HERDSMAN. It was a child from the house of Laius.

OEDIPUS. A slave? Or one of his own race?

HERDSMAN. Alas! I am on the edge of dreadful words.

OEDIPUS. And I of hearing: yet hear I must.

HERDSMAN. It was said to have been his own child. But

your lady within can tell you of these things best.

OEDIPUS. How? It was she who gave it to you?

HERDSMAN. Yes, King.

OEDIPUS. To what end?

HERDSMAN. That I should make away with it.

OEDIPUS. Her own child?

HERDSMAN. Yes: from fear of evil prophecies.

OEDIPUS. What prophecies?

HERDSMAN. That he should kill his father.

OEDIPUS. Why, then, did you give him up to this old

man?

HERDSMAN. Through pity, master, believing that he

would carry him to whatever land he had himself

come from—but he saved him for dreadful misery;

for if you are what this man says, you are the most

miserable of all men.

OEDIPUS. O! O! All brought to pass! All truth! Now,

O light, may I look my last upon you, having been

found accursed in bloodshed, accursed in marriage,

and in my coming into the world accursed!

ONE GIRL VERSUS THE LAW

Antigone

Sophocles

Translated by H. D. F. Kitto, 1962

Oedipus’ troubles did not end there. In the final scenes of Oedipus Rex, his wife Jocasta kills herself and he blinds himself with her brooch pins before leaving Thebes. Jocasta’s brother Creon is now guardian of the city. Sophocles’ play, Antigone, sees Creon at odds with Oedipus’ daughter Antigone. Her brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, have killed one another. Creon has forbidden the burial of Polyneices on the grounds that he was a traitor. Antigone urges her sister Ismene to help her lay Polyneices to rest. Ismene is afraid to break Creon’s law. The only law Antigone recognises is divine law. She therefore proceeds to bury her brother alone. In this scene her act of defiance is reported to Creon.

Strophe 1

CHORUS. [Sings] Wonders are many, yet of all

Things is Man the most wonderful.

He can sail on the stormy sea

Though the tempest rage, and the loud

Waves roar around, as he makes his

Path amid the towering surge.

Earth inexhaustible, ageless, he wearies, as

Backwards and forwards, from season to season, his

Ox-team drives along the ploughshare.

Antistrophe 1

He can entrap the cheerful birds,

Setting a snare, and all the wild

Beasts of the earth he has learned to catch, and

Fish that teem in the deep sea, with

Nets knotted of stout cords; of

Such inventiveness is man.

Through his inventions he becomes lord

Even of the beasts of the mountain: the long-haired

Horse he subdues to the yoke on his neck, and the

Hill-bred bull, of strength untiring.

Strophe 2

And speech he has learned, and thought

So swift, and the temper of mind

To dwell within cities, and not to lie bare

Amid the keen, biting frosts

Or cower beneath pelting rain;