If Thou Dost Count a Virtue Stubbornness Unschooled by Reason Thou Art Much Astray

OEDIPUS THE King

Suppliants of all ages are seated round the chantry at the palace doors, at their head a PRIEST OF ZEUS. To them enter OEDIPUS.

OEDIPUS
My children, latest born to Cadmus old,
Why sit ye here as suppliants, in your hands
Branches of olive filleted with wool?
What means this reek of incense everywhere,
And everywhere laments and litanies?
Children, it were not meet that I should learn
From others, and am here come up, myself,
I Oedipus, your world-renowned male monarch.
Ho! aged sire, whose venerable locks
Proclaim thee spokesman of this company,
Explain your mood and purport. Is information technology dread
Of ill that moves you lot or a boon ye crave?
My zeal in your behalf ye cannot dubiety;
Ruthless indeed were I and obdurate
If such petitioners as you lot I spurned.

PRIEST
Yea, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,
Thou seest how both extremes of age besiege
Thy palace altars--fledglings hardly winged,
and greybeards bowed with years; priests, as am I
of Zeus, and these the flower of our youth.
Meanwhile, the common folk, with wreathed boughs
Oversupply our two market-places, or before
Both shrines of Pallas besiege, or where
Ismenus gives his oracles by burn.
For, as thou seest thyself, our transport of State,
Sore buffeted, can no more lift her head,
Foundered beneath a weltering surge of blood.
A blight is on our harvest in the ear,
A blight upon the grazing flocks and herds,
A blight on wives in travail; and yet
Armed with his blazing torch the God of Plague
Hath swooped upon our city emptying
The house of Cadmus, and the murky realm
Of Pluto is full fed with groans and tears.
Therefore, O King, here at thy hearth we sit down,
I and these children; not as deeming thee
A new divinity, merely the kickoff of men;
Offset in the common accidents of life,
And first in visitations of the Gods.
Art yard non he who coming to the town
of Cadmus freed united states of america from the tax we paid
To the vicious songstress? Nor hadst k received
Prompting from us or been past others schooled;
No, by a god inspired (so all men deem,
And testify) didst thou renew our life.
And now, O Oedipus, our peerless male monarch,
All nosotros thy votaries beseech thee, find
Some succor, whether by a voice from heaven
Whispered, or haply known by human wit.
Tried counselors, methinks, are aptest found [1]
To furnish for the future meaning rede.
Upraise, O chief of men, upraise our Land!
Look to thy laurels! for thy zeal of yore
Our country's savior chiliad art justly hailed:
O never may nosotros thus record thy reign:--
"He raised united states upwards only to cast us downwardly."
Uplift united states of america, build our urban center on a rock.
Thy happy star ascendant brought the states luck,
O let it not refuse! If thou wouldst dominion
This land, equally now thou reignest, better sure
To rule a peopled than a desert realm.
Nor battlements nor galleys aught avail,
If men to human being and guards to guard them tail.

OEDIPUS
Ah! my poor children, known, ah, known likewise well,
The quest that brings you hither and your need.
Ye sicken all, well wot I, even so my hurting,
How great soever yours, outtops it all.
Your sorrow touches each human severally,
Him and none other, only I grieve at one time
Both for the full general and myself and you.
Therefore ye rouse no sluggard from day-dreams.
Many, my children, are the tears I've wept,
And threaded many a maze of weary thought.
Thus pondering one clue of hope I caught,
And tracked it upwards; I accept sent Menoeceus' son,
Creon, my espoused's brother, to inquire
Of Pythian Phoebus at his Delphic shrine,
How I might save the Land by act or word.
And at present I reckon up the tale of days
Since he prepare forth, and marvel how he fares.

'Tis strange, this countless tarrying, passing strange.
But when he comes, then I were base of operations indeed,
If I perform not all the god declares.

PRIEST
Thy words are well timed; even as thou speakest
That shouting tells me Creon is at hand.

OEDIPUS
O King Apollo! may his joyous looks
Be presage of the joyous news he brings!

PRIEST
Equally I surmise, 'tis welcome; else his head
Had scarce been crowned with berry-laden bays.

OEDIPUS
We presently shall know; he's now in earshot range.

