OED
216
Your prayers are answered. Succour and relief
Are yours, if ye will heed my voice and yield
What help the plague requires. Hear it from me,
Who am hitherto a stranger to the tale,
As to the crime. Being nought concerned therewith,
I could not of myself divine the truth.
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But now, as one adopted to your state,
To all of you Cadmeans I speak this:
Whoe’er among you knoweth the murderer
Of Laius, son of royal Labdacus,
Let him declare the deed in full to me.
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First, if the man himself be touched with fear,
Let him depart, carrying the guilt away;
No harm shall follow him:—he shall go free.
Or if there be who knows another here,
Come from some other country, to have wrought
This murder, let him speak. Reward from me
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And store of kind remembrance shall be his.
But if ye are silent, and one present here
Who might have uttered this, shall hold his peace,
As fearing for himself, or for his friend,
What then shall be performed, hear me proclaim.
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I here prohibit all within this realm
Whereof I wield the sceptre and sole sway,
To admit the murderer, whosoe’er he be,
Within their houses, or to speak with him,
Or share with him in vow or sacrifice
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Or lustral rite. All men shall thrust him forth,
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Our dark pollution, so to me revealed
By this day’s oracle from Pytho’s cell.
So firm is mine allegiance to the God
And your dead sovereign in this holy war.
Now on the man of blood, whether he lurk
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In lonely guilt, or with a numerous band,
I here pronounce this curse:—Let his crushed life
Wither forlorn in hopeless misery.
Next, I pray Heaven, should he or they be housed
With mine own knowledge in my home, that I
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May suffer all I imprecate on them.
Last, I enjoin each here to lend his aid
For my sake, and the God’s, and for your land
Reft of her increase and renounced by Heaven.
It was not right, when your good king had fallen,
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Although the oracle were silent still,
255
To leave this inquisition unperformed.
Long since ye should have purged the crime. But now
I, to whom fortune hath transferred his crown,
And given his queen in marriage,—yea, moreover,
His seed and mine had been one family
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Had not misfortune trampled on his head
Cutting him off from fair posterity,—
All this being so, I will maintain his cause
As if my father’s, racking means and might
To apprehend the author of the death
Of Laius, son to Labdacus, and heir
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To Polydorus and to Cadmus old,
And proud Agenor of the eldest time.
Once more, to all who disobey in this
May Heaven deny the produce of the ground
And offspring from their wives, and may they pine
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With plagues more horrible than this to-day.
But for the rest of you Cadmean men,
Who now embrace my word, may Righteousness,
Strong to defend, and all the Gods for aye
Watch over you for blessing in your land.
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