Sweet-voiced daughter of Zeus from thy gold-paved Pythian shrineWafted to Thebes divine,
What dost thou bring me? My soul is racked and shivers with fear.
(Healer of Delos, hear!)
Hast thou some pain unknown before,
Or with the circling years renewest a penance of yore?
Offspring of golden Hope, thou voice immortal, O tell me.
(Ant. 1)
First on Athene I call; O Zeus-born goddess, defend!
Goddess and sister, befriend,
Artemis, Lady of Thebes, high-throned in the midst of our mart!
Lord of the death-winged dart! Your threefold aid I crave
From death and ruin our city 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's flight, Swifter than the Fire-God's might, To the westering shores of Night.
(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-drawn moans and piercing cries Blent with prayers and litanies.
Golden child of Zeus, O hear
Let thine angel face appear!
7
(Str. 3)
And grant that Ares whose hot breath I feel, Though without targe or steel
He stalks, whose voice is as the battle shout, May turn in sudden rout,
To the unharbored Thracian waters sped, Or Amphitrite's bed.
For what night leaves undone, Smit by the morrow's sun
Perisheth. Father Zeus, whose hand
Doth wield the lightning brand,
Slay him beneath thy levin bold, we pray, Slay him, O slay!
(Ant. 3)
O that thine arrows too, Lycean King, From that taut bow's 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 call with golden-snooded hair, Whose name our land doth bear,
Bacchus to whom thy Maenads Evoe shout; Come with thy bright torch, rout,
Blithe god whom we 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. Mind you, I speak as one who comes a stranger To this report, no less than to the crime;
For how unaided could I track it far Without a clue? Which lacking (for too late Was I enrolled a citizen of Thebes)
This proclamation I address to all:-- Thebans, if any knows the man by whom Laius, son of Labdacus, was slain,
I summon him to make clean shrift to me. And if he shrinks, let him reflect that thus Confessing he shall 'scape the capital charge; For the worst penalty that shall befall him
Is banishment--unscathed he shall depart. But if an alien from a foreign land
Be known to any as the murderer,
Let him who knows speak out, and he shall have Due recompense from me and thanks to boot. But if ye still keep silence, if through fear
For self or friends ye disregard my hest, Hear what I then resolve; I lay my ban On the assassin whosoe'er he be.
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Let no man in this land, whereof I hold
The sovereign rule, harbor or speak to him;
Give him no part in prayer or sacrifice
Or lustral rites, but hound him from your homes.
For this is our defilement, so the god
Hath lately shown to me by oracles.
Thus as their champion I maintain the cause 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 gain admittance 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 land, A desert blasted by the wrath of heaven. For, let alone the god's express command,
It were a scandal ye should leave unpurged The murder of a great man and your king, Nor track it home. And now that I am lord, Successor to his throne, his bed, his wife, (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,
But Fate swooped down upon him), therefore I His blood-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 earth, nor teeming increase of the womb, But may they waste and pine, as now they waste, Aye and worse stricken; but to all of you,
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