[Enter CREON]
My royal cousin, say, Menoeceus' child,
What message hast thou brought us from the god?

CREON
Good news, for e'en intolerable ills,
Finding right issue, tend to naught but good.

OEDIPUS
How runs the oracle? thus far thy words
Give me no ground for confidence or fear.

CREON
If thou wouldst hear my bulletin publicly,
I'll tell thee straight, or with thee pass inside.

OEDIPUS
Speak before all; the burden that I bear
Is more for these my subjects than myself.

CREON
Allow me study and so all the god declared.
King Phoebus bids us straitly extirpate
A fell pollution that infests the state,
And no more harbor an inveterate sore.

OEDIPUS
What expiation means he? What's amiss?

CREON
Banishment, or the shedding blood for claret.
This stain of blood makes shipwreck of our country.

OEDIPUS
Whom can he mean, the miscreant thus denounced?

CREON
Earlier thou didst assume the captain of State,
The sovereign of this state was Laius.

OEDIPUS
I heard as much, but never saw the homo.

CREON
He fell; and at present the god's command is plain:
Punish his takers-off, whoe'er they be.

OEDIPUS
Where are they? Where in the wide globe to find
The far, faint traces of a foretime offense?

CREON
In this land, said the god; "who seeks shall detect;
Who sits with folded hands or sleeps is blind."

OEDIPUS
Was he within his palace, or afield,
Or traveling, when Laius met his fate?

CREON
Away; he started, so he told us, bound
For Delphi, simply he never thence returned.

OEDIPUS
Came there no news, no beau-traveler
To give some inkling that might be followed upward?

CREON
But i escape, who flight for dear life,
Could tell of all he saw simply one thing sure.

OEDIPUS
And what was that? 1 clue might lead us far,
With only a spark of hope to guide our quest.

CREON
Robbers, he told usa, not one bandit just
A troop of knaves, attacked and murdered him.

OEDIPUS
Did any bandit dare so assuming a stroke,
Unless indeed he were suborned from Thebes?

CREON
And then 'twas surmised, but none was establish to avenge
His murder mid the trouble that ensued.

OEDIPUS
What trouble tin can have hindered a total quest,
When royalty had fallen thus miserably?

CREON
The riddling Sphinx compelled united states to allow slide
The dim past and nourish to instant needs.

OEDIPUS
Well, I will commencement anew and once once again
Make dark things articulate. Right worthy the concern
Of Phoebus, worthy thine too, for the dead;
I also, as is meet, volition lend my aid
To avenge this incorrect to Thebes and to the god.
Non for some far-off kinsman, merely myself,
Shall I expel this poison in the blood;
For whoso slew that rex might have a listen
To strike me likewise with his assassin paw.
Therefore in righting him I serve myself.
Up, children, haste ye, quit these altar stairs,
Take hence your suppliant wands, go summon hither
The Theban commons. With the god'due south good help
Success is sure; 'tis ruin if we fail.

[Exeunt OEDIPUS and CREON]

PRIEST
Come, children, let us hence; these gracious words
Preclude the very purpose of our suit.
And may the god who sent this oracle
Save u.s.a. yet and rid us of this pest.

[Exeunt PRIEST and SUPPLIANTS]

CHORUS

(Str. ane)
Sweet-voiced daughter of Zeus from thy gilt-paved Pythian shrine
Wafted to Thebes divine,
What dost thousand bring me? My soul is racked and shivers with fear.

(Healer of Delos, hear!)
Hast thou some hurting unknown before,
Or with the circling years renewest a penance of yore?
Offspring of aureate Hope, thou voice immortal, O tell me.

(Pismire. 1)
First on Athene I telephone call; O Zeus-born goddess, defend!
Goddess and sister, befriend,
Artemis, Lady of Thebes, loftier-throned in the midst of our mart!
Lord of the decease-winged sprint!
Your threefold aid I require
From death and ruin our urban center to save.
If in the days of old when we nigh had perished, ye drave
From our land the fiery plague, be near us now and defend us!

(Str. 2)
Ah me, what countless woes are mine!
All our host is in decline;
Weaponless my spirit lies.
Earth her gracious fruits denies;
Women wail in barren throes;
Life on life downstriken goes,
Swifter than the wind bird'southward flight,
Swifter than the Fire-God's might,
To the westering shores of Dark.

