DIPUS PLAYS or

OPHOCLES
‘COMPLETE TEXTS OF

—_- SDIPUS SHE KING

OEDIPUS AT COLONUS
ANTIGONE

IO Co fo C7 Co Co Ca ©o

A REVISED AND UPDATED TRANSLATION BY PAUL ROCHE

 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2021 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/oedipusplaysofso0000soph
 The Oedipus Legend
The tragic story of King Oedipus is one of the great dramas
that we have inherited from ancient Greece. It has pene-
trated the literature, legend, and language of all ages.
Towering above the gallery of characters that Sophocles
created are two who stand as universal symbols of human
nature in all its frailty and strength: Oedipus, the king who
unknowingly killed his father and married his mother and
who atoned for these crimes by a voluntary act of self-
punishment . . . and Antigone, his daughter, who placed
justice and dignity above her own life.
Paul Roche has revised his classic 1958 translation, ren-
dering the Theban plays into a contemporary English that
brings the characters and story to life with all the power,
clarity, and emotion of the original Greek.

PAUL ROCHE is a distinguished poet and translator. In

addition to The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles, his translations
include The Orestes Plays of Aeschylus, The Bible’s Greatest
Stories, and the works of Sappho.
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THE OEDIPUS PLAYS OF

Sophocles
SEDIPR SSI HE KING
GeEDIPUSsAT GOUONUS
ANTIGONE

A newly revised

and updated translation by

Paul Roche

A MERIDIAN BOOK
MERIDIAN
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,
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Published by Meridian, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA

Inc. Previously published in a Mentor edition.

First Meridian Printing, May, 1996

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

Copyright © Paul Roche, 1958, 1991

Copyright renewed Paul Roche, 1986
All rights reserved

) REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 91-61300

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of Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone are subject to a royalty. They are
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 Contents

FOREWORD: The Great Encounter ix

INTRODUCTION: The Theban: Trilogy xi
OEDIPUS THE KING il
OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 83
ANTIGONE 187

APPENDIX:
Production and Acting 293
Notes 256
Glossary of Classical Names 261
Acknowledgments 268
 FEoreword

THE GREAT ENCOUNTER

Sophocles, who died at the age of well over ninety, two
thousand three hundred and ninety-seven years ago, was
one of the world’s greatest poets and dramatists, and he
speaks to us today with a message no less necessary and
elevating than it was to the Greeks of the fifth century
B.C. We too need to be told that man is but a limited and
contingent creature, subject to sudden disrupting forces.
Success is not finally to be measured by fame or material
prosperity. Human greatness consists ultimately in nobly
accepting the responsibility of being what we are; human
freedom, in the personal working out of our fate in terms
appropriate to ourselves. Though we may be innocent, we
are ail potentially guilty, because of the germ of self-suffi-
ciency and arrogance in our nature. We must remember
always that we are only man and be modest in our own
conceits. Our place in the total pattern of the cosmos is
only finite. That is not to say that it may not be glorious.
Whatever our circumstances, we can achieve and endure
through to essential greatness. It is not what fate has in
store for us that matters, but what we do with it when it
comes. There may be suffering, but no abiding hope-
lessness. No power, no imposition, no catastrophe, can
uproot the personal dignity of each human being. The
seeming caprice and unfairness of life, striking some down
and pampering others, is only the beginning of the Great
Encounter. Both the choice and the destiny are ours.
—Paul Roche
Soller,
Majorca,
1991
 Intro duction

THE THEBAN TRILOGY

The story of Oedipus King of Thebes, his success, his

fall, his awed and hallowed end—in brief, the Theban
Legend—was already old in the time of Sophocles. Per-
haps it stood to the great poet and dramatist in some-
thing of the same light that the legend of King Arthur
and the Holy Grail stood to the poet Tennyson: a legend
celebrated by several hundred years of song and poetry.
But, whereas Tennyson looked back on a dreamlike
world of chivalry, and helped to sustain the dream of
courtly romance, Sophocles looked back on an elemental
world of human frailty, pride, and punishment, and
helped to sustain the dreadful inevitability of a family
moving toward catastrophe. The world of King Arthur
seemed beautifully impossible and Tennyson left it so;
the world of King Oedipus seemed thankfully improbable
but Sophocles left it terrifyingly possible.
In each of the three plays that comprise his Theban
Trilogy—Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and the
Antigone—Sophocles shows us. a character pursued to
and pursuing its end amid the full illusion both of free-
dom and of destiny and so to a gloriously headstrong
doom. It is true that the downfall of the House of Oedi-
pus was foretold by the gods even before Oedipus was
born, but it was foretold because it was going to happen;
it was not going to happen because it was foretold.
The tragedy of King Oedipus was not only that he
suffered the improbabilities of murdering his father and
marrying his mother—both were mistakes anyway—the
tragedy was that having murdered his father and married
his mother he made the fully responsible mistake of find-
ing it out. As he was an upright man, but proud, the
x
 INTRODUCTION xi
gods allowed him to make the first mistake; as he was a
headstrong man, but overweening in self-confidence, he
allowed himself to make the second. Zeal mysteriously
worked with destiny to trip him up on his self-righteous-
ness and then reveal an arrogance which pressed forward
to calamity.
But even fallen pride need not remain prostrate. In
the second play, the Oedipus at Colonus, we are shown
an old man, blinded, beaten, hunted through the years,
rise to a new dignity by the very fact of his being the
recognized vehicle of divine justice. We now know the
worst that can happen to man, but it can only happen
through a foolish stepping outside from the stream of
man’s right relationship to God. Now we see Oedipus,
by his magnanimous acceptance of Fate, step back again.
He is both cursed and blessed, and a living testimony to
the vindication of man through suffering: not of course
suffering in the Christian sense—for the horror and recal-
citrance are still there—but suffering in that it is a lesson,
a proud and acknowledged testimony to the truth.
In the last play, the Antigone, Sophocles returns to the
theme of the first and shows us again what happens when
the ostensibly good man succumbs to pride. This time,
however, there is an added poignancy: Creon, who is the ©
protagonist rather than Antigone, and who is a kind of
second Oedipus in his ruthless pursuit of what he thinks
is right, brings final ruin to the House of Oedipus,
destroying not only himself, his wife, his son, the love
of these for him, but the very person his son is going to
marry and the one who is most dedicated to the right—
Antigone.
So must always be the end of man without God, even
religious man—for both Oedipus and Creon thought that
they were religious. The horror for us, as it was for the
Greeks, is precisely to see that an Oedipus or a Creon
can so easily be ourselves. Both display the glory and
the weakness (the fatal flaw) of self-sufficient man. And
when Oedipus, the once upright, is dragged piecemeal,
x SOPHOCLES

by his own doing, from wealth and power, is stripped of

reputation, made to wallow in a bed of murder, incest,
suicide, even personal disfigurement, the audience passes
through such territories of fear and pity that the human
heart is altogether purged.

THE RE-CREATION

If it is true that dramatic poetry is the language of

speech, but speech made perfect, and true that poetry
gives to plot its feeling, then my aim in this new transla-
tion of Sophocles is to make that speech as real as possi-
ble without ever letting it cease to be poetry. The
difficulty of doing this for Sophocles is that he was no
ordinary poetic genius. All great poets can rise to an
occasion; but Sophocles does not need an occasion: he
achieves his magical effects at will. He makes the sim-
plest words and phrases sound like the loftiest epic utter-
ance, and he makes the loftiest epic utterance sound as
natural as everyday speech. With Sophocles, dramatic
poetry is the language of speech made perfect and the
perfection of language made speech.
Herein lies the challenge to the translator: after he has
captured the sense of that perfect speech, how does he
proceed to capture the magic of its sound? For if poetry
lies somewhere between meaning and music, sense and
sound, it is obvious that when meanings cross the barrier
of different tongues they do not take their music with
them: they have to assume new sounds and these new
sounds may not be the aesthetic equivalent of the origi-
nal. This is true of any two languages. “‘La plume de ma
tante” is obviously not the same as “My, aunt’s pen,”
though who shall say exactly where the difference lies?
We need not, however, go further than our own lan-
guage to see that different sounds can have the same
meaning and yet a quite dissimilar feeling. “Lamp” is
not the aesthetic equivalent of “light,” nor ‘“daybreak”’
of “early morning.” ‘““Highroad”’ does not have the same
 INTRODUCTION xii
feeling to it as “main road” nor “chair” as “seat.” The-
differences here are subtle but they are there. Sometimes
the differences are crude and obvious: no one (even in
his cups) would get up from a meal saying, ‘Well, I’ve
never had better cutlets of dead calf or swallowed mel-
lower fermented grape juice.”
It is, then, not merely differences of meaning that con-
trol differences of feeling, but also differences of sound.
“Thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness,” is not at
all the same as “You sweet smell, healthy decay,” though
who will say the meaning is different? “In Xanadu did
Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree” bears
almost no emotional resemblance to, “Kubla Khan
decided upon a fine fun dome in Xanadu.” It is precisely
these different values of sound that guide and indicate
the changes of feeling in any language. It is the balance
of sounds in an infinitely complex interplay of rhythms
and cadences that creates all those shifting associations
of meaning and feeling, those allusions, hints and half-
meanings, that constitute the pattern of living speech.
This is what makes translating poetry so exacting. It is
not merely meanings that a translator has to match but
feelings, and for this there are no rules that he can fol-
low—he can only depend upon his ear. And to do this
he must be a poet. If he cannot tell that ‘“‘my Italy’ has
not the same ring to it as “Italia mia,” that “chez moi”
is not quite the same as “home,” and that “the alpha
and the omega” is the same and yet utterly different
from “A to Z,” then he had better leave the business of
translating poetry alone. He might possibly end up by
rendering Tennyson’s famous lines: “Break, break,
break on thy cold grey stones, O sea” into ‘“‘Cassez-vous,
cassez-vous, cassez-vous sur vos froids gris cailloux O
mer,”’* which would be equivalent aesthetically to some-
one’s translating the glorious cry of Xenophon’s Ten
Thousand: “Thalassa! Thalassa!’”’ (The Sea! The Sea!)
into “A vast expanse of salt water! A vast expanse of
salt water!” Perfectly accurate of course.

*I am indebted to the late Miss Edith Hamilton for this witty example.
xiv SOPHOCLES

It does not do then in poetry to forget sound. All

feeling is controlled by the shape of sounds—their differ-
ences of cadence and rhythm. It is not simply that differ-
ent sounds have different meanings, but that the same
meanings have different sounds. Words are unbelievably
sensitive. And in poetry mere clarity has very little to do
with feeling. An increase of clarity can even spell the
end of feeling; for poetry being half music has the power
of making itself felt long before it has made itself fully
understood.
I fled him down the nights and down the days,
I fled him down the arches of the years...
can be made far more straightforward and clear (and
valueless): “‘“For many years I made great efforts to avoid
him.” The health has gone from it.
These things being so, I took it as my principle that
the translator of poetry must never rest satisfied with
simply rendering the correct meaning of the words. This
is only half his duty. The other half is to search out and
to organize from the paucity or the abundance of words
in his own language those words which can conjure up a
similar feeling. He must rework the original words into
a new system of sounds and rhythms that are so true to
the nuances of his own language that they might almost
seem to have been first created in that language to
express the original feelings. He must therefore be aware
of the essential differences between his own language
and the original and yet be able to see constant analogies
between them. For it is only by relating the known to
the less known that a transformation takes place. Re-
creation, not imitation, is what is called for.
Suppose, for instance, that the translator of Sophocles
decides to cast his lines in hexameters simply because the
Greek trimeter is also a six-measured line. He will find
at once that he has not got the aesthetic equivalent: the
Greek trimeter is light and quick, the English hexameter
dawdles and hesitates.
Suppose he goes to the other extreme and far from
 INTRODUCTION xv
trying to imitate the Greek he ignores it and casts his
lines in English rhymed tetrameter. He may get lightness
and speed all right but now he will have something as
foreign in feeling to the original as The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner is to the Book of Job.
The poet-translator, then, must keep his eyes and ears
on each of the languages: never imitating the one but
seizing every chance for a parallel effect with the other.
Compared to Anglo-Saxon poetry Greek poetry is spare
in metaphor but rich in sound. He must somehow resolve
this difference so that the Greek sparsity of ornament
does not come out in English as bald uninspiring sound.
Compared to Anglo-Saxon poetry Greek poetry is often
direct and primitive in emotion but condenses great com-
plexity of expression in a single compound epithet: the
translator must somehow contrive to find a bond between
the two so that the Greek compressed simplicity does
not come out in English as verbiage or naiveté.
The style of Shakespeare and the style of the King
James Bible (pillars of English literary form) could not
be more different in sensibility from the style of Sopho-
cles, and yet the poet-translator must find some analogy
between them if he is to make a bridge between the
two sensibilities. Luckily, there are analogies, likenesses,
parallel feelings, for the design of words and the beauty
of sound. The two languages do in fact pay attention to
a great many of the same things: there is a preoccupation
with cadence, which shows itself in a love of alliteration
and assonance and the associative power of similar
sound; there is an attention to rhythm, which shows itself
in (among other things) the well-timed pause, the break
in the middle of the line; a love of antithesis of sound
and sense: there is a feeling for the symmetrical phrase
as well as the asymmetrical as a means to emphasis; the
use of repetition and parallelisms of speech for pointing
up a phrase or creating pathos; a predilection for twists
of expression, telling paradoxes, oxymora, litotes, and a
whole host of figures of speech that help to put salt on
the tongue and tonic in the head. These are the powerful
emotive devices that Greek shares with Anglo-Saxon. If
Xvi SOPHOCLES

a translator is deaf to them in the Greek he will be deaf

to them in English and he will remain comparatively
numb to the feelings they engender. It is just here, it
seems to me, that the poet-translator has his chance of
paralleling the force and beauty of the Greek without
ever deserting the native genius of English: He will be
respecting similarities without at the same time
attempting to camouflage differences.
In my own efforts I have been careful to watch Sopho-
cles. Where he has repeated a word, I have repeated it;
where he is rich in assonance and alliteration, I try to
be; where he is harsh and staccato, I try to catch it;
where he has a ringing tone, I try to ring.* I have tried
to walk and to run, to rise and to sit, with the Master,
but never by imitation, only by analogy, transposition,
re-creation. In translation there has to be a change of
instruments, but the tune, the feelings as relayed through
sound, must remain as quiet, as excited,as sublime, as
intense, as in the original.
Such is the challenge. The poet-translator has as his
ideal the creation of a pattern of sound which gets so
close to the feeling of the original that it goes beneath the
barrier of language and time, and lays bare the original
creations of the Master. We ought not to have to remind
ourselves that Oedipus, Antigone, Creon, Jocasta, and
the other characters of Sophoclean tragedy were first
conceived as human beings. They have not changed
since. They are in fact universal and timeless and we
ought primarily to see them that way rather than as
Greek characters in a Greek period piece.
The language of Sophocles is concentrated, vivid, spir-
ited, and powerful. Cardinal Newman calls it, ‘‘the sweet
composure, the melodious fullness, the majesty and
grace of Sophocles.”’ But it was also free, molten, fusile
with elements taken from the lofty poetry of the epic,
the strains of the lyric, and the lowly commonplaces of

*The reverse of this, of course, is not necessarily true: if I have repeated a

word, it may not always be that Sophocles has repeated it,
 INTRODUCTION xvii
the market square.* He was a careful craftsman but far
from being a safety-first artist. Amazing agility and sub-
tlety often consort with a quite conscious want of accu-
racy. He wrote in a Greek never quite heard before. He
took risks with the language: coining words, inventing |
grammatical and syntactical constructions, condensing,
eliding, twisting figures of speech inside out, and some-
times stretching the elasticity of the Greek language (that
most lively of languages) to breaking point. But in the
end, at least when it is given to the ear and not the eye
alone to judge, he makes everything sound moderate,
simple, and natural. In my efforts to follow him I have
not scrupled to turn my back on the purely literary, the
pedantic, and the circumspect in diction. I have used a
language which I hope is contemporary but new, tran-
scending if possible the mere aptness of a modern idiom.
I daresay I have sometimes run the risk of looking “not
quite right,” but perhaps not more so than Sophocles
himself might have looked to some of his contemporaries
had they only seen his lines and never heard them. I
have coined a construction here and there and, in the
Antigone, a word, but always with only one end in view:
a deepening of the fear, the pity, the love, the pathos,
the hate, contained in the original. I have throughout
thought more of the sequence of Sophocles’ feelings and
ideas than of the apparent grammatical connection of his
words; remembering that Sophocles himself wrote at a
time when the Greek language had not finally set. I have
always asked myself not: is such and such a phrase ren-
dered metaphrastically according to the book of grammar
or, for that matter, according to the lexicon, but—is it
true? Is it natural? Is it poetical and rhythmical? Is it
dramatically convincing and expressive of the human
heart?*
The choruses in Sophocles are swift, energetic, and

*There are echoes in Sophocles of the proverb, the cliché and (as far as we
can tell) the coiloquial phrase. I have not ostracized any of these where they
have served dialogue and emotions.
*These are the questions that Lewis Campbell, one of the greatest Greek
scholars of the last century, propounds to the would-be Sophoclean interpreter.
Xviil SOPHOCLES

moving, but they are not easy. I have not tried to make
them easy. I should hope, however, to have made them
evocative. Their function in the original (helped on by
dance, spectacle, and song) was to bridge the gap
between the audience and the players and to intensify
the emotion. For this reason I have allowed myself a
very full vocabulary; for I wanted the widest possible
range of sound. There seemed no reason, for instance,
in avoiding the emotionally right word simply because it
happened to be unusual or of non-Anglo-Saxon origin.
There is a time for the simple and a time for the com-
plex. The Sophoclean choruses in their tense and mobile
harmony of shifting sounds had an effect more powerful
than mere narration, more immediate than plot. There
is a time for music and a time for reasoning.
The three plays that are given here are three of the
only seven that have come down to us. Altogether, Soph-
ocles wrote some hundred and twenty plays, but only a
few fragments and the titles of some have survived. The
last of the three in the Theban Trilogy, the Antigone,
was written first and is sometimes said to be his thirty-
second play in order of production. It probably belongs
to his middle period and Sophocles must have been about
fifty-five. The first of the three, Oedipus the King, was
written some sixteen years later when Athens was at the
height of her fame and power. The second play, Oedipus
at Colonus, was written last—perhaps last of all his
plays—when Sophocles was over ninety*: an old man
well-loved and still distinguished for his refinement, bal-
ance, and nobility of mind, but perhaps a little disillu-
sioned with life and ready to say good-bye to it. He had
seen his sons rebel against him in court, and now was
forced to see his darling Athens nearing the end of her
death struggles with Sparta—bankrupt, tottering in the
dust, her sacred olive groves cut down, and her springing
fountains dry.
*Sophocles was between ninety and ninety-five years old when he wrote it.
The reason for the uncertainty is that his birth is conjectured as being between
499 and 496 B.C. He died in 406 B.C. The play was first produced in 401 B.C.
by his son Iophon (also a playwright).
 INTRODUCTION xix
Oedipus at Colonus has all the marks of an old man’s
last creative impulse. Almost gone are the devastating
blow-by-blow concisions and concussions of the Oedipus
the King. The piay in lesser hands could easily have dete-
niorated into a ramble. Instead, it builds. We have epi-
sodes which are lengthy and unexpected but finally
convincing. Above all, we are treated to language that
is miraculous. After some hundred and twenty plays, and
having won the first prize between eighteen and twenty-
four times, Sophocles’ mastery of dramatic verse is
supreme. The words are often so simple and ordinary
that one wonders (as with late Shakespeare) where the
poetry is coming from. But it comes. In an accumulation
of swift gentle strokes (especially in the farewell and
demise of Oedipus), the words move us in a way reminis-
cent of something out of the Old Testament, like the
Book of Job.
As did Sophocles, I attempted the Antigone first, and
though I have not his advantage of being able to put
some thirty-four years between it and the Oedipus at
Colonus, I have perhaps unwittingly reflected something
of his advance as a poet from the wonderful, but less
mature, artistry of the Antigone to the perfect smooth-
ness, naturalness, and sublimity of Oedipus at Colonus.
No one of course would dare to suggest that the Greek
of the Antigone, so strong and so beautiful, is not already
perfect, but Sophocles himself might have thought so.
Indeed, there is a pregnant phrase quoted by Plutarch in
which Sophocles described his own development by say-
ing that “after working off the Aeschylean grandilo-
quence of his earlier style, and then the artificiality and
crudity of his own style, he thirdly arrived at one which
was most expressive of character and most perfect.’’* Be
that as it may, rough diamonds in any language have
their own perfection and a too consistent sparkle can dim
the eye to deeper beauties.

*n6totaT Kat BéATLCTOV. I have taken this observation from The Style of Soph-
ocles by Professor F. R. Earp (Cambridge, 1944), to whom I am greatly indebted
for his illuminating analysis.
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 GEDIPWS
THE KING

for Duncan Grant

still my choice and master spirit
or this age
 THE CHARACTERS

OEDIPUS, King of Thebes

A PRIEST of Zeus
CREON, brother of Jocasta
CHORUS of Theban elders
TIRESIAS, a blind prophet
JOCASTA, wife of Oedipus
A MESSENGER from Corinth
An old SHEPHERD
A PALACE OFFICIAL
Palace Attendants and Servants
Citizens of Thebes
Antigone, Ismene, and a Boy
 TIME AND SETTING

Some fifteen years previously, OEDIPUS, then a young

man, was told by the Oracle at Delphi that he was destined
to murder his father and marry his mother. Shocked, he
determines never to go back to Corinth, where he was
brought up by the king and queen, who he thinks are his
father and mother. His wanderings bring him eventually
to the city of Thebes, where his real father and mother
reign. However, on the way, he brawls with an old man
in a carriage over right of way and in a fit of temper kills
him. Arrived at Thebes, he finds the city in an uproar:
the king, LAIUS, has gone on a mysterious journey and
never returned, and a female monster, the Sphinx, has
taken up her position on a rock outside Thebes and is
strangling the inhabitants one by one for not being able
to answer her riddle. OEDIPUS answers it and the Sphinx
throws herself from her rock. The citizens, in gratitude,
make OEDIPUS their king and he marries JOCASTA, their
widowed queen. No one knows that JOCASTA is OEDI-
PuUs’s real mother and that the old man he killed on the
road was LAIUS, his father. Nor do they know that these
parents of his had tried to murder him as a baby (because
of another dreadful oracle), and thought they had suc-
ceeded. There follow fifteen years of apparent prosperity:
a sham prosperity cloaking corruption. The gods are dis-
gusted. Thebes is struck by plague. The people of the city,
led by their priests and elders, flock around the great and
successful OEDIPUS, now in the prime of life and power.
He saved them once: he can save them again. Here the
play begins.
It is midmorning outside the palace of OEDIPUS, with
Thebes in the background. There is the sound of prayer
and lamentation; the air is full of incense. A procession
of children, youths, and elders, all holding olive branches
wreathed in white wool, are marshaled by a priest onto
the palace steps and group themselves around the altar of
Zeus. OEDIPUS comes out of the palace. He signals for
silence.
 Oedipus the King

PROLOGUE

OEDIPUS
My children, scions of the ancient Cadmean line,
what is the meaning of this thronging round my feet,
this holding out of olive boughs all wreathed in woe?
The city droops with elegaic sound
and hymns with pails of incense hang.
I come to see it with my eyes, no messenger’s.
Yes, I whom men call Oedipus the Great.
[He turns to the PRIEST]
Speak, Elder, you are senior here.
Say what this pleading means,
what frightens you, what you beseech.
Coldblooded would I be, to be unmoved
by petitioners so pitiful.

PRIEST
King Oedipus, the sovereign of our land, —
you see here young and old clustered round the shrine.
Fledglings some, essaying flight, |
and some much weighted down
(as I by age, the Presbyter of Zeus),
and striplings some—ambassadors of youth.
In the market place sit others too
at Pallas’s double altar, garlanded to pray,
and at the shrine
where Ismenus breathes oracles of fire.
Oh, look upon the city, see the storm
that batters down this city’s prow in waves of blood:
,
6 SOPHOCLES

The crops diseased, disease among the herds.

The ineffectual womb rotting with its fruit.
A fever-demon wastes the town
and decimates with fire, stalking hated
through the emptied house where Cadmus dwelled.
While poverty-stricken night grows fat
on groans and elegies in Hades’ halls.
We know you are no god, omnipotent with gods.
That is not why we throw ourselves before you here,
these, little suppliants and I.
It is because on life’s unequal stage ©
we see you as first of men and consummate
atoner to the powers above.
For it was you,
coming to the Cadmus capital,
Who disenthralled us from the Sphinx (her greedy dues): ~
that ruthless sorceress who sang.
Not primed by us, not taught by hidden lore,
but god-inspired, we so believe,
You raised us up again and made us sound.
So, Oedipus, you most respected king,
we plead with you to find for us a cure:
Some answer breathed from heaven, perhaps,
or even enlightenment from man.
For still we see the prowess of your well-proved mind,
its tested buoyancy.
So, go, you best of men.
Raise up our city. Go, now on your guard.
Your old devotion celebrates you still
as Defender of the State. You must not let
your reign go down as one. when men
were resurrected once—and once relapsed.
Mend the city, make her safe.
You had good omens once. You did your work.
Be equal to your stature now.
If king of men (as king you are),
then be it of a kingdom manned and not a desert.
Poop and battlement are wasted when
all is nothing but waste of men.
 OEDIPUS THE KING

OEDIPUS
This quest that throngs you here, poor needy children,
is NO new quest to me.
I know too well, you all are sick, yet sick,
not one so sick as I.
Your pain is single, each to each, it does not breed.
Mine is treble anguish crying out
for the city, for myself, for you.
It was no man asleep you woke—ah no!—
But one in bitter tears and one
perplexed in thought, found wandering.
Who clutched the only remedy that came:
to send the son of Menoeceus, Creon—
my own Jocasta’s brother—
to the place Apollo haunts at Pythia
to learn what act or covenant of mine
could still redeem the state.
And now I wonder.
I count the days. His time is up.
He does not come. He should be here.
But when he comes—the instant he arrives—
whatsoever he shall tell me from the god,
that to the hilt I’ll do—or I am damned.

PRIEST

Reassuring words indeed! And timely too,

for look, they’re signaling that Creon comes.
[CREON is seen approaching in the distance]

OEDIPUS
His eyes are bright. O great Apollo,
bring him here effulgent with success!

PRIEST
Yes, success it is, I think.
See the laurel chaplets thick with berries on his head!
8 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS
We shall know in a moment. He can hear us now.

[OEDIPUS shouts to him]

What news, royal brother?
What mandate, Son of Menoeceus, from he mouth of
the god?
[Enter CREON]

CREON

Favorable! I’d even say, if all goes well,

our wounds will issue into blessings.

OEDIPUS

Which means? . . . You leave me half in hope,

half buried in despair.

CREON

Do you want to hear it publicly, on the spot,

or shall we go inside?

OEDIPUS

Speak out to all. It’s more for them than me,

though more my own than my own soul.

CREON

Very well, then. This is what the god has said,

The Prince Apollo openly enjoins on us
to sever from the body politic
a monstrous growth that battens there:
stop feeding that which festers.

OEDIPUS
By what purge? How diagnosed?
 OEDIPUS THE KING 9
CREON
By banishment. Or blood for blood.
The city frets with someone’s blood.

OEDIPUS
Whose? Is the unhappy man not named?

CREON
Laius, sire. Him we had as king
in days before you ruled.

OEDIPUS
So I’ve heard ... A man I never saw.

CREON
A murdered man. And now clearly is required
the just blood of his assassins.

OEDIPUS
But where in the world are they? Oh where can one
begin
to search the long-lost traces of forgotten crime?

CREON
‘“Here,” says the god. ‘Seek and you shall find.
Only that escapes which never was pursued.”

OEDIPUS
Where did Laius meet his violent end?
At home? In the fields? In foreign parts?

CREON
He planned a pilgrimage, he said; and so left home,
never to come back again the way he went.
10 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

He went alone? No companions and no witnesses

who could furnish a report?

CREON

Dead. All done to death but one, who fled in panic,

and he tongue-tied save on a single. point.

OEDIPUS

What point? Tell it. Clues breed clues

and we must snatch at straws.

CREON

Brigands, this man insists, attacked the King:

not one but many, and they cut him down.

OEDIPUS

No brigand would be so bold, unless . .

-unless bought—right here—bought with bribes.

CREON

So we thought, but with Laius gone

we were sunk in miseries and no one stirred.

OEDIPUS

What miseries could ever let you leave unsolved

the death and downfall of a king?

CREON

Sire, it was the siren Sphinx of riddles

who sang us from the shadowed past
to what was sorely present.
 OEDIPUS THE KING ii

OEDIPUS
Then I'll go back and drag that shadowed past to light.
Oh yes, the pious Apollo and your piety
has set on foot a duty to the dead:
A search which you and I together will pursue.
My designs could not be suited more:
to avenge the god and Thebes in a single blow.
Ah! Not for any far-flung friend,
but by myself and for myself I’ll break this plague.
For who knows, tomorrow this selfsame murderer
may turn his bloody hands on me.
The cause of Laius therefore is my own.
So, rise up, Children, and be off.
Take your prayer boughs too.
Summon here the counselors of Thebes,
and muster too the Cadmus clan.
I am resolute, and shall not stop
till with Apollo’s help all-blessed we emerge,
or else we are lost—beyond all purge.
[OEDIPUS goes into the palace followed by CREON]

PRIEST

Children, rise.
The King has pledged us all our pleas
and we have heard Apollo’s voice.
Oh, may he bring salvation in his hands
and deal a death to all disease.
[The PRIEST disperses the suppliants. The CHORUS of
Theban Elders enters]

ODE OF ENTRY
[The first ode opens with a hymn to Apollo, the god of
victory and healing (known as Paean). Its stately dactylic
measure, as the CHORUS moves toward the altar of Zeus,
is bright with hope yet weighted with awe and uncertainty.
12 SOPHOCLES

Then as the Elders survey the sufferings of Thebes, the

rhythm changes into one of dismay, broken by the sad
lines of trochees and iambs. In the final strophe and antis-
trophe the Elders clinch their prayer for help on a note
of energy and determination. |

Strophe I
What god-golden voice from the gold-studded shrine of
the Pytho
Comes to our glorious Thebes?
My spirit is tremulous, racked with its eagerness. Help
Healer of Delos—Paean!
I am fainting with fear of what fate you will fashion me
| now,
Or turn in the turning of time.
Speak to me, Oracle, child everlastingly sprung
From Hope so goldenly. Come!

Antistrophe I
I call on you first, Zeus’s daughter, immortal Athena.
Then on your sister, earth’s guardian,
Artemis ringed round with praises and throned in our
square.
Ah! And far-shooting Phoebus.
You three that are champions swift to deliver, appear!
For if ever the fire of disaster
Reared on our city, you beat its affliction away.
Defend and be near us today.

Strophe II
Sorrows in a legion.
Sorrows none can cipher.
No shaft of wit or weapon
For a people stricken.
Shriveled soil and shrinking
Wombs in childbirth shrieking.
Soul after soul like fire
 OEDIPUS THE KING 13
Beats, beats upward soaring
To the god of the setting sun.

Antistrophe II
A decimated city
Dying. And deadly the dead.
All lying uncried for. But crying
Matrons and mothers graying
At every altar praying,
Till the chiming sorrow of dirges
Is splintered by shouts of the paean:
Rescue! O golden daughter
Of Zeus’s with your smile.

Strophe III
Muffle the wildfire Ares
Warring with copper-hot fever
Without clash of sword or shield.
Whirl him back homeward and headlong.
Plunge him down from our shores
Into Amphitrite’s foaming
Lap or the unquiet grave
Of hissing Thracian seas.
For, oh, what night has spared us
He does at break of day.
Zeus you sovereign of thunder,
Shiver him with lightning.

