Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1240

Antigone.

Antigone

Look, the stranger, it seems, is coming here to us.

Yes, without attendants, father, with tears streaming from his eyes.

1250

Oedipus

Who is he?

Antigone

The very man who was in our thoughts from the first. Polyneices has come to us.

Polyneices

Ah, me, what should I do? Should I weep first

for my own woes, sisters, or for those of my father here, in his old age? I have found him in a foreign land, here with you two as an exile, clad in such garments as these. Their unfriendly filth has resided with the old man for long,

1255

wasting his flesh; while above the sightless eyes the unkempt hair flutters in the breeze; and matching with these things, it seems, is the food that he carries, sustenance for his poor stomach.
  Wretch that I am! I learn all this too late.

1260

And I bear witness that I have proved the worst of men in all that concerns care for you; from my own lips hear what I am. But seeing that Zeus himself in all his actions has Shame beside him to share his throne, may she come to your aid too, father. For the sins committed can be healed,

1265

but can never be made worse.
  Why are you silent? Speak, father. Do not turn away from me. Do you not have any answer at all for me? Will you dismiss me without a word, dishonored, and not tell me why you are angry?

1270

 

Seed of this man, my sisters, you at least must try to move our father’s implacable, inexorable silence, so that he may not send me away like this, dishonored and with no word in return, when I am the suppliant of the god.

1275

Antigone

Tell him yourself, unhappy man, what you have come to seek. When words flow, you know, they may give joy, or incite anger or pity, and so they may give a voice to the mute.

1280

Polyneices

Then I will speak boldly, for you give me excellent guidance,

first claiming the help of the god himself, from whose altar the king of this land raised me to come to you, with a guarantee to speak and hear, and go my way unharmed. And I wish these pledges, strangers, to be kept with me by you, and by my sisters here, and by my father.

1285

But now I want to tell you, father, why I came.
  I have been driven as an exile from my fatherland, because, as eldest-born, I thought it right to sit on your sovereign throne.

1290

Therefore Eteocles, though the younger, thrust me from the land, when he had neither defeated me by an argument of law, nor made a trial of might and deed. He brought over the city by persuasion. The cause of this, I claim, is most of all the curse on your house;

1295

I also hear this from soothsayers. For when I came to Dorian Argos, I made Adrastus my father-in-law. And I bound to me by oath all men of the Apian land who are foremost in their renown for war,

1300

so that with their aid I might collect the seven armies of spearmen against Thebes , and die in a just cause, or drive the doers of this wrong from the land.
  All right then, why have I come to you now? Bearing prayers of supplication, father, in person to you,

1305

my own prayers and those of my allies, who now with seven armies behind their seven spears have set their blockade around the plain of Thebes . One such is swift-speared Amphiaraus, a matchless warrior, and a matchless diviner;

1310

then comes the son of Oeneus, Aetolian Tydeus; Eteoclus is third, of Argive birth; the fourth, Hippomedon, is sent by Talaos, his father; while Capaneus, the fifth, boasts that he will burn Thebes to the ground with fire; and sixth, Arcadian Parthenopaeus rushes to the war.

1315

He is named for that virgin of long ago from whose marriage in later time he was born, the trusty son of Atalanta. Last come I, your son—or if not yours, then the offspring of an evil fate, but yours at least in name—

1320

leading the fearless army of Argos to Thebes .
  It is we who implore you, father, every one of us, by your daughters here and by your soul, begging you to forgo your fierce anger against me, as I go forth to punish my brother,

1325

who has expelled me and robbed me of my fatherland. For if anything trustworthy comes from oracles, they said that whoever you join with in alliance will have victorious strength.
  Then, by the streams of water and gods of our race, I ask you to listen and to yield.

1330

I am a beggar and a stranger, as you are yourself; by paying court to others both you and I have a home, obtaining by lot the same fortune. But he is tyrant at home—wretched me!—and in his pride laughs at you and me alike.

1335

But if you join as ally to my purpose, with little trouble or time I will scatter his strength to the winds, so that I will bring you home and set you in your own house, and set me in mine, when I have cast him out by force. If you are with me, then I can make this boast; but without you

1340

I cannot even return alive.

1345

Chorus

For the sake of him who has sent this man, Oedipus, speak what seems good to you, before you send him away.

Oedipus

Guardians of this land, if it were not Theseus who had sent him here to me, thinking it just that he should hear my response,

then never would he have heard my voice of prophecy. But now he will be graced with it, before he goes, and hear from me such words as never will gladden his life.