(Ant. 2)
Wasted thus by death on death
All our city perisheth.
Corpses spread infection round;
None to tend or mourn is found.
Wailing on the altar stair
Wives and grandams rend the air--
Long-fatigued moans and piercing cries
Blent with prayers and litanies.
Gilt child of Zeus, O hear
Permit thine angel face appear!

(Str. three)
And grant that Ares whose hot breath I feel,
Though without targe or steel
He stalks, whose voice is equally the battle shout,
May turn in sudden rout,
To the unharbored Thracian waters sped,
Or Amphitrite'southward bed.
For what night leaves undone,
Smit by the morrow's dominicus
Perisheth. Male parent Zeus, whose manus
Doth wield the lightning brand,
Slay him beneath thy levin bold, we pray,
Slay him, O slay!

(Pismire. three)
O that thine arrows too, Lycean King,
From that taut bow'southward gold string,
Might fly abroad, the champions of our rights;
Yea, and the flashing lights
Of Artemis, wherewith the huntress sweeps
Across the Lycian steeps.
Thee too I telephone call with aureate-snooded hair,
Whose proper name our land doth comport,
Bacchus to whom thy Maenads Evoe shout;
Come with thy bright torch, rout,
Blithe god whom nosotros adore,
The god whom gods abhor.

[Enter OEDIPUS.]
OEDIPUS
Ye pray; 'tis well, but would ye hear my words
And heed them and apply the remedy,
Ye might perchance find comfort and relief.
Heed you lot, I speak equally one who comes a stranger
To this study, no less than to the crime;
For how unaided could I track it far
Without a clue? Which defective (for too belatedly
Was I enrolled a citizen of Thebes)
This annunciation I address to all:--
Thebans, if any knows the human by whom
Laius, son of Labdacus, was slain,
I summon him to make make clean shrift to me.
And if he shrinks, let him reverberate that thus
Confessing he shall 'scape the upper-case letter charge;
For the worst penalization that shall befall him
Is adjournment--unscathed he shall depart.
But if an alien from a strange land
Be known to any as the murderer,
Let him who knows speak out, and he shall take
Due recompense from me and thanks to boot.
Simply if ye even so keep silence, if through fear
For self or friends ye disregard my hest,
Hear what I and so resolve; I lay my ban
On the assassin whosoe'er he be.
Let no man in this state, whereof I hold
The sovereign rule, harbor or speak to him;
Give him no role in prayer or cede
Or lustral rites, simply hound him from your homes.
For this is our defilement, and so the god
Hath lately shown to me by oracles.
Thus as their champion I maintain the crusade
Both of the god and of the murdered King.
And on the murderer this curse I lay

(On him and all the partners in his guilt):--
Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness!
And for myself, if with my privity
He proceeds comprisal to my hearth, I pray
The curse I laid on others fall on me.
See that ye give effect to all my hest,
For my sake and the god's and for our state,
A desert blasted past the wrath of heaven.
For, let lone the god'south limited control,
It were a scandal ye should leave unpurged
The murder of a corking human and your king,
Nor track it abode. And now that I am lord,
Successor to his throne, his bed, his married woman,

(And had he not been frustrate in the hope
Of issue, common children of one womb
Had forced a closer bond twixt him and me,
Merely Fate swooped downward upon him), therefore I
His claret-avenger will maintain his cause
As though he were my sire, and leave no stone
Unturned to track the assassin or avenge
The son of Labdacus, of Polydore,
Of Cadmus, and Agenor first of the race.
And for the disobedient thus I pray:
May the gods send them neither timely fruits
Of world, nor teeming increment of the womb,
Just may they waste matter and pine, equally now they waste,
Aye and worse stricken; simply to all of y'all,
My loyal subjects who approve my acts,
May Justice, our ally, and all the gods
Be gracious and attend you evermore.

CHORUS
The oath thou profferest, sire, I take and swear.
I slew him non myself, nor can I name
The slayer. For the quest, 'twere well, methinks
That Phoebus, who proposed the riddle, himself
Should give the answer--who the murderer was.