Antistrophe III
Aureate champion Apollo,
Let us sing the song of your arrows
Shot from the bow of the sun;
While Artemis blazing with torches
Courses the Lycean mountains.
And you, O Theban Bacchus,
Wine blushed, xanthic crowned,
You smiling god of succor,
14 SOPHOCLES

Come all torchlit flaring,

Come wheeling with your Maenads,
Fall on the god that is godless.
[OEDIPUS has entered]

First Episode

OEDIPUS

You pray! Then listen:

What you pray for you can have—
remission of these miseries and help
if you'll hear my plan:
a plan to stop the plague.
I speak of course as stranger to the story
and stranger to the crime,
being too late your latest citizen
And helpless, therefore, to track it very far
unless you lend me clues.
Wherefore, I boldly challenge
all you Thebans here with this:
Does any man among you know
who killed Laius son of Labdacus?
Such a one I now command
to tell me everything.
[He waits for a reply]
If self-incrimination keeps him silent,
let him be assured
He need fear nothing worse than banishment
and he can depart unharmed.
[He pauses again]
Perhaps one of you is aware
the murderer was someone from some other land.
Let him not be shy to say it.
I shall heap rewards on him,
besides my deepest blessing.
[No one stirs]
 OEDIPUS THE KING 15
What, silent still?
If anyone is out to shield a guilty friend
(or is it guilty self?),
He’d best listen to the penalties I plan.
That man, whoever that man be,
I this country’s reigning king
Shall sever from all fellowship of speech and shelter,
sacrifice and sacrament,
Even ritual touch of water, in this realm.
Thrust out from every home,
he’ll be the very picture of that pestilence
he brought upon our city,
As Apollo’s word from Pythia has just revealed to me.
Yes, such an ally, nothing less,
am I of both religion and the murdered man.

As to the killer, slipping off alone

or with a band of men,
I now call down a life to fit a life
dragged out in degradation.
And if I myself should prove myself
to have him in my halls an intimate,
Then on myself I call down every curse I’ve just invoked.
See to it that every syllable I say is done.
For my sake, for the god Apollo, and for this land,
so fruitless now and so cast off by heaven.
Why, even without a sanction so divine,
how could you find it in you to neglect
a monarch’s death and not pursue
this ending to the best of men?
Whose very scepter I hold in my hands as King;
His marriage bed my bed of seed,
our children even shared with share of her
had he been blessed with progeny—
Oh, blessed and not struck down by fate!
Such ties swear me to his side
as if he were my father.
I shall not rest until I’ve tracked the hand
that slew the son of Labdacus,
16 SOPHOCLES

the son of Polydorus, heir to Cadmus in the line

of ancient Agenor.
And those who disobey
I'll ask the gods to curse
with fields that never sprout
and wombs that never flower,
And all the horrors of this present plague and worse.
The rest of you, my loyal men of Thebes,
who think with me, may Justice champion
and the whole of heaven help.

CHORUS

Great king, your oath will make a perjuror of me

if I do not tell the truth.I swear
I am not the killer, nor can I show you
who the killer is.
Apollo proposed the search, it’s up to him
to point the culprit out.

OEDIPUS

Certainly, but show me a man who can force

the hand of heaven.

CHORUS
Then, the next best thing, if I may say it...

OEDIPUS
Next best, third best, say it—anything.

CHORUS

My lord, there lives a man who with a king’s eyes sees

the secrets of a king: Tiresias of Apollo.
He is our source of light, our chance of learning, King.
 OEDIPUS THE KING Ly,

OEDIPUS
I know. Don’t think that I’ve been idle there.
Twice I have sent for him at Creon’s bidding.
I cannot understand what keeps him so.

CHORUS
At least we can dismiss those other tall old tales.

OEDIPUS

What tales? I must hear them all.

CHORUS
How he met his death through traveling vagabonds.

OEDIPUS
I’ve heard that too. We have no witnesses, however.

CHORUS

And he’d be a brazen man indeed who could rest in

peace
after all your menaces.

OEDIPUS
Mere words will not stay one whom murder never could.

CHORUS

And yet there’s one to meet the challenge. Look:

They’re leading in the holy prophet,
sole temple of incarnate truth on earth.
[The old blind prophet TIRESIAS is led in by a boy]

OEDIPUS

Come, great mystic, Tiresias—intuitive,

didactic master of the finite and the infinite—
18 SOPHOCLES

Though you cannot see it you must surely feel

the overwhelming weight of all this city’s woes.
You are our last refuge, Pontiff, and our help.
Apollo, if you have not heard the news,
has sent back to us who sent to him,
an answer saying: ‘‘No deliverance from the plague
except you seek and find the Laius killers
and punish such with death or banishment.”
Now, sir, do not begrudge the smallest hint
your skill from birds or any other omen can elicit.
Save yourself, the city, and save me.
Save us from this whole corruption of the dead.
We are in your hands.
What more rewarding for a man
than stir himself to help where help he can?
[There is an ominous pause before TIRESIAS answers]

TIRESIAS
Oh, what anguish to be wise where wisdom is a loss!
I thought I knew this well. What made me come?

OEDIPUS
What makes you come so full of gloom?

TIRESIAS

Please send me home.

Take up your load and I’ll take mine.
Believe me, it is better so.

OEDIPUS
What? Refuse to speak?
Is that fair and loyal to your city?

TIRESIAS

Ah, fair speech! If yours were only so

T should not shy away.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 19

OEDIPUS
By all the gods, do not deny us what you know.
We ask you, all of us, on bended knees.

TIRESIAS
All ignorant! And I refuse to link my utterance
with a downfall such as yours.

OEDIPUS
You mean, you know and will not say?
You'd rather sacrifice us all and let the city rot?

TIRESIAS
I'd rather keep you and me from harm.
Don’t press me uselessly. My lips are sealed.

OEDIPUS
What, nothing? You miserable old man!
You’d drive a stone to fury. Do you still refuse?
Your flinty heart set in hopeless stubbornness?

TRESIAS
My flinty heart! Oh, if you could only see
what lurks in yours you would not chide me so.

OEDIPUS
Hear that? What man alive, I ask,
could stand such insults to our sovereignty and state?

TIRESIAS
It will out in time. What if I hold my tongue?

OEDIPUS

Out in time! Then why not say it now?

20 SOPHOCLES

TIRESIAS

No. I’ve had my say.

So choose your rage and fume away.
[TIRESIAS begins to move off]

OEDIPUS

Indeed I shall. I do. I vent it all on-you.

Yes, you, you planned this thing,
and I suspect you of the very. murder even,
all but the actual stroke.
And if you had your eyes
I'd say you played that chief part too.
[TIRESIAS turns back]

TIRESIAS

Would you so? Then I shall charge you to abide

by the very curse you trumpeted just now.
From this day forth keep far |
from every person here and me:
The rotting canker in the State is you.

OEDIPUS

Insolence!
And dare you think you’re safe?

TIRESIAS

Yes safe. For truth has made me strong.

OEDIPUS
What truth? Hardly learned from your profession!

TIRESIAS

No. Learned from you; who force it out of me.

 OEDIPUS THE KING 21

OEDIPUS
Force what? Say it again. I must have it straight.

TIRESIAS
Was it not straight? You’d bait and goad me on?

OEDIPUS
It made no sense. So speak it out again.

TIRESIAS
I say, the murderer of the man
whose murder you pursue is you.

OEDIPUS
What! A second time? This you will regret.

TIRESIAS
Shall I add to it and make you angrier still?

OEDIPUS

To your heart’s content. Mouth away!

TIRESIAS
I say that you and your most dearly loved
Are wrapped together in a hideous sin, blind to the hor-
ror of it.

OEDIPUS
You think you can go on blabbering unscathed?

TIRESIAS
Unscathed indeed, if truth is strength.
22 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS
It is. But not for you, you purblind man:
in ears and mind and vision.

TIRESIAS
Poor fool! These very gibes you mouth at me
will soon be hurled by every mouth at you.

OEDIPUS
You can’t hurt me, you night-hatched thing!
Me or any man who lives in light.

TIRESIAS
You’re right. ’'m not the one that fate casts for your fall.
Apollo is enough. It’s in his able hands.

OEDIPUS
[remembering that it was CREON who urged him to send
for TIRESIAS, Apollo’s priest]
Creon? Of course! Was it you or he that thought up
that?

TIRESIAS

Hardly Creon. You are your own worst enemy.

OEDIPUS

Oh wealth and sovereignty! Statecraft surpassing art!

Oh life so pinnacled on fame!
What ambushed envy dogs your trail!
And for a kingship which the State put in my hands,
all given, never asked.
So this is what he wants, Creon the loyal,
Creon so long my friend!
Stealing up to overthrow and snatch!
 OEDIPUS THE KING 23
Suborning sorcerers, like this vamper-up of plots,
this hawking conjurer, a genius born blind
with eyes for gain. Yes you. Tell me,
when did you ever play the prophet straight?
Or why when the bitch-dog Sphinx of riddles sang,
you never spoke a thing to break the spell?
And yet her riddle called for insight trained—
no traveler’s guess—
which you plainly showed you did not have
either from theology or birds.
But I, the Oedipus who stumbled here without a hint,
could snuff her out by human wit,
not taking cues from birds.
And I’m the one you want to topple down
to give yourself a place by Creon’s throne.
Oh! Do not be surprised if this plot of yours
to brand me as a scapegoat
turns around and brands you and him.
And were you not as doting as you seem,
I'd lash you with the lessons of your fraud.
[CHORUS leader steps forward, holding up a hand in
restraint}

CHORUS

Forgive us, Oedipus, but this is anger.

He spoke in anger too. And both beside the point.
What we want to know
is how best to carry out the god’s designs.

TIRESIAS

Perhaps you are a king, but I reign too—

in words. I’ll have my equal say.
I’m not your servant. No, I serve Apollo.
So don’t ever mark me down as Creon’s myrmidon.
I’m blind, you say; you mock at that!
I say you see and still are blind—appallingly:
Blind to your origins and to a union in your house.
Yes, ask yourself where you are from?
24 SOPHOCLES
You’d never guess what hate is dormant in your home
or buried with your dear ones dead,
or how a mother’s and a father’s curse
Will one day scourge you with its double thongs
and whip you staggering from the land.
It shall be night where now you boast the day.
Then where shall your yelp of horror not resound,
Where round the world not ring,
echoing from Mount Cithaeron,
when at last you see—yes soon—
What portless port this palace and this marriage was you
made,
scudding in before a lucky breeze?
What flood of sorrows—ah! you do not dream—
will pull you down and level off your pride
To make it match your children
and the creature that you are.
Go on then, hurl abuse
at everything that I or Creon say.
No man alive shall see his life so ground away.

OEDIPUS
[stepping forward threateningly]
Dear gods! Must I listen to this thing?
Look it dawdles! Wants to wallow in perdition!
Does not turn in panic from my home!

TIRESIAS

You called me here. I never would have come.

OEDIPUS

Nor I have ever summoned you

if ’'d known you’d go foaming at the mouth.
 OEDIPUS THE KING Ik}

TIRESIAS
A born fool of course to you am I,
and yet to parents you were born from, wise.

OEDIPUS
Parents? Wait! Who was I born from after all?

TIRESIAS
[stoppping and turning|
This very day will furnish you a birthday and a death.

OEDIPUS
What a knack you have for spouting riddles!

TIRESIAS
And you, of course, for solving them!

OEDIPUS
Go on! You challenge there my strongest point.

TIRESIAS

Oh yes! Your lucky strain. Your royal road to ruin.

OEDIPUS
A ruin that saved the State. That’s good enough for me.

TIRESIAS
[turning his back]
Pil take my leave, then.
Your hand, boy—home.
26 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

Yes, take him home. Good riddance too!

You’re nothing but a nuisance here,
and one I can do without.

TIRESIAS
[turning face-about|
You'll not be rid of me
until I’ve spoken what I came to say.
You do not frighten me. There’s not a thing
that you can do to hurt.
I tell you this:
the man you’ve searched for all along
with threats and fanfares
for the murder of King Laius,
That man, I say, is here:
a stranger in our midst, they thought,
but in a moment you shall see
him openly displayed a Theban born,
and shattered by the honor. Blind
instead of seeing, beggar
instead of rich,
He’ll grope his way in foreign parts, tapping out his way
with stick in hand.
Oh yes, detected in his very heart of home:
his children’s father and their brother,
son and husband to his mother,
bed-rival to his father and assassin.
Ponder this and go inside,
And when you think you’ve caught me at a lie,
then come and tell me I’m not fit to prophesy.
[TIRESIAS lets his boy lead him away. OEDIPUS waits, then
stomps into the palace}
 OEDIPUS THE KING 27
SECOND CHORAL ODE
[The Elders, spurred on by the proclamation of OEDIPUS,
begin to imagine with righteous and indignant anticipation
what shall be the fate of the man whose sin has plunged
Thebes in misery. The meter js swift and resolute. Then they
remember the baffling threat of TIRESIAS and they catch
their breath at the unthinkable possibility that Oedipus him-
self may be implicated (Strophe and Antistrophe I1).|

Strophe I
Show me the man the speaking stone from Delphi damned
Whose hands incarnadine
Achieved the master stroke of master murdering.
Faster than horses that beat on the wind he must fly.
The son of Zeus caparisoned in light and fire
Is on his heels.
The pack of sure-foot Fates will track him down.

Antistrophe I

A Voice that coruscates from high Parnassian snows

Leaps down like light.
Apollo to the hunt will run the man to earth
Through savage woods and stony caverns.
A lone wounded bull he limps, lost and alone,
Dodging living echoes
From the mantic earth that sting and gad around him.

Strophe H

Terrible auguries tear me and trouble me:

The seer’s divining.
I cannot assent. I cannot deny.
Deserted by words,
I live on hopes—all blind for today and biind for
tomorrow.
A division between the House of Laius and Oedipus
Yesterday or today
28 SOPHOCLES

I knew not, nor know of a quarrel

Or a reason or challenge to challenge
The fame of Oedipus,
Though I seek to avenge the curious death
Of the Labdacid king.

Antistrophe IT
Zeus and Apollo are wise and discern
The conditions of man.
But oh among men where is there proof
That a prophet can know
More than me, a man? Yet wisdom can surpass
Wisdom in a man. But nevertheless I'll not
Be quick to judge
Before the proof. For once
The winged and female Sphinx
Challenged him and found him sound
And a friend of the city. So never in my mind at least
Shall he be guilty of crime.

SECOND EPISODE

[CREON enters, distraught]

CREON

Good citizens, I hurry here

shocked into your presence by a monstrous charge
laid on me by Oedipus the King.
If he thinks in all this turmoil of our times
that any word or act of mine
was ever done in malice, done to harm,
I'd rather end my life than live so wronged.
For this is not a trifling calumny
but full catastrophe:
to find myself called traitor;
traitor to my town,
to you, and to my friends.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 29

CHORUS
We are convinced the taunt was made in anger,
not coolly uttered by a mind at calm.

CREON

It was uttered, then? Said that I

had got the seer to tell a tale of lies?

CHORUS
It was said. We cannot fathom why.

CREON

But said with steady eyes, steady mind—

this onslaught made against my name?

CHORUS

I do not know.
I turn my eyes away from what my sovereign does.
But look! He’s coming from the house himself.
[OEDIPUS comes raging in]

OEDIPUS

What? You again? You dare come back?

Have the face to put your foot inside my door?
You the murderer so self-proved,
the self-condemned filcher of my throne?
In heaven’s name, what cowardice or lunacy
did you detect in me
to give you gall to do it?
Did you think that I
would never spot such treachery,
such slinking jobbery,
or that when I did I’d not be one to fight?
What madman’s game is this:
To go out hunting crowns
unbacked by friends and money,
30 SOPHOCLES

when crowns are only won

by many friends and well-crammed money-bags?

CREON
Wait! Listen to my answer to our charge.
And when you’ve heard me, judge.

OEDIPUS
No. You’re too good at talking. And I’m not good at
hearing
one found so laden with malevolence.

CREON
We’ll deal first with that very point.

OEDIPUS
That very point, we'll leave alone:
that you’re no traitor, eh?

CREON
If you really think a stubborn mind is something to be
proud of,
you're not thinking straight.

OEDIPUS
And if you really think a brother-in-law
can get away with murder, you’re not thinking at all.

CREON
All right, then—tell me what I’ve done.
What’s the crime I’ve wronged you with?

OEDIPUS
Did you or did you not urge me to send
for that reverend frothy-mouthing seer?
 OEDIPUS THE KING Sy

CREON
I did. And I still stand by that advice.

OEDIPUS
Then how long is it since Laius .. .

CREON
Laius? I don’t follow the connection.

OEDIPUS
Disappeared—died—was mysteriously dispatched?

CREON
Old calendars long past would tell us that.

OEDIPUS
And was this—this ‘‘prophet” in his practice then?

CREON

He was, and just as wise, just as honored.

OEDIPUS
And did he at any time then speak of me?

CREON
No. At least never in my hearing.

OEDIPUS
And you did nothing to investigate his death?

CREON
Of course we did: a full commission, and nothing learnt.
32 SOPHOCLES
OEDIPUS
But the all-seeing seer did not step forward and all see?

CREON
That I cannot answer for and shall not venture an
opinion.

OEDIPUS
You could answer very well—at least upon a certain
point.

CREON
What point is that? If I know, I won’t hold it back.

OEDIPUS
Just this: were you not hand-in-glove with him,
he never would have thought of pinning Laius’s death
on me.

CREON
What prompted him, only you can tell.
Now / should like to ask, and you can do the answering.

OEDIPUS
Ask away, but don’t expect to find a murderer.

CREON

Well then, are you married to my sister?

OEDIPUS
I am. Why should I deny it?

CREON
And reign equally with her over ail the realm?
 OEDIPUS THE KING | oS
OEDIPUS
I do, and do my best to grant her every wish.

CREON
And of this twosome do I make an equal third?

OEDIPUS
Exactly! Which is why you make so false a friend.

CREON

No. Try to reason it as I must reason it.

Who would choose uneasy dreams to don a crown
when all the kingly sway
can be enjoyed without?
I could not covet kingship for itself
when I can be a king by other means.
All my ambitions now
are satisfied through you, without anxiety,
But once a king, all hedged in by constraint.
How could I suit myself with power and sovereignty as
now,
If power and sovereignty once grasped were grasped in
pain?
I am not so simple as to seize the symbol
when I can have the sweet reality:
Now smiled upon by all, saluted now,
now drawn aside by suitors to the King,
my ear their door to hope.
Why should I let this go, this ease, and reach for cares?
A mind at peace does not engender wars.
Treason never was my bent, nor I
a man who parleys with an anarchist.
Test me. Go to Delphi. Ask
if I have brought back lies for prophecies.
And do not stop,
but if you find me plotting with a fortuneteller,
34 SOPHOCLES

take me, kill me, full-indicted

on a double not a single count:
not yours alone but mine.
Oh, do not judge me on a mere report, unheard!
No justice brands the good and justifies the bad.
Drive friendship out, I say, and you drive out
life itself, one’s sweetest bond.
Time will teach you well. The honest man needs time,
The sinner but a single day to bare his crime.

CHORUS
He speaks well, sire. The circumspect should care.
Swift thinking never makes sure thought.

OEDIPUS
Swift thinking must step in to parry
where swift treachery steps in to plot.
Must I keep mum until his perfect plans
are more than match for mine?

CREON
Then what is it you want—my banishment?

OEDIPUS
Banishment? Great heavens, no! I want you dead:
A lesson to all of how much envy’s worth.

CREON
So adamant! So full of disbelief!

OEDIPUS
Only a fool would believe in a rabid man.

CREON
Rabid? It’s clear you’re not thinking straight.
 OEDIPUS THE KING

OEDIPUS
Straight enough for me.

CREON
Then why not for me as well?

OEDIPUS
What! For a treason-monger?

CREON
You make no sense.

OEDIPUS
I make decisions.

CREON
Crazed decisions!

OEDIPUS
Hear him Thebes! My own poor Thebes!

CREON
Not just yours. My city too.

CHORUS

Princes, please!
Look. Jocasta hurries from the house:
a timely balm on both your hurts.
You must compose your quarrel.
[JOCASTA hurries in]

JOCASTA

You wretched men! Out on all this senseless clatter!

Shame to wrangle over private wrongs,
36 SOPHOCLES

with Thebes our city in her agonies!

Get back home, sir, you, and Creon you
into your house.
Stop turning trifles into tragedies.

CREON

Trifles, sister! Oedipus your husband

plans to do me devilish harm, with choice of dooms:
exile from my father’s land or death.

OEDIPUS

Exactly that, my wife, I’ve caught him in a plot,

against my very person.
So cleverly devised.

CREON

May I be stricken dead if I be guilty

in the smallest part of what you charge!

JOCASTA

For the gods’ sakes, listen, Oedipus.

He’s sworn by all the gods, in front of us,
for me and for us all.

CHORAL DIALOGUE

Strophe I

CHORUS
Believe her, King, believe. Be willing to be wise.

OEDIPUS
What! You’d have me yield?
 OEDIPUS THE KING 37

CHORUS
He’s never told you lies
before. He’s sworn. Be kind.

OEDIPUS
You know for what you plead?

CHORUS
We know.

OEDIPUS
Explain.

CHORUS

Do not impeach a friend or lead

him to disgrace; his oath annulled upon a word.

OEDIPUS

It’s come to that? My banishment or death preferred

to what you want for him?

Strophe II

CHORUS

No, by Helios, no, god of the primal sun!

Call gladless death upon me—godless, friendless—
If that be in my mind.
The dying land undoes me,
Sorrow heaped on sadness
Now to see you and him—combine in madness.

OEDIPUS

Go then, let him go, though I go

abundantly to die,
or flung from here and fated;
38 SOPHOCLES

Yours not his the cry that breaks me.

He a thing that’s hated.

CREON

Yes, how you hate, even in your yielding! ;

But passion spent, compunction follows.
Such men justly bear the tempers they created.

OEDIPUS
Get yourself gone then! Out of my sight!
[CREON leaves, while OEDIPUS continues to stand there
disappointed and shaken]

Antistrophe I

CHORUS
Madam, why delay to lead him away?

JOCASTA
I stay .. . to know.

CHORUS
Hot and hasty words, suspicion and dismay .

JOCASTA
From both?

CHORUS
From both.

a JOCASTA
What words?
 OEDIPUS THE KING 39
CHORUS
Enough! Enough! The agony! O let it alone!
Let it sleep with all its pain.

OEDIPUS —
Very well, but understand
You’ve numbed me to the heart by your demand.

Antistrophe IT

CHORUS
Sire, I’ve said it more than once
How insensate we’d be, what crass
And total fools to abdicate
From you who set this foundering ship,
This suffering realm, back on her course
And now again can take the helm.
{End of Choral Dialogue. JocasTa gently leads OEDIPUS
aside|

JOCASTA
In the name of all the gods, my king, inform me too
what in the world has worked you to this rage?

OEDIPUS

Willingly, my wife—so more to me than these.

It’s Creon; he has played me false.

JOCASTA
What’s the charge? Tell me clearly—what’s the quarrel?
\

OEDIPUS

He makes me murderer of Laius.

40 SOPHOCLES

JOCASTA

His own invention or on evidence?

OEDIPUS

Ah! The fox: he sends along a mouthing seer

and keeps his own lips lily pure.

JOCASTA

Oh then, altogether leave behind

these cares and be persuaded and consoled.
There is no art of seership known to man.
I have my proof. Yes, short and certain proof.
Once long ago there came to Laius
from—let’s not suppose ‘Apollo personally
but from his ministers—an oracle,
Which said that fate would make him meet his end
through a son, a son of his and mine.
Well, there was a murder, yes,
but done by brigands in another land, they say,
Where three highways meet,
and secondly, the son, not three days old,
Is left by Laius (through other hands of course)
upon a trackless hillside,
his ankles riveted together.
So there! Apollo fails to make the son
his father’s murderer, and the father
(Laius sick with dread) murdered by his son.
All foreseen by fate and seers, of course,
and all to be forgotten.
If the god insists on tracking down the truth,
why then, let the god himself get on the track.

OEDIPUS

My queen, each word that strikes my ear

has shattered peace, struck at my very soul.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 41
JOCASTA
You start! What pale memory passes now?

OEDIPUS
Laius was killed—I thought I caught the words—
where three highways meet?

JOCASTA
So they said. That is how the story goes.

OEDIPUS
The place? Where did the mishap fall?

JOCASTA
A land called Phocis,
at a spot where the road from Delphi
meets the road from Daulia.

OEDIPUS
And the time? How many years ago?

JOCASTA

A little before you'came to power here

the news was made public in the town.

OEDIPUS
O Zeus, what plaything will you make of me?

JOCASTA
Why, Oedipus, what nightmare thought has touched vu
now?

OEDIPUS
Don’t ask! Not yet! ... Laius, tell me, his age? His
build?
42 SOPHOCLES

JOCASTA
Tall, the first soft bloom of silver in his hair;
in form, not far removed from yours.

OEDIPUS
Oh lost! Yes, surely lost!
self-damned, I think, just now and self-deceived.

JOCASTA
Self-what, my king?
that look you give, it chills.

OEDIPUS
I am afraid—afraid the eyeless seer has seen.
But wait: one thing more...

JOCASTA
Yes? It frightens me, but ask. I’ll try to tell.

OEDIPUS

Did he set out in simple state

or with an ample bodyguard as king?

JOCASTA
Five men in all, and one a herald.
A single chariot for the King.

OEDIPUS

It’s all too clear. .

My wife, where did you get these details from?

JOCASTA
A servant. The only man who got away.
 OEDIPUS THE KING

OEDIPUS
Is he in the house by chance?

JOCASTA
No, for the moment he was back and saw
you reigning in dead Laius’s place,
he begged me, pressed my hand,
to send him to the country, far from Thebes,
where he could live a shepherd’s life.
And so I sent him. Though a slave,
I thought he’d more than earned this recompense.

OEDIPUS
Could we have him here without delay?

JOCASTA
Certainly. But what should make you ask?

OEDIPUS

There may be things, my wife, that I have said

best left unsaid, which makes me want him here.

JOCASTA

He shall be here. But tell me, my king,

may I not also know what it-is unnerves you so?

OEDIPUS

You shall,
for I have passed into territories of fear,
such threatenings of fate,
I welcome you, my truest confidante.
My father was Corinthian, Polybus,
My mother Dorian, called Mérope.
I was the city’s foremost man until
a certain incident befell, a curious incident,
though hardly worth the ferment that it put me in.
44 SOPHOCLES

At dinner once,
a drunkard in his cups bawled out,
“Aha! You’re not your father’s son.’
All that day I fretted, hardly able to contain my hurt.
But on the next, straightway I went to ask
my mother and my father,
who were shocked at such a random slur.
I was relieved by their response, and yet
the thing had hatched a scruple in my mind which grew
so deep it made me steal away from home
to Delphi, to the oracle, and there
Apollo—never hinting what I came to hear—
packs me home again, my ears ringing
with some other things he blurted out;
horrible disgusting things:
How mating with my mother I must spawn
a progeny to make men shudder,
having been my father’s murderer.
Oh, I fled from there, I measured out
the stars to put all heaven in between
the land of Corinth and such a damned destiny.
And as I went, I stumbled on the very spot
where this king you say has met his end.
Pil... Pl tell the truth to you, my wife.
As I reached this triple parting of the ways,
a herald and a man like you described
in a colt-drawn chariot came.
The leading groom—the old man urging him—
tried to force me off the road. The groom
jostled me and I in fury
landed him a blow.
Which when the old man sees,
he waits till I’m abreast,
Then from his chariot cracks down on me,
full on my head,
a double-headed club.
He more than paid for it. For in a trice
this hand of mine had felled him with a stick
and rolled him from the chariot stunned.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 45
I killed him. I killed them all.
Ah! If Laius is this unknown man,
there’s no one in this world so doomed as I.
There’s no one born so god-abhorred:
a man whom no one, citizen or stranger,
can let into his house or even greet—
a man to force from homes.
And who but I have done it all? Myself,
to fix damnation on myself!
To clasp a dead man’s wife with filthy hands:
these hands by which he fell.
Not hell-born then? Not rotten to the core?
A wretch who has to flee, yet fled cannot go home
to see my own,
Or I will make my mother wife, my father dead:
my father, Polybus, who reared and gave me life.
Forbid, forbid, most holy gods!
Never let that day begin.
I'd rather disappear from man than see
myself so beggared, dyed so deep in sin.

CHORUS
King, you tell us frightening things, but wait
until you’ve heard the witness speak. Have hope.

OEDIPUS

Yes, all my hope upon a herdsman now,

and I must wait until he comes.

JOCASTA

But when he comes, what is it you want to hear?

OEDIPUS

Just this: if his account is yours, I’m clear.

46 SOPHOCLES

JOCASTA
But what was my account? What did I say?

OEDIPUS

Why, several bandits in your account,

he claimed, cut down the King.
If he will keep to several, I, as only one,
am not the killer, not the same.
But if he says it was a lone man journeying—ah then!—
the verdict tilts too heavily to me.

JOCASTA

Rest assured; his account was that, exactly that,

He cannot cancel what he said.
The whole town heard, not I alone.
And even if he tries to change a word,
he still can never make—oh surely, King!—
the death of Laius tally with the oracle,
which said it had to happen through a son of mine...
poor babe, who never killed a thing
but himself was killed—oh long before!
After this, I'll never change my look from left to right
to suit a prophecy.

OEDIPUS
I like your reasoning. And yet ... and yet...
that herdsman—have him here. Do not forget.

JOCASTA
Immediately. But let us go indoors.
All my care is you, and all my pleasure yours.
[OEDIPUS and JOCASTA enter the palace}
 OEDIPUS THE KING 47
THIRD CHORAL ODE
[The Elders seem at first merely to be expressing a lyrical
admiration for piety and purity of heart, but before the
end of the ode we see that the reputation itself of OEDIPUS
is at stake. JOCASTA’s blatant impiety has shocked the
CHORUS into realizing that if divine prophecies cannot go
unfulfilled and man’s insolence unpunished, then OEDIPUS
himself, whoever he is, must be weighed in the balance.
It is too late to go back. A choice will have to be made.
They call desperately on Zeus.]

Strophe I
O purity of deed and sweet intent,
Enshrine me in your grace
A minister to radiant laws
Heaven-born which have
No father but Olympus nor
Fading genesis from man.
Great is God in them
And never old
Whom no oblivion lulls.

Antistrophe I
Pride engenders power, pride,
Banqueting on vanities
Mistaken and mistimed;
Scaling pinnacles to dash
A foot against Fate’s stone.
But the true and patriotic man
Heaven never trips to fall.
So I for one shall never desert
The god who is our champion.

Strophe II
But what if a brazen man parade
In word or deed
48 SOPHOCLES

Impiety and brash disdain

Of principalities and canons?
Then dog him doom and pay him pride
Wages for his haughty greed,
His sacrilege and folly.
What shield is there for such a man‘
Against all heaven’s arrows?
Could I celebrate such wantonness
And celebrate the dance?

Antistrophe II
I shall not worship at the vent
Where oracles from earth are breathed;
Nor at Abae’s shrine and not
Olympia, unless these oracles
Are justified, writ large to man.
Zeus, if king of kings you are,
Then let this trespass not go hidden
From you and your great eye undying.
The Laius prophecies are turned to hes;
They fade away with reverence gone
And honor to Apollo.

THIRD EPISODE
[JOCASTA hurries in from the palace with a garlanded
olive branch and a burning censer in her hands|

JOCASTA

Men of State, I have a new design:

With these garlands and with incense in my hands
to call at all the shrines.
For rampant fancies in a legion raid
the mind of Oedipus. He is so far from sense
he cannot gauge the present from the past
but pins his soul to every word of fear.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 49
All my advice is bankrupt; I address
myself to you Apollo, whose Lycean shrine
is nearest to these rites and prayers:
That you may work some way to make us clean.
For we are gone to pieces at the sight
of him the steersman of the ship
astray by fright.
[While JOCASTA is standing in prayer a MESSENGER from
Corinth enters]

MESSENGER

Can you tell me please, good sirs,

where is the palace of King Oedipus,
or better, where’s the King?

CHORUS

This is his palace, sir, and he’s within.

This lady is his wife and mother . . . of his children.

MESSENGER

Heaven bless her always and bless hers:

the perfect wife blessed perfectly with him.

JOCASTA
And you sir, too, be blessed for your remark . .
But are you here to ask us news or give?

MESSENGER
To. give it, madam. Happy news
both for your house and husband.

JOCASTA
Happy news? From where?
50 SOPHOCLES

MESSENGER
From Corinth, my lady. Oh a pleasing piece of news!
Or I’d think so . . . Perhaps a little bittersweet.

JOCASTA ‘
What’s bittersweet? What’s half-and-half to please?

MESSENGER
King Elect of Corinth is he:
So runs the order-in-council there.

JOCASTA
How so? The old man Polybus still reigns.

MESSENGER
No more. For death has sealed him in his grave.

JOCASTA
What? Is Oedipus’s father dead?

MESSENGER
Yes, dead. It’s true. On my life he’s dead.
[JOCASTA excitedly turns to servant girl]

JOCASTA

Quick girl—off and tell your master this!

