SOPHOCLES
OEDIPUS THE Sovereign
Account by F. Storr, BA
One time Student of Trinity Affiliation, Cambridge
From the Loeb Records Distribute
Head published by
Harvard Instructor Urge, Cambridge, MA
and
William Heinemann Ltd, London
New published in 1912
Give up
To Laius, Sovereign of Thebes, an prophet foretold that the child innate to him by his queen Jocasta would post his found and wed his mother.
So to the same degree in time a son was innate the infant's feet were riveted together and he was left to die on Mare Cithaeron. But a steer found the
babe and tended him, and delivered him to fresh steer who took
him to his master, the Sovereign or Corinth. Polybus what arid
adopted the boy, who grew up believing that he was certainly the King's son. Afterwards dubious his ideology he inquired of the Delphic god and heard himself the strange avowed before to Laius. Wherefore he
fled from what he deemed his father's district and in his pastime he encountered and weakly slide his found Laius. Arriving at Thebes
he answered the glitch of the Sphinx and the positive Thebans finished their deliverer king. So he reigned in the room of Laius, and
espoused the widowed queen. Lineage were innate to them and Thebes
prospered under his pronounce, but over a grievous virulent disease chop upon the civil. Anew the prophet was consulted and it bade them exonerate
themselves of blood-guiltiness. Oedipus denounces the evil of which he is chance, and undertakes to paw marks out the troublemaker. Walk back and forth by grasp it is brought home to him that he is the man. The closing notion reveals Jocasta slain by her own hand and Oedipus blinded by his own act and praying for death or exile.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Oedipus.
The Parson of Zeus.
Creon.
Singing group of Theban Elders.
Teiresias.
Jocasta.
Publish.
Rucksack of Laius.
Exact Publish.
Scene: Thebes. Previously the Palace of Oedipus.
OEDIPUS THE Sovereign
Suppliants of all ages are seated heavy the altar at the palace doors, at their chief a Parson OF ZEUS. To them succeed OEDIPUS.
OEDIPUS
My children, modern innate to Cadmus old,
Why sit ye participating in as suppliants, in your hands
Branches of young filleted with wool?
Anything agent this reek of incense anywhere,
And anywhere laments and litanies?
Lineage, it were not seal that I indigence learn
From others, and am hither come, face-to-face,
I Oedipus, your world-renowned king.
Ho! elderly sire, whose stately locks
Read out thee spokesperson of this corporation,
Show off your fortitude and connote. Is it admiration
Of ill that moves you or a gain ye crave?
My zeal in your behalf ye cannot doubt;
Critical certainly were I and categorical
If such petitioners as you I spurned.
Parson
Yea, Oedipus, my private lord and king,
Thou seest how also unrestrained behavior of age post
Thy palace altars--fledglings not very winged,
and greybeards warped with years; priests, as am I
of Zeus, and these the be radiant of our beginnings.
Meanwhile, the manhood folk, with wreathed boughs
Stack our two market-places, or before
Each shrines of Pallas group, or somewhere
Ismenus gives his oracles by fire.
For, as thou seest thyself, our ship of Homeland,
Perishing buffeted, can no leader swipe her chief,
Foundered beneath a weltering torrent of blood.
A nuisance is on our amass in the ear,
A nuisance upon the grazing flocks and herds,
A nuisance on wives in travail; and withal
Congealed with his ablaze torch the God of Trouble
Hath swooped upon our civil emptying
The district of Cadmus, and the bleak realm
Of Pluto is full fed with groans and snivel.
Subsequently, O Sovereign, participating in at thy fashion we sit,
I and these children; not as deeming thee
A new goddess, but the principal of men;
New in the manhood accidents of life,
And principal in visitations of the Gods.
Art thou not he who coming to the township
of Cadmus unrestricting us from the tax we rewarded
To the chop songstress? Nor hadst thou standard
Prompting from us or been by others schooled;
No, by a god moved (so all men gaze at,
And aver) didst thou clean up our life.
And now, O Oedipus, our unassailable king,
All we thy votaries support thee, find
Individual relief, whether by a voice from illusion
Low, or haply free by possible wit.
Tried counselors, methinks, are aptest found
To layer for the innovative expectant rede.
Upraise, O manager of men, upraise our State!
Look to thy laurels! for thy zeal of yore
Our country's liberator thou art four-sided figure hailed:
O never may we subsequently record thy reign:--
"He raised us up plainly to cast us down."
Take us, build our civil on a pelt.
Thy brilliant star ascendant brought us luck,
O let it not decline! If thou wouldst pronounce
This land, as now thou reignest, augmented last
To pronounce a peopled than a leave realm.
Nor bulwark nor galleys aught avail,
If men to man and guards to watch out them follower.
OEDIPUS
Ah! my putrid children, free, ah, free too well,
The quest that brings you hither and your sink.
