Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles

said this more than once.
I would be mad, or have lost my good sense,
if I lost faith in you: you
who wrenched our loved country
820 back on course when you found her
wandering crazed with suffering.

     

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Steer us straight, againnow
with all your inspired luck.
JOCASTA In god's name, King, tell me why
you've hardened your mind in this rage.
LEADER I'll tell you, for it's you I respect, not the men.
Kreon caused my rage by his plots against me.
JOCASTA Go on. Explain what provoked the quarrel.
OEDIPUS He says I murdered Laius.
830 JOCASTA Does he know this himself? Or did someone tell him?
OEDIPUS Neither. He sent that vicious seer to make the charge
so he could keep his own mouth innocent.
JOCASTA Then you can clear yourself of all his charges.
Listen to me, for I can make you believe
that no man, ever, has mastered prophecy.
This one incident will prove it.
A long time back, an oracle reached Laius
I don't say that Apollo himself sent it,
but the priests who interpret him did
840 which said that when Laius came to die
his killer would be a son born to him and me.
Yet, as we heard the story, foreign bandits
murdered Laius at a place where three roads meet.
(Oedipus reacts with sudden intensity to her words.)
But that son of ours was less than three days old
when Laius pierced and yoked its ankle joints,
and had it left, by someone else's hands,
on a mountain far from any roads. Apollo failed!
That time Apollo failed to make Laius die
the way he fearedat the hands of his own son.
850 Does that show you how much sense
prophetic voices make of our lives?
You can forget them. When god wants
something to happen, he makes it happen,
then he shows it to usall with ease.
OEDIPUS Just now, as I listened to you, Lady, my heart raced,
something in my memory woke up terrified.
JOCASTA What chilling thought turned you toward me like that?
OEDIPUS I thought you said that Laius
was struck down where three roads meet.

     

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860 JOCASTA That's what I saidit's the story we still hear.
OEDIPUS Tell me the place where it happened.
JOCASTA It happened on a road in Phokis, at the fork
where roads come in from Delphi and from Daulis.
OEDIPUS How much time has passed since it happened?
JOCASTA We heard the news just before you came to power.
OEDIPUS O Zeus! What is this you have willed me to do?
JOCASTA Oedipus, you're heartstricken. What is it?
OEDIPUS Don't ask me yet. Describe Laius to me.
Was he a young man just reaching his prime?
870 JOCASTA He was tall, with some white showing in his hair.
He looked then not very different from you now.
OEDIPUS It's my ruin. I think that savage curse I spoke
in such ignorance is mineit damns me.
JOCASTA What are you saying? Your face makes me tremble, Lord.
OEDIPUS I have a desperate fear the prophet sees.
But there is one more fact you must tell me.
JOCASTA I'm so frightened I can hardly answer.
OEDIPUS Did Laius go with just a few, or the large troop
of armed men one expects of a prince?
880 JOCASTA There were only five men. One was a herald,
there was a wagon for Laius to ride.
OEDIPUS Ah! Now I can see it. Who told you this, Lady?
JOCASTA Our slave. The one man who survived and came home.
OEDIPUS Is he by chance on call here in our house?
JOCASTA No. When he returned here, and saw
that you had all dead Laius' power,
he touched my hand and begged me to send him
out to our farmlands and sheepfolds,
so he'd be far away and out of sight.
890 I sent him. He was deservingthough a slave
of a much larger favor than he asked.
OEDIPUS Can he be sent for immediately?
JOCASTA Of course. But why do you insist on it?

     

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OEDIPUS I'm so afraid, Lady, that I've said far
too much. That's the reason I wish to see him now.
OEDIPUS I'll make him come. But I think I've a right
to know what so deeply disturbs you, Lord.
OEDIPUS So much of what I dreaded has happened,
I will tell you everything I fear.
900 No one has more right than you do,
to know the risks to which I'm now