Aha! Forecasts of the gods where are you now?
This is the man that Oedipus was terrified to kill, so fled;
And now, without the slightest push from him, he’s dead.
[Enter OEDIPUS]

OEDIPUS

Jocasta, dearest wife,

why have you called me from the palace here?
 OEDIPUS THE KING 51
JOCASTA
Just listen to this man and fill your ears.
How dwindled are the grand predictions of Apollo!

OEDIPUS
Who is this? What has he come to say?

JOCASTA °
A man from Corinth, come to let you know
your father is no more. Old Polybus is dead.

OEDIPUS
What? Let me have it from your mouth, good sir.

MESSENGER
Why, to give you first news first, he’s gone.
Be quite assured—he’s dead.

OEDIPUS
Through treason or disease?

MESSENGER
A little touch will tip the old to sleep.

OEDIPUS
He died a natural death, then? Poor old man!

MESSENGER
A natural death, by right of many years.

OEDIPUS

Aha, my wife! So we are done

with delving into Pythian oracles,
this jangled mongering with birds on high,
which foretold—yes, had it all arranged—
ay SOPHOCLES

that I should kill my father. Ha! He’s dead

and under sods, while here I stand
my sword still in its scabbard . . .
or did he pine for me? And did I kill him so?
Well, he’s dead, and may he rest in peace in Hades realm
with all those prophecies—worth nothing now.

JOCASTA
Worth nothing—as I told you even then.

OEDIPUS
You told me, yes, but I was sick with fear.

JOCASTA
Forget it all. Give none of it a thought.

OEDIPUS
There’s still that scruple of my mother’s bed.

JOCASTA

How can a man have scruples

when it’s only Chance that’s king?
There’s nothing certain, nothing preordained.
We should live as carefree as we may.
Forget this silly thought of mother-marrying.
Why, many men in dreams have married mothers,
And he lives happiest who makes the least of it.

OEDIPUS
Everything you say would make good sense
were my mother not alive—she is;
so all your comfort cannot quiet me.

JOCASTA
At least your father’s death has lightened up the scene.
 OEDIPUS THE KING bX
OEDIPUS
It has, but now I fear a living woman.

MESSENGER
A woman, sir? Who ever could she be?

OEDIPUS
Mérope, old man, who lives with Polybus.

MESSENGER
But what’s in her that she can make you fear?

OEDIPUS
A dire warning sent from heaven, my friend.

MESSENGER
Some secret too horrible to tell?

OEDIPUS
No, you may be told.
Apollo once declared that I
would come to couple with my mother,
and with these very hands of mine
spill out the life-blood of my father.
All of which has put me far and long from Corinth,
in sweet prosperity maybe,
But what’s so sweet as looking into parents’ eyes?

MESSENGER
Is this the fear that drove you out of Corinth?

OEDIPUS
Exactly that, old man, and not to kill my father.
54 SOPHOCLES
MESSENGER

Well, my King, since I came to save,

why don’t I loose you from that worry too?

OEDIPUS
Ah! If you could, ’'d heap you with rewards.

MESSENGER

Ah! to be frank, that’s why I came ... to bring you

home,
and do myself some good.

OEDIPUS

No, not home. I’ll not go near a parent still.

MESSENGER

My son, it’s plain you don’t know what you’re at.

OEDIPUS

Speak out, old man. In the name of heaven—what?

MESSENGER
Well, you’ve fled from home because of this?

OEDIPUS
Yes, the fear Apollo may be proven right.

MESSENGER

And you, because of your parents, a criminal?

OEDIPUS
Yes, old man, it’s that. ’'m haunted by that dread.
 OEDIPUS THE KING aD
MESSENGER
Then, don’t you understand, you’re terrified for nothing.

OEDIPUS
Nothing? How—when I am their son.

MESSENGER
Because Polybus and you were worlds apart.

OEDIPUS
Worlds apart? He was my father, wasn’t he?

MESSENGER
No more nor less than I who tell you this.

OEDIPUS
No more nor less than you? Than nothing then.

MESSENGER
Exactly so. He never gave you life, no more than I.

OEDIPUS

Then, whatever made him call me son?

MESSENGER

You were a gift. He took you from my arms.

OEDIPUS

A gift? But he loved me as his own.

MESSENGER

He had no children of his own to love.

56 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

And this gift of me you gave—was I freeborn or bought?

MESSENGER

Discovered . . . in a woody mountain dell of Cithaeron.

[JOCASTA moves away. She has gone pale}

OEDIPUS
On Theban hills? What made you wander there?

MESSENGER
On those hills I used to graze my flock.

OEDIPUS
What! A shepherd out for hire?

MESSENGER

And on that day your savior too, my son.

OEDIPUS

My savior? Was I in pain when you took me in your

arms?

MESSENGER
The ankles of your feet could tell you that.

OEDIPUS
Ah, don’t remind me of that ancient hurt.

MESSENGER
I loosed the pin that riveted your feet.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 57
OEDIPUS
My birthmark and my brand from babyhood!

MESSENGER
Which gave you also your unlucky name.*

OEDIPUS
Was this my mother’s doing or my father’s?
For the gods’ sakes say!
[socasTa hides her face in her hands]

MESSENGER
That, I do not know. The man who gave you me could
tell.

OEDIPUS
What, received at secondhand? Not found by you?

MESSENGER
Not found by me, but handed over by another shepherd.

OEDIPUS
What shepherd? Could you point him out?

MESSENGER

I think he was known as one of Laius’s men.

OEDIPUS
You mean the king who reigned here long ago?

**Swollen-foot.”
58 SOPHOCLES

MESSENGER
The same. He was a herdsman of that king.

OEDIPUS
Could I see him? Is he still alive?

MESSENGER
Your own people could tell you best.
[OEDIPUS turns to the CHORUS]

OEDIPUS

Does any man here present know this herdsman he is

talking of:
either seen him in the fields or hereabouts?
The time has come for full discovery.

CHORUS

I think he means that herdsman, sir,

you asked to see before.
Jocasta here is surest judge of that.
[They all turn toward JOCASTA, who stands transfixed]

OEDIPUS

Come, madam, do you know the man we sent for once

before?
Is he the man he means?

JOCASTA
[wildly]
Which man? What matters who he means? Why ask?
Forget it all. It’s not worth knowing.
 OEDIPUS THE KING Ae
OEDIPUS
Forget it all? I can’t stop now.
Not with all my birth clues in my hands.

JOCASTA
In the name of heaven, don’t proceed!
For your own life’s sake, stop!
And I’ve been tortured long enough.

OEDIPUS
Oh come! It won’t be you that is disgraced
even if I’m proved a thrice-descended slave.
[socAsTA throws herself before him and clutches his
knees|

JOCASTA
Yet be persuaded, please. Do not proceed.

OEDIPUS
Persuaded from the truth? Pursuing it? I must.

JOCASTA
Though I’m pleading for what’s best for you.

OEDIPUS
What’s best for me? I’m tired of hearing that.

JOCASTA
[rising slowly}
God help you, Oedipus! Hide it from you who you are.
60 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

Will someone go and fetch the herdsman here?

We'll leave the lady to her high descent.

JOCASTA

Good-bye, my poor deluded, lost and damned!

There’s nothing else that I can call you now.
[JOCASTA rushes into the palace}

CHORUS

Oedipus, what made the Queen so wildly leave,

struck dumb? A stillness just before the storm!

OEDIPUS

Storm, then, let it burst!

Born from nothing though I be proved,
let me find that nothing out.
And let my wife with all a woman’s pride
bridle at my paltry origin.
I do not blush to own I’m Fortune’s pampered child.
She will not let me down. She is my mother.
The moons my monthly cousins watched me wax and
wane.
My fealty to that family makes me move
true to myself. My family I shall prove.

FOURTH CHORAL ODE

[The Elders, forgetting for the moment JOCASTA’s omi-

nous withdrawal, anticipate the joy of discovering who
OEDIPUS really is. Ironically, they imagine themselves
already celebrating his remarkable origins.|
 OEDIPUS THE KING 61
Strophe
If I am a prophet with sapient eyes,
Cithaeron you, my mystical mountain,
Tomorrow before the moon’s full rise,
Shall shout out your name as the nurse and the mother,
The father as well of our Oedipus.
Then shall we weave our dances around you;
You who have showered our princes with graces.
Ayay, great Apollo! May’t please you, ayay!

Antistrophe
Who was your mother, son? Which of the dryads
Did Pan of the mountains have? Was he your father?
Or was it Apollo who haunts the savannas?
Or perhaps Hermes on the heights of Cyllene?
Or was Dionysus god of the pinnacles
Of Helicon’s hiiltops where he abides
Presented with you by some Helliconian
Nymph, among whom he frequently frolics?

FOURTH EPISODE
[A figure, old and roughly clad, is seen approaching]

OEDIPUS

Look, Elders,
if I may play the prophet too,
I'd say—although I’ve never met the man—
there’s the herdsman we’ve been searching for.
He’s old enough and matches this old man.
But you no doubt can better judge than I:
you’ve seen the man before.
62 SOPHOCLES

CHORUS

We know him well.

Laius never had a better servant.

[The SHEPHERD enters, ill at ease. OEDIPUS surveys him

and turns to the MESSENGER]

OEDIPUS
First question then to you, Corinthian:
is he the man you mean?

MESSENGER
The very man.

OEDIPUS
Come here, sir, and look me in the eyes.
Tell me straight: were you ever Laius’s?

SHEPHERD
Yes sir, born and bred, sir—never bought.

OEDIPUS
And what was your job? How were you employed?

SHEPHERD
Chiefly as a shepherd, sir.

OEDIPUS
A shepherd where? What was your terrain?

SHEPHERD
[hedging]
Sometimes . . . the slopes of Cithaeron
and sometimes . . . thereabouts.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 63
OEDIPUS
Good, then you’ve run across this man before?
[The SHEPHERD desperately tries to avoid looking at the
MESSENGER]

SHEPHERD
How’d he be there, sir? ... What man do you mean,
sir?

OEDIPUS
The man in front of you. Did you ever meet him?

SHEPHERD
Not to remember, sir . . . I couldn’t rightly say.

MESSENGER
And no wonder, sire! But let me jog his memory.
I’m sure he won’t forget the slopes of Cithaeron
where for three half-years we were neighbors,
he and I; he with two herds, I with one:
six long months, from spring to early autumn.
And when at last the winter came,
we both drove off our flocks,
I to my sheepcotes, he back to Laius’s folds .
Am I right or am | wrong?

SHEPHERD
[sullenly]}
Aye, you’re right. But it was long ago.

MESSENGER

Now tell me this. Do you recall a certain baby boy

you gave me once to bring up as my own?
64 SOPHOCLES

SHEPHERD
What’re you getting at? What’re these questions for?
MESSENGER
Take a look, my friend. He’s standing there, your baby
boy.

SHEPHERD
Damn you man! Can you not hold your tongue?

OEDIPUS
Watch your words, old man!
It’s you who ought to be rebuked, not he.

SHEPHERD
Great master, please! What have I done wrong?

OEDIPUS
Not answered this man’s questions on the baby boy.

SHEPHERD
But, sir, he’s rambling nonsense. He doesn’t know a thing.

OEDIPUS

You won’t talk for pleasure?

Then perhaps you’ll talk for pain.
[OEDIPUS raises a threatening hand|

SHEPHERD
By all the gods, sir, don’t hurt a poor old man.

OEDIPUS
Here, someone twist the wretch’s hands behind his back.
[A palace guard steps forward|
 OEDIPUS THE KING 65

SHEPHERD
God help me, sir! What is it you must know?

OEDIPUS
The baby he’s been speaking of—did you give it him or
not?

SHEPHERD
Idid...Idid... I wish I’d died that day.

OEDIPUS
You'll die today, unless you speak the truth.

SHEPHERD
Much sooner, sir, if I speak the truth.

OEDIPUS
This man, it’s clear, is playing for time.

SHEPHERD
No, not me, sir! I’ve already said I gave it him.

OEDIPUS
Then where’s it from? Your home or someone else’s.

SHEPHERD

Oh not mine, sir! I got it from another.

OEDIPUS
Someone here in Thebes? Of what house?

SHEPHERD

By all the gods, sir, don’t ask me any more!

66 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS
If I have to ask again—you’re dead.

SHEPHERD

Then .. . from Laius’s house . . . that’s where it’s from.

OEDIPUS
What, a slave? Or someone of his line?

SHEPHERD
Oh sir! Must I bring myself to say it?

OEDIPUS
And I to hear it. Yes, it must be said.

SHEPHERD
They say it was .. . actually his own.
But the Queen inside could probably explain.

OEDIPUS
She, she gave it you?

SHEPHERD
Just that, my lord.

OEDIPUS
With what intention?

SHEPHERD
To do away with it.

OEDIPUS
The child’s own mother?
 OEDIPUS THE KING 67
SHEPHERD
To escape a prophecy too horrible.

OEDIPUS
What kind of prophecy?

SHEPHERD
A warning that he’d kill his father.

OEDIPUS
In heaven’s name, what made you pass him on
to this old man?

SHEPHERD
Only pity, sir.
I thought he’d take him home and far away.
Never this—oh, never kept for infamy!
For if you are the one he says you are,
Make no mistake: you are a doom-born man.
[OEDIPUS stares in front of him, then staggers forward]

OEDIPUS

Lost! Ah lost! At last it’s blazing clear.

Light of my days, go dark. I want to gaze no more.
My birth all sprung revealed from those it never should,
Myself entwined with those I never could.
And I the killer of those I never would.
[OEDIPUS rushes into the palace]
68 SOPHOCLES

FIFTH CHORAL ODE

[The Elders, seeing that the cause of OEDIPUS is lost,

break into a desperate lament for the insecurity of all
human fame, so bitterly exemplified now in the fall of the
once-confident King.| :

Strophe I

Oh the generations of man!

His life is vanity and nothingness.
Is there one, one
Who more than tastes of, thinks of, happiness,
Which in the thinking vanishes?
Yours the text, yours the spell,
I see it in you Oedipus:
Man’s pattern of unblessedness.

Antistrophe I

You who aimed so high!

Who hit life’s topmost prize—success!
Who—dZeus, oh, who—
Struck and toppled down the griffin-taloned
Deathknell witch, and like a saving tower
Soared above the rotting shambles here:
A sovereign won, supremely blest,
A king of mighty Thebes.

Strophe II

Caught in the end by Time

Who always sees, where Justice sits as judge,
Your unwed wedding’s done,
Begetter and begot—O son of Laius!—
Out of sight what sight might not have seen!
My sorrow heaves, my lips lament,
Which drew their breath from you and now
Must quiver and be still.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 69
EPILOGUE
[A PALACE OFFICIAL hurries out from the palace}

OFFICIAL
Listen, lords most honorable of Thebes:
forget the House of Labdacus, all filial sympathy,
if you would stop your ears, hide your eyes,
not break your hearts against appalling pain.
No rivers—even Ister, even Phasis—
could flush away, I think, the horrors
hidden in these walls, where now
other evils, courted evils self-incurred,
Will bring to light the perfect agony of self-inflicted pain.

CHORUS

Stop. What we’ve seen already is unbearable.

What further agony will you load on us?

OFFICIAL

Pll tell it quickly and you can quickly hear:

Jocasta’s gone, the Queen.

CHORUS

Dead? Poor lady! How?

OFFICIAL

She killed herself.

You cannot apprehend, you who were not there,
how horrible it was.
But I was there and what I tell you now
is stamped upon my memory:
Oh, the struggles of that lost princess!
The moment she had burst into the palace,
running through the doors demented,
she made for the bridal bed,
70 SOPHOCLES

plunging her fingers through her hair

and slamming shut the door behind her.
We heard her sobbing out Laius’s name (so long dead),
recalling the night his love had bred his murderer
And left a mother making cursed children with her son.
“Unhappy bed!” she wailed. ““Twice wicked soil!
The father’s seedbed nurtured for the mother’s son!”
And then she killed herself. How, I do not know.
The final act escaped our eyes—
all fastened now upon the raving Oedipus,
who broke upon us, stamping up and down
and shouting out: “A weapon, quick!
Where is the brideless bride?
Find me that double breeding ground
where sown the mother, now has sown the son.”
Some instinct of a demigod discovered her to him,
not us near by. As if led on,
He smashes hollering through the double doors,
breaking all its bolts, and lunges in.
And there we saw her hanging, twisted, tangled,
from a halter.
A sight that rings from him a maddened cry.
He frees the noose and lays the wretched woman down,
then—Oh hideous sequel!—trips from off her dress
the golden brooches she was wearing,
Holds them up and rams the pins right through his eyes.
“Wicked, wicked eyes!” he gasps,
“You shall not see me nor my crime,
not see my present shame.
Go dark for all time blind
to what you never should have seen, and blind
to the love this heart has cried to see.”
And as this dirge went up, so did his hands
to strike his founts of sight
not once but many times.
And all the while his eyeballs gushed
in bloody dew upon his beard .. .
no, not dew, no oozing drops—a spurt
of black-ensanguined rain like hail beat down.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 71
A coupled punishment upon a coupled sin:
husband and wife one flesh in their disaster—
Their happiness of long ago, true happiness,
now turned to tears this day,
to ruin, death, and shame;
No evil absent by whatever cursed name.

CHORUS
Poor man! What agony!

OFFICIAL
He shouts for all the barriers to be unbarred and he
displayed to all of Thebes, his father’s murderer,
his mother’s . . . no, a word too foul to say... .
begging to be cast adrift, not rot at home
as curser and the cursed.
His strength is gone. He needs a helping hand,
his wound and weakness more than he can bear.
But you will see. The gates are opening. Look:
a sight that turns all loathing into tears.
[OEDIPUS, blinded, enters and staggers down the palace
steps}

CHORAL DIALOGUE
CHORUS

Oh, most inhuman vision!

A world of pain outsuffered and outdone.
What possession in full flush
has swamped your brain?
What giant of evil beyond all human brawn
pounced on you with devil’s doom?
Oh, the pity and the horror!
I cannot look—and yet so much to ask,
so much to know, so much to understand.
I cannot look for shuddering.
72 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

I am deserted, dark,
And where is sorrow stumbling?
Whence flits that voice so near?
Where, demon, will you drive me?

CHORUS

To a doom no voice can speak, no eye regard.

Strophe I

OEDIPUS

Aah! a nightmare mist has fallen

Adamantine black on me—
Abomination closing.
Cry, cry, oh cry again!
Those needle pains:
The pointed echoes of my sinning.

CHORUS
Such great sufferings are not strange
Where a double sorrow requires a double pang.

Antistrophe I

OEDIPUS

Oh you my friends!
Still friends and by my side!
Still staying by the blindman!
Your form eludes, your voice is near;
That voice lights up my darkness.

CHORUS

Man of havoc, how

Could you hate your sight so?
What demon so possessed you?
 OEDIPUS THE KING 73

Strophe I

OEDIPUS
Friends, it was Apollo, spirit of Apollo.
He made this evil fructify.
Oh yes, I pierced my eyes, my useless eyes, why not?
When all that’s sweet had parted from my vision.

CHORUS
And so it has; is as you say.

OEDIPUS
Nothing left to see, to love,
No welcome in communion.
Friends, who are my friends,
Hurry me from here,
Hurry off the monster:
That deepest damned and god-detested man.

CHORUS
A man, alas, whose anguish fits his fate.
We could wish that we had never known you.

Antistrophe IT

OEDIPUS

Yes, rot that man’s unlocking my feet from biting fetters.

Unloosing me from murder to lock me in a blood-love.
Had I only died then, I should not now be leaving
All I love and mine so sadly shattered.

CHORUS

Your wish is also ours.

74 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

Then I should be free,

Yes, free from parricide:
Not pointed out as wedded
To the one who weaned me.
Now I am god-abandoned,
A son of sin and sorrows
All incest-sealed
With the womb that bore me.
Oh Oedipus, your portion!

CHORUS

But how can we say that your design was good?

To live in blindness? Better live no longer.
[End of strophic pattern] |
OEDIPUS

Enough of this! Enough of your advice!

It was a good design. Don’t tell me otherwise.
My best design!
What kind of eyes should I need
to gaze upon my father’s face in Hades
or my unhappy mother’s:
Those twin victims ruined by me
for whom I should be hanged?
Or eyes that could be eyes to stare
into my children’s faces?
Joy? No no, a sight of pain
engendered from those loins.
Or even eyes to view again citadel and tower
and holy idoled shrine I cast away?
Most cursed I, the prince of princes here in Thebes
and now pariah self-damned and self-arraigned:
The refuse-heap of heaven on display as son of Laius,
parading and self-dyed in sin.
What? Eyes to lift and gaze at these?
No no, there’s none!
Rather plug my ears and choke that stream of sound,
 OEDIPUS THE KING ve)
stuff the senses of my carcass dumb—
glad to stifle voices with my vision,
and sweet to lift the soul away from hurt.
Pity you, Cithaeron, that you gave me harbor,
took me in and did not kill me straight;
that you did not hush my birth from man.
Pity you Polybus and Corinth,
age-old home I called my father’s:
What fair skin you housed around what foulness!
A prince of evil-all revealed and son of sin.
And you three roads and dell concealed,
you copse of oak and straitened triple ways!
I handed you my blood to drink,
the chalice of my father’s.
What memories have you of my manners then,
or what I did when afterwards I came here?
You batch of weddings! Birthdays breeding
seedlings from their very seed:
Fathers, sons and brothers flourishing in foulness
with brides and wives and mothers
in a monstrous coupling . .
Unfit to tell what’s too unfit to touch!
My load is mine, don’t fear;
no man could bear so much.

CHORUS

Wait! Here Creon comes to hear your pleas

and deal with your designs.
He takes your place
as sole custodian of the State.

OEDIPUS

Ah! What words are left for me to him?

What title to sincerity and trust
when all my past behavior’s proved so wrong?
[Enter CREON]
76 SOPHOCLES

CREON

It’s not to scoff or scorn for past behavior, Oedipus,

that I am here...
[Turns to attendants]

You there, show some reverence for the dignity of man,

and blush at least before Apollo’s royal sun
which feeds the world with fire,
to so display unveiled putrescence
in its very picture of decay—
Assaulting earth, the heaven’s rain, the light of day.
Quickly take him home. A family’s ears, a family’s eyes,
alone should know a family’s miseries.

OEDIPUS

For the gods’ own love, you best of men

who visit me the worst
with clemency beyond my dreams,
grant me one request: I ask it
for your sake not mine.

CREON

What favor could you want of me?

OEDIPUS

Expel me quickly, purge me far from Thebes

to where no human voice is heard.

CREON

This I would have done at once

but first must ask the god’s design.

OEDIPUS

The god’s design is open, all his oracle is clear:

kill the impious one, the parricide, kill me.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 7a,

CREON
So ran the words, but in these straits
it’s best to ask the god again what should be done.

OEDIPUS
What! Interrogations still for a thing so down?

CREON
Yes, and even you will now believe the god.

OEDIPUS

I do. But add to it this charge, I beg, this prayer:

her poor remains still in the house,
bury them—what tomb you wish.
You must not fail your own with proper rites.
But as for me, my father’s city here
must never harbor me alive, .
so let me live among the hills,
yes, Cithaeron, that very mountain famed as mine;
Which my father and my mother gave me while they
lived
to be my tomb.
There Ill be obedient to the death they planned.
For this I know, no sickness and no natural death
will sever me from life .. . no, not me,
preserved from death precisely for disaster.
So let my fortune follow where it will.
Now for my children, first of all my sons.
These you need not care for, Creon. They are men
and they will always find a livelihood.
But my little girls, that stricken pair of orphans
whose place at table never missed being set with mine,
who ate with me, drank from my cup—ah! these
look after for me, guard them both.
[CREON goes to fetch OEDIPUS’s two little daughters,
ANTIGONE and ISMENE. Meanwhile, OEDIPUS, thinking
he is still there, continues to plead|
78 SOPHOCLES

If I could only touch them with my hands

and weep my fill, good Creon, one last time!
Just touch them, please, you generous-hearted prince,
and think them in my arms as when I saw.
[CREON returns leading ANTIGONE and ISMENE by the
hand|

Wait! That sobbing? Don’t tell me .

it’s my two darlings crying!
Has Creon pitied me and sent me all my heart’s desire?
Can that be true?

CREON
It is. I ordered it to stir again your old delight.

OEDIPUS

God bless you, Creon, bless your path through life,

encompass you with surer joys than mine.
But children where, where are you? Hurry
into these arms . . . these brother’s . . . these
father’s arms—that struck out the light
and made his face this eyeless mask.
For—oh my little ones!—
he did not see, he had no knowing,
When he became your father—in full view—
the sower and the seed.
He cannot see you now but still can weep
and ponder on those bitter days to come
which cruel consort with the world will prove.
No public holidays, no carnivals,
from which you will not hurry home in tears.
And then one day a marriage time will come,
but wha will marry you? Who on this earth will face
the destiny that dogs our line?
Our record’s too replete:
“This father killed his father,
tilled the womb again from which he sprang,
to beget you very children from his bed of birth.”
 OEDIPUS THE KING 79

Such will be their gibes,

so who will want to marry you?
There’s none, my children, no not one,
and life for you is all decline
to doom and empty spinsterhood.
[He turns to CREON]

Listen, Son of Menoeceus,

now their natural parents are no more,
they have no other father left but you.
You must not see your blood go down in beggary,
or watch them roaming husbandless.
You must not leave them to a fate like mine.
Open your heart—they’re young,
bereft of everything unless you furnish it.
Come... a promise noble prince . . . your hand!
[CREON gives his hand]

My darling little ones, if you could only understand,

Id tell you, oh, so many things!
Let this suffice, a simple prayer:
Abide in modesty so may you live
the happy life your father did not have.

CREON
These tears . . enough! . . . Now go inside.

OEDIPUS
I must, with bitterness.

CREON
All things have their time.

OEDIPUS

You know my terms?

80 SOPHOCLES

CREON
Pll know them when you tell me.

OEDIPUS
Then send me far away from home.

CREON
You ask what only the gods can give.

OEDIPUS
The gods? They are my enemy.

CREON
They’ll answer all the swifter, then.

OEDIPUS
Ah! Do you mean it?

CREON
What I do not mean, I do not say.

OEDIPUS
Then lead me off.

CREON
Come! Let your children go.

OEDIPUS
No, no, never! Don’t take them from me.

CREON

Stop this striving to be master of all.

The mastery you had in life has been your fall.
 OEDIPUS THE KING 81
[CREON signs to the attendants, who disengage OEDIPUS
from his children and lead him into the palace. CREON
follows and the doors are closed. The CHORUS groups for
the exit march]

ENVOI
CHORUS
Citizens of our ancestral Thebes,
Look on this Oedipus, the mighty and once masterful:
Elucidator of the riddle,
Envied on his pedestal of fame.
You saw him fall. You saw him swept away.
So, being mortal, look on that last day.
And count no man blessed in his life until
He’s crossed life’s bounds unstruck by ruin still.
: we a }
Fai
> Mew k
r
 OEDIPUS
AT COLONUS

in memory of
Martin W. Tanner
“he setteth his mind to finish
is work, and watcheth
to polish it perfectly.”
 THE CHARACTERS

OEDIPUS, former king of Thebes

ANTIGONE, his daughter
A COUNTRYMAN of Colonus
CHORUS of Elders of Colonus
ISMENE, sister of Antigone and daughter of Oedipus
THESEUS, king of Athens
CREON, brother-in-law of Oedipus and present ruler
of Thebes
Bodyguard of Creon
POLYNEICES, son of Oedipus
A MESSENGER
Soldiers and Attendants of Theseus
Servant to Ismene
 TIME AND SETTING

Some twenty years have passed since OEDIPUS blinded

himself after discovering that he had murdered his father
and married his mother. During much of that time he has
been wandering from town to town accompanied by his
daughter, ANTIGONE. CREON, the regent of Thebes, has
turned against him, as also have his two sons, who are
now contending for the throne.
OEDIPUS is about sixty-five but looks much older.
Gaunt, white-haired, dressed in rags (with a beggar’s wal-
let) and leaning on ANTIGONE, he slowly climbs the rocky
path that leads to the edge of a wood, where the statue of
a hero on a horse can be discerned among the trees. It is
early afternoon in April.
 Oedipus at Colonus

PROLOGUE

OEDIPUS
So where have we come to now, Antigone, my child,
this blind old man and you—
what people and what town?
And who today will dole out charity
to Oedipus the vagabond?
It’s little that I ask, and I make do with less.
Patience is what I’ve learned from pain;
from pain and time and my own past royalty.
But, do you see any place, dear girl, where I may sit:
whether in public ground or sacred grove—
There sit me down
Just until we’ve found out where we are.
For we are only wanderers
and must ask advice of citizens
and do as they direct.

ANTIGONE

[looking at her father with concern, and then gazing

across the plain toward Athens}
Poor father! Poor wayworn Oedipus! .. .
I can see the walls and turrets of a town,
a long way off,
And where we stand is clearly consecrated ground
luxuriant in laurel, olive, vine,
and deep in the song of nightingales.
[ANTIGONE peers into the grove]
87
8&8 SOPHOCLES

So rest yourself upon this boulder here:

a rough seat, I know.
But you’ve come too long a way for an old man.

OEDIPUS
A blind one too! So watch him well and help him down.

ANTIGONE
After all this time, I need no lessons there.
[She leads him to the rock seat inside the grove and settles
him there]

OEDIPUS
Now tell me: have you the slightest inkling where we
are?

ANTIGONE
Well, I know it’s Athens, but this spot . . .I’ve no idea.

OEDIPUS
Of course it’s Athens. That much we know from every-
one we’ve passed.

ANTIGONE :
Then shall I go and ask what this place is called?

OEDIPUS
Do child, if there’s any sign of life.

ANTIGONE

Oh, but there must be!

In fact I don’t even have to go. I see a man approaching.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 89
OEDIPUS
What! Coming our way? Coming here?

ANTIGONE
He’s almost on us . . . Quick, you speak, Father—
here he is.
[Enter a COUNTRYMAN of Colonus]

OEDIPUS
Excuse me, good sir, my daughter here
whose eyes are mine as they are hers,
tells me you are passing by,
Just in time, I’m sure, to solve our doubts and let us
know...

COUNTRYMAN
Before you start your questioning
come off that seat:
You’re tresspassing on holy ground.

OEDIPUS
Holy ground? What god is sacred here?

COUNTRYMAN

It’s untouchable—not to be inhabited—

abode of most stern goddesses:
daughters of Earth and Darkness.

OEDIPUS
Then let me pray to them. What are their holy names?

COUNTRYMAN

The All-seeing Eumenides or Kindly Ones, we call He

ere.
In other places graced no doubt by other names.
90 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS
Then let them welcome me, their suppliant,
for I shall never set my foot outside this haven here.

COUNTRYMAN
What do you mean?

OEDIPUS

I recognize the signs—my journey’s end.

COUNTRYMAN

Well, I’ve no power to shift you without a warrant.

I must go and let the city know.

OEDIPUS

Meanwhile, my friend, for the love of all the gods,

don’t disappoint a homeless wanderer, but tell me. .

COUNTRYMAN
Ask. I have no call to disappoint.

OEDiPUS

Then where have we come to? Does this place have a

name?

COUNTRYMAN
Pll tell you everything I know.
This whole ground is sacred. Great Poseidon holds it.
Prometheus the Titan who bore fire is present here.
The very spot you occupy is called “The Brazen
Threshold,”
the cornerstone of Athens.
That statue there, that horseman who rides above the
fields,
is Colonus himself, origin and Lord of all this clan,
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 91
who gave the place its name:
Perhaps not much to sing about but, believe me Stranger,
living music to all who inhabit here.

OEDIPUS
So there are inhabitants in these parts?

COUNTRYMAN
Certainly, and called after their horseman hero there.

OEDIPUS
But who governs them? Or do they rule themselves?

COUNTRYMAN
A king in Athens rules over them.

OEDIPUS
A respected monarch whose word is law? Who is he?

COUNTRYMAN
His name is Theseus, son of King Aegeus before him.

OEDIPUS
Then could I send a message by one of you to him?

COUNTRYMAN

A message, what? Asking him to come?

OEDIPUS

To say, ‘‘a little favor wins a great reward.”

COUNTRYMAN
Great reward? What can a blind man give?
92 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

You shall see—there’s vision in every syllable I say.

COUNTRYMAN

Listen, stranger, I am out to help.

You are obviously well-born, though down iin luck.
Stay where you are, exactly where I found you,
while I go and tell the local people here.
Let them decide whether you are to stay or go.
[The COUNTRYMAN hurries off]

OEDIPUS
Daughter, has that person gone?

ANTIGONE

Gone, Father. Be at ease. Say anything you like.

