the killer.

TIRESIAS That's your truth? Hear mine: I say
honor the curse your own mouth spoke.
From today, don't you speak to me,
or to your people here. You are the plague.
430 You ruin your own land.

OEDIPUS So the appalling charge has been at last
flushed out, into the open.
Now where will you run?

TIRESIAS Where you can't reach. To truth, where I'm strong.

OEDIPUS Who put this truth in your mouth? Not your prophet's trade.

TIRESIAS You did. By forcing me to speak.

OEDIPUS Speak what? Repeat it so I understand.

TIRESIAS I made no sense the first time?
Are you provoking me to use the word?

440 OEDIPUS You made no sense at any time. Try once more.

TIRESIAS I say: you are the killer you would find.