OEDIPUS
Well argued; but no living human tin promise
To force the gods to speak against their will.

CHORUS
May I so say what seems next best to me?

OEDIPUS
Aye, if in that location be a tertiary best, tell it likewise.

CHORUS
My liege, if whatsoever man sees eye to eye
With our lord Phoebus, 'tis our prophet, lord
Teiresias; he of all men best might guide
A searcher of this matter to the light.

OEDIPUS
Hither too my zeal has nil lagged, for twice
At Creon's instance have I sent to fetch him,
And long I marvel why he is non here.

CHORUS
I mind me besides of rumors long agone--
Mere gossip.

OEDIPUS
Tell them, I would fain know all.

CHORUS

'Twas said he vicious past travelers.

OEDIPUS
So I heard,
Merely none has seen the man who saw him autumn.

CHORUS
Well, if he knows what fearfulness is, he volition quail
And flee before the terror of thy curse.

OEDIPUS
Words scare not him who blenches not at deeds.

CHORUS
Merely here is one to arraign him. Lo, at length
They bring the god-inspired seer in whom
To a higher place all other men is truth inborn.

[Enter TEIRESIAS, led by a male child.]

OEDIPUS
Teiresias, seer who comprehendest all,
Lore of the wise and hidden mysteries,
High things of sky and low things of the earth,
One thousand knowest, though thy blinded eyes see null,
What plague infects our city; and we turn
To thee, O seer, our 1 defense and shield.
The purport of the answer that the God
Returned to us who sought his oracle,
The messengers have doubtless told thee--how
One grade alone could rid us of the pest,
To find the murderers of Laius,
And slay them or expel them from the land.
Therefore begrudging neither auspice
Nor other divination that is thine,
O save thyself, thy state, and thy king,
Save all from this defilement of blood shed.
On thee nosotros rest. This is man's highest finish,
To others' service all his powers to lend.

TEIRESIAS
Alas, alas, what misery to be wise
When wisdom profits naught! This one-time lore
I had forgotten; else I were not here.

OEDIPUS
What ails thee? Why this melancholy mood?

TEIRESIAS
Let me become home; prevent me not; 'twere best
That yard shouldst bear thy burden and I mine.

OEDIPUS
For shame! no true-born Theban patriot
Would thus withhold the word of prophecy.

TEIRESIAS
Thy words, O rex, are broad of the mark, and I
For fearfulness lest I too trip similar thee...

OEDIPUS
Oh speak,
Withhold non, I adjure thee, if thousand know'st,
Thy knowledge. We are all thy suppliants.

TEIRESIAS
Aye, for ye all are witless, only my voice
Will ne'er reveal my miseries--or thine. [two]

OEDIPUS
What then, thou knowest, and yet willst not speak!
Wouldst k betray us and destroy the Land?

TEIRESIAS
I will non vex myself nor thee. Why ask
Thus idly what from me thou shalt not larn?

OEDIPUS
Monster! thy silence would incense a flint.
Will nothing loose thy natural language? Can cypher melt thee,
Or shake thy indomitable taciturnity?

TEIRESIAS
Chiliad blam'st my mood and seest not thine ain
Wherewith thousand art mated; no, g taxest me.

OEDIPUS
And who could stay his choler when he heard
How insolently thou dost flout the Land?

TEIRESIAS
Well, it volition come what will, though I exist mute.

OEDIPUS
Since come information technology must, thy duty is to tell me.

TEIRESIAS
I have no more than to say; tempest equally thou willst,
And give the rein to all thy pent-upwards rage.

OEDIPUS
Yea, I am wroth, and volition non stint my words,
Just speak my whole mind. Thou methinks thou art he,
Who planned the crime, aye, and performed it also,
All relieve the assassination; and if thou
Hadst non been bullheaded, I had been sworn to boot
That thou alone didst do the encarmine deed.

TEIRESIAS
Is it then? And then I accuse thee to bide
By thine own proclamation; from this day
Speak non to these or me. Thousand fine art the man,
Yard the accursed polluter of this land.

OEDIPUS
Vile slanderer, thou blurtest forth these taunts,
And think'st forsooth equally seer to go scot free.

TEIRESIAS
Yea, I am gratis, strong in the force of truth.