There’s no one here but me.
[OEDIPUS staggers to his knees in an attitude of prayer.
ANTIGONE stands watching a few paces away]

OEDIPUS

Great mistresses of terrifying mien,

I salute you first on bended knee
in this your sanctuary.
Harden not your hearts against me or Apollo,
for even when he told my doom
he foretold me too
that after long journeys I should come
to my journey’s end
at a faraway place of rest, a shelter
at the seat of you the dreaded Holy Ones.
“There,” he said,
“you will close your life of sorrows,
With blessings on the land that harbors you
and curses on the people who cast you out.”
Certain signs, he said, would warn me of these things:
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 93
earthquakes, thunder, lightnings from Zeus.
I realize now
some gentle spell from you
has pulled my steps toward this grove.
How else could I have found you first
and wandered here—
I the sober and you the wineless ones—
To sit upon this holy seat not made with human hands?
Therefore, you kind divinities,
in fulfillment of Apollo’s prophecies,
grant me here to reach my term at last,
my rounding off of life;
Unless you think me far too vile for that—
I a slave to sorrow far worse than any slave’s.
So, hear me, good daughters of primeval Night.
And Athens, you first of cities, namesake of great Pallas,
pity this poor remnant, Oedipus,
this ghost, this carcass of what he was—a man.

ANTIGONE :
Quiet, Father! Some elderly men are coming our way,
spying out your resting place.

OEDIPUS
Then quiet I'll be,
while you hurry me off this path into the grove,
until I hear just what it is they have to say.
It’s always wise to be informed before we act.
[OEDIPUS and ANTIGONE hustle into the trees]

FIRST CHORAL DIALOGUE

[Enter the CHORUS of Elders of Colonus. They scurry
about, searching among the bushes and behind the rocks,
meanwhile uttering severally:|
94 SOPHOCLES

_Strophe I
Look for him?
Who is it?
Where can he lurk?
Where has he bolted? ;
Oh what a sacrilege!
Comb the ground.
Strain your eyes.
Search him out everywhere.
A vagabond, surely,
some aged vagabond.
No one from here,
would ever have pushed
Into this virgin plot of the unaffrontable maidens,
Whose very name sends shivers,
whom we pass with averted eyes,
Whom we pray to with quavering lips.
But now a blasphemous rogue
is hidden somewhere they say,
And I’ve covered the ground on every side
But still I cannot uncover
the cranny in which he hides.
[OEDIPUS and ANTIGONE step from the trees|

OEDIPUS

I am the man and my ears are my eyes,

as they say of the blind.

CHORUS
Ah! Horrible to see, and horrible to hear!

OEDIPUS

Listen, please! I am no criminal.

 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 95
CHORUS
Zeus, defend us! Who could this old man be?

OEDIPUS
No favorite of fate—I can tell you that—
good guardians of this grove.
For who would borrow eyes to walk,
or lean his weight on frail support?

Antistrophe I
Look at his eyes!
Great gods!
He’s blind!
Eyeless from birth?
What a lifetime of horror!
Far be it
from us, sir,
to add to your sorrows,
But you trespass, you trespass;
step no further
Into the still
of the grassy dell
Where chaliced water from the spring, blended with
honey,
Is poured in a stream of the purest offering. Go
Away from there, you woebegone stranger.
Turn back, come away,
no matter how far you have wandered.
Can you hear us from there, you derelict outcast?
Speak if you want, and we’ll listen, but not
till you’ve moved from the sacred close.

[OEDIPUS and ANTIGONE Stand motionless]

OEDIPUS
My daughter, what are we to do?
96 SOPHOCLES

ANTIGONE
Do as they say, Father. We must yield and listen.

OEDIPUS
Your hand then, come.

ANTIGONE

There, you have it.

OEDIPUS
Sirs, I am breaking cover.
You must not violate my trust.

CHORUS
Never fear, old man!
No one will drag you off from here against your will.
[OEDIPUS takes a step forward out of the grove. End of
strophic pattern but not of Choral Dialogue}

OEDIPUS
Further?

CHORUS
Come still further.
[He takes another step]

OEDIPUS
Enough?

CHORUS
Lead him, girl, you understand.

ANTIGONE
I do indeed—these many years . . . Careful now!
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 97

OEDIPUS
Oh, what it is to walk in the dark!

ANTIGONE
Come, Father, come! Let your blind steps follow.

CHORUS
Poor harassed stranger on strange soil!
Learn to loathe what we find loathing.
Learn respect for what we reverence.

OEDIPUS

Then guide my walking, you my daughter,

Down the path of pious bidding
Where we can talk without offending.
Let’s not fight with what is fated.
[He advances onto a platform of rock at the edge of the
grove]

CHORUS
There.
You need not go beyond that ledge of rock.

OEDIPUS
This far?

CHORUS
That is far enough. Do you hear us?

OEDIPUS
May I sit?

CHORUS
Yes, sit to the side of that slab of rock.
98 SOPHOCLES

ANTIGONE
I have you, Father. Lean on me.

OEDIPUS
Oh, what a wretched thing it is! .. .

ANTIGONE
Step by step, we together,
Old and young, weak and strong;
Lean your loving weight on mine.

OEDIPUS
Oh, how pitiable my wretchedness!
[ANTIGONE finally settles him on the rock]

CHORUS

You sad old man, relax at last

And tell us of your birth and home.
What prompts this weary pilgrimage?
What country are you from?

OEDIPUS
[alarmed
Country? None. . . . Oh please, good friends, do not. . .

CHORUS
Do not what, old man? What are you avoiding?

OEDIPUS
Do not . . . Oh please—
not ask me who I am!

CHORUS

Why? What is it?

 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 99
OEDIPUS
My frightening origin.

CHORUS
Tell it.

OEDIPUS
[turning to ANTIGONE]
Dear child, must I out with it?

CHORUS
Sir, your ancestry? Your father’s name?

OEDIPUS
No no, not that! Child, what shall I do?

ANTIGONE
Tell them, since you’ve gone so far already.

OEDIPUS

Then I'll say it. There’s no way to cover up.

CHORUS
Both of you—you’re wasting time—get on with it.

OEDIPUS
Laius . . . Have you heard the name?

CHORUS

Dear gods! We have.

OEDIPUS

Of the line of Labdacus?

100 SOPHOCLES

CHORUS
Great Zeus!

| OEDIPUS
And Oedipus the stricken one?

CHORUS
What! That man is you?

OEDIPUS
Wait, listen—do not recoil.

CHORUS
Oh monstrous! Monstrous!

OEDIPUS
It’s hopeless now.

CHORUS
Intolerable!

OEDIPUS
Daughter, what will happen now?

CHORUS
Away with both of you! Leave our land!

OEDIPUS
But you promised! You will keep your word?

CHORUS

There is no blame attached to any

Who hits back where first he’s wronged.
You deceived us, so we’re playing
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 101
Trick for tricking, paying back
Treachery with trouble. Go!
Quit these precincts, quit our country,
Do not pollute our city with your tainted air.

ANTIGONE
You gentle sirs of pious intent,
If unmoved by my father’s plight
And all those horrors not his fault,
To me at least be kind, who beg you.
He is my father, all I have.
I’m pleading with my eyes to yours:
Eyes not blind, but eye to eye,
Almost as if I were your daughter,
Beseeching you for a beaten man
Needing mercy. Like a god
You have us wholly in your hands.
Come, be clement past our hoping.
By all your dearest roots to life,
I implore you: child and wife,
Hearth and godhead. Bear in mind
There never was a human being
Who, god-impelled, had hope in fleeing.

[End of Choral Dialogue}

FIRST EPISODE

CHORUS

Daughter of Oedipus, of course we pity you,

just as we pity him for what he suffers;
But we dare not risk divine displeasure
and go beyond what we’ve said already.

OEDIPUS

Then where has fame and where hasreputation gone

if this be Athens that most pious city?
102 SOPHOCLES

Sanctuary of the lost, savior of the needy,

unique in both! What good are they
When you tear me from my seat of stone
and cast me headlong from the land?
And all because you’ve merely heard my name!
Me, this carcass, this right hand of mine, °
you can’t fear that; for what I’ve done is simply suffer:
Yes, suffer much more than anything I’ve done.
As I could prove if I but touched upon the story
of my mother and my father.
It’s this that frightens you, as well I know.
Am I then a sinner born?
I, provoked to strike in self-defense?
Why, even if I’d acted with full knowledge,
it still would not have been a crime.
As it was, where I went I went
All ignorant toward a doom too known
to those who planned it.
Therefore, good sirs,
since you have moved me from my seat,
you must—by all the gods—protect me now.
Do not say you reverence heaven,
then do nothing but ignore what heaven says.
Make no mistake,
the gods’ eyes see the just
and the gods’ eyes see the unjust too,
and from that blazing gaze,
never on this earth,
will the wicked man escape by flight.
By heaven’s grace then,
let no dishonor blot the name of Athens by abeting
wrong.
You accepted me as suppliant and gave a pledge,
now guard me to the end.
And when you look into my ruined eyes,
do not look with scorn.
I am a priestly and a holy man,
and come with blessings for your people in my hands.
And when your prince shall come,
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 163
whoever be your prince,
Then shall everything be told and all made plain.
But in that space between do nothing mean.

CHORUS
Your words, old man, must make us think.
These solemn arguments have weight.
Let authority decide. We are content.

OEDIPUS
And where is he who wields authority?

CHORUS
In Athens, our ancestral city.
The scout who sent us here has gone for him.

OEDIPUS
What hope is there that he will come?
Why should he trouble with a blind old man?

CHORUS
Certainly he will come—once he hears your name.

OEDIPUS
But who will tell him that?

CHORUS

The road is long but travelers talk.

He will hear your name and he will come.
For every region of the earth has heard your name, old
man.
The instant that it hits his ears
he will leap up from his recreation and his ease
and hurry here.
 104 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

Then may his coming bring rewards

for myself and for his city.
Ah! Is not nobility its own reward?

ANTIGONE

Great heavens, I am speechless!

Father, I can’t imagine it.

OEDIPUS
What’s happening, Antigone, my child?

ANTIGONE

I see a woman coming straight toward us on a colt,

an Etnan thoroughbred.
She wears a broad Thessalian hat
to shade her from the sun.
I can’t be sure. Is it she or isn’t it?
Is my mind wandering? It can’t be her . . . surely can it?
But it must be. . . It is.
Her eyes are flashing welcomes.
She’s almost on us. She’s waving now.
Of course .. . it’s no one but our own Ismene.

OEDIPUS
What are you saying, child?

ANTIGONE *

_ That your daughter—and my sister—is right in front of

me.
Wait till ‘you hear her voice.

[ISMENE, attended by a single servant, advances toward

OEDIPUS and ANTIGONE]
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 105
ISMENE
Dearest Father! Sister!
The sweetest names in the world to me.
It was difficult to find you, and now
it’s difficult to see you through my tears.

OEDIPUS
Darling daughter—you?

ISMENE
Poor dear Father!

OEDIPUS
But, child, you’re really here?

ISMENE
It was not easy.

OEDIPUS
Dear girl—let me feel you.

ISMENE
Let me hug you both.
[They all embrace]

OEDIPUS
My children! . . . My sisters!

ISMENE

The stricken ones.

OEDIPUS
Yes, she and I.
106 SOPHOCLES

ISMENE
With me the third.

OEDIPUS
But, Daughter, what has brought you?

ISMENE
Concern for you, Father.

OEDIPUS
You mean, you missed me?

ISMENE

Yes. And I’ve come with news,

trusting myself to this last loyal servant here.

OEDIPUS
But those young men your brothers, where are they?

ISMENE
Just where they are—in the thick of trouble.

OEDIPUS

Oh, what miserable and perfect copies

have they grown to be of Egyptian ways!
For there the men sit at home and weave
while their wives go out to win the daily bread,
as you do, my daughters.
Just so your brothers, who should be
the very ones to take this load upon them.
Instead they sit at home like girls
and keep the house,
leaving the two of you to face my troubles
and make life a little easier for me.
Antigone here,
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 107
ever since she left the nursery
and became a woman,
has been with me as guide and old man’s nurse,
steering me through my dreary wanderings;
often roaming through the tangled forests,
barefoot and hungry,
often soaked by rain and scorched by sun,
never regretting all she’d missed at home,
so long as her father was provided for.
And you, my daughter,
more than once you’ve sallied forth
slipping past the Theban sentinels
to bring your father news of all the latest oracles.
You were my faithful spy
when I was driven from the land.
But, Ismene, what new tidings do you bring your father?
What mission has summoned you from home?
You don’t come empty-handed, that I know.
You’ve brought me something—
something I can fear.

ISMENE

I went through fire and water, Father,

to find out where you were and how you were
surviving,
but let that pass;
I have no desire to live it all again
by telling you.
The trouble now is those two sons of yours
that’s what I’ve come to tell you.
They were content at first to leave the throne to Creon,
and rid the city of the ancient family curse
that has dogged our line.
But now they are possessed.
Some demon of pride, some jealousy,
has gripped their souls
with a manic lust for royal power.
108 SOPHOCLES

They want to seize the reins of government.

Eteocles, our hot-brained stripling younger brother,
has snatched the throne from his elder, Polyneices,
and driven him from Thebes.
While Polyneices, we hear from every source,
has fled to the vale of Argos, :
adds marriage to diplomacy and military alliances,
And swears that Argos will either
acquit herself with triumph on the Theban plain
or be lifted to the skies in glorious attempt.
This is no fiction but the agonizing truth.
How far the gods will go before they let some mercy
fall—
Oh, Father, fall on you!—it’s impossible to tell.

OEDIPUS
Ah! Did you think that any glances of the gods
could ever be a glance to save me?

ISMENE
Yes, Father, that I hoped, exactly that.
There’ve been new oracles.

OEDIPUS
My child, what oracles? What have they said?

ISMENE
That soon the men of Thebes will seek you out,
dead or alive: a talisman for their salvation.

OEDIPUS
Ha! a talisman for what—one such as I?

ISMENE
In you, they say, there is a power born—a power for them.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 109
OEDIPUS
So, when I am a nothing, then am I a man?

ISMENE
The gods now bear you up; before they cast you down.

OEDIPUS
An old man on a pedestal, his youth in ruins!

ISMENE
Nevertheless, this you ought to know.
Creon is on his way to use you, and sooner now than
later.

OEDIPUS
To use me, Daughter? How?

ISMENE
He wants to plant you on the frontiers of Thebes;
within their reach, of course, but not within their sight.

OEDIPUS
On the threshold, then? What use is that?

ISMENE
It saves them from a curse if your tomb be wronged.

OEDIPUS
But bestows a blessing if it is honored.
They needed neither god nor oracle to tell them that.

ISMENE
And so they want to keep you somewhere near,
but not where you can set up as master of yourself.
110 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

And when I die, to bury me in Theban dust at least?

ISMENE
No, dear Father, no: you spilled your father’s blood.
OEDIPUS
Then I’ll not fall into their hands—no, never!

ISMENE
And that, one day, will spell the ruin of Thebes.

OEDIPUS
How so, my child? What way will they be hurt?

ISMENE
Scorched by the anger blazing from your tomb.*

OEDIPUS
Who told you, child, all this you’re telling me?

ISMENE
Pilgrims from the very hearth of Delphi.

OEDIPUS
And Apollo really said these things of me?

ISMENE
So those men avowed on their return to Thebes.

OEDIPUS
Has either of my sons heard this?
*This refers to the day when the Theban invaders of Athens will be routed in
battle near the tomb of Oedipus.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS lil
ISMENE
Both of them alike; each taking it to heart.

OEDIPUS
Scoundrels! So they knew it! Coveted my presence less
than they coveted a crown.

ISMENE
It hurts to hear you say it, but it’s true.

OEDIPUS
Oh you gods! Tread not down
the blaze of coming battle between these two.
And give me power to prophesy the end
for which they now match spear with clash on spear.
Then shall the one who now
enjoys the scepter and the throne
no more remain,
And he who fled the realm, not return.
I was their father,
thrust out from fatherland in full disgrace.
They did not rescue or defend me.
No, they cared nothing:
but watched me harried from my home,
my banishment proclaimed.
And if you say that such was then my wish,
a mercy granted by the city—apt and opportune—
I answer, “‘No!”’
On that first day I wished it, yes,
death was sweet—my soul on fire—
even death by stoning,
but no man was found to further that desire.
In time my madness mellowed.
I began to think my rage had plunged too far,
my chastisement excessive for my sins.
And then the city—city, mark you, after all that time—
had me thrust and hurtled out of Thebes.
112 SOPHOCLES

Then they could have helped,

my two boys, their father’s sons— _
then they could have stirred themselves.
They could. They did not do a thing.
For lack of a little word from them
I was cast out .
to drag away my life in wandering beggary.
Shelter, devoted care, my daily bread,
everything within a woman’s power to give,
these I owe to my two daughters here.
Their brothers sold their father for a throne,
exchanged him for a scepter and a realm.
No, [ll not help them win a war,
And the crown of Thebes will prove to be their bane.
That much Ismene’s oracles make clear
now that I match them with those others,
those olden oracles Apollo made me once
and now at last fulfills.
So let them send a Creon to search me out;
or any other potentate from Thebes.
I shall be your city’s champion and the scourge
of all my enemies,
With you, good people, on my side,
And by the grace of the Holy Ones who here abide.

CHORUS

Certainly, Oedipus, you impel our sympathies,

you and your two daughters here.
And now that you add the sovereign weight
of your great name to make our city triumph
we are more than ready to help you with advice.

OEDIPUS
Good friends, Ill carry out whatever you suggest.

CHORUS

Then expiate at once those goddesses

whose holy precincts you profaned.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 113
OEDIPUS
By what ritual, friends? Tell me that.

CHORUS
First, from the spring of living waters fetch
in pure washed hands the ceremonial draught.

OEDIPUS
And when I’ve fetched this fresh unsullied cup?

CHORUS
You'll find some chalices of delicate design.
Crown with wreaths their double handles and their
brims.

OEDIPUS
What kind of wreaths? Olive sprigs or flocks of wool?

CHORUS
A ewe-lamb’s fleece, all freshly shorn.

OEDIPUS
Good. And then, . . . How do I complete the rite?

CHORUS
Pour out your offering, with your face towards the dawn.

OEDIPUS

Pouring from those chalices you spoke of?

CHORUS

Yes, in three libations, emptying the last.

114 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

And this last, please tell me clearly:

what should it contain?

CHORUS
Water mixed with honey. Add no. wine.

OEDIPUS

And when the green-shadowed ground has drunk this

cup?

CHORUS

Lay thrice nine sprigs of olive on it

and with both hands offer up a prayer.

OEDIPUS
The Prayer? That’s most important. Tell me that.

CHORUS

That these goddesses we call the Kindly Ones, or

Eumenides,
be saving kind to you, who pray to them.
Make that your prayer, or someone make it for you.
Whisper it and do not cry it out.
Then come away. Do not turn back.
This accomplished, we shall gladly stand by you;
otherwise, my friend, we are afraid.

OEDIPUS
My daughters, did you hear what these locals said?

ANTIGONE
Father, we heard. Tell us what you want.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 115
OEDIPUS
If cannot go. I am too weak and blind—
my double disability.
Will one of you two do it for me?
A single person pure of heart, I think,
can make atonement for a thousand sinners.
So do it now, but do not leave me all alone.
I am not strong enough to get along without a helping
hand.
ISMENE
Then I shall carry out the rite,
if somebody will point the way.

CHORUS
Beyond that clump of trees, young woman.
The guardian of the grove will tell you
everything you want to know.

ISMENE
To my task, then.
Antigone, you watch over Father here.
No trouble is too much for a parent anywhere.
[ISMENE goes into the grove. The CHORUS turns to
OEDIPUS]

SECOND CHORAL DIALOGUE

Strophe I
CHORUS
Stranger it hurts
to stir up the memory
time has let slumber,
but we must know...
116 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

What now?

CHORUS

The story of suffering

you have been chained to:
the fatal ordeal without a cure. -

OEDIPUS

For hospitality’s sake, my friends,

do not uncover my shame.

CHORUS
The tale of it echoes
all over the universe.
But the truth of it, tell us,
how much is true?

OEDIPUS
No! No!

CHORUS
We beg you tell.

OEDIPUS
Ah, the shame of it!

CHORUS
‘Grant us. this favor
as we favored you.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 117
Antistrophe I

OEDIPUS
Friends, so many sufferings
suffered unwittingly!
God is my witness,
none of it guiltily.

CHORUS
How did it happen?

OEDIPUS
An innocent bridegroom,
a twisted wedding
yoking Thebes to disaster.

CHORUS
Is there truth in the word that you shared
the incestuous bed of a mother?

OEDIPUS
Must you, good people?
It’s death to hear it.
Ah, these maidens are mine,
but more than that...

CHORUS
Go on! Go on!

OEDIPUS

Two daughters, two curses...

CHORUS

Zeus, oh no!
118 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

Two shoots from the birthpangs

of a wife-mother’s tree.

Strophe II

CHORUS
What! Are you saying, your children are both...

OEDIPUS
Their father’s offspring and his sisters.

CHORUS
Horrible!

OEDIPUS

Horror, yes horror. Wave upon wave.

CHORUS
Victim!

OEDIPUS
Yes, endlessly victim.

CHORUS
Sinner, too!

OEDIPUS
No sinner.

CHORUS
How?
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 119
OEDIPUS
I saved
The city—I wish I had not—
And the prize for this has broken my heart.

Antistrophe I

CHORUS
Broken your heart with shedding the blood of .. . ?

OEDIPUS
What is it now? What more are you after?

CHORUS
A father...

OEDIPUS
Stab upon stab!
wound upon wounding!

CHORUS
Killer!

OEDIPUS
I killed him, yes, but can plead . .

CHORUS
What can you... ?

OEDIPUS
Justice.

CHORUS
How?
120 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

Let me tell you:

The man that I murdered would have killed me.
By law I am innocent, void of all malice.
[End of Choral Dialogue. THESEUS and his retinue are
seen approaching. The CHORUS turns in his direction]

CHORUS

But here comes our king, Theseus son of Aegeus,

bent upon your bidding.
[Enter THESEUS with soldiers and attendants. He stands
gazing at OEDIPUS]

THESEUS
That story noised abroad so often in the past,
the bloody butchering of your sight,
warned me it was you, Son of Laius,
And now, hastened here by rumors,
I can see it is.-
Your clothes, your mutilated face,
assure me of your name.
And I would gently ask you, tortured Oedipus,
what favor you would have of me or Athens:
You and that sad companion by your side?
Tell me.
For no tale of yours however shocking
could make me turn away.
I was a child of exile too,
fighting for my life in foreign lands—
and none so dangerously.
So never could I turn my back on some poor exile
such as you are now
and leave him to his fate.
For I know too well that I am only man.
The portion of your days today
could be no less than mine tomorrow.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 121
OEDIPUS
Theseus, in so short a speech
all your birth’s declared,
and my reply can be as brief.
My name, my father and my country,
you’ve touched on all correctly.
There’s nothing left for me to say
but tell you my desire,
and all my tale is told.

THESEUS
I wait to hear it. Please proceed to tell.

OEDIPUS
I come with a gift: this my battered body.
No priceless vision, no,
But the price of it is better than of beauty.

THESEUS
What makes it precious, this gift you bring?

OEDIPUS
In time you’ll know. Not now perhaps.

THESEUS

And when will that time of grace be known?

OEDIPUS

When I am dead and you have raised my tomb.

THESEUS
Life’s last rites, you ask for that,
with all before made nothing of, forgotten!
122 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS
Yes, for in that wish the rest is harvested.

THESEUS

You ask a little favor, then, compressing éverything?

OEDIPUS
Perhaps, but not so little—believe me—not so little.

THESEUS

Does it, then, concern your sons and me?

OEDIPUS .
It does, my king, they are intent to carry me off to
Thebes.

THESEUS
Which ought to please you, surely, more than banishment?

OEDIPUS
No. For when I wanted that they would not have it.

THESEUS

This is foolishness to sulk in time of trouble.

OEDIPUS
Wait till you’ve heard me out before you scold.

THESEUS
Proceed. I have no right to judge before I know.

OEDIPUS

I am the victim, Theseus, of repeated and appalling

wrong.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 123
THESEUS
You mean the family curse that haunts your line?

OEDIPUS
No. That already rings in Greece’s ears.

THESEUS
But what could be worse than that—
the worst wretchedness of all?

OEDIPUS
Just this:
I am driven from my native land by my own flesh and
blood.
I can return no more. I am a parricide.

THESEUS
What, ostracized and summoned home in one?

OEDIPUS
The god has spoken. His warning makes them want me
there.

THESEUS
And what is the warning threatened by the oracle?

OEDIPUS
A mortal wound dealt on this very field of battle.

THESEUS

This field of battle? But Athens and Thebes are not at

war.
124 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

Good son of Aegeus, gentle son,

only to the gods is given not to age or die,
All else disrupts through all disposing time.
Earth ebbs in strength, the body ebbs in power.
Faith dies and faithlessness is born.
No constant friendship breathes
between man and man, or city and a city.
Soon or late, the sweet will sour,
the sour will sweet to love again.
Does fair weather hold between this Thebes and you?
Then one day shall ever teeming time
hatch nights on teeming days,
Wherein this pledge, this harmony, this hour
will break upon a spear,
slashed down for a useless word.
Then shall my sleeping corpse,
cold in sepulcher,
warm itself with draughts of their perfervid blood,
If Zeus is Zeus and truth be truth
from Zeus’s son Apollo.
But I’m not one to bawl away a mystery,
so let me stop where I began:
Take care to keep your word with me,
then never shall you say of Oedipus
you gave him sanctuary without reward;
Or, if you do, all heaven is a fraud.

CHORUS
Sire, from the first this man has sworn
he had the power to benefact our land.

THESEUS
How could we spurn the overtures of such a fnend,
who not only nghtly claims the hospitality
of Thebes an allied city,
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 125
But comes appealing to our goddesses
and pays no little tribute to our State and me?
I shall reverence and not repudiate his gift
and grant him all the rights of citizen.
But more: if it please our guest to sojourn here,
I place him in your care.
yes Oedipus—unless you’d rather come with me—
the choice is yours,
your every wish is mine.

OEDIPUS
Great Zeus, be gentle to such gentleness!

THESEUS
Well, what is your wish? Will you come with me?

OEDIPUS
If only that were fitting, but this very place is where I
must...

THESEUS
Must what? I shail not hinder you.

OEDIPUS
. . . triumph over those who banished me.

THESEUS

And as you promised, shower blessings on us with your

presence?

OEDIPUS

Only if you keep your word to me.

THESEUS
Never doubt it. I am not one to play you false.
126 SOPHOCLES
OEDIPUS
And I’ll not make you swear it like a criminal.

THESEUS
An oath would be no surer than my word:

OEDIPUS
But how will you proceed if...

THESEUS
What now disturbs you?

OEDIPUS

Men will come.

THESEUS
And mine will see to them.

OEDIPUS

But if you leave me. .

THESEUS
You need not tell me what to do.

OEDIPUS
The fear in my heart compels me.

THESEUS
And there is no fear in mine.

OEDIPUS
But the threats ... you do not know. .
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 127
THESEUS
I know only this:
That no one is going to kidnap you against my will.
Often bluff and bluster, threat and counterthreat
can bully reason for a time,
But when the mind reseats itself
disquiet vanishes.
These people who have shouted lustily
for your abduction,
Will, I trust, run into a long and ruffled passage here.
Have confidence!
Apart from all my promises, has not Apollo
charge of you within this hallowed ground?
And when I’m gone,
my name’s enough to keep you sound.
[THESEUS leaves with his retinue. The CHORUS regroups
and faces the audience to deliver a eulogy on Colonus and
Athens]

CHORAL ODE

Strophe I
Stranger, here
Is the land of the horse
Earth’s fairest home
This silver hill Colonus.
Here the nightingale
Spills perennial sound
Lucent through the evergreen.
Here the wine-deep ivies creep
Through the god’s untrodden bower
Heavy with the laurel berry.
128 SOPHOCLES
Here there is a sunless quiet
Riven by no storm.
Here the corybantic foot
Of Bacchus beats
Tossing with the nymphs who nursed him.

Antistrophe I
The narcissus
That drinks sky’s dew
Here lifts its day—
By-day-born eye:
The diadem that crowns
The curls of ancient goddesses.
The crocus casts his saffron glance
And unparched Cephisus all day
Wanders out from sleepless springs
Fingering his crystal way
Out among the gentle breasts
Of hills and dales
Swelling with fecundity.
Not seldom here the Muses sing
And Aphrodite rides with golden rein.

Strophe IT
Not in Asia
Never in Pelops
(Great Dorian island)
Was heard the like of what I sing:
A tree indomitable, self-engendered,
Challenge to the spears of armies
Lush in Athens
Sap of striplings—
Olive, the moon-green olive.
No youth in lustihood
Shall ravish her
Nor calculating age.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 129
The sleepless eye of Zeus is on her
Athena’s gaze cerulean.

Antistrophe II
Add praise on praise:
Our mother city’s
Prize and god-gift:
Prowess in horses, prowess in stallions
Prowess at sea. You Poseidon
Son of Cronus, sat her high,
Rode her down
These roads displaying
How the bit and bridle
Breaks the stamping charger
How the oarblade
Sleekly stroking
Cuts the brine behind
The hundred-footed Nereids.

SECOND EPISODE
[ANTIGONE’S attention is riveted by the approach of an
old man hurrying toward them with a squad of soldiers}

ANTIGONE
Look! You much praised land, the hour has come
for you to make your words shine forth with deeds.

OEDIPUS
[alarmed]
Child, what now?

ANTIGONE
Creon is coming ... And, Father, not alone.
130 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS

You generous counselors, now is the time

to prove the limits of your sanctuary.

CHORUS

Take heart! Proof you'll have.

Though we be old, our country’s strength is young.
[CREON arrives at the head of his escort of guards]

CREON
Sirs, you worthy men of Attica,
I see some apprehension in your eyes at my approach.
Do not recoil. Do not be ready with abuse.
I have not come to do you harm—
an old man against a mighty state,
mighty as ever there was in Greece.
My mission is to plead with that old man
to return with me to Theban territory.
I am no private emissary—ah no!—
but a nation’s full ambassador.
It was my lot as this man’s relative
to bear the crushing load of his estate
as no man else in Thebes.
{He turns toward OEDIPUS]

Do you hear me, Oedipus?

Come home you woebegotten man!
Everyone in. Thebes is rightly calling for you;
I most of all, yes, I,
who’d be a brute indeed
not to weep to see an old man suffer so:
drifting endlessly, unknown, a vagabond,
a girl his single prop—and she poor thwarted creature
Fallen lower than I’d ever dream she’d fall,
dragging out her gloomy squalid life of caring for you:
well ripe for weddings but unwed and waiting,
ah! for some thick-fisted yokel’s snatch.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 131
A disgrace? Indeed, we are all disgraced.
I point at you and me and all of Thebes.
Who can cover up what so emblazons forth?
You can at last. Yes, Oedipus, you can hide it now.
By all our fathers’ gods, consent to come back home,
your own ancestral city-
Say farewell to Athens, kind as she has been.
Home comes first,
the place of your long-gone cradlehood.

OEDIPUS.
You brazen hypocrite! You’d stop at nothing.
Twisting every righteous motive to your ends!
You'd trap me, would you, in your cruel coils a second
time?
Once in agony I turned against myself
and cried aloud for banishment.
Then it did not fit your pleasure, did it,
to fit yourself to mine?
But when my overbrimming passion had gone down
and home’s four walls were sweet,
Then you had me routed out and cast away.
Fine affection that for family ties!

And now again, the moment you perceive

me being welcomed by this kindly city and her sons,
you want to wrench me away,
your barbed designs wrapped up in words of wool.
Who ever heard of friendliness by force?
You're like a man who spurns to grant a favor when he’s
asked,
gives nothing, will not lift a finger for you,
Then when your heart’s desire has passed,
wants to push that very grace upon you,
now a grace no longer.
Rather barren of delight that gift, do you not think?
Yet that precisely is the gift you proffer me,
so fair in form, so hollow in reality.
 132 SOPHOCLES
\!
Therefore, let me shout your falsehood out to these
and let them gaze at your duplicity.
You come to fetch me—home? Ah no!
You come to plant me on your doorstep,
A talisman to ward away the onslaughts Attica will
launch.
That wish you’ll never have, but this you will:
my curse forever on your land,
And for my sons this sole realm and heritage—
the right, and room enough, to die.
Ha! I’d say my forecast for the fate of Thebes
was more informed than yours. Oh much!
So much the more reliable!
It stems from Zeus and from Apollo.
Yours is from a counterfeiting tongue,
double-edged and whetted to deceit.
But yours, you'll find, will reap more suffering than
success.
However, since I cannot make you see this—go!
And leave us here to lead a life of hardship as we may.
Hardship to those resigned is no dismay.