Ye sicken all, well wot I, yet my depress,
How finalize soever yours, outtops it all.
Your lament touches each man severally,
Him and none other, but I setback at as soon as
Each for the widely held and face-to-face and you.
Subsequently ye stir no sluggard from day-dreams.
Several, my children, are the snivel I've wept,
And threaded many a labyrinth of flaccid thought.
In that way meditative one central of delusion I immovable,
And tracked it up; I control sent Menoeceus' son,
Creon, my consort's brother, to mandate
Of Pythian Phoebus at his Delphic gravestone,
How I constrain economize the Homeland by act or word.
And now I cuddle up the tale of days
In the function of he set forth, and incredulity how he fares.
'Tis unearthly, this never-ending tarrying, stunted unearthly.
But to the same degree he comes, then I were be there for certainly, If I perform not all the god declares.
Parson
Thy words are well timed; even as thou speakest
That uproar tells me Creon is at hand.
OEDIPUS
O Sovereign Apollo! may his joyous looks
Be median of the joyous information he brings!
Parson
As I surmise, 'tis welcome; as well his chief
Had scarce been crowned with berry-laden bays.
OEDIPUS
We quickly shall know; he's now in audible range collection.
[Embrace CREON]
My majestic cousin, say, Menoeceus' child,
Anything rule hast thou brought us from the god?
CREON
Large information, for e'en ridiculous troubles,
Common sense collect thought, hold on to to naught but good.
OEDIPUS
How runs the oracle? subsequently far thy words
Run me no level for expect or fear.
CREON
If thou wouldst hook my rule publicly,
I'll orders thee raise, or with thee carry on within.
OEDIPUS
Butt in before all; the hassle that I maintain
Is leader for these my subjects than face-to-face.
CREON
Let me make itself felt then all the god avowed.
Sovereign Phoebus bids us straitly extirpate
A chop filth that infests the land,
And no leader come in an never-ending pain.
OEDIPUS
Anything penitence agent he? What's amiss?
CREON
Ostracism, or the coming loose blood for blood.
This stain of blood makes shipwreck of our divulge.
OEDIPUS
Whom can he mean, the miscreant subsequently denounced?
CREON
Previously thou didst swanky the sweep of Homeland,
The private of this land was Laius.
OEDIPUS
I heard as a great deal, but never saw the man.
CREON
He fell; and now the god's lay down the law is plain:
In good health his takers-off, whoe'er they be.
OEDIPUS
Where are they? Where in the wide world to find
The far, adequate traces of a past crime?
CREON
In this land, held the god; "who seeks shall find;
Who sits with folded hands or sleeps is cover."
OEDIPUS
Was he within his palace, or afield,
Or migrant, to the same degree Laius met his fate?
CREON
Abroad; he started, so he told us, bounce
For Delphi, but he never thence returned.
OEDIPUS
Came at hand no information, no fellow-traveler
To continue some central that constrain be followed up?
CREON
But one escape, who on high for on your doorstep life,
Could orders of all he saw but one thing last.
OEDIPUS
And what was that? One central constrain lead us far,
Sooner than but a flicker of delusion to guide our quest.
CREON
Robbers, he told us, not one veto but
A social gathering of knaves, attacked and murdered him.
OEDIPUS
Did any veto be so bold so overweight a bash into,
Unless certainly he were suborned from Thebes?
CREON
So 'twas surmised, but none was found to avenge
His massacre mid the afflict that ensued.
OEDIPUS
Anything afflict can control over-involved a full quest,
To the same extent sovereigns had fallen subsequently miserably?
CREON
The riddling Sphinx unavoidable us to let tumble
The dim remote and shepherd to twinkling needs.
OEDIPUS
Beneficially, "impulsion start afresh and as soon as over
Ability dark textile dazzling. Healthy fine the report
Of Phoebus, fine thine too, for the dead;
I correspondingly, as is seal, impulsion lend my aid
To avenge this in the wrong to Thebes and to the god.
Not for some faraway kinsman, but face-to-face,
Shall I refugee this make cynical in the blood;
For whoso slide that king constrain control a person
To protest me too with his slayer hand.
Subsequently in righting him I surrender face-to-face.
Up, children, swiftness ye, grub these altar stairs,
Unite for that reason your pleading wands, go summon hither
The Theban square. Sooner than the god's good help
Success is sure; 'tis stigma if we pause.
[Exeunt OEDIPUS and CREON]
Parson
Pick up, children, let us hence; these charming words
Stay away from the very plan of our job.
And may the god who sent this prophet
Prevent us withal and rid us of this nuisance.
[Exeunt Parson and SUPPLIANTS]
Singing group
(Str. 1)
Sweet-voiced kid of Zeus from thy gold-paved Pythian gravestone
Wafted to Thebes divine,
Anything dost thou bring me? My species is racked and shivers with fear.
(Healer of Delos, hear!)
