Bacchus! Draw near,

And light thy torch of pine!

Enter OEDIPUS, attended.

OEDIPUS

You are at prayers; but for your prayers’ intent

You may gain help, and of your ills relief,

If you will minister to the pestilence,

And hearken and receive my words, which I—

A stranger to this tale, and to the deed

A stranger—shall pronounce; for of myself

I could not follow up the traces far,

Not having any key. But, made since then

A fellow-townsman to the townsmen here,

To all you Cadmeans I thus proclaim;

Whichever of you knows the man, by whom

Laius the son of Labdacus was slain,

Even if he is afraid, seeing he himself

Suppressed the facts that made against himself,

I bid that man shew the whole truth to me;

For he shall suffer no disparagement,

Except to quit the land, unscathed. Again,

If any knows another—say some stranger

To have been guilty, let him not keep silence;

For I will pay him the reward, and favour

Shall be his due beside it. But again,

If you will hold your peace, and any man

From self or friend in terror shall repel

This word of mine, then—you must hear me say

What I shall do. Whoe’er he be, I order

That of this land, whose power and throne are mine,

None entertain him, none accost him, none

Cause him to share in prayers or sacrifice

Offered to Heaven, or pour him lustral wave,

But all men from their houses banish him;

Since it is he contaminates us all,

Even as the Pythian oracle divine

Revealed but now to me. Such is my succour

Of him that’s dead, and of the Deity.

And on the guilty head I imprecate

That whether by himself he has lain covert,

Or joined with others, without happiness,

Evil, in evil, he may pine and die.

And for myself I pray, if with my knowledge

He should become an inmate of my dwelling,

That I may suffer all that I invoked

On these just now. Moreover all these things

I charge you to accomplish, in behalf

Of me, and of the God, and of this land,

So ruined, barren and forsaken of Heaven.

For even though the matter were not now

By Heaven enjoined you, ’twas unnatural

For you to suffer it to pass uncleansed,

A man most noble having been slain, a king too!

Rather, you should have searched it out; but now,

Since I am vested with the government

Which he held once, and have his marriage-bed,

And the same wife; and since our progeny—

If his had not miscarried—had sprung from us

With common ties of common motherhood—

Only that Fate came heavy upon his head—

On these accounts I, as for my own father,

Will fight this fight, and follow out every clue,

Seeking to seize the author of his murder—

The scion of Labdacus and Polydore

And earlier Cadmus and Agenor old;

And such as disobey—the Gods I ask

Neither to raise them harvest from the ground