CREON
A splendid tirade!
But whom do you think it hurts, you or me?

OEDIPUS
What care I? So long as you fail as thoroughly
to dupe these people here as you’ve duped me.

CREON
Silly obdurate man, whom time has not made wise!
Must you bring even dotage to disgrace?

OEDIPUS |
_ Such a tricky tongue! I never knew an honest man
who could dissertate and twist speech so.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 133

CREON
Dissertation is quite different from frothing at the mouth.

OEDIPUS
You, of course, can dissertate and hit the bull’s-eye
straight.

CREON
Not exactly straight—with such a crooked target.

OEDIPUS
Be off with you! I speak for all these people here.
I do not want you prowling round my haven.

CREON
Then I appeal to them, these people, not to you.
You Ill deal with once I’ve got you in my clutches.

OEDIPUS
Got me in your clutches, eh?
With these my friends all looking on?

CREON
Just wait! I know another way to make you wince.

OEDIPUS
Another way? Id like to see exactly how.

CREON
Certainly! You have two daughters.
One I’ve already seized. The other will quickly follow.

OEDIPUS
Oh no!
134 SOPHOCLES

CREON
Oh yes! And you’ll soon have more to groan about.

OEDIPUS
You’ve got my child?

CREON

And soon will have the other.

OEDIPUS
Friends, my friends, is there nothing you can do?
You must not fail me now. Hound this horrible man
away.

CHORUS
Sir, be off with you! What you have done
and what you mean to do is criminal.

CREON
[to his guards}
Grab the girl. It’s time to act.
Drag her off by force if she won’t come.
[The guards advance on ANTIGONE]

ANTIGONE
Help! Is there no escape?
You gods! You men!

CHORUS
What are you doing, sirrah?

CREON
I shan’t touch your man, but she is mine.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 135

OEDIPUS
Elders, help!

CHORUS
Sir, you have no right.

CREON
I have indeed a right.

CHORUS
What right?

CREON
To take what’s mine.

OEDIPUS
Men of Athens, help!
[CREON lays hands on ANTIGONE]

THIRD CHORAL DIALOGUE

[The following lines form a strophe in the Greek which :
is answered later by an antistrophe when CREON attacks
OEDIPUS himself. This short choral interlude serves both
to sustain the excitement and yet to relieve the tension.|

Strophe

CHORUS
[approaching menacingly|
How dare you, Stranger!
Unhand her or you run the danger
of our attack.
136 SOPHOCLES

CREON
Stand back!

CHORUS
Not until you yield.

CREON
Then it’s Thebes and Athens
on the battlefield.

OEDIPUS
Ah! My prophecy come true!

CHORUS
Let loose the girl, or you . .

CREON
Mind your own authority.

CHORUS
I'm telling you to set her free.

CREON
And I’m telling you to unbar my way.

CHORUS
Colonians, to the rescue! Help!
The State manhandled, the State itself at bay.

ANTIGONE
Friends! Friends! They’re dragging me away.
[End of strophe and of first part of Third Choral
Dialogue|
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 137,
OEDIPUS
Antigone, where are you?

ANTIGONE
They’re dragging me away.

OEDIPUS
Hold on to my hand, child!

ANTIGONE
I haven’t the strength.

CREON

[to his guards}

Get on with her!

OEDIPUS

This is the end of me.

[The guards hustle ANTIGONE away. CREON pauses, then
turns to OEDIPUS with a sneer]

CREON

At least you won’t go hobbling through your life

with those two little crutches any more!
If that’s the kind of triumph you want,
trampling over friends and fatherland—
those whose mandate I, as king,
am trying to carry out—
Then have that triumph.
In time I think you’ll learn
you are your own worst enemy, before and now:
flying into tantrums with your friends—
those damnable tempers that have ruined you.
138 SOPHOCLES

[CREON begins to walk away, but realizes his men have

gone off with ANTIGONE and he is now on his own, with
his way blocked by the Athenian Elders]

CHORUS
Hold there, Stranger!

CREON
Don’t dare touch me!

CHORUS
Stay where you are till you restore those girls.

CREON
[looking around and catching sight of OEDIPUS, who is
backing into the grove]
In that case T’ll present my city with an even greater
prize
worth more than those two women.

[He rounds on the retreating OEDIPUS|

CHORUS

Whatever next?

CREON
Him. He’s mine.

CHORUS
Braggart! You wouldn’t dare.

CREON
Watch me do it!
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 139

CHORUS
Not if our sovereign king can stop you.

OEDIPUS
Villain, are you so far gone you’d even lay a hand on
me?

CREON
Hold your tongue!

OEDIPUS
That I will not.
If the hallowed spirits of this place allow,
let me give vent to one more curse.
You scum! My devastated eyes, blank so long,
saw through the eyes of this helpless girl
and now you’ve plucked her from me.
So, may Helios, all-seeing god of sun,
visit you and all your race
with such dotage and decay as matches mine.

CREON

Do you hear him, men of Athens?

OEDIPUS

They hear all right. They mark you and me:

You the bully who use sheer force,
And I who can only counter with a curse.

CREON

[advancing on OEDIPUS]
Pll stand no more of this.
Old and single-handed though I am,
Ili take this man by the strength of my right arm.
140 SOPHOCLES

[CREON lays hands on OEDIPUS and attempts to drag him

away|

Antistrophe
[matching the Strophe on page 135 and completing the
Third Choral Dialogue}

OEDIPUS

You'll rue it.

CHORUS

Rash man!
What makes you think that you can do it?

CREON
I can.

CHORUS
Then is Athens city most degenerate.

CREON
Where right is might the little beat the great.

OEDIPUS
Hear him?

CHORUS
Rant—Zeus knows!

CREON
Perhaps Zeus knows.
You don’t and can’t.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 141
CHORUS
Unbridled insolence!

CREON
Then you’ll have to bear unbridled insolence.

CHORUS
Rally, people! Rulers, rally!
To the rescue—hurry,
Before these ruffians cross our boundary.
[THESEUS arrives at the head of a troop of men. End of
antistrophe and of Third Choral Dialogue|

THESEUS
What’s all this clamor? What’s going on?
Why was I called away by panic cries
from Poseidon’s altar, great sea-god of Colonus?
Explain it all,
for I’ve hurried here much too quick for comfort.

OEDIPUS
Ah! welcome, gentle voice!
I am worsted by a brigand.

THESEUS
Worsted? How? Please tell me.

OEDIPUS

Creon here, this creature that you see,

has kidnapped my two children,
my last and darling pair.

THESEUS
Is this true?
142 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS
As I tell it: the most foul truth.

THESEUS
[to his men]
Quick, one of you to the altar place.
Break up the concourse at the sacrifice
and have the people gallop foot and horse
to the meeting of the roads
before the women pass:
Quick, off with you!
Before this foreign bully makes a fool of me by force.
[A solider is dispatched. THESEUS turns to CREON]
As for him, '
if I should let my anger have full sway
to deal with him as he deserves,
he’d not leave my hands without a smart.
We will, however, judge him by the very laws
to which he himself appeals.
[Pointing at CREON]
You, you shall not leave this country, sir,
until those girls are back and stand before my eyes.
You insult us;
you insult your very race and native land.
You push your way within this realm
where right is loved and law is paramount,
and then proceed to sweep aside authority,
pillaging and taking prisoners at your will
as if you thought my city was bereft of men
or manned by slaves
and I a nobody.
Well, it was not Thebes that brought you up to steal.
She has no predilection for a rascal brood.
Scant praise you’d have from her
if she found you plundering me,
plundering the gods,
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 143
carrying off by force
poor wretched victims come to plead.
Never could I see seize and snatch,
entering territory of yours— :
not even if I had a more than royal right—
unless whoever governed gave me leave for it.
I should know how a guest behaves on foreign soil.
But you, you dishonor your own city,
so undeserving of disgrace.
Length of days has made you ripe in age
but far from ripe in reason.
I have said it once, and I say it once again:
restore those girls forthwith
or you'll find your visit here prolonged by force—
not quite according to your will.
This is no idle talk. I mean it every syllable.

CHORUS

Stranger, see what you’ve brought upon yourself!

By birth and race you ought to know much better.

CREON

Theseus son of Aegeus,

I never thought your city was unmanned by men
or drifting rudderless, as you suggest.
That never prompted what I did.
No, I merely took for granted
that your people here
were never so devoted to my family
as to harbor one of them against my will
and welcome here
a parricide,
a tainted man,
a man discovered—oh the filth of it!—
both bridegroom and his own bride’s son.
I took for granted that your famous Council
on Ares’ hill where Justice sits,
would never in its wisdom let such reprobates
144 SOPHOCLES

roam at large within your land.

Convinced of this, I hunted down my prize.
And even then I might have let him go
had he not heaped on me and all my clan
the foulest imprecations.
I’ve stomached quite enough, I think,
to justify reprisals.
Rage, remember, knows no age till death.
Nothing hurts the dead.
Well, do what you will.
Though right is on my side,
what headway can I make alone?
I may be old but I shall strain
to counter every plan with counterplan.

OEDIPUS

Arrant monster!
On whom do you think these insults fall—
on my old head or yours?
Murder, incest, deeds of horror,
you spew the lot at me:
and all the lot I bore in misery,
not through any choice of mine
but through some scheme of heaven,
long incensed, it seems,
against some misdeed of our line.
Examine me apart from this
and you will find no flaw to cavil at
that might have drawn me so to floor
my family and myself.
For tell me this:
Suppose my father by some oracle was doomed to die
by his own son’s hand,
could you justly put the blame on me—
a babe unborn,
not yet begotten by a father,
not yet engendered in a mother’s womb?
And if when born—as born I was to tragedy—
I met my father in a fight and killed him,
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 145
ignorant of what I did, to whom I did it,
can you still condemn an unwilled act?
And my mother, your own sister, wretched man...
since you’re low enough to drag her in
and force me to allude to it, I shall.
Pil not keep silent when your own lewd mouth
has broken all the bonds of reticence. . . .
My mother, yes she was my mother—what a fate!
I did not know. She did not know.
And to her shame she gave me children,
children to the son whom she herself had given.
One thing I know:
you vituperate by choice, both her and me,
when not by choice I wedded her,
and not by choice am speaking now.
Neither in this marriage then
shall I be called to blame,
nor in the way my father died—
which you keep casting in my teeth.
Let me ask you this, one simple question:
If at this moment someone
should step up to murder you,
would you, godly creature that you are,
stop and say, “Excuse me, sir, are you my father?”
Or would you deal with him there and then?
Ah! You love your life enough, I think,
to turn on him,
not look around to find a warrant first.
That precisely was the plight that heaven put me in.
My father’s very soul, come back, would not say no.
But you, the unscrupulous wretch you are,
A man convinced that everything he says is fit to hear,
who bawls out every secret thing,
You heap your slanders on me publicly,
meanwhile making sure to bow and scrape
before the name of Theseus, with flattery
and compliments on how the state of Athens runs.
Very well, extoll them to the skies but don’t forget,
146 , SOPHOCLES
if there’s any state that knows what true religion is,
that state is this.
And yet it was here you tried to wrest
a pleading worshipper away, an old man too,
and have taken captive both my daughters.
Therefore I rest my case before these goddesses,
lay siege to them in prayer,
assail them for their help
to fight for me, and manifest to you
the caliber of men that guard this realm.

CHORUS

Sire, this stranger is an upright man:

A woefully unlucky man and worthy of our aid.

THESEUS
Enough of talk!
The criminals are in full flight
while we stand still discussing it.

CREON
I am helpless then. What is it I must do?

THESEUS

My pleasure is
that you yourself shall show the way
and I shall escort you
to where the two missing girls are hidden.
But if your men have already hustled them away
we shall spare ourselves the trouble
and others will give chase and hunt your soldiers down,
and none shall escape to thank their gods at home.
All right, lead off! And bear in mind,
the looter has been looted,
the trapper’s in the trap,
and stolen goods soon spoil.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 147
Expect no help from your accomplice either.
Oh yes, I’m well aware
you did not push yourself
to this pinnacle of daring,
this reckless outrage,
without some help or backing.
And I must look to it,
not jeopardize my city for a single man,
Does this make sense?
Or do my warnings seem to you as vain
as any scruples when you hatched your plan?

CREON
I shall not argue with you on your own terrain.
But once at home, I’ll have my inspirations too.

THESEUS

Threaten away, but keep moving please.

Oedipus, stay here in peace.
Rest happy in the pledge I give:
I'll have your daughters back, or I’ll not live.

OEDIPUS

Bless you, Theseus, for your nobility;

bless you for your loving care of me.
[CREON is marched off by THESEUS and his men]

SECOND CHORAL ODE

[In a galloping meter, the Elders excitedly follow the chase
in imagination, alluding to some of the most religiously
evocative centers dear to Athens, notably Apollo’s oracle
at Delphi and Demeter’s mystery-fraught shrine by the sea
at Eleusis. They also appeal to Pallas Athena, patroness
of Athens, to Poseidon, patron of horses and ships, to
148 SOPHOCLES

Apollo the supreme archer, and to his sister Artemis, the

supreme huntress.|

Strophe I
Oh to be there
when the brigands at bay
Turn to the clash
of bronze on bronze
Down by the Pythian shore
Or the flaring sands
of Eleusis where
The Queens of the Night
and their honey-voiced hymners
Solemnly seal
in tongues of gola
The rites that bring blessings to man.
Ah! I think Theseus
springs to the fight
With presage of victory
strong in his shout
Soon to make safe
two sisterly captives
Still in our land.

Antistrophe I
Or perhaps galloping
onward they go
To the western plains
past rocky Oéa’s
Glens and snowblanched sides.
Neck and neck in the race
chariots flying
Till Creon is worsted
by terrible Ares
And by Theseus’
stalwart men.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 149
Ah, flash of the harness,
toss of the reins!
Thunder of chargers,
body of horsemen
Dear to Athena,
Queen of the horse,
Dear to Poseidon Ocean embracer
fond son of Rhea.

Strophe I
The tussle is on
Or just to begin
A beautiful hope
tells us that soon
The two young women
are here returned,
Cornered so cruelly
by an uncle so cruel.
Victory! Victory!
Zeus win the day!
Success in the struggle
is what I foretell.
Oh that my eyes—
high over the battle—
Were the eyes of a dove
that sails down the storm
And lifts to the passing cloud.

Antistrophe II
All-seeing Zeus,
all-ruling all,
Let this country’s
guardians conquer.
Let them capture
quarry and prize.
Grant, oh grant it!
Your daughter too,
 150 SOPHOCLES

Pallas Athena,
Our Lady stern.
Grant it Apollo!
Hunter who
Beside his sister
Artemis chases
The light-footed moon-speckled
deer. Oh come!
Twin allies of this land and people.
_ [As the strains of the Choral Ode die away, a member of
the CHORUS hurries back with a report]

THIRD EPISODE
CHORUS MEMBER

Wanderer, look!
The forecast of our watchers was not false,
for I see the girls returning under escort.

OEDIPUS
Where, where? What are you saying? .. .
[ANTIGONE and ISMENE are led in by THESEUS and his
soldiers. ANTIGONE runs forward]

ANTIGONE

Father, Father!
I wish some god could give you eyes to see
this princely man who has brought us back to you.

OEDIPUS
My child—it’s you? Ah, both of you!
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 15]
ANTIGONE
Both of us, saved by his strong arm:
by Theseus and his gallant men.

OEDIPUS
Come to me, dear girls.
Let your father press you to his embrace—
redeemed beyond all hope.

ANTIGONE
Beyond all hope! We could not ask for more.

OEDIPUS
But where—where are you?

ANTIGONE
Both here—hand in hand.

OEDIPUS
My own sweet darlings!

ANTIGONE
A father’s favorites!

OEDIPUS
Dear props of my life!

ANTIGONE
And partners in pain.

OEDIPUS
My precious ones—ah, mine again!
If now I died they would not say
he was altogether damned:
he had his daughters with him in the end.
152 SOPHOCLES

Press closer to me, each of you,

don’t let your father go.
Rest there from your late roaming
so cruel and so forlorn
and tell me in a word what happened:
young girls need no speeches.

ANTIGONE

Father, our rescuer is here.

You should learn it all from him.
The credit is his.
There—my speech was short!

OEDIPUS
[turning to where he thinks THESEUS is]
Sir, forgive me!
I cannot welcome them enough.
My children were lost. Now they are found.
And you are the one who brings this joy to me:
You rescued them, no man else besides.
The gods reward you far beyond my dreams:
reward-you and this blessed land
where more than any other place on earth,
among your people, I have found
Reverence and honesty and lips that cannot lie.
These things I recognize and pay my homage to.
All that I have, I have through you and no man else.
Therefore, my king, give me your hand and let me touch
it.
And let me put a kiss upon your cheek.
[He takes a step toward THESEUS, then checks himself]
What am I saying?
What is this invitation that I make
to handle me a man of sorrows, a temple of pollution?
No, no! Never let it be; even if you would!
Let my sufferings lodge with those tried souls
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 153
who have drunk with me the bitter cup.
I salute you from afar.
Keep me always in your gentle care,
as until this hour you have.

THESEUS
No, Oedipus, this is nothing strange:
Your shower of words, your open heart, your joy.
Of course you had to greet your children first.
How could that fill me with dismay?
Besides, I’d rather furbish life with sparkling deeds than
words,
as I have proved to you, good reverend sir,
making perfect everything I pledged:
presenting you with daughters both redeemed,
rescued from all menaces.
As to the manner of my victory,
why should I enlarge on that?
They will tell you everything.
Meanwhile, some late news has come my way
and I should like your thoughts on it.
It hardly sounds to me important,
and yet it puzzles me.
There’s nothing that a wise man should dismiss.

OEDIPUS

What is it, son of Aegeus?

No news of anything has come to us.

THESEUS

They say a man, not from Thebes

and yet a relative of yours,
has unexpectedly appeared;
is prone in prayer before Poseidon’s altar,
Where I was worshiping before I started here.
154 SOPHOCLES

OEDIPUS
A man from where?
And what is his petition?

THESEUS
I only know he wants a word with you,
which will not cost you much.

OEDIPUS
Only a word, yet prostrate in petition?

THESEUS
Yes, he only wants to speak with you, they say,
then go his way in peace.

OEDIPUS
Who can this be, praying at the shrine?

THESEUS

Think of Argos, have you any kinsman there

who might ask a like request?

OEDIPUS
[alarmed]
Dear friend, do not go on!

THESEUS
Why? What’s the matter now?

OEDIPUS

Don’t ask.

THESEUS
Don’t ask you what? Explain.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 155

OEDIPUS
Argos, you said. I know now who it is.

THESEUS
Someone I must hold at bay?

OEDIPUS
Sire, my son, my own detested son.
There’s no man’s voice I find so poisonous.

THESEUS
Give him a hearing at least.
If you don’t like what he asks, you needn’t grant it.
Where’s the pain in that?

OEDIPUS

Hate, my king! Though he is my son.

Do not press me to give way.

THESEUS

I think you must. The man has come to plead.

You must not fail in reverence to the god.

ANTIGONE

Father, listen to me, young though I am.

Let the king’s desire be honored
and his conscience satisfied
to give the gods their due.
And for our sakes too, let our brother come.
After all, whatever pain his words may give,
he cannot wrench your will away.
And the sound of his voice—what damage can that do?
Besides, it’s talk that best betrays the foul design.
You are his father,
And even if his conduct plumbed the depths of
156 SOPHOCLES

wickedness,
that would never make it right for you, dear Father,
to pay him back in kind.
So let him come!
Many a man is pricked to anger by a renegade son
but yielding to advice more reasonable and loving,
is coaxed from harshness back to gentleness.
Cast your thoughts on what has been,
not what is now:
All that your own father and mother caused you to
endure.
Ponder this, and the lesson that it teaches:
catastrophic anger brings catastrophe.
Think no further
than those two sightless sockets once your eyes.
Come, give way to us!
We should not have to plead for a cause so fair.
Can one who has just felt mercy’s touch
Then turn his back, not give as much?

OEDIPUS

Daughter, a hard-won joy you wring from me.

Well, have it as you wish.
[He turns to THESEUS]

But, oh my friend, that man—if he must come—

never let him put me in his power.

THESEUS.

Enough! I’ve told you once, old man,

no need to ask again;
nor shall I brag. But be sure of this:
Your life is safe while any god saves mine.
[THESEUS departs with some of his soldiers, leaving a con-
tingent to guard OEDIPUS]
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 157
THIRD CHORAL ODE
[The Elders, shaken by the wrangling and frustrations of
two old men, dwell on the tragedy of life and the hope-
lessness of old age. The heavy trochaic and iambic beat
measures out the sadness. |

Strophe I
Where is the man who wants
More length of days?
Oh cry it out.
There is a fool
His dawdling years
Are loaded down
His joys are flown
His extra time but trickles on
He awaits the Comforter
Who comes to all.
No wedding march
No dancing song:
A sudden vista down stark avenues
To Hades realms,
Then death at last.

Antistrophe I
Not to be born has no compare
But if you are
Then hurry hence
For after that there is no better blessing.
When one has watched gay youth
Pack up his gallant gear
Vexations crowd without
And worries crowd within:
Envy, discord, struggles,
Shambles after battles
Till at last he too must have his turn
Of age, discredited and doddering:
158 SOPHOCLES

Disaffected and deserted age

Confined with crabbedness
And every dismal thing.

Epode
So are we senile—he and I:
Lashed from the north by wintry waves
Like some spume-driven cape on every. side
Lashed by our agonies those constant waves
Breaking in from the setting sun
Breaking in from the dawn
Breaking in from the glare of noon
Breaking in from Polar gloom.

FOURTH EPISODE

ANTIGONE
Father, I think I see our visitor approach.
He is alone. Tears are streaming from his eyes.

OEDIPUS
And who is he?

ANTIGONE

Exactly whom we thought.

It’s Polyneices who has come.
[POLYNEICES enters, advances, and stares aghast at his
father and sisters]

POLYNEICES

Oh my sisters, I’m at a loss!

Shall I pour out tears for my own calamities
or for this sorry sight—my decrepit father?
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 159
Just look at him:
jettisoned with two poor girls
in an alien land;
arrayed in such unkempt and antique filth
his own antiquity corrodes with it:
his hair above his sightless eyes
straggling out upon the breeze;
and matching this, his beggars scrip
with pittance for his wasted belly.
Ah, too late! I see it all too late.
I pronounce that this neglect of you
brands me as the most delinquent thing on earth.
Yes, let me be the first to say it.
But, Father,
Zeus himself sits mercy by his throne,
sO may you seat her near you too.
We can mend mistakes and not make more.
[He pauses anxiously]

You are silent.

Say something, Father, please.
Don’t turn away from me.
Have you no reply?
Will you send me off in mute contempt?
Not even tell me what upsets you so?
[He pauses again}

You his daughters, my own sisters, please,

try to move him from this dumb rigidity.
I must not be dismissed in shame
without a word of hope
from this blessed seat of appeal—
the god’s own sanctuary.

[OEDIPUS turns his back. ANTIGONE steps toward POLY-

NEICES and touches his arm]
160 SOPHOCLES
ANTIGONE

Tell him yourself, my stricken brother,

why it is you came. |
Sometimes as words begin to flow,
here they strike a spark of joy,
there they fan up anger or bring a touch of tenderness,
And anyhow, to the tongue-tied somehow give a tongue.

POLYNEICES

Then Ill speak out, for you advise me well.

But first let me make it plain,
the god I’ve called on for his help
is that very ocean god, Poseidon,
from whose suppliant shrine this country’s king
has just now raised me up and let me come
with safe conduct to confer with you.
Therefore I would ask you gentlemen,
my sisters here, and you my father,
to respect my rights in this.
And now Ill tell you, Father, why I came.
I am driven out, banished from my native land
because as eldest son
I claimed my sovereign birthright to your throne.
But Eteocles my younger brother has cast me out:
not by making good his claims,
nor by proof of excellence,
but by cajoling the city to his side.
It all seems part of the curse that dogs your line,
and this the various oracles confirm.
So I went to Argos in the land of Doria,
There took to wife the daughter of the king, Adrastus,
and made a league
of all the famous fighters of the Peloponnese
to raise a seven-headed army aimed at Thebes
and oust those from the realm who ousted me,
or die in the attempt—die gloriously.
Well then, what is my point in coming here?
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 161
To petition, Father:
to lay our supplications at your feet,
mine and all my allies,
Who at this moment raise the standard of their seven
spears
and ring their seven armies round the plain of Thebes.
There’s Amphiaraus, the hurricane spearsman,
first at the spear, first at the reading of riddles.
Then the son of Oeneus: Tydeus of Aetolia.
Third comes Eteoclus, native of Argos.
Fourth, Hippomedon, sent by his father Talaus.
Fifthly Capaneus, swearing to mow down Thebes with
fire.
Sixthly Parthenopaeus, born in Arcadia, son of Atalanta,
that ferocious virgin who finally wedded
and became the mother of this stalwart boy.
And lastly, I, your son,
or if not your son
but the child of some appalling fate,
then son at least in name.
I am the one who puts this fearless Argos in the field
against the state of Thebes.
Father, will you listen to us, to all of us:
we beg you for your daughters’ and your own life’s
sake.
Ease the harshness of your rage against me now:
I who sally out to give this wretched brother
chastisement,
the one who thrust me out and robbed me of my
home.
If there’s any truth in prophecy,
the oracles have said
that victory lies with those
who win you to their side.
So listen, Father,
if you love our land
with its springing fountains,
its Theban deities.
Be persuaded by my prayers.
162 SOPHOCLES

We are exiles, you and I,

both of us are beggars.
We have to fawn on others for a home, you and I,
both share a single destiny.
And all the time
this creature kings it in our house.
Insufferable!
He ridicules us from his cushioned pride.
If you will only bless my scheme, _
I’ll make short shrift of him and scatter him.
I'll bring you home again and re-establish you,
and I shall be established too.
I'll make good this boast, if you make one with me.
I shall not live, if you’ll not now agree.

CHORUS

Oedipus, for Theseus’ sake who sent him here,

you must not let him go without some reasonable
reply.

OEDIPUS
You trustees of this realm,
since Theseus sent him here
and asked me to reply, I will.
Nothing less would let him hear my voice.
But now he shall be graced with it
in accents that will bring him little joy.
{He turns toward POLYNEICES]
Liar!
When you held the scepter and the throne
which your brother at the moment holds in Thebes,
you drove me out,
drove this your father out,
displaced me from my city.
You are the reason for these rags—
rags that make you cry to see,
now that you have reached rock bottom too.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 163
The season for condolences is past.
What I must bear must last as long as life,
last in my thoughts of you as my destroyer.
Oh yes, it’s you that dragged me down!
You expelled me, you arranged
that I should beg my daily bread.
But for my two girls
I should not even be alive if left to you.
It’s they who tend me, they preserve me.
They are the ones who play a man’s and not a woman’s
part.
But you, you and your brother—bastards— E
are no sons of mine.

The eye of Fate is on you now.

Her glance is mild to what it soon shall be
if once your armies march on Thebes.
Never shall you topple down that city.
Instead, you’ll trip up headlong into blood,
your brother too,
spattering each other.
Long ago I cursed you both,
and now once more I summon up those curses,
let them battle for me.
Let them teach you reverence
for those that gave you birth.
Let them teach you what contempt is worth
of an eyeless Father
who had such worthless sons.

My daughters did not treat me so.

Therefore, if Justice is still seated
side by side with Zeus
in ancient and eternal sway,
I consign to perdition
your sanctimonious supplications
and your precious throne.
So, leave my sight. Get gone and die:
you trash—no son of mine.
164 SOPHOCLES

Die,
with these my curses
ringing in your ears:
Never to flatten your motherland beneath your spear,
Never to set foot again in Argive’s vales,
Instead you die,
die by a brother’s blow
and make him dead by yours
who drove you out.
That’s my prayer for you.
I summon the pitchy gloom of Tartarus
to gulp you down
to a new paternal home.
I summon the holy spirits of this. place.
I summon Ares the Destroyer,
who whirled you into hatred and collision.
With these imprecations in your ears, get out.
Go publish them in Thebes.
Go tell your bellicose and trusty champions
the will and testament
That Oedipus bequeaths to his two sons.

CHORUS

Polyneices,
Never have your missions boded peacc,
nor do they now.
Go as quickly as you can.

POLYNEICES

How pitiful!
My pointless journey here!
My hopes in ruins!
My comrades all betrayed!
What anend |
to our proud marching out from Argos town!
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 165
And none of this dare I whisper to my allies
to try to turn them back.
I cannot halt them in the silent march to doom.
[He turns to ANTIGONE and ISMENE]
But you, his little ones, my sisters,
now you've heard our father’s prayers,
his prayers of hate, please,
If ever they should come to bear their mortal fruit,
and you be found in Thebes again,
Then by all the gods,
on that blessed chance, I beg:
do not let my shade be damned
but put me in the tomb with hallowed rites.
So shall you earn more praises from me dead
than from that living father
for all you did.

ANTIGONE
Polyneices, wait. One thing I ask.

POLYNEICES
Antigone, sweet sister, what?

ANTIGONE
Turn your army back to Argos now.
Do not destroy yourself and Thebes.

POLYNEICES
Impossible! Once seen to flinch
how could I put an army in the field again?

ANTIGONE
Again, my little brother?
What new madness could ever make you want to?
What can ruin of your native city gain?
166 SOPHOCLES

POLYNEICES

Yes, but running from a younger brother,

a laughingstock .. .

ANTIGONE

Ah, don’t you see

you'll make your father’s prophecies come true:
a duel to the death— .
the death of both of you?

POLYNEICES
That’s what he wants. But ll not give way.

ANTIGONE

Oh, I’m sick at heart!

And who will follow you once it’s heard
the future he has threatened?

POLYNEICES

It shan’t be heard. Ill never say.

Good generals do not stress their weakness
but their strength.

ANTIGONE
Your mind’s made up? My poor misguided boy!
[She throws her arms around him|

POLYNEICES

It is. So do not try to hold me back.

There is an avenue down which I go
beckoned by my father’s prayers
and dark with Furies answering his call.
May Zeus reward you both
for the obsequies you do for me
when I am dead.
In life there’s nothing left
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 167
for you to tender me,
Now let me go. Good-bye!
You'll never gaze again into my living eye.
[He gently releases himself from ANTIGONE]

ANTIGONE
[breaking down]
It breaks my heart!

POLYNEICES
Don’t cry for me.

ANTIGONE
Oh, Polyneices, who would not cry to see
you my brother hurrying to die?

POLYNEICES
If die I must, I’ll die.

ANTIGONE
No, hear me—never you!

POLYNEICES
Don’t press me uselessly.

ANTIGONE
Bereft of you, what is left for me?

POLYNEICES
The future is in Fortune’s hands
whether we live or die.
My prayer for both of you is this:
Heaven keep you from every harm.
You deserve none. As all affirm.
168 SOPHOCLES

[It would be characteristic of ISMENE, who has remained

silent all this time, to have been rendered speechless by
her tears. She too now advances and clings to her brother
in a last farewell. After a moment, POLYNEICES disen-
gages himself and strides away. The blind OEDIPUS has
been standing by, mute as a stone] ;

CHORAL ODE AND DIALOGUE

Strophe I

CHORUS

So do we see fresh sorrows strike

Fresh strokes of leaden doom
From the old blind visitor
Or is it Fate unfolding—
Supernal in her workings which
I dare not say can fail—
Watched, yes watched,
By never failing Time
Shuffling fortunes from the top to bottom?
[A clap of thunder]

The sky is rift. Great Zeus defend us!

OEDIPUS

Quick, children, oh my children,

send someone to bring Theseus here,
that princely man.

ANTIGONE
Father, what should make you call him now?
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS _ 169
OEDIPUS
That clap of thunder beating down from Zeus
beckons me to Hades realms.
So hurry, someone, hurry!
[Another peal of thunder, followed by lightning]

Antistrophe I

CHORUS
Louder—hear it?—crashing down
Divine report, dumbstriking sound
Pricking up my hair with panic
And shattering my soul.
There again! Light rips the sky
I’m stricken to the core with fear.
Such a pregnant rush of light
Never comes without some meaning
Never not with monstrous issue
Great awful sky! Great Zeus, oh, save us!
[More thunder and lightning]

OEDIPUS
Dear children, life is closing on me now:
that predestined end from which there is no turning.

ANTIGONE
What makes you know? What signals do you have?