OEDIPUS
Who was thy instructor? not methinks thy fine art.

TEIRESIAS
Thou, goading me against my will to speak.

OEDIPUS
What speech? repeat it and resolve my doubt.

TEIRESIAS
Didst miss my sense wouldst g goad me on?

OEDIPUS
I only half caught thy meaning; say it once more.

TEIRESIAS
I say g art the murderer of the man
Whose murderer k pursuest.

OEDIPUS
Yard shalt rue it
Twice to repeat so gross a calumny.

TEIRESIAS
Must I say more than to beal thy rage?

OEDIPUS
Say all thou wilt; it will be simply waste of breath.

TEIRESIAS
I say chiliad livest with thy nearest kin
In infamy, unwitting in thy shame.

OEDIPUS
Call up'st thou for aye unscathed to wag thy natural language?

TEIRESIAS
Yea, if the might of truth can nil prevail.

OEDIPUS
With other men, only non with thee, for thousand
In ear, wit, eye, in everything fine art blind.

TEIRESIAS
Poor fool to utter gibes at me which all
Here present will bandage dorsum on thee ere long.

OEDIPUS
Offspring of endless Dark, 1000 hast no power
O'er me or any man who sees the dominicus.

TEIRESIAS
No, for thy weird is not to autumn by me.
I exit to Apollo what concerns the god.

OEDIPUS
Is this a plot of Creon, or thine own?

TEIRESIAS
Non Creon, thou thyself art thine ain bane.

OEDIPUS
O wealth and empiry and skill by skill
Outwitted in the battlefield of life,
What spite and envy follow in your train!
Meet, for this crown the Land conferred on me.
A gift, a affair I sought not, for this crown
The trusty Creon, my familiar friend,
Hath lain in look to oust me and suborned
This mountebank, this juggling charlatan,
This tricksy beggar-priest, for proceeds alone
Keen-eyed, simply in his proper fine art stone-blind.
Say, sirrah, hast g ever proved thyself
A prophet? When the riddling Sphinx was hither
Why hadst thou no deliverance for this folk?
And yet the riddle was not to be solved
Past guess-work only required the prophet's art;
Wherein thou wast establish defective; neither birds
Nor sign from sky helped thee, but I came,
The simple Oedipus; I stopped her rima oris
By mother wit, untaught of auguries.
This is the man whom thou wouldst undermine,
In promise to reign with Creon in my stead.
Methinks that thou and thine abettor soon
Volition rue your plot to drive the scapegoat out.
Thank thy grey hairs that thou hast nevertheless to learn
What chastisement such arrogance deserves.

CHORUS
To united states it seems that both the seer and yard,
O Oedipus, accept spoken angry words.
This is no time to wrangle only consult
How all-time we may fulfill the oracle.

TEIRESIAS
King every bit thousand art, free speech communication at to the lowest degree is mine
To make answer; in this I am thy peer.
I own no lord just Loxias; him I serve
And ne'er can stand enrolled as Creon's man.
Thus and then I answer: since thousand hast not spared
To twit me with my blindness--thousand hast eyes,
Nonetheless meet'st not in what misery thousand art fallen,
Nor where m dwellest nor with whom for mate.
Dost know thy lineage? Nay, k know'st it not,
And all unwitting art a double foe
To thine ain kin, the living and the dead;
Yeah and the dogging curse of mother and sire
One 24-hour interval shall drive thee, similar a two-edged sword,
Beyond our borders, and the eyes that now
See articulate shall henceforward countless night.
Ah whither shall thy bitter cry not reach,
What crag in all Cithaeron but shall then
Reverberate thy wail, when yard hast establish
With what a hymeneal thou wast borne
Abode, but to no off-white haven, on the gale!
Aye, and a alluvion of ills thousand guessest not
Shall set thyself and children in one line.
Flout then both Creon and my words, for none
Of mortals shall be striken worse than g.

OEDIPUS
Must I suffer this fellow's insolence?
A murrain on thee! Go thee hence! Begone
Avaunt! and never cantankerous my threshold more than.

TEIRESIAS
I ne'er had come up hadst thou non bidden me.

OEDIPUS
I know not thou wouldst utter folly, else
Long hadst one thousand waited to be summoned here.