1350

Worst of men, when you had the scepter and the throne, which now your brother has in Thebes , you drove me, your own father, into exile; and by making me an exile you caused me to wear this clothing at whose sight you weep, now that you have come to the same state of misery as I.

1355

The time for tears is past. I must bear this burden as long as I live, and keep you before my mind as a murderer. For it is you that have made me subject to this anguish; it is you that have thrust me out, and because of you I wander, begging my daily bread from strangers.

1360

And had these daughters not been born to me to be my comfort, in truth I would be dead, for lack of help from you. But now these girls preserve me; they are my nurses; they are men, not women, in sharing my toil. But you are from another and are no sons of mine.

1365

 

Therefore the divinity looks upon you—not yet as he soon will look, if indeed those armies of yours are moving against Thebes . There is no way in which you can ever overthrow that city. Before that you will fall, polluted by bloodshed, and so too your brother.

1370

Such curses as my heart before now sent up against you both, I now invoke to fight for me, in order that you may think it fit to revere your parents and not to dishonor your father utterly, because he who begot such sons is blind. For my daughters here did not act in this way.

1375

This supplication of yours, and this throne of yours, will lie in the power of my curses, if indeed Justice, revealed long ago, sits beside Zeus, to share his throne through sanction of primordial laws.
  But off to damnation with you, abhorred by me and disowned!

1380

Take these curses which I call down on you, most evil of evil men: may you never defeat your native land, and may you never return to the valley of Argos ; I pray that you die by a related hand, and slay him by whom you have been driven out. This is my prayer.

1385

And I call on the hateful darkness of Tartarus that your father shares, to take you into another home; and I call on the divinities of this place, and I call on the god of war, who has set dreadful hatred in you both. Go with these words in your ear;

1390

go and announce to all the Cadmeans, and to your own faithful allies, that Oedipus has distributed such portions to his sons.

1395

Chorus

Polyneices, in your past travels I take no joy. Now go back with speed.

Polyneices

Alas, for my journey and my failed attempt! Alas, for my companions!

Such is the end of the road on which we set out from Argos —wretched me!—such an end, that I cannot even mention it to any of my companions or turn them back, but must go in silence to meet this fate.

1400

But you, daughters of this man and my sisters, since you hear these hard curses of a father, do not—if this father’s curses be fulfilled and you find some way of return to Thebes—do not, I beg you by the gods, leave me dishonored,

1405

but give me burial and due funeral rites. So the praise which you now win from this man here for your labors will be increased by another praise no less, through your care for me.

1410

Antigone

Polyneices, I beseech you, hear me in one thing!

Polyneices

What is it, dearest Antigone? Speak!

1415

Antigone

Turn your force back to Argos as quickly as may be, and do not destroy both yourself and your city.

Polyneices

No, it is not possible. For how could I lead the same force again, when once I had shrunk back?

Antigone

But why, my brother, must your anger rise again? What profit will come to you from destroying your native land?

1420

Polyneices

It is shameful to be in exile, and to be mocked in this way by my brother, when I am eldest-born.

Antigone

Do you see to what sure fulfillment the prophecies of this man are leading,

who declares mutual death for you two?

1425

Polyneices

Yes, for he wishes it. But I must not yield.

Antigone

Ah, wretched me! But who will dare follow you, when he hears what prophecies this man has uttered?

Polyneices

I will not report ill-tidings; a good leader should tell the better news, and not the worse.

Antigone

Is this then your fixed decision, my brother?

Polyneices

Yes, and do not detain me. This path now will be my destiny, ill-fated and evil, because of my father here and his Furies. But as for you two,

may Zeus grant you good things, if you bring these things to completion for me when I am dead, since in life you will see me no more.

1435

Now release me, and farewell; for nevermore will you behold me living.

Antigone

Ah, wretched that I am!

Polyneices

Do not mourn for me.

Antigone

And who would not mourn you, brother, when you are hurrying off

to a death foreseen?

1440

Polyneices

If it is fated, then I must die.

Antigone

No, no, listen to my prayer!

Polyneices

Do not plead for what must not be.

Antigone

Then I, indeed, am utterly wretched, if I must lose you!

Polyneices

It rests with the divinity, this way or that. But as for you two,

I pray to the gods that you may never meet with evil; for in all men’s eyes you do not deserve to suffer. Polyneices exits.

1445