OEDIPUS
I am too well aware.
Oh hurry to this country’s king
and fetch him here.

[More thunder]
170 SOPHOCLES

Strophe II
CHORUS

Ha! again, another crack

shatters the air. i
Come gently you powers, oh gently come
if you must darken
This earth our mother. Show us some pity
show us some clemency.
Though we have favored a stricken man
hounded by destiny
Zeus, our king, be kind!

OEDIPUS

Daughters, is he here yet?

Shall I be breathing still? .
Still master of my mind?
ANTIGONE
What is so urgent on your mind to tell him?
OEDIPUS

The crowning gift I promised in return.

The blessing to repay him for all he’s done.
[More thunder and lightning}

Antistrophe IT
CHORUS

Hurry, Theseus, my son, step down

from altar and sacrifice:
Even from worship in the deep of the grove
at Poseidon’s shrine.
Don’t tarry, don’t linger, oh King, for the stranger
brings city and people
A grace to reward you, a sovereign blessing
for all you have done.
Theseus, Lord, come quickly!
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 171
[With another peal of thunder and lightning, THESE
US
bursts in]

THESEUS
What another summons?
Guest and people joined
In general clamor!
Bolts from Zeus
And catapults of hail!
All’s possible when God
Hurls. down such a storm.
[End of Choral Ode and Dialogue]

OEDIPUS
King, how glad I am to see you come!
Some god has surely smoothed your way to us,

THESEUS
What is it now, son of Laius?

OEDIPUS
The balance of my life is tilting.
I must not die a debtor:
my bargain barren still
with you and with your city.

THESEUS
What signs declare to you the end is near?

OEDIPUS

This rolling thunder rolled,

this shuttled light.
The fulminating bolts
of unanswerable artillery.
172 SOPHOCLES

THESEUS

And I believe.
You never did foreshadow falsely.
Declare what we must do.

[With great solemnity, OEDIPUS draws THESEUS aside]

OEDIPUS

Come, listen, son of Aegeus.

I lay before you now a city’s lasting treasure.
There is a place where I must die.
And I myself unhelped shall walk before you there.
That place you must not tell to any living being:
not where it lurks, not where the region lies,
if you would have a shield like a thousand shields
and a more perpetual pact than the spears of allies.
No chart of words shall mark that mystery.
Alone you'll go, alone your memory
shall frame the spot.
For not to any person here,
not even to my daughters so beloved,
am I allowed to utter it.
You yourself must guard it always.
And when your life is drawing to its close,
divulge it to your heir alone
and he in turn to his,. and so forever.
This way you will keep your city safe
against the Dragon’s seed, the men of Thebes,
though many a state attack a peaceful home,
though sure be the help from heaven (but exceeding
slow
against earth’s godless men and men gone mad.
Be far from you such fate, good son of Aegeus!
But all this you know without my telling you.
[oEDIPUS’s face lights up as if inspired. With slow firm
steps he moves forward}
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 173
Now to that spot. The god within me calls.
Let us go forward and linger here no more.
Come beloved daughters, follow!
Follow this new leader guiding you:
the father once you guided.
[ANTIGONE and ISMENE attempt to assist him]
No no, hands off! Let me walk my way
without a prop toward my holy hidden tomb
where the promised earth of Attica will cover me.
This way, this way—come!
For this way Hermes beckons me,
and Persephone, mistress of the dead.
[He turns his blind eyes up toward the sun]
Farewell! Farewell! You blindfold light
once light of mine,
last vision felt in darkness.
I walk to Hades now
to close my life in shade.
[Turning to THESEUS]

Most gentle friend,

heaven bless you, bless your land and yours.
And in prosperity remember me, the dead,
That every grace abiding be ever on your head.
[OEDIPUS moves slowly into the grove, followed by THEs-
EUS, ANTIGONE, and ISMENE. The CHORUS watches until
they are out of sight]

FOURTH CHORAL ODE

[The CHORUS sings a “Requiescat in pace’* addressed to
Persephone and Hades, the queen and king of the under-
world, and also to the Furies. Even Cerberus, the fierce

*Let him rest in peace (as from the requiem mass).

174 SOPHOCLES

three-headed hound that guards the portals of the dead,

is not left out of their appeal.|
Strophe
Dare we adore the unseen Queen
And you night’s children’s King?
Then Aidoneus, listen, Aidoneus:
Not in pain and lamentation
May his deathknell ring—
This stranger passing down
Through pallisades of gloom
Toward those prairies of the dead
His stygian home.
Much did he suffer
much beyond deserts
Let the finger of God’s fairness
Raise him now.

Antistrophe
You goddesses or worlds deep down
And you untamed hulk of snarling hound
Watching, they say, the gates of hell
For those arriving at the gaping maw
Of Hades pit . . . Oh let him pass.
And Death you son of Earth and Tartarus
Muzzle the cur, so Cerberus
Shall not molest the lonely path
Of Oedipus, who walks
Toward those sunken
Meadows of the dead
O Death bestow on him eternally
Eternal rest.
[After a pause, a MESSENGER appears at the entrance of
the grove]
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 175
FIFTH EPISODE

Exodos

MESSENGER
Fellow citizens,
I could cut this story short and Say:
“Oedipus is gone,”
But what was done was not done shortly,
and my story breaks away from brevity.

CHORUS
So the man of destiny has gone?

MESSENGER
Gone. He has left this life behind.

CHORUS
But did he have a blest demise all free from pain?

MESSENGER
It was extraordinary, most marvelous.
You yourselves saw how he went:
unled by those he loved but walking on
and showing us the way.
And when he’d reached that yawning orifice
where steps of brass sink rooting down,
he halted by the many branching ways
where Theseus is remembered for his famous pact
with Peiritheus to raid the underworld
and bring Persephone back. And there,
he stood at the chasm
Halfway between that basin and the slab of Thoricus,
By the old wild pear tree’s hollow trunk and the marble
tomb.
 176 SOPHOCLES

Then sitting down he undid his squalid dress,

and calling for his daughters bade them fetch
water to wash with from the spring
and some to pour in ritual for the dead.
So the women went to Demeter’s hill in front of them
(that goddess of unfolding spring),
and soon had done all their father had enjoined;
Then bathed and tended him and dressed him fittingly.
And when he was content that all was done,
-_ with nothing further he could wish,
there came a grumbling sound from Zeus’s underworld.
It shook the girls with trembling and they fell
weeping at their father’s knees.
Nor would they stop but beat their breasts and sobbed.
And when he heard this bitter burst of grief, :
he took them in his arms and said:
“This day, my daughters,
you shall have no father left to you,
For all my life is done,
your double burden of me done.
It was not easy, children, that I know,
and yet one little word can change all pain:
That word is LOVE, and love you’ve had from me
more than any man can ever give.
But now you must live on, when I am gone.”

So did the three of them cling to one another

calling out and crying
until at last they came to the end of tears,
and sobs gave out and all was still.
Then in that stillness suddenly a voice was heard,
terrifying: their hair stood up with fear.
The voice of the god it was, calling out and calling:
“Oedipus, Oedipus, why do we delay?
You stay too long—too long you stay.”
And when he knew it was the god that called,
he craved King Theseus to draw near,
and when he had he said to him:
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 177
“Dear friend, put out your hand,
my children, put yours here.
Now swear you never will abandon them
but wisely further all their needs
as friendship and the time will tell.”
And Theseus, noble that he is, holding back his tears,
swore to keep his promise to his friend.
AS soon as. this was done,
Oedipus, groping for his daughters with blind hands,
said: “Sweet children, now be brave,
as you were born to be, and leave this place.
Do not ask to see what you should not see
or hear what you should not hear.
But go at once.
Only Theseus has the right to stay
and see what now unfolds.”
Such was his converse. We heard it all of us.
So, sobbing with the girls, we left.
But after a little while, some paces off,
we glanced around
and Oedipus was nowhere to be seen
but only the King,
holding up his hands to screen his eyes
as if he had beheld a vision—
one too dazzling for a mortal’s sight.
Then presently we saw him hail the earth and sky
in One great prayer.
[The MESSENGER pauses]
How Oedipus has passed, no man shall ever tell,
no man but Theseus.
For in that hour no whitehot thunderbolt from Zeus
came down,
no surge of giant sea to take him.
Some emissary maybe from heaven came;
or was the adamantine floor of the dead
gently reft for him with love?
The passing of the man was pangless
with no trace of pain nor any loud regret.
178 SOPHOCLES

It was of mortal exits the most marvelous.

But if you think that none of this makes sense,
I am content to go on talking nonsense.

CHORUS
Where are the girls and their escort now?

MESSENGER

Not far away,

for I hear the sound of sobbing.
[ANTIGONE and ISMENE, escorted by a solemn Copan)
of attendants, slowly walk into view]

FOURTH CHORAL DIALOGUE

[which lasts until the end of the play|

Strophe I

ANTIGONE

Cry, cry, and cry again!

Our cause is too complete:
Two sisters and their sire
Stained to the core.
Oh tears for the spellbound blood!
We lived his long-drawn life of pain
Until this dazing hour
This last suffering
His ineffable demise.

CHORUS
What took place?
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 179
ANTIGONE
We can only guess.

CHORUS
So he is gone?

ANTIGONE
Gone as you would wish.
No bloody war
No deep sea caught him up
But he was plucked
By some unseen design:
Rapt to the land of blind horizons.
And now a deathlike night
Has blanketed our vision.
In distant lands, over drifting seas,
How shall we live our bitter living?

ISMENE
I know not how.
Come blood-dripping Death
And carry me down
And lay me by my ancient father’s side.
So should I miss
The unliveable life to come.

CHORUS
Dear children, stop your tears,
You best of daughters.
Such is our end which heaven sends us
And Fate is our friend.

Antistrophe I
ANTIGONE

Ah! What was pain was joy

What lacked all love was love
180 SOPHOCLES

When I had him in my arms.

Father, my father,
Wrapped in perpetual gloom
In that territory of shade—
Not even there shall her
Love and mine
Be barred from. you.

CHORUS
So his work is done?

ANTIGONE
He had his wish.

CHORUS
His wish?

ANTIGONE

He wished to die on foreign soil

He did:
His bed beneath the mantle
Of the gentle dark,
His aftermath of mourning
Rich in tears.
Oh Father, yes
I cannot staunch their flow,
It is a flood of sorrow...
To die on foreign soil,
You wanted that, but ah,
So far away from me!

ISMENE

Poor dear sister,

With Father gone forever
What fate remains for you and me?
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 181
CHORUS
Dear children, think of this
He made a blessed end
So cease your crying.
There’s none alive
That’s free from trial.

Strophe II
ANTIGONE
Dearest, let’s go back there.

ISMENE
Whatever for?

ANTIGONE
I'm gripped with sudden longing.

ISMENE
What?

ANTIGONE
To see his hidden home.

ISMENE
Whose home?

ANTIGONE
Our father’s.

ISMENE
It is forbidden. And also, don’t you see... .

ANTIGONE
Why this reluctance?
182 SOPHOCLES

ISMENE
But don’t you see...

ANTIGONE
I do not, go on.

ISMENE
He has no tomb.
He died away from all of us.

ANTIGONE
Then take me there and kill me too.

ISMENE
And leave me helpless and deserted,
dragging out my hopeless life alone?

Antistrophe II

CHORUS
Bear up, dear girls, take heart!

ISMENE
But where, oh where
is there left to go?

CHORUS
There is a place . .

ISMENE
But where?

CHORUS
Here. Nothing shall molest you here.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 183
ISMENE
That I know.

CHORUS
Then what is on your mind?

ISMENE
We can’t go home to Thebes.

CHORUS
Don’t even try.

ISMENE
How terrible!

CHORUS
It always was.

ISMENE
No, worse
than the worst before.

CHORUS
I know, a surge of sorrow
sweeps Over you.

ISMENE

Oh where are we to turn, great Zeus?

What hope, what destiny to drive us on,
and what the use?

[End of strophic pattern but not of Choral Dialogue.

THESEUS and his escort enter]
184 SOPHOCLES

THESEUS

Weep no more, sweet women.

Where death has dealt so kindly
There is no room for sorrow
or nemesis will follow.

ANTIGONE

Good son of Aegeus, we beg you...

THESEUS
Daughters, for what favor?

ANTIGONE

Let these eyes of ours regard

our father’s place of resting.

THESEUS
That may not be.

ANTIGONE
But you are king of Athens. Why?

THESEUS

Because, dear children,

he himself has charged me
not to let a mortal being
approach these hallowed precincts
or invade with prayers and voices
his sanctuary of quiet.
And if I keep this covenant,
he said I keep my country
free from every hurt.
The gods’ ears heard these pledges
And Zeus the god of treaties,
the all-seeing god, has sealed it.
 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS 185
ANTIGONE
Then if his wish be this,
enough for us. So be it.
But send us back to Thebes:
Thebes our ancestral city.
There we must try to stem
the bloodbath of our brothers.

THESEUS
Why, so I shall,
and spare no pains
to gladden you and grace his tomb:
the dauntless dead so lately Swept away.

CHORUS
Come then cease your crying
Keep tears from overflowing
All’s ordained past all denying.
Bars MRE
utr eine See
Ta Sorte

Spt 10) seb Sk ee

pe Geog ies
 ANTIGONE

for Gh
TO TPRIV DopMY BY Ao
(to prin domén aga(ma)
 THE CHARACTERS

ANTIGONE, daughter of Oedipus and sister of Polyneices

and Eteocles
ISMENE, sister of Antigone
CHORUs of Citizens of Thebes
CREON, king of Thebes and uncle of Antigone
and Ismene
A SENTRY
HAEMON, son of Creon and betrothed to Antigone
TIRESIAS, a blind prophet
EURYDICE, wife of Creon and mother of Haemon
FIRST MESSENGER
Guards, Ladies-in-waiting, and a Boy
 TIME AND SETTING

After the death of OEDIPUS, his two sons contend for the
throne of Thebes. POLYNEICES, leading the Seven Cham-
pions, attacks from Argos and batters at the seven gates
of Thebes. ETEOCLES defends the city, supported by
CREON, who appears to have been acting as regent. In a
great battle the two brothers meet face to face and kill
each other. The Argive forces retreat. It is the morning
after the battle. The dead still lie on the field, including
POLYNEICES and ETEOCLES. CREON, once again the
undisputed master of Thebes, proclaims that POLYNEICES,
because he died fighting against his own city, shall be left
to rot on the battlefield—the most ignominious of ends for
any Greek. ANTIGONE, caught in a conflict of loyalties,
to her dead brother and to the State, decides to defy
CREON'S edict. It is daybreak. She calls her sister out from
the palace.
 Antigone

PROLOGUE

ANTIGONE
Come, Ismene, my own dear sister, come!
What more do you think could Zeus require of us
to load the curse that’s on the House of Oedipus?
There is no sorrow left, no single shame,
no pain, no tragedy,
which does not hound us, you and me, towards our
end.
And now,
what’s this promulgation which they say
our ruler has made to all the state?
Do you know? Have you heard?
Or are you sheltered from the news
that deals a deathblow to our dearest?

ISMENE

Our dearest, Antigone? I’ve heard no news

either good or bad,
ever since we two were stripped
of two brothers in a single day,
Each dismissing each by each other’s hand.
And since the Argive army fled last night,
I’ve heard no more—either glad or sad.

ANTIGONE
That’s what I thought,
that’s why I’ve brought you here beyond the gates
that you may hear my news alone.
19]
192 SOPHOCLES

ISMENE
What mischief are you hinting at?

ANTIGONE

I think you know . . . Our two dear brothers:

Creon is burying one to desecrate the other.
Eteocles, they say, he has dispatched with proper rites
as one judged fit to pass in glory to the shades.
But Polyneices, killed as piteously,
an interdict forbids that anyone should bury him
or even mourn.
He must be left unwept, unsepulchered,
a vulture’s prize,
sweetly scented from afar.
That’s what they say our good and nobble Creon plans:
plans for you and me, yes me;
And now he’s coming here to publish it and make it
plain
to those who haven’t heard.
Anyone who disobeys will pay no trifling penalty
but die by stoning
before the city walls.
There’s your chance to prove your worth,
or else a sad degeneracy.

ISMENE

You firebrand! Could I do a thing

to change the situation as it is?

ANTIGONE .

You could. Are you willing

to share danger and suffering and .

ISMENE
Danger? What are you scheming at?
 ANTIGONE 193
ANTIGONE
. . . take this hand of mine to bury the dead?
)
ISMENE
What! Bury him and flout the interdict?

ANTIGONE
He is my brother still, and yours;
though you would have it otherwise,
but I shall not abandon him.

ISMENE
What! Challenge Creon to his face?

ANTIGONE
He has no right to keep me from my own.

ISMENE
Sister, please, please!
Remember how our father died:
hated, in disgrace,
self-dismantled in horror of himself,
his own hand stabbing out his sight.
And how his mother-wife in one
twisted off her earthly days with cord;
And thirdly how our two brothers in a single day
each achieved for each a suicidal nemesis.
And now, we two are left.
Think how much worse our end will be than all the rest
if we defy our sovereign’s edict and his power.
Remind ourselves that we are women
and as such are not made to fight with men.
For might unfortunately is right
and makes us bow to. things like this and worse.
Therefore shall I beg the shades below
to judge me leniently as one who kneeled to force.
It’s madness to meddle.
194 SOPHOCLES

ANTIGONE.

I will not press you any more.

I would not want you as a partner if you asked.
Go to what you please. I go to bury him.
How beautiful to die in such pursuit!
To rest loved by him whom I have loved,
sinner of a holy sin,
With longer time to charm the dead than those who live,
for I shall abide forever there.
So go. And please your fantasy
and call it wicked what the gods call good.

ISMENE
You know I don’t do that.
I’m just not made to war against the state.

ANTIGONE
Make your apologies!
I go to raise a tomb above my dearest brother.

ISMENE
You foolhardy thing! You frighten me.

ANTIGONE
Don’t fear for me. Be anxious for yourself.

ISMENE
At least tell no one what you do, but keep it dark,
and I shall keep it secret too.

ANTIGONE
Oh tell it, tell it, shout it out!
I'd hate your silence more than if you told the world.

ISMENE
So fiery—in a business that chills!
 ANTIGONE 195
ANTIGONE
Perhaps, but I am doing what I must.

ISMENE
Yes, more than must. And you are doomed to fail.

ANTIGONE
Why then, I'll fail, but not give up before.

ISMENE
Don’t plunge into such a hopeless enterprise.

ANTIGONE
Urge me so, and I shall hate you soon.
He, the dead, will justly hate you too.
Say that I’m mad, and madly let me risk
The worst that I can suffer and the best:
A death that martyrdom can render blest.

ISMENE

Go then, if you must toward your end:

Fool, wonderful fool, and loyal friend.
[ISMENE watches ANTIGONE walk away, then she goes
into the palace}

ENTRY ODE
[The CHORUS in a march-dance files into the theater, singing
a hymn of triumph. They celebrate the defeat of the invading
Polyneices and the victory of Thebes over Argos.|
196 SOPHOCLES

Strophe I
CHORUS

Sunshaft of the sun

Most resplendent sun
That ever shone on Thebes
The Seven Gates of Thebes:
Epiphany, you broke
Eye of the golden day
Marching over Dirce’s streams
At dawn to drive in headlong flight
The warrior who came with shields
All fulminant as snow
In Argive stand at arms
Scattered now before the lancing sun.
LEADER

Propelled against our land

By Polyneices’s claims
This screaming eagle circled round
Caparisoned with arms he swooped
His wings their shields of snow. His crest
Their helmets in the sun.

Antistrophe I
CHORUS

He stooped above our towers

Gaped above our gates
His hungry spears hovered
Then before he gorged
And glutted on our blood
Before Hephaestus hot
With pitch and flame had seized
Our crown of towers, all the din
That Ares loves burst around
Their rear, and panic turned
His flank. The fight came on
Behind their backs: a dragon-breathing foe.
 ANTIGONE 197
LEADER
The braggart’s pompous tongue
Is hated most by Zeus
And seeing them advance superb
In clank of gold, he struck their first
Man down with fire before he yelled
Triumph from the wails.

Strophe II
CHORUS
Thundering down to the ground with his torch
Knocked from his hands, this bacchanalian
Passionate lunatic breathing out hate
In hurricanes, fell in a flaming arc
His brandished torch all quenched, and great
Ares like a war horse wheeled:
Ubiquitous his prancing strength
Trampling in the dust
Havoc that he dealt with several dooms.

LEADER

_ Seven champions dueled

With seven at the Seven
Gates and gave their panoplies
To Zeus, save two, the fatal two
Who sharing parents shared their fall,
Brother killing brother.

Antistrophe II
CHORUS

But now that this triumph, the loudest of triumphs

Oh joy-bearing triumph! has come to our Thebes
The proud city of chariots, why
Now let us chase the memory far
Away of the wars that are blessedly past.
Come call on the gods with song and with dance
198 SOPHOCLES

All through the night at the groves and the shrines,

And Bacchus shall lead the round—
Shouting and shaking all Thebes with his revels.

LEADER

But look who comes, the lucky

Son of Menoeceus:
The man the gods have made our king.
What new vicissitudes of state
Vex him now? Why has he sent
A herald to our summons?
[CREON has entered from the palace, surrounded by sol-
diers. He addresses the CHORUS]

FIRST EPISODE
CREON

Gentlemen, the gods have graciously

steadied our ship of state, which storms
have terribly tossed.
And now I have called you here privately
because of course I know
your loyalty to the House of Laius.
How again, when Oedipus was king,
your duty never faltered,
and when he fell you still upheld his sons.
But now that they have gone,
sharing their double end on a single day,
(mutual murder, mutual recompense!),
I nearest in line enjoy the scepter and the throne.
Now, naturally, there is no way
to tell the character and mettle of a man
until you’ve seen him govern.
Nevertheless, I want to make it plain:
I am the kind of man who can’t and never could
abide the tongue-tied ruler who through fear
backs away from sound advice.
 ANTIGONE 199
And I find intolerable the man who puts his country
second to his friends.
For instance, if I saw ruin and danger
heading for the state,
I would speak out.
Never could I make my country’s enemy my private
friend,
knowing as I do,
she is the good ship that bears us safe.
So there you have my principles by which I govern.
In accord with them, I made the proclamation
that you heard just now:
Eteocles, who died in arms for Thebes,
shall have a glorious funeral
as befits a hero going to join the noble dead.
But his brother Polyneices,
he who came from exile breathing fire
against this city of his fathers and its shrines;
The man who came all thirsting for his country’s blood
to drag the rest of us away as slaves—
I’ve sent the edict out
that none shall bury him or even mourn.
He must be left all ghastly where he fell,
a corpse for dogs to maul and vultures pick his bones.

You see the kind of man I am!

You'll not catch me putting traitors up on pedestals
beside the loyal and true.
I'll honor him alone, alive or dead, who honors Thebes.

LEADER

Your disposition is quite clear,

son of Menoeceus, Creon,
touching friend or enemy of this our city.
We know you have the power too
to wreak your will upon the living and the dead.
200 . SOPHOCLES

CREON
Then see to it my injunctions are performed.

LEADER
Put the burden on some younger men.

CREON
No. Sentries are already posted on the corpse.

LEADER
Then what exactly do you want us to do?

CREON

Merely see there’re no infringements of the law.

LEADER
No man is mad enough to welcome death.

CREON

And death it is. But greed of gain

has often made men fools.
[A SENTRY, disheveled and distraught, comes bumbling
in towards the King|

SENTRY

King, I won’t pretend I come at breakneck speed,

all out of breath.
I kept on stopping in my tracks ... to think...
and turning back.
I held committee meetings with myself:
“You fool,” I said,
“you're ’eading straight for the lion’s mouth,”
then, “Blockhead, what’re you waiting for?
if Creon gets the news from someone else, you’re done!”
 ANTIGONE 201
So I’ve come scurrying at a snail’s pace
by the long shortcut,
the “forward” voice in charge.
And ’ere I am, with a tale to tell that makes no sense,
which any’ow I'll tell, cos I do believe
nothing bad can ’appen that isn’t on one’s ticket.

CREON
Come to the point, man! What are you dithering about?

SENTRY
First, sir, if I may slip in a word about miself.
It in’t me that done it,
and I dunno who darned done it neither;
so it in’t fair to make me take the rap.

CREON
Done it? Done it? You’re a great marksman—
hit the target first time!
You must have something very odd to say.

SENTRY
It’s awfully off-putting, sir, to. bring bad news—
especially to you, sir.

CREON
Then get on with it and go.

SENTRY
Right! Pll tell you straight. The body—it’s buried like.
I mean someone’s just gorne and sprinkled dust on it—
right proper thirsty dust—and gore. . .
done the ritual, sir, you see.

CREON
What are you saying, man? Who would have dared?
202 SOPHOCLES

SENTRY

Don’t ask me, sir!

There ain’t no mark of pick or mattock,
ground’s all ’ard, unbroken,
no wheel tracks neither:
Not a sign of ’uman ’ands.
When the sentry of the morning watch pointed to it,
there it was at dawn, the corpse,
an ugly mystery that struck us dumb.
T’weren’t exactly buried,
just sprinkled with earth ritual like
as if someone wanted to set it free.
No marks of dog or jackal neither—not a scratch.
Then we flew at one another, guard accusing guard.
It came near to blows.
There weren’t no clue to clinch the quarrel.
Any one of us coulda done it. See!
No evidence to disprove any one of us—not a shred.
So we dared one another to pick up red-’ot iron,
walk through fire, and swear by all the gods
He neither done the deed nor ’ad the slightest inkling
who ’ad.
Well, one of us cut through the deadlock, saying .. .
(We went weak as straws when we ’eard it,
cos there weren’t no denying,
nor coming out of it in one piece neither):
This fella there and then blurts out: “We gotta tell the
King.
There ain’t no way to cover up.”
He convinced the lot of us, so we drew straws.
And ’oo should be the unlucky one to win the prize
but yours truly.
So ’ere I am, unwelcome / can tell, and un’appy too,
For there ain’t no one likes the bringer of bad news.

LEADER

Sire, I’ve had misgivings from the first:

could this be more than purely natural work?
 ANTIGONE

CREON
Enough! You make me furious with such senile dod-
dering remarks.
It’s quite insufferable.
You really think they give a damn, the gods, about this
corpse?
Next you’ll say they make it a priority to bury him in state,
and thank him for his burning down their altars,
sacking shrines, scouting laws, and raping all the land.
Or are the gods these days considerate to criminals?
Far from it! No, from the first,
there’s been a group of grumblers in this town:
men who can hardly abide my rule,
who nod and whisper, chafing beneath my law,
who are not in love with it at all.
These are the ones, I’ll warrant,
who have suborned my guards with bribes.
Ah, Money! Money is a currency that’s rank.
Money topples cities to the ground,
seduces men away from happy homes,
corrupts the honest heart to shifty ways,
makes men crooked connoisseurs of vice.
But these plotters who have sold themselves,
every man jack of them,
Will end up, gentlemen,
with much more than he’s bargained for.
[He turns on the SENTRY]
You there! Get this straight:
I swear by almighty Zeus whom I revere and serve,
that either you find the man who did this burial
and stand him here before my eyes,
or Hades itself will be too good for you
until you’ve first confessed to everything—
yes, hanging from a cross.
That perhaps will teach you, soldier,
where to look for profit
and that gold can glister from an evil source.
Ah! Money never makes as many as it mars.
204 SOPHOCLES

SENTRY
Am I allowed a word, sir? Or do I just go?

CREON

Can’t you see your very voice gets on my nerves?

SENTRY

’urts your ears, does it, sir? Or kinda your conscience?

CREON

What business of yours is it to diagnose my pain?

SENTRY

Because I only affect your ears; the culprit, your brain.

CREON

By God, what a born chatterer you are!

SENTRY
Maybe, but it weren’t me that did the burying.

CREON

No, you just sold yourself for silver.

SENTRY
Oh, what a crying shame, when right reason reasons
wrong!

CREON
A logic-chopper and a wit! But don’t imagine that
will save your skin.
If you fail to stand the man before my face,
you'll find that dirty money pays in hurt.
[CREON strides into the palace}
 ANTIGONE 205

SENTRY
Well, let’s ’ope he’s found. But caught or not
(and only chance can tell), one thing’s for sure:
you won’t catch me coming back again.
It’s a goddam miracle I got out of ’ere alive.
[SENTRY runs off]

FIRST CHORAL ODE

[The CHORUS of Citizens, in an intuitive foreshadowing
of both Creon’s and Antigone’s fate, contrast the prowess
and glory of human kind with the tragedy of their.down-
fall when they overstep the mark. There is a veiled warn-
ing to Creon-not to exceed humane bounds, but also, by
their listing all the predominantly masculine occupations
(sailing, plowing, hunting, fishing, domesticating animals,
verbal skills, building, making laws), they are advising
women like Antigone to beware of taking on what they
consider male roles.|

Strophe I
Creation is a marvel and
Man its masterpiece. He scuds
Before the southern wind, between
The pounding white-piling swell.
He drives his thoroughbreds through Earth
(Great goddess inexhaustible)
And overturns her with the plow
Unfolding her from year to year.

Antistrophe I
The light-balanced light-headed birds
He snares; wild beasts of every kind.
In his nets the deep sea fish
Are caught. Oh, mastery of man!
206 SOPHOCLES

The free forest animal

He herds; the roaming upland deer.
The shaggy horse he breaks to yoke
The unflagging mountain bull.

Strophe II
Training his agile thoughts
_ volatile as air
He’s civilized the world
of words and wit and law.
With a roof against the sky,
the javelin crystal frosts
The arrow-lancing rains,
he’s fertile in resource
Provident for all,
healing all disease:
All but death, and death—
death he never cures.

Antistrophe II
Beyond imagining wise:
his cleverness and skills
Through labyrinthine ways
for good and also ill.
Distinguished in his city
when law-abiding, pious
But when he promulgates
unsavory ambition,
Citiless and lost.
And then I will not share
My hearth with him; I want
no parcel of his thoughts.
 ANTIGONE 207

SECOND EPISODE
[The SENTRY returns, leading ANTIGONE]

CHORUS
What visitation do I see from heaven?
And one I wish I could deny.
I am amazed. It is Antigone.
What! They bring you here in charge?
Poor Antigone, daughter of unlucky Oedipus.
Were you rash enough to cross the King?.
And did they take you in your folly?

SENTRY

"ere she is, the culprit: caught red’anded

in the very act of burying ’im.
But where is Creon?

CHORUS
Coming from the house, and just in time.
[Enter CREON]

CREON

Just in time for what?

SENTRY

King, it’s most unwise, I find,

ever to promise not to do a thing.
Now look at me! I could ’ave sworn
I'd not come scurrying back,
After being almost skinned alive by all your flailing
threats.
Yet ’ere I am against my oath, bringing in this girl,
and all because beyond my wildest dreams,
in fact with quite a thrill,
I caught ’er at it—actually at the burying.
208 SOPHOCLES

No drawing straws this time—lI’ll say not!

So grab ’er, King, she’s yours.
And I’m scot-free, or I should ’ope,
quit of this ’ole goddam thing.

CREON
Tell me first when and how you found her.

SENTRY
She was burying the man. There ain’t nothing more to tell.

CREON
Are you rambling? Do you know what you are saying?

SENTRY
Sir, I saw ’er in the act
of burying that forbidden corpse.
Is that plain and clear?

CREON
But how actually was she surprised and taken?

SENTRY

Well it was like this.

We ’ad returned to the spot,
our ears ringing with all your nasty threats,
and ’ad brushed the earth from off the body
to make it bare again
(it was all soft and clammy),
And were squatting there windward of the stench >
keeping each other up to the mark
And rounding ’ard on anybody that nodded . . .
Watching we were, till the midday sun,
a great blazing ball
bashed down on us something fierce,
 ANTIGONE 209
When suddenly came this right twisting squall,
Sweeping across the plain,
tearing the leaves off trees,
buffeting ’eaven itself.
We ’ad to shut our eyes against this god-sent blight.
When at last it cleared
there was this vision of this girl,
Standing there she was,
giving out little shrill-like sobs:
’eartrending as a mother bird’s
what ’as seen its nest pillaged
and its bairns all gone.
That’s ’ow she was wailing
and calling curses down
on them what done it
when she saw the body bared.
Immediately she scoops up earth—a dry ’andful like—
and sprinkles it. Then ’olding up
a shapely brazen urn, she pours
three libations for the dead.
That’s when we swooped and closed upon our quarry.
She didn’t flinch, and when we charged ’er
with what she’d gorne and done,
and done before, she just admitted it.
It made me glad and sad:
bliss to get myself out of trouble,
distress to bring it on a friend.
When all’s said and done, ’owever,
the safety of one’s own sweet skin comes first.