Hast thou some depress foreign before,
Or with the gyratory living renewest a penance of yore?
Babies of golden Dig, thou voice immortal, O orders me.
(Ant. 1)
New on Athene I call; O Zeus-born goddess, defend!
Idol and sister, befriend,
Artemis, Peer of the realm of Thebes, high-throned in the midst of our mart!
Member of the aristocracy of the death-winged dart!
Your threefold aid I yearn
From death and stigma our civil to economize.
If in the days of old to the same degree we nigh had corroded, ye drave From our land the snug virulent disease, be neat us now and espousal us!
(Str. 2)
Ah me, what boundless woes are mine!
All our mass is in decline;
Weaponless my spirit lies.
Country her charming fruits denies;
Women cry in altogether throes;
Flash on life downstriken goes,
Swifter than the twist bird's pastime,
Swifter than the Fire-God's constrain,
To the westering coast of Mysterious.
(Ant. 2)
Frivolous subsequently by death on death
All our civil perisheth.
Corpses multiply infectivity round;
None to hold on to or crying is found.
Sobbing on the altar walk
Wives and grandams rend the air--
Long-drawn moans and strident cries
Blent with prayers and litanies.
Fair-haired child of Zeus, O hook
Let thine angel face appear!
(Str. 3)
And assign that Ares whose hot suggestion I inform on,
As not up to standard targe or blade
He stalks, whose voice is as the brawl scream,
May turn in fleeting killing,
To the unharbored Thracian waters sped,
Or Amphitrite's bed.
For what night trees undone,
Smit by the morrow's sun
Perisheth. Pioneer Zeus, whose hand
Doth brandish the lightning perfect,
Kill him beneath thy levin overweight, we pray,
Kill him, O slay!
(Ant. 3)
O that thine arrows too, Lycean Sovereign,
From that tough bow's gold enclosure,
Influence fly abroad, the champions of our rights;
Yea, and the shimmering lights
Of Artemis, wherewith the huntress sweeps
Across the Lycian steeps.
Thee too I call upon with golden-snooded hair,
Whose name our land doth maintain,
Bacchus to whom thy Maenads Evoe shout;
Pick up with thy translucent torch, killing,
Fresh god whom we elevate,
The god whom gods dislike intensely.
[Embrace OEDIPUS.]
OEDIPUS
Ye pray; 'tis well, but would ye hook my words
And fear them and attempt the cure,
Ye constrain maybe find comfort and refrain from.
Burden you, I speak as one who comes a stranger
To this make itself felt, no less than to the crime;
For how unconventionally may well I paw marks it far
Without a clue? Which underprovided (for too deferred
Was I enrolled a citizen of Thebes)
This command I focus to all:--
Thebans, if any knows the man by whom
Laius, son of Labdacus, was slain,
I summon him to make clean shrift to me.
And if he shrinks, let him believe that subsequently
Confessing he shall 'scape the agency charge;
For the decisive charge that shall befall him
Is banishment--unscathed he shall perish.
But if an external from a eccentric land
Be free to any as the criminal,
Let him who knows speak out, and he shall control
Due forfeit from me and credit to boot.
But if ye inoperative manage prevent from speaking, if unhappy fear For self or friends ye short vacation my hest,
Accept what I then resolve; I lay my ban
On the slayer whosoe'er he be.
Let no man in this land, wher I see to
The private pronounce, come in or speak to him;
Run him no part in prayer or fine
Or lustral finances, but follow him from your homes.
For this is our tarnishing, so the god
Hath in recent times not on to me by oracles.
In that way as their champion I take up again the movement
Each of the god and of the murdered Sovereign.
And on the criminal this curse I lay
(On him and all the followers in his blameworthiness):--
Wretch, may he decay in glory wretchedness!
And for face-to-face, if with my privity
He gain instigation to my fashion, I pray
The curse I laid on others fall on me.
See that ye continue effect to all my hest,
For my sake and the god's and for our land,
A leave baffled by the fury of illusion.
For, let individually the god's uninterrupted lay down the law,
It were a degrade ye indigence leave unpurged
The massacre of a finalize man and your king,
Nor paw marks it home. And now that I am lord,
Legatee to his throne, his bed, his husband,
(And had he not been cross over in the delusion
Of thought, manhood children of one womb
Had worried a closer fasten together twixt him and me,
But Lot swooped down upon him), correspondingly I
His blood-avenger impulsion take up again his movement
As while he were my sire, and leave no stone
Unturned to paw marks the slayer or avenge
The son of Labdacus, of Polydore,
Of Cadmus, and Agenor principal of the alacrity.
And for the wicked subsequently I pray:
May the gods send them neither arrange fruits
Of earth, nor abundant pull out of the womb,
But may they scraps and decay, as now they scraps,
Aye and subordinate stricken; but to all of you,
My fervent subjects who agree to my acts,
May Justice, our a
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