greek · literary

Oedipus Rex — Oedipus the King

c. 429 BCE · Classical Greece (5th century BCE) · Athens, Greece

Prologue — The Plague of Thebes

1My children, latest-born to Cadmus old,
2why are ye here as suppliants, wreathed with boughs?
3The city reeks with incense, rings with prayers
4for health, and cries of woe.
5I held it unmeet, my children, to hear these things from others' tongues,
6and have come hither myself—I, Oedipus, whom all men call the Great.
7PRIEST: O Oedipus, ruler of our land,
8thou seest how young and old we sit around thy altars;
9some nurture yet too tender for far flights—
10some bowed with age, the priests as I of Zeus—
11and younger folk chosen from all the city.
12The rest sit crowned with wreaths at the two shrines of Pallas,
13or where Ismenus gives his fire oracular.
14For the city, as thou thyself seest,
15is now too sorely vexed, and can no more
16lift her head from beneath the angry waves of death.

Scene I — Tiresias

17OEDIPUS: Who is the man of whom the god speaks?
18Where shall we find him? Where shall we hope to trace the footprints of a distant crime?
19TIRESIAS: I say thou art the slayer of the man
20whose slayer thou dost seek.
21OEDIPUS: Thou shalt not twice say riddles such as that unpunished!
22TIRESIAS: Shall I say more, to tempt thine anger more?
23OEDIPUS: Say what thou wilt; it will be said in vain.
24TIRESIAS: I say that thou hast been living in unguessed shame
25with those most dear to thee,
26and seest not to what woe thou hast come.
27OEDIPUS: Dost thou indeed think thou canst say such things
28and not be punished?
29TIRESIAS: Yes, if the truth has any power to save.
30OEDIPUS: It has, for all but thee; for thee 'tis not,
31since thou art blind in ear, in mind, in eye.
32TIRESIAS: Yea, thou art a poor wretch to hurl these taunts
33at me, which all men soon will hurl at thee.

Scene II — The Messenger from Corinth

34MESSENGER: Polybus is dead, O king.
35OEDIPUS: How? By treachery or by the hand of sickness?
36MESSENGER: A slight thing in the scale brings aged men to rest.
37OEDIPUS: By sickness, then, poor man, it seems he perished?
38MESSENGER: Yes, and by the long count of years he lived.
39JOCASTA: Oedipus, why then should a man fear,
40seeing that for man fortune rules supreme
41and there is clear fore-knowledge of nothing?
42'Tis best to live at random, as one can.
43But fear thou not touching marriage with thy mother:
44many mortals ere now have so lain in dreams also.
45But he to whom these things are as nought
46bears his life most easily.

Scene III — The Shepherd's Revelation

47OEDIPUS: And thou—thine age, thy look—
48Art thou the man this other meant?
49SHEPHERD: Woe is me! I am on the brink of speaking that which I should not.
50OEDIPUS: And I of hearing; yet I must hear.
51SHEPHERD: Know then—they said he was Laius' child.
52But the woman within—thy wife—could best say how these things are.
53OEDIPUS: She gave him to thee?
54SHEPHERD: Yea, O king.
55OEDIPUS: For what intent?
56SHEPHERD: That I should make away with it.
57OEDIPUS: Her own child, the wretch?
58SHEPHERD: Aye, in fear of evil prophecies.
59OEDIPUS: What prophecies?
60SHEPHERD: 'Twas said that he must slay his sire.
61OEDIPUS: Why then didst thou give him up to this old man?
62SHEPHERD: Through pity, master, as thinking that he would bear him away
63to the country from which the man came.
64But he saved him for the worst of woes.
65For if thou art what this man saith,
66know that thou wast born to misery.
67OEDIPUS: Oh, oh! All brought to pass—all true!
68O Light, may I now look my last on thee—
69I who have been found accursed in birth, accursed in wedlock, accursed in the shedding of blood!

Exodus — The Ruin of Oedipus

70CHORUS: Time, all-seeing, hath found thee out in thy despite;
71he judgeth the strange marriage—the begetter and begotten both.
72O thou child of Laius, would, would that I had never seen thee!
73I wail aloud, I who drew breath of life from thee,
74and through thee darkness hath been shed upon mine eyes.
75OEDIPUS: O darkness that envelops me,
76accursed cloud that cannot be dispersed,
77coming upon me unspeakable, irresistible,
78swept onward by ill fortune and the memory of my sins.
79What city will receive me now? What friendly stranger
80will look with kindly eye upon my ruin?
81CHORUS: What profit was it to behold? Why should I look at things divine
82if I who looked thus came to woe?
83Let no man pray to see again such days!
84Fix all his hope on the last day and call
85no mortal blest till he hath passed the goal of life
86and suffered naught.

notes

Oedipus Rex (Oedipus Tyrannus) by Sophocles (c. 497/6–406/5 BCE) is one of the three Theban plays and is widely regarded as the greatest achievement of ancient tragedy. Aristotle held it up in the Poetics as the exemplary tragedy, analysing it to define catharsis, reversal (peripeteia), and recognition (anagnorisis). The play dramatises the investigation Oedipus conducts into the murder of his predecessor Laius — not knowing he himself is the murderer, or that Laius was his father and Jocasta his mother. The action is a single day of relentless revelation. The irony is total: every step Oedipus takes to escape his fate drives him deeper into it. The closing choral ode — "call no mortal blest till he hath passed the goal of life and suffered naught" — summarises the tragic vision of Greek culture: that happiness is not established until death. Translation: R.C. Jebb, "Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, Part I: The Oedipus Tyrannus," Cambridge University Press, 1887. Public domain.

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