CREON

Come girl, you with downcast eyes,

did you, or did you not, do this deed?

ANTIGONE
I did. I deny not a thing.
210 SOPHOCLES
CREON

You, soldier, you can go—be off wherever you please—

Free of any serious charge.
[The SENTRY stands for a moment, smiles, then bounds
away| :
Now tell me, Antigone, a straight yes or no:
Did you know an edict had forbidden this?

ANTIGONE
Of course I knew. Was it not publicly proclaimed?

CREON
So you chose flagrantly to disobey my law?

ANTIGONE
Naturally! Since Zeus never promulgated such a law,
Nor will you find that Justice,
Mistress of the world below,
publishes such laws to humankind.
I never thought your mortal edicts had such force
they nullified the laws of heaven,
which unwritten, not proclaimed,
can boast a currency that everlastingly is valid,
an origin beyond the birth of man.
And I, whom no man’s frown can frighten,
Am far from risking heaven’s frown by flouting these.
I need no trumpeter from you to tell me I must die,
we all die anyway
And if this hurries me to death before my time,
why, such a death is gain. Yes, surely gain
to one whom life so overwhelms.
Therefore, I can go to meet my end
without a trace of pain.
But had I left the body of my mother’s son unburied,
lying where he lay,
ah, that would hurt!
For this, I feel no twinges of regret.
 ANTIGONE er
And if you judge me fool, perhaps it is
because a fool is judge.

LEADER
My word! The daughter is as headstrong as the father.
Submission is a thing she’s never learned.

CREON

You wait and see! The toughest will

is first to break: like hard untempered steel
which snaps and shivers at a touch
when hot from off the forge.
And I have seen high-mettled horses curbed
by a little scrap of bit.
One who has no more authority than a common slave
can ill afford to put on airs.
And yet, this girl, already versed in disrespect
the first time she disobeyed my law,
Now adds a second insult, has done it again,
and vaunts it to my face.
Oh, she’s the man, not I,
if she can flout authority and walk away unscathed.
I swear I hardly care
if she be my sister’s child
or linked to me by blood more closely
than any member of my hearth and home;
She and her sister will not now escape
the utmost penalty.
I say the sister too.
I charge her as accomplice of this burial.
Call her forth.
I saw her whimpering in there just now, all gone to
pieces.
So does remorse blurt out the secret sin .
Although its opposite is even worse:
crime detected glorifying crime.
212 SOPHOCLES

ANTIGONE
Is there something more you want? Or just my life?

CREON
Not a thing, by God! It gives me what I want.

ANTIGONE

Why dawdle, then? Your conversation

is hardly something I enjoy, or ever could,
nor mine be more acceptable to you.
And yet it ought to be.
Where could I win respect and praise more validly than
this:
burial of my brother?
Not a man here would say the opposite,
were his tongue not locked in fear.
Unfortunately, tyranny (blessed in so much else besides)
can lay the law down any way it wants.

CREON
Your view is hardly shared by all these Thebans here.

ANTIGONE
They think as I, but trim their tongues to you.

CREON
Are you not ashamed to differ from such men?

ANTIGONE

‘There is no shame to reverence relatives.

CREON
And the other duelist who died—was he no relative?
 ANTIGONE 213
ANTIGONE
He was. And of the same father and same mother.

CREON
So, slighting one, you would salute the other?

ANTIGONE
The dead man would not agree with you on this.

CREON
Surely! If you make the hero honored with the black-
guard.

ANTIGONE
It was his brother not his slave that died.

CREON
Yes, ravaging our land, while he fell as its champion.

ANTIGONE
Hades makes no distinction in its rites and honors.

CREON

The just and unjust do not urge an equal claim.

ANTIGONE

The “crime” (who knows?) may be called a virtue there.

CREON

Not even death can metamorphose hate to love.

ANTIGONE

No, nor decompose my love to hate.

214 SOPHOCLES

CREON

Curse vou! Find the outlet for your love down there.
No woman while I live shall govern me.
[ISMENE is brought in under guard] |

LEADER OF CHORUS

See where Ismene comes

Crying from the palace gates,
Her face all flushed.
A sister’s tears are breaking rains
Upon her cheeks and from her eyes,
Her loveliness a shadow.

CREON
[Turning viciously towards ISMENE]

Come, you serpent, secret lurker in my home,

who sucked my blood
Even while I nurtured you two sister vipers at my
throne—
Speak. Confess your part in burying him.
Or do you dare deny complicity?

ISMENE

I did it too. If she’ll allow my claim.

I share with her the credit and the blame.

ANTIGONE

That is not true. You do not share with me,

nor did I grant you partnership.

ISMENE

But now that your poor ship is buffeted,

I’m not ashamed to sail the voyage at your side.
 ANTIGONE lo,

ANTIGONE
The dead of Hades know whose act it was.
I do not take to those who take to talk.

ISMENE
Sister, do not scorn me; let me share
your death and holy homage to the dead.

ANTIGONE
No share in work, no share in death, _
and I must consummate alone what I began.

ISMENE
Then what is left of life to me when you are gone?

ANTIGONE

Ask Creon. You and he are friends.

ISMENE
Ah! Must you jeer at me? It does not help.

ANTIGONE

You are right. It is a joyless jeering.

ISMENE

Tell me, even now: how can I help?

ANTIGONE

Save yourself. I shall not envy you.

ISMENE

Poor dear sister—let me suffer with you!

216 SOPHOCLES

ANTIGONE
No. For you choose life, and I chose death.

ISMENE
When all my protests were of no avail.

ANTIGONE
We played our different parts, with different acclaim.

ISMENE
But now we share and equal share of blame.

ANTIGONE
Look up! You live! And I died long ago,
when I gave my life to serve the dead.

CREON
These girls, I swear, are crazed: one mad by birth,
the other by attainment.

ISMENE
Yes, my lord, for when misfortune comes,
he sends our reason packing out of doors.

CREON

And yours went flying fast

when you chose damnation with the damned.

ISMENE
Yet, with her gone, what portion had I left?

CREON
Do not mention her. She does not still exist.
 ANTIGONE 217
ISMENE
You would not kill your own sen’s bride?

CREON
Let him sow his seed in other furrows.

ISMENE
A match like theirs will not repeat itself.

CREON
I shudder at the jades who court our sons.

ANTIGONE
My darling Haemon, how your father heaps disgrace on you!

CREON
Damn you and damn your cursed marriage!

LEADER
You would not tear your own son’s bride from him?

CREON
Let us say that Death is going to come between.

LEADER
I fear, I fear it’s fixed. Her death is sealed.

CREON.
Yes, let us both be quite assured of that.
Guards, take them away and lock them up.
No more roaming. They are women now.
The breath of Hades pressing close to kill
Can make the bravest turn, and turn the bravest will.
[ANTIGONE and ISMENE are led away. CREON Stays]
218 SOPHOCLES

SECOND CHORAL ODE

[The CHORUS cries out in an ode which begins by being
both a lament for the past victimization of the House of
Oedipus and an omen for the present, and then goes on
to warn all those who think they can live their lives apart
from the universal providence of Zeus.|

Strophe I
Happy the man who has not sipped the bitter day,
Whose house is firm against divine assault.
No planted curse creeps on and on
Through generations like the dark and driven surge
Booming from the bosom of the sea while Thracian gales
Churn perpetually the ooze in waves that throw
Down upon the headlands swept and carded by the storm
Their thunderous mass.

Antistrophe I
So do I see the house of Labdacus struck down,
In all its generations victimized by some
Pursuing deity. Its useless dead.
Its never-ending doom. And now once more the sun
Gone down in blood: the final hope of Oedipus
Felled to the root, put out in smoke and Hades’ dust,
And all because of headlong folly and the reckless speech
Of a frenzied heart.

Strophe II
O Zeus, what creature pits himself against thy power?
Not Sleep encumbrous with his sublet net
And not the menstrual cycle
Of the tireless moon.
Thou in ancient splendors still art young
When worlds are old
On Mount Olympus.
Everything past, everything present,
 ANTIGONE 219
And everything still to come
Is thy domain
No mortal thing however vast can steal
Outside thy grasp.

Antistrophe II
Hope, eternally gadding, alights on many with nothing
But bliss, but just as blithely brings to others
Delusions and seething ambition.
No man can tell
What has come stealthily creeping over his life
Until too late
Hot ashes and pain
Sear his feet . . . Once long ago
A sage famously said:
“If evil good appear
To any, the gods are near. Unscathed he’ll go,
And then they’ll bring him low.”
[HAEMON is seen approaching]

LEADER

Here Haemon comes, your youngest son,

Driven perhaps by pangs of grief
For Antigone his sentenced bride:
A bitter groom, a marriage marred.

CREON
We shall see in a moment, and without the need of seers.

THIRD EPISODE
[HAEMON enters. The men stare warily at each other for
a few seconds]
220 SOPHOCLES
CREON

Son, do you come provoked against your father

for the death warrant of your would-be bride,
or still my loving son, whatever I may do?

HAEMON

Father, I am your loving son and you the wise

preceptor of my ways, whom I must follow.
No marriage I could make would ever match
the good of your abiding counsel.

CREON

Well spoken son!

Just what a right-minded son should feel:
unremitting deference to his father’s will.
Such is a parent’s prayer, to see grow up
a race of filial sons to deck his home:
Ready always to avenge their father’s wrongs,
and of course to give his friends
the selfsame honor that the father gives.
But a man who raises a batch of worthless boys,
what has he hatched for himself but nuisances,
and jubilant sneers from the ill-disposed!
Oh Haemon, don’t lose your balance for a woman’s sake!
Don’t hug a joy that’s cheap and cools:
an evil woman for your bed and board.
No wound is worse than counterfeited love.
She is poison. Spit her out.
Let her go and find a mate in Hades.
Why, I’ve just caught her in an open act of treason—
she alone of all the city.
I will not break my word to Thebes. She dies.
So let her plead to Zeus
the sanctity of kindred ties.
 ANTIGONE 221
How can I, if I nurse sedition in my house,
not foster it outside?
No. If a man can keep his home in hand,
he proves his competence to keep the state.
But one who breaks the law and flouts authority,
I never will allow.
Unswerving submission
to whomsoever the state has put in charge
is what is asked: in little things as well as great,
in right and wrong.
And I am confident that one who thus obeys,
will make a perfect subject or a perfect king:
the kind of man who in the thick of flying spears
never flinches from his post
but stands dauntless at his comrade’s side.
But as for anarchy,
there is no greater curse than anarchy.
It topples cities down, it crumbles homes,
it shatters allied ranks in broken flight
which discipline kept whole:
For discipline preserves and orders well.
Let us then defend authority
and not be ousted by a girl.
If yield we must, then let it be to men,
And never have it said we were worsted by a woman.

LEADER

What you say (unless my wits have run to seed)

sounds reasonable and makes good sense.

HAEMON

Yes, Father, reason: the gods’ greatest gift to man.

I would not dream of criticizing yours
Or saying you were wrong, even if I could.
But other men can reason rightly too.
eee SOPHOCLES

As your son, you see, I find myself

marking every word and act and comment of the crowd,
to gauge the temper of the simple citizen,
who dares not risk your scowl to speak his mind.
But I from the shadows hear them:
hear a city’s sympathy for this girl,
because no woman ever faced
so unreasonable, so cruel a death,
for such a generous cause.
She would not leave her brother where he fell;
for carrion birds and dogs to maul.
“Should not her name be writ in gold?” they say,
and so the whisper grows.
You know, my Father, how I prize
your well-being and your name.
For sons and father’s crown each other’s glory
with each other’s fame.
So I beg you Father,
don’t entrench yourself in your opinion
as if everyone else was wrong.
The kind of man who always thinks that he is right,
that his opinions, his pronouncements,
are the final word,
is usually exposed as hollow as they come.
But .a wise man is flexible, has much to learn
without a loss of dignity.
See the trees in floodtime, how they bend
along the torrent’s course,
and how their twigs and branches do not snap,
but stubborn trees are torn up roots and all.
In sailing too, when fresh weather blows,
a skipper who will not slaken sail, turns turtle,
finishes his voyage beam-ends up.
So let your anger cool, and change your mind.
I may be young but not without some sense.
Let men be wise by instinct if they can,
but when this fails and nature won’t oblige,
be wise by good advice.
 ANTIGONE aes

LEADER
Sire, the young man speaks good sense: worth listening to.
And you, son, too, should listen. You both speak to the
point.

CREON
You mean that men of my years have to learn to think
by taking notes from men of his?

HAEMON
In only what is right.
It is my merit not my years that count.

CREON
Your merit is to foment lawlessness.

HAEMON

You know I do not plead for criminals.

CREON

So this creature is no criminal, eh?

HAEMON
The whole of Thebes says ‘‘no.”’

CREON
And I must let the mob dictate my policy?

HAEMON

See now who is speaking like a boy!

CREON

Do I rule this state, or someone else?

224 SOPHOCLES

HAEMON

A one man state is no state at all.

CREON
The state is his who rules it. Is that plain?

HAEMON
The state that you should rule would be a desert.

CREON
This boy is hopelessly on the woman’s side.

HAEMON

I’m on your side. Are you a woman then?

CREON
You reprobate! At open loggerheads with your father!

HAEMON
On the contrary: you at loggerheads with open justice!

CREON
My crime, of course, the discharge of my rule:

HAEMON
What rule—when you trample on the rule of heaven?

CREON
Insolent pup! A woman’s lackey!

HAEMON
Lackey to nothing of which I am ashamed.
 ANTIGONE 225
CREON ©
Not ashamed to be the mouthpiece for that trollop?

HAEMON
I speak for you, for me, and for the holy spirits of the dead.

CREON
The dead? Precisely—you’ll never marry her alive.

HAEMON
Well then, dead—one death beckoning to another.

CREON
So it’s come to that—you threaten me?

HAEMON
One cannot threaten empty air!

CREON
My word, what wisdom! How you’ll regret dispensing it!

HAEMON
If you weren’t my father, I’d say your mind had gone.

CREON
You woman’s slave! Don’t come toadying to me!

HAEMON
Go on—make remarks and never listen to an answer!

CREON
Is that so? Then by Olympus be quite sure of this:
You shall not rant and jeer at me without reprisal.
Off with the wretched girl! I say she dies
In front of him, before her bridegroom’s eyes.
226 SOPHOCLES

HAEMON

She shall not die—don’t think it—

in my sight or by my side.
And you shall never see my face again.
I commit you raving to your chosen friends.
[HAEMON rushes out]

LEADER

Gone, your Majesty, but gone distraught.

He is young, his rage will make him desperate.

CREON

Let him do or dream up acts as murderous as a fiend’s,

these girls, he shall not snatch from death.

LEADER
You do not mean to kill them both?

CREON
You are right. Not the one who did not meddle.

LEADER
What kind of death do you plan?

CREON

I'll take her down a path untrod by man.

Pll hide her living in a rock-hewn vault,
With ritual food enough to clear the taint
Of murder from the City’s name.
I'll leave her pleading to her favorite god,
Hades. He may charm her out a way to life.
Or perhaps she’ll learn though late the cost
Of homage to the dead is labor lost.
[CREON walks away into the palace]
 ANTIGONE PATE
THIRD CHORAL ODE
[The CHORUS, apprehensive of the fate of the young lov-
ers, sings of the desperately destructive power of love.
Their words also veil a condemnation of men like CREON,
who overvalue the so-called masculine qualities of the soul
and fail to realize the duality of male and female within
the person.|

Strophe I
Love, unquelled in battle
Love, making nonsense of wealth
Pillowed all night on the cheek of a girl
You roam the seas, pervade the wilds
And in a shepherd’s hut you lie.
Shadowing immortal gods
You dog ephemeral man—
Madness your possession.

Antistrophe I
Turning the wise into fools
You twist them off their course
And now you have stung us to this strife
Of father fighting son . . . Oh, Love,
The bride has but to glance
With the lyrical light of her eyes
To win you a seat in the stars
And Aphrodite laughs.
[End of Choral Ode and beginning of Choral Dialogue
which continues through FOURTH EPISODE]
228 SOPHOCLES

FOURTH EPISODE
[ANTIGONE is led in under guard]

LEADER

And now you turn on me

Unman my loyalty
Loose my tears to see
You Antigone
Pass your wedding bower
Death’s chamber, pass
So easily.

Strophe I
[ANTIGONE and the CHORUS chant alternately|
ANTIGONE

See me, friends and citizens,

Look on this last walk—
The sun’s light snuffed out with my dower
And Death leading me to Acheron
Alive, where all must sleep.
No wedding march, no bridal song
Cheer me on my way,
I whom Hades Lord of the dark lake weds.

CHORUS
Yet you walk with fame, bedecked
In praise towards the dead man’s cave.
No sickness severed you
No sword incited struck.
All mistress of your fate you move
Alive, unique, to Hades Halls.
 ANTIGONE 229

Antistrophe I
ANTIGONE
Oh, but I have heard what happened
To that Phrygian girl, poor foreigner
(The child of Tantalus), who clings
Like ivy on the heights of Sipylus
Captured in stone, petrified
Where all the rains, they say, the flying snow,
Waste her form away which weeps
In waterfalls. I feel her trance,
Her lonely exodus, in mine.

CHORUS
And she a goddess born of gods
While we are mortals born of men.
What greater glory for a woman’s end
To partner gods in death
Who partnered them in life!

Strophe II
ANTIGONE
Ah! Now you laugh at me.
Thebes, Thebes, by all our father’s gods
You my own proud chariot city
Can you not wait till I am gone?
And you sweet Dirce’s stream and Theban groves
You at least be witnesses to me with love
Who walk in dismal passage to my heavy tomb
Unwept, unjustly judged
Displaced from every home
Disowned by both the living and the dead.
230 SOPHOCLES

Strophe II
CHORUS

Perhaps you aimed too high

You dashed your foot on Fate
Where Justice sits enthroned.
You fall a plummet fall
To pay a father’s sin.

Antistrophe II
ANTIGONE

You touch my wounds, my memories

Make fresh again my tears: the triple curse
That haunts the House of Labdacus:
The spilt and tainted blood, the horrid bed,
My fated mother sleeping with her son
To father me in incest .. . Parents here I come,
Home at last, not wed, no broken spell.
Brother when you made _
Your blindfold match, you made
Your death and mine—mine to come.

Antistrophe LIT
CHORUS
Pious is as pious does
But where might is right
It’s reckless to do wrong.
Self-propelled to death
You go with open eyes.

Epode
ANTIGONE

Unwept, unwedded, unloved I go

On this last journey of all.
Eye of the blessed sun—
 ANTIGONE 251
I shall miss you soon.
No tears will mourn me dead. -
No friend to cry.
[End of Choral Dialogue. CREON has entered|

CREON
Listen you!
Panegyrics and dirges go on forever
if given the chance.
Dispatch her at once, I say. Seal up the tomb.
Let her choose a death at leisure—or perhaps,
in her new home,
An underground life forlorn.
We wash our hands of this girl—
except to take her from the light.

ANTIGONE
Come tomb, my wedding chamber, come!
You sealed off habitations of the grave!
My many family dead, finished, fetched
in final muster to Persephone.
I am last to come, and lost the most of all,
my life still in my hands.
And yet I come (I hope I come) toward a father’s love,
beloved by my mother,
And by you, my darling brother, loved.
Yes, all of you,
Whom these my hands have washed, prepared and sped
with ritual to your burials.
And now, sweet Polyneices, dressing you,
I’ve earned this recompense,
though richly honored you the just will say.
No husband dead and gone, no children lisping ‘“‘mother”’
ever could have forced me to withstand
the city to its face.
By what law do I assert so much? Just this:
232 SOPHOCLES

A husband dead, another can be found,

a child replaced, but once a brother’s lost
(mother and father dead and buried too)
No other brother can be born or grows again.
That is my principle,
which Creon stigmatized as criminal,
my principle for honoring you, my dearest brother.
So taken, so am I led away:
a virgin still, no nuptial song, no marriage-bed,
no children to my name.
An outcast stripped of sympathy,
I go alive toward these sepulchers of death.
What ordinance, what law of heaven broken,
what god left for me to cast my eyes toward, _
when sacraments must now be damned as sacrilege?
And if these things be smiled upon by heaven,
why, when I’m dead Ill know I sinned.
But if I find the sin was theirs,
may Justice then mete out no less to them
than what injustice now metes out to me—my doom.

LEADER

See how she goes, headlong driven

By the capricious gusts of her own will!

CREON

Putting to disgrace her loitering guards.

Who shall be paid their just rewards.

ANTIGONE

Ah, Death comes nearer with those words!

CREON

There is no comfort I can offer

Nor this damnation can I alter.
 ANTIGONE 233
ANTIGONE
See me, Thebes, I am going, now going!
See me, divine ancestral Thebes!
Cast but a glance, you her princes,
On this last and lonely royal scion,
See what I suffer from these men
For reverencing the rights of man.
[ANTIGONE is led away]

FOURTH CHORAL ODE

[The CHORUS, in an attempt to comfort ANTIGONE, recall
situations of fate similar to her own. First there was
Dande, shut up by her father in a brazen tower because
an oracle had foretold that she would bear a son who
would kill him. Zeus, however, had access to her prison
and impregnated her in a shower of gold. The resulting
offspring, Perseus, did indeed later kill his grandfather
(accidentally). Next, there was Lycurgus, son of Dryas
king of Thrace: punished by Dionysus for insulting him
and abolishing the cult of the vine in his kingdom. Lastly,
there was .Phineus, who, suspicious of his two sons by his
first wife (daughter of Boreas, the north wind), prompted
his second wife to blind them in a fit of jealousy.*|

Strophe I
Hidden from the sun
Housed behind brass doors
Danae’s beauty too was locked away
Her nuptial cell a tomb
And she, my child, yes she
A royal daughter too:
*It must be borne in mind that there are contradictory versions of these stories in
Greek mythology. Here, for instance, Sophocles’s account scrambles or’conflates.
several others.
234 SOPHOCLES

The rare receptacle of Zeus’s golden seed.

O Destiny, marked mysterious force!
No mound of coins
No panoplies of war
No ramparts keep you out
And through the dark sea looming
No ship escapes.

Antistrophe I

The savage son of Dryas

That Edonian king
Was pent by Dionysus in a prison
Clamped within a rocky cavern.
There his jeering changing
Changing into howling
Faded into echoes till he came at last
To know the godhead whom his madness
Baited when he tried
To quench the god-possessed
Flaring Bacchantes
And offended all the Muses
Who love the flute.

Strophe II
Once in primitive Thrace near Salmydessus
Where twin black doom-ridden crags
Sever two seas, along the vicious
Lonely shores of the Bosporus,
War-loving Ares
Witnessed a nightmare scene:
The bride of Phineus, jealous, frenzied,
Plunging the dagger of her spindle
Into the princely eyes of his two sons...
Saw their vacant scream for vengeance
Plead in pools of socket-bloody staring.
 ANTIGONE 235
Antistrophe II
Wasting in agony, doomed so cruelly
They lamented their mother’s fatal mating
From which even her noble birthline
From Erechtheus could not save her—
And she a daughter cradled
By Boreas in the caverns
Born amid her father’s tempests
Bolting like a colt from heaven
Over the uplands—child of the gods—

Even she, Antigone, they had her,

The ageless gray-grim Fates they struck her down.

FIFTH EPISODE
[The blind prophet TirEsIAs, led by a boy, announces his
arrival in a quavering, chanting voice]

TIRESIAS
Rulers of Thebes, here we come: one pair of eyes for
two
On a single road, and the blind man led by another.

CREON

What news, venerable Tiresias?

TIRESIAS
I shall tell you, and you must listen hard.

CREON

Have I ever failed to listen to you?

236 SOPHOCLES

3 TIRESIAS
And therefore have you safely piloted the state.
CREON
Gladly do I own my debt to you.

TIRESIAS

Then beware, you’re standing once again upon the

razor’s edge.

CREON
How so? Your words and aspect chill.

TIRESIAS

Listen, Ill read the signs and make them plain.

I was sitting by my ancient chair of augury,
the haunt of every kind of bird,
When suddenly a noise not heard before
assaults my ears:
A panic screeching and a pandemonium deafening jargon:
beaks and bloody talons tearing—lI could tell it—
pinions whirring,
all shocked me as a portent.
At once I kindled sacrifice to read by fire,
but Hephaestus fanned no leaping flame.
Instead, a sort of sweat distilled from off the thigh fat,
slid in smoke upon the sputtering fire.
The gallbladders burst and spurted up.
The grease oozed down and left the thighbones bare.
These were the signs I learnt from off this boy,
omens of a ruined sacrifice:
he is my eyes as I am yours.

See it—how the city sickens, Creon,

these the symptoms, yours the fanatic will that caused
them:
 ANTIGONE PAV
Dogs and crows all glutted carrying
desecrated carrion to the hearths and altars—
carrion from the poor unburied son of Oedipus.
Burnt offerings go up in stench. The gods are
dumb.
The birds of omen cannot sing.
But obscene vultures flap away
with crops all gorged on human flesh.

Think, son, think! To err is human, true,

and only he is damned who having sinned
will not repent, will not repair.
He is a fool, a proved and stubborn fool.
Give death his due, and do not kick a corpse.
Where is renown to kill a dead man twice?
Believe me, I advise you well.
It should be easy to accept advice
SO sweetly tuned to your good use.

CREON
Old man,
you pot away at me like all the rest
as if I were a bull’s-eye,
And now you aim your seer craft at me.
Well, I’m sick of being bought and sold
by all your soothsaying tribe.
Bargain away! All the silver of Sardis,
all the gold of India
is not enough to buy this man a grave;
Not even if Zeus’s eagles come, and fly away
with carrion morsels to their master’s throne.
Even such a threat of such a taint
will not win this body burial.
It takes much more than human remains
to desecrate the majesty divine.
Old man Tiresias,
The most reverend fall from grace when lies are sold
Wrapped up in honeyed words—and all for gold.
238 SOPHOCLES

TIRESIAS
Creon! Creon!
Is no one left who takes to heart that .. .

CREON
Come, let’s have the platitude!

TIRESIAS
... That prudence is the best of all our wealth.

CREON

As folly is the worst of all our woes?

TIRESIAS
Yes, infectious folly! And you are sick with it.

CREON

I’ll not exchange a fish-wife’s set-to with a seer.

TIRESIAS
Which is what you do when you say I sell my prophecies.

CREON
As prophets do—a money-grubbing race.

TIRESIAS
Or as kings, who grub for money in the dung.

CREON
You realize this is treason—lese majesty?

TIRESIAS

Majesty? Yes, thanks to me you are savior of Thebes.

 ANTIGONE | 239
CREON
And you are not without your conjuring
tricks. But still
a crook.

TIRESIAS
Go on! You will drive me to divulge something
that . . .

CREON
Out with it! But not for money, please.

TIRESIAS
Unhappily for you this can’t be bought.

CREON
Then don’t expect to bargain with my wits.

TIRESIAS
All right then! Take it if you can.
A corpse for a corpse the price, and flesh for flesh,
one of your own begotten.
The sun shall not run his course for many days
before you pay.
You plunged a child of light into the dark;
entombed the living with the dead; the dead
Dismissed unmourned, denied a grave—a corpse
Unhallowed and defeated of his destiny below.
Where neither you nor gods must meddle,
you have thrust your thumbs.
Do not be surprised that heaven—yes, and hell—
have set the Furies loose to lie in wait for you,
Ready with the punishments you engineered for others.

Does this sound like flattery for sale?

Yet a little while and you shall wake
to wailing and gnashing of teeth in the house of Creon.
240 SOPHOCLES

Lashed to a unison of rage, they'll rise,

those other cities,
whose mangled sons received their obsequies
from dogs and prowling jackals—
from some filthy vulture flapping to alight
before their very hearths to bring them home—
desecration reeking from its beak.
There! You asked, and I have shot my angry arrows.
I aimed at your intemperate heart. I did not miss.
Come, boy, take me home.
Let him spew his choler over younger men.
He’ll learn a little modesty in time,
a little meekness soon.
[TIRESIAS is led out by his boy. CREON stands motionless,
visibly shaken] .

LEADER

There’s fire and slaughter for you, King!

The man has gone,
but my gray hairs were long since shining black
before he ever stirred the city to a false alarm.

CREON
I know. You point the horns of my dilemma.
It’s hard to eat my words, but harder still
to court catastrophe through overriding pride.

LEADER
Son of Menoeceus, be advised in time.

CREON
To do what? Tell me, I shall listen.

LEADER
Go free the maiden from her vault.
 ANTIGONE 241
Then entomb the lonely body lying stark.

CREON
You really mean it—that I must yield?

LEADER
Must, King, and quickly too.
The gods, provoked, never wait to mow men down.

CREON
How it goes against the grain
to smother all one’s heart’s desire!
But I cannot fight with destiny.

CHORUS
Quickly, go and do it. Don’t trust to others.

CREON
Yes, I go at once.
Servants, servants—on the double!
You there, fetch the rest. Bring axes all
and hurry to the hill.
My mind’s made up. I’ll not be slow
to let her loose myself
who locked her in the tomb.
In the end it is the ancient codes—oh my regrets!—
that one must keep:
To value life then one must value law.
[CREON and servants hurry away in all directions]

FIFTH CHORAL ODE

[The CHORUS sings a desperate hymn to Bacchus, begging
him to come and save the city of Thebes and the stricken
House of Oedipus}
242 SOPHOCLES

Strophe I
Calling you by a hundred names
Jewel and flower of Semele’s wedding
Son of Zeus and son of thunder
Singer of sweet Italy!
Calling you in world communion
In the bowery lap of Dio’s glades
Close by Ismenus’s quicksilver stream:
You the Bacchus haunting Thebes
(Mother of the Bacchanals)
Hard by the very fields where once
The dragon’s teeth were sown.

Antistrophe I
Bacchus and your nymphs Bacchantes
Dancing in the hills and valleys:
Dots of fire and wreathing torches
Curling smoke above the crested
Forks (Castalia fled Apollo
Plunging into the spring-fed pool there)
Calling you from the slopes of Nyssa
Dripping ivy down to the seashore
Green with vineyards, while your Maenads
Storm ecstatic shouting “Bacchus”
On your march to Thebes.

Strophe II
Calling you to your favorite city
Sacred city of your mother
(Ravished by a lightning bolt)
Calling you to a city dying—
People shadowed by the plague
Calling you to leave the high-spots
Leaping fleet-foot down to cross
The moaning waters. Oh come quickly
Hurry from Parnassus.
 ANTIGONE 243
Antistrophe II
Come you master of the dancing
Fiery-breathing pulsing stars
Steward of the midnight voices
Son of Zeus, O Prince appear!
Bring your train of Maenads raving
Swirling round you, round you dancing
Through the night, and shouting ‘‘Bacchus
Giver of all blessings, Bacchus!”
Bacchus, oh come!

[There is a pause, while the strains of the CHORUS die

away. A MESSENGER enters]

PPILOGUE

MESSENGER
Men of the House of Cadmus and of Amphion,
how rash it is to envy others or despair!
The luck we adulate in one today,
tomorrow is another’s tragedy.
There is no stable horoscope for man.
Take Creon:
he if anyone, I thought was enviable.
He saved this land from all our enemies,
attained the pomp and circumstance of king,
his children decked like olive branches round his
throne.
And now it is undone, all finished.
And what is left is not called life but death alive.
His kingly state is nothing to him now
with gladness gone:
Vanity of vanities—the shadow of a shade.
244 SOPHOCLES

LEADER
What fresh news do you bring of royal ruin?
MESSENGER

Death twice over, and the living guilty for‘the dead.

LEADER
Who struck and who is stricken? Say.

MESSENGER
Haemon’s gone. Blood spilt by his own hand. ah

LEADER
By his own hand? Or by his father’s?

MESSENGER
Both. Driven to it by his father’s murdering.

LEADER
Oh Prophet, your prophecy’s come true!

MESSENGER
So stands the case. Make of it what you will.

LEADER

Look, I see Eurydice approach,

Creon’s unhappy queen.
Is it chance or has she heard the deathknell of her son?
[EURYDICE staggers in, supported by her maids}

EURYDICE

Yes, good citizens, all of you, I heard:

Even as I went to supplicate
the goddess Pallas with my prayers.
 ANTIGONE 245
Just as I unloosed the bolt that locks the door,
the sound of wailing struck my ears,
the sound ‘of family tragedy.
I was stunned—
and fell back fainting into my ladies’ arms.
But tell me everything however bad;
I am no stranger to the voice of sorrow.