TEIRESIAS
Such am I--as it seems to thee a fool,
Just to the parents who begat thee, wise.

OEDIPUS
What sayest thou--"parents"? Who begat me, speak?

TEIRESIAS
This twenty-four hours shall be thy birth-day, and thy grave.

OEDIPUS
Grand lov'st to speak in riddles and dark words.

TEIRESIAS
In reading riddles who so skilled as thou?

OEDIPUS
Twit me with that wherein my greatness lies.

TEIRESIAS
And nevertheless this very greatness proved thy bane.

OEDIPUS
No matter if I saved the commonwealth.

TEIRESIAS

'Tis time I left thee. Come, boy, take me dwelling.

OEDIPUS
Yes, take him rapidly, for his presence irks
And lets me; gone, thou canst not plague me more.

TEIRESIAS
I get, but beginning will tell thee why I came.
Thy pout I dread not, for thousand canst non harm me.
Hear then: this human whom thou hast sought to arrest
With threats and warrants this long while, the wretch
Who murdered Laius--that man is hither.
He passes for an alien in the land
But before long shall prove a Theban, native born.
And yet his fortune brings him little joy;
For blind of seeing, clad in beggar'south weeds,
For majestic robes, and leaning on his staff,
To a strange land he soon shall grope his way.
And of the children, inmates of his home,
He shall be proved the brother and the sire,
Of her who bare him son and husband both,
Co-partner, and assassinator of his sire.
Go in and ponder this, and if thou find
That I have missed the mark, henceforth declare
I accept no wit nor skill in prophecy.

[Exeunt TEIRESIAS and OEDIPUS]

CHORUS

(Str. one)
Who is he by phonation immortal named from Pythia'due south rocky cell,
Doer of foul deeds of mortality, horrors that no tongue can tell?
A foot for flight he needs
Fleeter than storm-swift steeds,
For on his heels doth follow,
Armed with the lightnings of his Sire, Apollo.
Like sleuth-hounds as well
The Fates pursue.

(Emmet. 1)
Yea, but now flashed forth the summons from Parnassus' snowy peak,
"Nigh and far the undiscovered doer of this murder seek!"
Now like a sullen bull he roves
Through forest brakes and upland groves,
And vainly seeks to fly
The doom that ever nigh
Flits o'er his caput,
Even so by the avenging Phoebus sped,
The phonation divine,
From Earth's mid shrine.

(Str. 2)
Sore perplexed am I by the words of the primary seer.
Are they true, are they false? I know not and bridle my natural language for
fear,

Fluttered with vague surmise; nor nowadays nor futurity is articulate.
Quarrel of ancient appointment or in days notwithstanding near know I none
Twixt the Labdacidan house and our ruler, Polybus' son.
Proof is there none: how and then tin can I challenge our Male monarch's good name,
How in a blood-feud join for an untracked human action of shame?

(Pismire. two)
All wise are Zeus and Apollo, and zip is hid from their ken;
They are gods; and in wits a man may surpass his fellow men;
Simply that a mortal seer knows more than than I know--where
Hath this been proven? Or how without sign bodacious, can I blame
Him who saved our State when the winged songstress came,
Tested and tried in the light of the states all, like gold assayed?
How can I now assent when a crime is on Oedipus laid?

CREON
Friends, countrymen, I acquire King Oedipus
Hath laid against me a virtually grievous accuse,
And come to yous protesting. If he deems
That I have harmed or injured him in nothing
Past word or human action in this our nowadays problem,
I intendance non to prolong the span of life,
Thus ill-reputed; for the calumny
Hits not a unmarried blot, simply blasts my name,
If by the general voice I am denounced
Faux to the State and false by yous my friends.

CHORUS
This taunt, information technology well may be, was blurted out
In petulance, not spoken advisedly.

CREON
Did any cartel pretend that it was I
Prompted the seer to utter a forged charge?

CHORUS
Such things were said; with what intent I know not.

CREON
Were non his wits and vision all off-target
When upon me he stock-still this monstrous charge?

CHORUS
I know not; to my sovereign'due south acts I am blind.
Just lo, he comes to answer for himself.

[Enter OEDIPUS.]

