Greek Texts & Translations

720Land that is praised above all lands, now it is your task to make those bright praises seen in deeds!

What strange new thing has happened, my daughter?

Creon there draws near us, and not without followers, father.

Ah, dearest old men, now give me 725the final proof of my salvation!

Courage! It will be yours. For even if I am aged, this country's strength has not grown old.

Gentlemen, noble dwellers in this land, I see from your eyes that a sudden fear has troubled you at my coming; 730but do not shrink back from me, and let no evil word escape you. I am here with no thought of force; I am old, and I know that the city to which I have come is mighty, if any in Hellas has might. 735No, I have been sent, aged as I am, to plead with this man to return with me to the land of Cadmus. I am not one man's envoy, but have a mandate from all our people; since it belonged to me, by family, beyond all other Thebans to mourn his woes. 740Unhappy Oedipus, hear us, and come home! Justly are you summoned by all the Cadmeans, and most of all by me, since I—unless I am the worst of all men born—feel most sorrow for your woes, old man, 745when I see you, unhappy as you are, a stranger and a wanderer evermore, roaming in beggary, with one handmaid for your support. Ah, me, I had not thought that she could fall to such a depth of misery as that to which she has fallen— 750this poor girl!—as she tends forever your dark life amid poverty; in ripe youth, but unwed: a prize for the first passerby to seize. Is it not a cruel reproach—alas!—that I have cast at you, and me, and all our race? 755But indeed an open shame cannot be hidden. Oedipus, in the name of your ancestral gods, listen to me! Hide it, and consent to return to the city and the house of your ancestors, after bidding a kind farewell to this city. Athens is worthy; yet your own city has the first claim on your reverence, 760since it was Thebes that nurtured you long ago.