You shall,
If things are as I see them, you are the first
To whom I would tell my story. Listen then,
My father was a Corinthian, Polybus;
My mother a Dorian, Merope. At home
I rose to be a person of some pre eminence;
Until a strange thing happened - a curious thing -
Though perhaps I took it to heart more than it deserved.
One day at a table, a fellow who had been drinking deeply
Made bold to say I was not my fathers son.
That hurt me;
But for the time I suffered in silence
As well as I could.
Next day I approached my parents and asked them to tell me the truth.
They were bitterly angry
That anyone should dare to put a story about;
And I was relieved.
Yet somehow the smart remained;
And a thing like that soon passes from hand to hand,
So, without my parents knowledge, I went to pytho;
But came back disappointed to any answer,
To the question I asked;
having heard instead a tale of horror and misery:
How I must marry my mother,
and become the parent of a misbegotten brood,
An offense to all of mankind - and kill my father.
At this I fled away, putting the stars
Between me and Corinth, never to see home again,
that no such horror should ever come to pass,
My journey brought me into the neighborhood where
Your late king met his end.
Listen, my wife:
This is the truth.
When I came to the place where three roads join, I met
A herald followed by a horse-drawn carriage, and a man
Seated therein, just as you have described,
The leader roughly ordered me out of his way;
and his venerable master joined in with a surly command.
It was the driver that thrust me aside, him I struck,
For I was angry.
The old man saw it, leaning from the carriage,
Waited until I passed, then, seizing for weapon,
the drivers two pronged goad, struck me on the head,
He paid with interest for his temerity;
Quick as lightning, the staff in this right hand did its work;
he tumbled headlong out of the carriage,
and every man of them there I killed.
But now,
if the blood of Laius ran in this strangers vein,
Is there any more wretched mortal than I, more hated,
By God and man?
It is I whom no strange, no citizen must take to his house;
I whom none may speak; on me is the curse
That none but I have laid.
His wife! - these hands that killed him have touched her!
Is this my sin?
Am I not utterly foul?
Banished from here, and in my banishment
debarred from home and from my fatherland,
Which I must shun forever, lest I live,
To make my mother my wife, and kill my father...
My father... Polybus, to whom I owe my life.
Can it be any but some monstrous God
of evil that has sent this doom upon me?
O never, never, holy powers above,
May that day come!
May I be sooner dead
and blotted from the face of the Earth,
than live to bear the scars of such vile circumstance...
Sophocles
If things are as I see them, you are the first
To whom I would tell my story. Listen then,
My father was a Corinthian, Polybus;
My mother a Dorian, Merope. At home
I rose to be a person of some pre eminence;
Until a strange thing happened - a curious thing -
Though perhaps I took it to heart more than it deserved.
One day at a table, a fellow who had been drinking deeply
Made bold to say I was not my fathers son.
That hurt me;
But for the time I suffered in silence
As well as I could.
Next day I approached my parents and asked them to tell me the truth.
They were bitterly angry
That anyone should dare to put a story about;
And I was relieved.
Yet somehow the smart remained;
And a thing like that soon passes from hand to hand,
So, without my parents knowledge, I went to pytho;
But came back disappointed to any answer,
To the question I asked;
having heard instead a tale of horror and misery:
How I must marry my mother,
and become the parent of a misbegotten brood,
An offense to all of mankind - and kill my father.
At this I fled away, putting the stars
Between me and Corinth, never to see home again,
that no such horror should ever come to pass,
My journey brought me into the neighborhood where
Your late king met his end.
Listen, my wife:
This is the truth.
When I came to the place where three roads join, I met
A herald followed by a horse-drawn carriage, and a man
Seated therein, just as you have described,
The leader roughly ordered me out of his way;
and his venerable master joined in with a surly command.
It was the driver that thrust me aside, him I struck,
For I was angry.
The old man saw it, leaning from the carriage,
Waited until I passed, then, seizing for weapon,
the drivers two pronged goad, struck me on the head,
He paid with interest for his temerity;
Quick as lightning, the staff in this right hand did its work;
he tumbled headlong out of the carriage,
and every man of them there I killed.
But now,
if the blood of Laius ran in this strangers vein,
Is there any more wretched mortal than I, more hated,
By God and man?
It is I whom no strange, no citizen must take to his house;
I whom none may speak; on me is the curse
That none but I have laid.
His wife! - these hands that killed him have touched her!
Is this my sin?
Am I not utterly foul?
Banished from here, and in my banishment
debarred from home and from my fatherland,
Which I must shun forever, lest I live,
To make my mother my wife, and kill my father...
My father... Polybus, to whom I owe my life.
Can it be any but some monstrous God
of evil that has sent this doom upon me?
O never, never, holy powers above,
May that day come!
May I be sooner dead
and blotted from the face of the Earth,
than live to bear the scars of such vile circumstance...
Sophocles
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