MESSENGER
Dear Mistress, I was there.
I shall not try to glaze the truth;
for where is there comfort in a lie,
so soon found out? The truth is always best
In attendance on your Lord,
I took him deep into the plain
where Polyneices lay
abandoned still—all mauled by dogs.
And there with humble hearts
we prayed to Hecate, goddess of the Great Divide.
to Hades too, and begged their clemency.
Then we sprinkled him with holy water,
lopped fresh branches down
and laid him on a funeral pyre
to burn away his poor remains.
Lastly, we heaped a monument to him,
a mound of his native earth, then turned away
to unseal the vault in which there lay
a virgin waiting on a bed of stone
for her bridegroom—Death.
And one of us, ahead,
heard a wail of deep despair
echoing from that hideous place of honeymoon.
He hurried back and told the King,
who then drew near
and seemed to recognize those hollow sounds.
He gave a bleat of fear:
“Oh, are my heart’s forebodings true?
I cannot bear to tread this path.
246 / SOPHOCLES

My son’s voice strikes my ears.

Hurry, hurry, servants, to the tomb,
And through those stones once pried away peer down
into that cadaverous gap
and tell me if it’s Haemon’s voice.
Oh, tell me I am heavenly deceived!”
His panic sent us flying to the cave,
and in the farthest corner we could see her
hanging with a noose of linen round her neck,
and leaning on her,
hugging his cold lover lost to Hades,
Haemon, bridegroom, broken,
cursed the father who had robbed him,
pouring out his tears of sorrow.
A groan agonized and loud—
broke from Creon when he saw him.
“You poor misguided boy!” he sobbed,
staggering forward,
“What have you done? What were you thinking of?
And now, come to me, my son. Your father begs you.”
But the boy glared at him with flaming eyes,
spat for answer in his face,
and drawing a double-hilted sword,
lunged but missed
as his father stepped aside and ran.
Then, the wretched lad,
convulsed with self-hatred and despair,
pressed against that sword and drove it home,
halfway up the hilt into his side.
And conscious still but failing, limply folded
Antigone close into his arms—
Choking blood in crimson jets upon her waxen face.
Corpse wrapped in love with corpse he lies,
married not in life but Hades:
Lesson to the world that inhumane designs
Wreak a havoc immeasurably inhumane.
[EURYDICE is seen moving like a sleepwalker into the
palace|
 ANTIGONE 247
LEADER
What does her exit mean?
The Queen has gone without a word of comfort or of
sorrow.
MESSENGER
{ am troubled too. And yet I hope
the reason is she shrinks from public sorrow for her son,
And goes into the house to lead her ladies
in the family dirge.
She will not be unwise. She is discreet.

LEADER
You may be right, but I do not trust
extremes of silence or of grief.

MESSENGER
Let me go into the house and see.
Extremes of silence, as you say, are sinister.
Her heart is broken and can hide
some sinister design.
[As the MESSENGER hurries into the palace through a side
door, the great doors open and a procession carrying the
dead body of HAEMON on a bier approaches, with CREON
staggering behind]

CHORUS
Look, the King himself draws near, his load
in a kind of muteness crying out his sorrow
(Dare we say it?) from a madness of misdoing
started by himself and by no other.
248 SOPHOCLES

CHORAL DIALOGUE

Strophe I

CREON

Purblind sin of mine!

There is no absolution
For perversity that dragged
A son to death:
Murdered son, father murdering.
Son, my son, cut down dead!
New life that’s disappeared
And by no youthful foolishness
But by my foily.

CHORUS
Late, too late, your reason reasons right!

Strophe II
CREON

Yes, taught by bitterness.

Some god has cast his spell,
Has hit me hard from heaven,
Let my cruelty grow rank;
Has slashed me down, my joys
Trodden in the earth.
Man, man, oh how you suffer!
[Enter the MESSENGER]

MESSENGER

Sire, you are laden,

You the author loading:
Half your sorrow in your hands,
The other half still in your house
Soon to be unhidden.
 ANTIGONE 249
CREON
What half horror coming?

MESSENGER
Your queen is dead:
Mother for her son;
The suicidal thrust:
Dead for whom she lived.

Antistrophe I

CREON
Oh, Death, pitiless receiver!
Kill me? Will you kill me?
Your mercy dwindles does it?
Must you bring me words
That crush me utterly.
I was dead and still you kill me.
Slaughter was piled high,
Ah then, do not tell me
You come to pile it higher:
A son dead, then a wife.

CHORUS
Look! Everything is open to full view.
[The scene suddenly opens by a movement of the
ekkuklema* to reveal EURYDICE lying dead, surrounded
by her attendants]
Antistrophe II
CREON

Oh, oh! A second deathblow.

Fate, my bitter cup

*The ekkuklema was a theatrical machine which could open up the stage to an
inner scene: frequently a murder or a suicide.
250 SOPHOCLES

Should have no second brimming,

Yet the sight I see laid out
Compels a second sorrow:
My son just lifted up
A corpse, and now a corpse his mother.

MESSENGER

Her heart was shattered

And her hand drove keen the facgen
At the altar there she fell
And darkness swamped her drooping eyes
As with cries she sobbed her sorrow
For her hero son Megareus—
Long since nobly dead—
And for this son her other,
Mingling with her dying gasp
Curses on you—killer.

Strophe III
CREON

My heart is sick with dread.

Will no one lance a two-edged sword
Through this bleeding seat of sorrow?

MESSENGER

She charged you, yes,

With both their deaths—
This lifeless thing
As double filicidal killer!

CREON
Tell me, how did she go?

MESSENGER

Self-stabbed to the heart;

Her son’s death ringing
New dirges in her head.
 ANTIGONE 251
Strophe IV

CREON
I killed her, I
Can own no alibi:
The guilt is wholly mine.
Take me quickly, servants,
Take me quickly hence.
Let this nothing be forgotten.

CHORUS
Good advice, at-last,
If anything be good
In so much bad.
Such evils need quick riddance.

Antistrophe III

CREON
Oh, let it come! Letit break!
My last and golden day:
The best, the last, the worst
To rob me of tomorrow.

LEADER
Tomorrow is tomorrow
And we must mind today.

CREON
All my prayers are that:
The prayer of my desires.

LEADER
Your prayers are done.
Man cannot flatter Fate,
And punishments must come.
202 SOPHOCLES

Antistrophe IV
CREON

Then lead me please away,

A rash weak foolish man,
A man of sorrows,
Who killed you, son, so blindly
And you my wife—so blind.
Where can I look?
Where hope for help,
When everything I touch is lost
And death has leapt upon my life?

CHORUS

Where wisdom is, there happiness will crown

A piety that nothing will corrode.
But high and mighty words and ways
Are flogged to humbleness, till age,
Beaten to its knees, at last is wise.
 Appendix

PRODUCTION AND ACTING

There are two main dangers in the production of a Greek
play: one is to overplay the dignity; the other is not to
be aware of that dignity at all. The first becomes a des-
perate and futile endeavor to recapture the externals of
the Greek theater. It is arty and self-conscious and, in
battening on period effects (we are being Greeks, boys
and girls—is my mask on Straight?), destroys the very
humanity and timelessness it seeks to promote. The sec-
ond, confusing the Greek idealization and simplification
of human nature with unreality, and seeking to redress
the balance, tries to turn the heroic figures of Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides into everyday nonentities. It
attempts the prosaic, trivial, chatty, and obliterates the
heights and depths of tragedy.
These are the two chief false principles. Occasionally
they are blended and a third type of mistake is hatched,
inheriting the artiness of one parent and the lack of
restraint of the other. Professor J. T. Sheppard, the great
Sophoclean scholar, well describes it in a production of
Oedipus the King which he had the discomfort of wit-
nessing: “. . . [the] actors, not altogether, I suspect, of
their own free will, raged and fumed and ranted, rushing
hither and thither with a violence of gesticulation which,
in spite of all their effort, was eclipsed and rendered
insignificant by the yet more violent rushes, screams, and
contortions of a quite gratuitous crowd.” (Introduction
to The Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, Cambridge, 1920.)
What then is the enlightened producer to aim for? Let
him first of all remember that these plays were per-
formed before enormous audiences, perhaps up to 30,000
os
254 SOPHOCLES

people. Masks, costumes, spectacles, and the whole style

of production (whatever its sacred origins) were designed
for long-distance effect*: a purpose that no longer exists
in our smaller and more intimate theater.
Secondly, this vast audience did not consist predomi-
nantly of sophisticated city dwellers but ‘of honest-to-
goodness people coming in from the country—many of
them farmers and perhaps even (we cannot be certain)
slaves. The point is that it was not a highbrow audience,
even if it understood better than any modern audience
the cultural framework of its own myths. It was not at
all the kind of audience that came for culture or would
tolerate any “art for art’s sake.”’ These people came to
be thrilled and moved to tears. All the external apparatus
of the Greek stage—song, dance, mime, masks and spee-
tacle—was simply a means to creating a vivid arena
wherein the great human ‘emotions could be worked out
in public. In some two thousand four hundred years
these emotions have not.changed. Only the external cir-
cumstances have changed. Oedipus, Jocasta, and Antig-
one were first of all human beings. The heart of
Sophocles which beat to their passions was first of all a
human heart—only incidentally Greek and of the fifth
century B.C.
Thirdly, let both producer and actor remember that it
is only through his words—by their very choice and
sound—that Sophocles the poet achieves his power to
move us. It is through the beauty, restraint, perfect adap-
tation of every tone and emphasis of the language to
each situation, that he is able to sink us deeply into the
pathos of his characters. Assuming that the translator has
done his best to capture something of the original word-
magic, let those words be heard. It is absolutely neces-
sary that the poetry be read as poetry and not given a
prose pointing. It is absolutely necessary that the lines
are not deprived of their rich embodiment of rhythm
and cadence. The poet has already done the work of

*Masks not merely typed a character’s predominant expression, but also helped to
project the actor’s voice (though this second reason is now somewhat discredited).
 Appendix 295
establishing the necessary tension and dramatic force.
No
amount of “acting” can be a substitute for it.
Let the
voice be measured but natural; never “‘tharsonic,” that
blend of stage and pulpit which some actors affect
when
they come to poetry. If the lines are enunciated clearl
y
and rhythmically, if the acting follows the poetry and
is
not imposed upon it, then the result will tend to be great
acting. It will be the transparent window through which
the characters—created by the words—are sincerely
seen; idealistically human yet never falsely intimate.
As to the Chorus, let the producer keep in mind its
purpose: to underline, develop, and if-possible increase,
the suspense built up by the dialogue. Certainly there
can be music, mime, and dance, provided all this does
not detract from the intelligibility of the words. The
music should tend to build up background rather than to
lead. It can be an ally to the force of the poetry if used
sensitively and not as an end in itself. Woodwind and
percussion instruments—flute and soft drum—would
seem to be the most natural accompaniment to the Greek
movement. They can be used to usher in and to usher out
the main characters. The Sophoclean chorus numbered
fifteen, but it can be raised to almost any number or
lowered to as few as five. It is better for the chorus to
speak its lines severally than to chant them in unison:
though there may be occasions when a group answers a
group.
The scenery should be simple and not distract the
viewer’s imagination by striving for realism. A drop cur-
tain may be helpful, though the Greeks did not use one.
An interval almost certainly destroys the accumulated
tension. If masks are used they should not be replicas of
the Greek mask, which was much larger than life.
These then are the principles. There are few rules, if
many possibilities. Only that production of a Greek play
will be valid which puts the human emotions first and
enables the spectator to feel with and for its subjects.
Let producer and actor resist the two falsifying tempta-
tions: the purely mundane, which can never be heroic,
and the overstylized, which can never be human.
 NOTES

(1) Note on Meter

The meter throughout the dialogue of this rendering
of the Theban Plays is iambic, as it is in Sophocles. If to
anyone’s eye it reads too unvaryingly I can only counsel
him to read it aloud, keeping to the natural stresses of
the words. Dramatic speech automatically tends to create
its own background of counterpoint rhythms. Indeed, the
danger on the stage is not that poetry should sound
monotonous but that it should not sound at all. Sopho-
cles himself never loses his hold on an unmistakable
“beat” which should not be lost in the English even
though English prosody is ‘qualitative’ rather than
“quantitative.” In either language it is the beauty of the
measure itself that contributes to the depth, loftiness and
intensity of the drama.
In my original translation of the Oedipus Plays, pub-
lished by New American Library in 1958, I wrote: ‘In
the Antigone I keep to a more or less traditional blank
versification, but in the other two plays I have made the
attempt to tauten the metrical value of dramatic speech
while at the same time rendering it more elastic and
capacious. In Oedipus the King I have adopted a prosodi-
cal device which helps the line to follow the sense of the
words more than it does in ordinary iambic pentameter.
The lines lengthen and shorten as the need may be, but
whether they stretch into hexameters or shrink into trim-
eters the overall count of a passage remains iambic pen-
tameter. I have called it “Compensated Pentameter.” In
Oedipus at Colonus, to match by some kind of prosodical
analogy this last and supreme mastery of Sophocles over
human speech, I have done away with even compensa-
tion and embark on a completely free-wheeling iambic
measure which I think (and hope) is proof against all
misreading.”
256
 APPENDIX 257;
Since that time, I have come to the conclusion
that
this last solution is the best, and it is what I
adhere to
in this new rendition in all three plays. The free-wheel
ing
iambic measure seems to me to get nearest to that amaz-
ing wedding in the Greek of formality to spontaneity and
fluidity.
There is one other observation I should like to make.
In the Choruses and Choral Dialogues I have mostly
returned to the traditional usage of beginning each line
with a capital rather than following the present practice
of using lower case. My motive is to discourage readers
(especially actors) from treating verse, even when dia-
logue, as ordinary expository prose. I make no apologies
for this decision. We live in an age when lack of faith
(or is it courage?) in the power of poetry to communicate
before and beyond the point at which it enters the cere-
brum, drives readers to make verse look and sound like
prose as soon as possible.

(2) Note on Oedipus the King

The power of Oedipus the King is cumulative. It opens
slowly, weightily, and rises to a flood of emotion that
nothing can stop. This initial solemnity—at times almost
a stiffness—I have been at pains to keep in the English.
It is a formal and hieratic quality and lasts till about line
86, the first exit of OEDIPUS. However, it must not be
assumed that this “grand manner” of utterance casts
aside the already perceptible elements of pity, pathos,
irony, fear, and suffering which come to such full fruition
later.

(3) Note on Creon

It must not be thought that the character of CREON in
Oedipus the King corresponds exactly to the CREON in
the other two plays. The Theban Plays were not written
at the same time nor conceiyed originally as a strict unity.
258 SOPHOCLES

(4) Note on the Appearance of the Greek Script

For those who are interested, here are the first six
lines of the Antigone written out in Greek lower case. If
they are written out in capitals (as Greek often was) they
will look like the lines at the beginning of this book. It
is the same passage.
7Q xowdv adta&derAqov “hourwnc x&pa
&p’ &o@” Stu Zevo tOv an’ Oldinov xaxdv
dmotov ob>yi vOv Ett Cooaw teAei,
oddév yap ot’ dAyewdv oft’ &mc a&tep
ob? atoypdv ott &tidv e080’ dnoiov ob}
Tv oGv te KaLGV ovK STOW tyO KaKdv.

(5) Note on the Texts

The texts I have. followed have in the main been those
of Lewis Campbell, Oxford, 1879, and Richard Jebb,
Cambridge, 1889-93. I support Campbell as against Jebb
in not excising lines 904-12 of the Antigone. These lines
seem to me to throw important light on ANTIGONE’s
character and motives.

(6) Notes on the Handling of the Chorus

In general, let the director never forget that the
Chorus must be elevated to an art convincing in its own
right. This means that the Chorus must be worth watch-
ing and listening to almost regardless of the rest of the
play. Though commenting on, condensing, and recording
the action of the drama, the Chorus should transcend it,
lift it to a new plane of experience—the lyrical. This is
accomplished only by being poetically different from the
realism (naturalism) of each episode. The verses must be
treated as pure poetry—that is, as a vehicle of illumina-
tion that communicates before, or at least beyond the
point at which it is understood. The important question
is not so much whether the Choruses are intelligible, as
 APPENDIX 259
whether they sweep the audience off its feet the way
music and dance can. The following Suggestions on how
to direct a Chorus may be helpful. They embody some
of the stratagems I would employ if I were staging a
Greek play.
(a) Make the size of the Chorus as large as is compati-
ble with the size of the stage, remembering that twelve
people are generally more impressive than three.
(b) Have the Chorus trained in dance and mime and
let the dancing be more or less continuous throughout
the play, though obviously more restrained during the
dialogue parts of the episodes. .
(c) Rarely allow the Chorus to speak directly (except
of course where it takes part in the dialogue). Instead,
have the words coming “voice-over” their movements,
either by direct voice beyond the stage or prerecorded,
or both:.in all cases amplified and made larger than life.
(The reason I am disinclined to let the Chorus speak is
that I have found that performers generally appear overly
self-conscious when forced to dance, sing, mime, and
recite at the same time.)
(d) For this same reason, recitation in unison is diffi-
cult to bring off convincingly, and I prefer the single
amplified voice. Of course, there may be occasions where
voices in unison may be attempted, as well as other sonic
experiments. For instance, after a first straight hearing,
the words can be fragmented into various patterns of
repetition, cross-cutting, overlapping, truncation, and so
on. They can echo liturgical prayers, litanies, chants—the
English perhaps played off against the sound of classical
Greek—or even turned into wounded animal sounds.
Here it would be wise to call in the assistance of an
imaginative musical director who knows all the tricks of
electronic recording. Another inventive approach would
be to have the actions of the Chorus turned into living
tableaux during the voice-overs. These tableaux can be
sometimes moving, sometimes still—frozen into certain
attitudes. Remember always that the aim is to make the
Chorus—both in sound and sight—breathtaking.
(e) As to the straight recitation of the Chorus verses,
260 SOPHOCLES

they should be beaten out rhythmically with little attempt

to make them sound “natural.” The design of the poetry
must be allowed to appear, and not turned into prose.
For instance, when the sense of the words requires the
end of one line to be run into the next, let the reciter
create the illusion of doing this, but he must not actually
do it. The ear must not be cheated of the incantatory
effect of the line as a musical unit.
(f) The choice of music is crucial. There should be
music throughout the play, introducing scenes, repeating
themes, coming in and out of both the dialogue and the
choruses. Care must be taken, however, that the words
always be given first place. Never should the audience
have to strain to hear the words above the music. As to
instruments, I favor drum, flute, and lute (perhaps guitar
and harp) as coming nearest to the Greek timbal, flageo-
let, and lyre.
~ (g) In general, let the director remember that a Greek
play stands or falls by the quality of the Chorus. Too
often one gets the impression that the embarrassed direc-
tor, at his wit’s end, wants to get the Chorus out of the
way as soon as possible. Sometimes it seems the Chorus
is being twisted into part of the dialogue. No, the Chorus
must exist for its own sake and for the arresting beauty
of its own design. Besides being esthetically irresistible
the Chorus has the function of relieving the audience of
dramatic tension (building after each episode) and intro-
ducing a new tension which is lyric and hits below the
belt—that is, below the level of the conscious mind.
 GLOSSARY OF CLASSICAL NAMES
Abae: An ancient town in the country of Phocis (north-
ern Greece) which was famous for its temple and oracle
of Apollo. |
Acheron: A river of the lower world, around which
the souls of the dead were said to hover.
Aidoneus: Another name for Hades—god of the
Nether World.
Amphion: With his twin brother Zethus, Amphion
marched against Thebes, killed Lycus the King (their
cast-off mother’s husband) and Dirce, who had become
Lycus’s wife. They tied Dirce to a bull which dragged
her about until she was dead, then they threw her body
into a fountain—hence ‘“‘Dirce’s Fountain.” Hermes gave
Amphion a lyre on which he played with such magic skill
that the stones moved of their own accord and formed a
great wall around Thebes.
Amphitrite: Wife of the god Poseidon and goddess of
the sea. She was the mother of Triton.
Aphrodite: Goddess of love and beauty. The Roman
Venus.
Apollo: The son of Zeus and Leto. He was the god of
prophecy, of help and reward, and of punishment. He
had more influence upon the Greeks than any other one
god.
Areopagus: Criminal court. of Athens—so called
because it sat on the Hill of Ares, west of the Acropolis.
Ares: Bloodthirsty god of war. Roman Mars.
Argos: A city-state in the Peloponnesus. Also, a rival
to Sparta.
Artemis: Twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the
moon and of the hunt. She sent plagues and sudden
deaths (especially to women), but she also cured and
alleviated sufferings. She is the Roman Diana.
Athena: Or Athene—the Roman Minerva. Daughter
of Zeus and Metis (Zeus swallowed her mother before
her birth and Athena sprang from his head—dressed in
261
262 SOPHOCLES

full armor and shouting a mighty war cry). Goddess of

power and wisdom, Athena was the preserver of the state
and maintained law and order. She is said to have cre-
ated the olive tree and invented the plow.
Attica: A division of Greece in which Athens was the
principal city. ;
Bacchus: Earlier called Dionysus. Greek and Roman
god of wine and revelry.
Bacchanal: Religious revelry centered around the god
Bacchus.
Bacchae: Priestesses of Dionysus who by wine and mad
enthusiasm worked themselves to a frenzy at the Dionys-
iac festivals.
Boreas: God of the North Wind. In the Persian War
he helped the Athenians by destroying the ships of the
barbarians.
Cadmus: Son of Agenor, king of Phoenicia, and. also
the brother of Europa. He founded Thebes by killing a
dragon sacred to Ares and then on the advice of Athena
sowing its teeth. Armed men sprang up from the ground
who fought and killed one another till only five
remained. These five then helped Cadmus to build the
city of Thebes.
Castalia: A fountain on Mount Parnassus sacred to
Apollo.
Cephisus: The largest stream in Attica.
Cerberus: The three-headed dog which guarded the
entrance of Hades Halls.
Cithaeron: A lofty mountain range separating Boeotia
from Megaris and Attica. It was sacred to Dionysus.
Corybantes: The attendants of the Phrygian goddess
Cybele, who followed her through the night with dancing
and revelry.
Cronus: Youngest of the Titans—son of Uranus
(heaven) and Ge or Gaea (earth). He was father, by
Rhea, of Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and
Zeus. He ousted Uranus from divine supremacy and in
turn was dethroned by Zeus. He is the Roman Saturn.
Cyllene: The highest mountain in the Peloponnesus.
Danaé: She was locked in a brazen tower by her father
 Appendix 263
because an oracle said her son would grow to kill
its
grandfather. In her tower Zeus visited her in a showe
r
of gold, and thus impregnated she gave birth to Per-
seus—who years later accidentally killed his grandfather
with a discus.
Daulia: An ancient town in+Phocis.
Delos: The smallest of the Cyclades islands. As it was
the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, Delos became the
holy seat of the worship of Apollo and the site of a
famous temple.
Delphi:A small town in Phocis, but the most cele-
brated in Greece because of its oracle of Apollo.
Demeter: Sister of Zeus, goddess of earth, protectress
of agriculture and all the fruits of the earth. She became
identified with the Roman Ceres.
Dionysus: God of wine and the god of tragic art and
protector of the theater. The Roman Bacchus.
Dirce: See Amphion.
Dragon’s Seed: The armed men that sprang up from
the teeth of the dragon which Cadmus slew. They fought
and killed one another except five, who became the
ancestors of the Thebans.
Dryads: Nymphs of the woods (female divinities of the
lower order).
Dryas: Father of the Thracian king, Lycurgus.
Edonia: A part of Thrace where the people were cele-
brated for their orgiastic worship of Bacchus.
Eleusis: A town of Attica, northwest of Athens, which
had a magnificent temple of Demeter, and gave its name
to the great festival and mysteries of the Eleusinia, which
were celebrated in honor of Persephone and Demeter.
Erectheus: (Erichthonius)—son of Hephaestus. Athena
reared him without the other gods’ knowing. He’ became
king of Athens and is said to have introduced the worship
of Athena there.
Eumenides: The ‘Kindly Ones” (which is a euphemism
for the Furies or Erinyes, dreaded daughters of Earth
and Night). They were usually represented as winged
maidens with serpents entwined in their hair and blood
dripping from their eyes. They dwelt in the depths of
264 SOPHOCLES

Tartarus. They punished humans both in this world and

after death—usually for disobedience toward parents,
disrespect of old age, perjury, murder, violation of laws
of hospitality, and improper conduct toward suppliants.
Euxine: The Black Sea.
Furies: See Eumenides.
Hades: See Aidoneus.
Helicon: Range of mountains in Boeotia which are
covered in snow most of the year. They were sacred to
Apollo and the Muses. From Helicon sprang the famous
fountains of the Muses.
Helios: God of the sun who sees and hears everything.
Hephaestus: God of fire and the forge, who made
Achilles’ shield. Son of Zeus and Hera. The Roman
Vulcan.
Hermes: The Roman Mercury. Usually depicted wear-
ing winged shoes and hat and carrying the caduceus in
his hand. He was the herald and messenger of the gods
and also invented the lyre. He conducted the shades of
the dead from the upper to the lower world.
Iacchus: The solemn name of Bacchus in the Eleusin-
ian mysteries.
Io: Beloved by Zeus and hated by Hera, who turned
her into a heifer. Hera tormented her with a gadfly. In
a constant state of frenzy, she fled from land to land
until she at last found rest on the banks of the Nile and
returned to her original form.
Ismenus: A small river in Boeotia, the stream Dirce
flowed into.
Ister: The river Danube, flowing to the Black Sea
through the land of the Scythians.
Isthmian: The Isthmian games were held once a year
on the Isthmus of Corinth.
Lyceus: A surname of Apollo, who was worshipped in
Lycia, a small district in South Asia Minor.
Maenads: Another name for the Bacchantes, meaning
“to be mad,” because they were frenzied in their worship
of Bacchus.
Mars: Roman name for Ares, god of war.
Megareus: A son of Eurydice, wife of Creon.
 Appendix 265
Mercury: Roman name for Hermes.
Nemesis: The goddess who measured out happiness
and misery, visiting suffering and losses on those
who
were too fortunate. She became known. as the
divinity
who punished the criminal.
Niobe: The daughter of Tantalus and wife of
Amphion, king of Thebes. She boasted of the numbe
r
of her children, thus annoying Apollo and Artemis, who
slew all her children. Zeus turned the weeping mother
into a stone on Mount Sipylus in Lydia, which even dur-
ing the summer always shed tears.
Nymphs: Minor goddesses of nature, haunting rivers
(Naiads), woods and trees (Dryads and Hamadryads),
mountains (Oreads), and seas (Nereids).
Nyssa: The legendary scene of the nurture of Diony-
sus. It came to mean several places sacred to Dionysus.
Oea: A deme (small district) in Attica belonging to the
Oenean tribe. 7
Olympus: The highest of the range of mountains sepa-
rating Macedonia and Thessaly. It was the home of Zeus
and all his dynasty.
Pallas: A surname of Athena.
Pan: A son of Hermes. The god of shepherds and
flocks. He loved music and invented the syrinx or shep-
herd’s flute. He led the nymphs in dance, but, as he had
the legs and horns of a goat and dwelt in the forests,
travelers were frightened of him.
Parnassus: A mountain range in southern Greece: usu-
ally signifying the highest part, which is a few miles north
of Delphi. It was the seat of Apollo and the Muses, and
sacred to: Dionysus.
Peiritheus: A hero in Attic history who gave his name
to a deme (one of the hundred townships into which
Attica was divided).
Peloponnesus: Southern peninsula of Greece, con-
nected with Hellas by the isthmus of Corinth. It con-
tained the powerful city-states of Sparta and Argos.
Pelops: Meaning the Peloponnesus, which was named
after Pelops, son of Tantalus, who came to Elis and
266 SOPHOCLES

brought with him such riches that the whole peninsula

was named for him.
Persephone: Daughter of Zeus and Demeter and wife
of Hades, therefore Queen of the Dead. The Roman
Proserpine.
Phasis: A river of Colchis in Asia Minor from whose
banks the pheasant is said to have come.
Phineus: Who blinded his own sons because of alleged
treachery. The gods punished him in turn with blindness
and sent the Harpies to torment him. The sons of Boreas
eventually freed him from the monsters.
Phoebus: “‘Bright’’ or ‘““Pure’—an epithet of Apollo.
Phrygia: A country in Asia Minor, probably settled by
Thracians.
Pluto: Another name for Hades—used as euphemism
by those who were frightened to mention Hades.
Poseidon: God of the Mediterranean. Brother of Zeus
and Hades, who rode his chariot over the waves and
lived in a palace in the depths of the sea. The Roman
Neptune.
Prometheus: A god who stole fire from heaven and
taught the mortals its use, and many arts. He was
chained to a rock and submitted to the perpetual torture
of an eagle’s eating away his liver (and Zeus’s healing it
each night so that the eagle could begin again). Hercules
eventually freed him.
Pythia: A priestess of Delphi, who, after exhaling the
intoxicating vapors which rose from the ground in the
center of the temple, uttered the revelations of Apollo.
Pytho: The ancient name of Delphi.
Rhea: Mother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera,
Demeter, Hestia. ‘“Mother of the Gods,” who was wildly
and often orgiastically worshiped through the whole of
Greece.
Sardis: An ancient city of Asia Minor which contained
the palace and the rich treasury of the Lydian kings.
Semele: The daughter of Theban Cadmus who was
beloved by Zeus. Jealous Hera tricked her into asking
Zeus to visit her as god of thunder. He warned Semele
of the danger but nevertheless complied. She was killed
 Appendix 267
by lightning but Zeus saved her child, Dionysus,
whom
she had just conceived by Zeus (as thunder). Diony
sus
later carried her from the underworld to Olymp
us and
she became immortal.
Sipylus: See Niobe.
Sphinx: “The Strangler,” a winged monster with a
lion’s body and the head and breasts of a woman. She
took up her station on a rock outside Thebes and pro-
posed a riddle to every passerby, strangling those who
could not answer. When Oedipus solved the riddle she
flung herself from her rock and perished.
Tantalus: A wealthy, worldly king, and son of Zeus.
After his death Zeus punished him in the underworld by
eternal thirst and hunger. He placed him in a lake, which
receded from him each time he tried to drink, and
beneath branches of fruit which Tantalus could never
quite reach.
Tartarus: A name synonymous with Hades. Also a
place as far below Hades as Heaven is above the earth.
Thebes: The chief city of Boeotia; said to have been
founded by the hero Cadmus. The walls of the city were
built by Amphion and his brother Zethus. Legend had
it that when Amphion played his lyre, the stones them-
selves moved into place to form the wall.
Thoricus: A hero in Attic history who gave his name
to a deme (one of the hundred townships into which
Attica was divided).
Thrace: A city-state in northern Greece which was
inhabited by rapacious and warlike people.
Titans: Giant deities, the primordial children of
Heaven and Earth, who were overthrown and succeeded
by Zeus and the Olympian gods.
Zeus: The Roman Jupiter: greatest, most powerful,
and ruler of all the Olympian gods. The husband of
Hera, the Roman Juno.
 Acknowledgments

In my original rendition of the Oedipus Plays, I made

grateful acknowledgment to the following professors and
associate professors for their criticism and suggestions:
Mr. Bernard N. W. Knox of Yale University
Mr. Martin Ostwald of Columbia University
Miss Helen Bacon of Smith College
Mr. John A. Moore of Amherst College.
I also thanked the trustees of the Bollingen Foundation for
the award that enabled me to translate the Oedipus
at
Colonus on the island of Nevis in the West Indies.
Lastly, in this new and ‘revised version, I want to thank
my
percipient editor at Dutton Signet, Ms. Rosemary Ahern.
DATE DUE
 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF OEDIPUS
Revising and updating his classic 1958 translation, Paul Roche
captures the dramatic power and intensity, the subtleties of
meaning. and the explosive emotions ef Sophocles’ great Theban
trilogy. In vivid. poetic language, he presents the timeless story ofa
noble family moving tow ard catastrophe, dragged down fram
wealth and power by pride, cursed with incest. suicide, and murder.

4 23 00 Gh GA © OF 69 OH OS 55 OS ES OF ES 2

William Carlos Williams called the Roche translation of \ntigone

“brilliantly successful...as spirited and powerful as the original
must have been.” Roche’s versions of the Oedipts plays are both
stunning and sympathetic, awe-inspiring and intimate, and bring
the elemental myths of ancient Greece to life for modern readers.

Loee OS Go 26 GH C8 09 ©5 C4 55 £5 84 6 EH OF

Included in this edition are a glossary of classical names. notes

on pronunciation and meter. suggestions for production and
acting. and historical material, which offer the reader a greater
appreciation of Sephocles’ dramatic genius.