Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles Page A

exposed.
Polybos of Corinth was my father.
My mother was Merope, a Dorian.
I was the leading citizen there
until this chance happening
challenged me. Shocking enough
but I took it much too hard.
It was this: a drunk man at a feast swore
that I was not Polybos' real son.
910 Though seething, I said nothing. All that day
I barely held it in. But next morning
I put my question to mother and father.
They were enraged at this man, and the insult
he'd shot at me. Their words reassured me.
Yet, the thing kept pounding in my mind.
It stalked me. So, without telling my parents,
I traveled to the Pythian oracle.
But Apollo would not honor me
with the knowledge I craved.
920 Instead,
his words flashed other things
horror and disgustat me:
that I would be my mother's lover,
that I would show a kind of children to the world
it could not bear to look at, that I
would murder the father whose seed I am.
Once I had heard the god say that, I fled
far from Corinth, measuring my distance
from home by its place in the stars. I ran
930 for someplace where I'd never see come true
outrages like those predicted for me.
But my flight carried me to just the place
where you say that the king was killed.
Oh, woman, here is the truth.
As I strode toward those joining paths
a herald, a colt-drawn wagon, and a man

     

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like the one you describe, met me.
The man out front and the old man himself
tried to crowd me off the roadway.
940 The driver, who was forcing me aside,
I smashed in anger.
The old man watched me,
he measured my approach, then leaning out
he lunged down with his two-spiked goad
at the center of my skull.
He was more than repaid:
I hit him so fast with the staff
this hand held, he was knocked back
rolling off the cart, and lay face up.
950 And then I killed them all.
But if this stranger and Laius . . . were the same blood,
whose triumph could be worse than mine?
Is there a man born the gods hate more?
Nobody, no Theban, no foreigner,
can bring me into his home.
No one can speak with me.
They must all drive me out.
I am the man who leveled
no one else!this curse at myself.
960 I love his wife with my hands
repulsive from her husband's blood.
Has not evil soaked through me
poisoning my whole being?
I must be banished, but I can't
return to my parents, I can't set foot
in my homeland, because there
I would marry my own mother.
I would kill Polybos my father
who gave me birth and brought me up.
970 If someone said that things like these
could only be the work of a savage god,
he would be speaking the truth.
O you perfect and terrifying gods! Never,
never, let the day these things happen
come to me. Let me be wiped from men's eyes
before I see my body gripped
by such shame and devastation.
LEADER What you say terrifies us, Lord. But don't lose hope
until you've heard it from the eyewitness.

     

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OEDIPUS That is the one hope I have left
980 to wait for that man to come from the fields.
JOCASTA When he comes, what will you try to find out?
OEDIPUS This: if his story matches yours,
then I will have escaped destruction.
JOCASTA What did you hear that was crucial in mine?
OEDIPUS He told you Laius was killed by bandits.
If he will still claim there were several,
then I cannot be the killer. One man
cannot be many. But if he says: one man,
990 braving the road alone, did it,
there's no more doubt.
The evidence drags me down.
JOCASTA Never. I told it just as he told me.
Be sure of it. He can't take back what he said
the whole city heard him, not just me.
And even if he does change his story now
he can't show us that Laius' murder
happened as the god predicted.
Apollo
1000 unmistakably said my son would kill Laius.
That poor doomed child never had a chance
to kill his father because he was killed first.
I will never react to an oracle
by fearing everything in sight.
OEDIPUS You've thought this out well. But you must
still send for that herdsman. Don't fail me.
JOCASTA I'll send for him now. But come inside.
Would I do