OEDIPUS
Sirrah, what mak'st thou here? Dost yard presume
To approach my doors, 1000 brazen-faced rogue,
My murderer and the filcher of my crown?
Come, answer this, didst thou detect in me
Some touch of cowardice or witlessness,
That made thee undertake this enterprise?
I seemed forsooth too unproblematic to perceive
The serpent stealing on me in the dark,
Or else too weak to scotch information technology when I saw.
This thou art witless seeking to possess
Without a following or friends the crown,
A prize that followers and wealth must win.

CREON
Attend me. Thou hast spoken, 'tis my turn
To make respond. So having heard me, judge.

OEDIPUS
M art glib of tongue, but I am boring to acquire
Of thee; I know as well well thy venomous hate.

CREON
First I would fence out this very betoken.

OEDIPUS
O contend not that grand art not a rogue.

CREON
If grand dost count a virtue stubbornness,
Unschooled by reason, thou art much astray.

OEDIPUS
If g dost hold a kinsman may be wronged,
And no pains follow, thou art much to seek.

CREON
Therein thou judgest rightly, merely this incorrect
That one thousand allegest--tell me what it is.

OEDIPUS
Didst thou or didst one thousand not propose that I
Should call the priest?

CREON
Yes, and I stand to it.

OEDIPUS
Tell me how long is it since Laius...

CREON
Since Laius...? I follow not thy drift.

OEDIPUS
Past violent hands was spirited away.

CREON
In the dim by, a many years agone.

OEDIPUS
Did the aforementioned prophet and so pursue his craft?

CREON
Yes, skilled every bit now and in no less repute.

OEDIPUS
Did he at that time always glance at me?

CREON
Non to my knowledge, not when I was by.

OEDIPUS
But was no search and inquisition made?

CREON
Surely full quest was made, simply goose egg learnt.

OEDIPUS
Why failed the seer to tell his story and then?

CREON
I know not, and not knowing hold my natural language.

OEDIPUS
This much thou knowest and canst surely tell.

CREON
What's mean'st thou? All I know I will declare.

OEDIPUS
But for thy prompting never had the seer
Ascribed to me the death of Laius.

CREON
If so he 1000 knowest all-time; only I
Would put thee to the question in my turn.

OEDIPUS
Question and prove me murderer if thou canst.

CREON
Then permit me ask thee, didst 1000 wednesday my sister?

OEDIPUS
A fact so plain I cannot well deny.

CREON
And as thy espoused queen she shares the throne?

OEDIPUS
I grant her freely all her heart desires.

CREON
And with you twain I share the triple rule?

OEDIPUS
Yea, and it is that proves thee a faux friend.

CREON
Not so, if thou wouldst reason with thyself,
Equally I with myself. First, I bid thee think,
Would any mortal choose a troubled reign
Of terrors rather than secure tranquillity,
If the same power were given him? Equally for me,
I have no natural craving for the proper noun
Of rex, preferring to do kingly deeds,
And and so thinks every sober-minded man.
Now all my needs are satisfied through thee,
And I have naught to fear; but were I rex,
My acts would oft run counter to my will.
How could a title so have charms for me
Above the sweets of boundless influence?
I am not so infatuate every bit to grasp
The shadow when I hold the substance fast.
At present all men cry me Godspeed! wish me well,
And every suitor seeks to gain my ear,
If he would hope to win a grace from thee.
Why should I exit the better, choose the worse?
That were sheer madness, and I am non mad.
No such appetite always tempted me,
Nor would I have a share in such intrigue.
And if thousand doubt me, first to Delphi go,
In that location ascertain if my study was true
Of the god'south answer; side by side investigate
If with the seer I plotted or conspired,
And if it prove so, sentence me to death,
Non past thy vocalization alone, only mine and thine.
But O condemn me not, without appeal,
On bare suspicion. 'Tis not right to adjudge
Bad men at random good, or good men bad.
I would equally lief a man should cast abroad
The thing he counts near precious, his ain life,
As spurn a true friend. Thou wilt larn in fourth dimension
The truth, for time alone reveals the just;
A villain is detected in a day.

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Source: https://sophocles.thefreelibrary.com/Oedipus-The-King/3-1

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