Or halts, a pitiful throng, where the seven gates
Are not enough for the grave-bound multitude,
Till there stands a mounting pile of death, funeral jostling funeral.
The pestilence struck first at the slow-footed sheep;
There was death in the ripe grass on which they grazed.
A priest stood ready to sever a victim’s neck;
His hand was raised to strike unerringly,
When the bull, his horns a-glitter with gold, sank limply to the ground.
When its throat was opened with a heavy axe, there was no blood;
Only a noisome ooze from the black gash left its mark on the blade.
A race-horse faltered and fell, in the middle of the course,
Throwing its rider over its bowed shoulders.
Out in the fields the cattle lie abandoned,
A whole herd dying and their bull’s strength ebbing away.
There is no herdsman to tend what is left of the stock;
He has lain down to die among the sick animals.
Wolves no longer hold any terror for the stags;
The angry lion’s roar is no longer heard;
The shaggy bear has no spirit for the fight.
The serpent in the grass is powerless,
His venom lost, dried up in his shrivelled skin.
The woods, whose leafy heads should be throwing deep shadows across the hills,
Are gone; gone is the rich green carpet of the country-side;
Gone is the vine that was bent with fullness of the gift of Bacchus.
There is nothing on which our pestilence has not fallen.
Out of the depths of Erebus their prison
The Furies have rushed upon us with the fire of hell.
Phlegethon, River of Fire, has burst his banks,
The River of Hades is mingled with the River of Cadmus.
Black Death has opened his ravenous mouth to devour us;
His mighty wings are spread to cover us.
And the guardian of the angry waters, with his boat that takes all in –
Even he, the indefatigable age-old ferryman,
Is almost weary of pulling at his never-resting oar,
For ever carrying fresh multitudes across the river.
Some say the Hound of Hell has broken his iron chains
And is at large in our land; that the earth has roared.
Phantoms, of more than human size, have been seen in the woods;
Twice the forest of Thebes has been shaken, its snow scattered to the ground;
Twice the River of Dirce has boiled with blood;
The silence of night has been broken by the baying of Actaeon’s hounds.
Strange and terrible forms of death we have seen,
Symptoms more painful than the death itself.
Slow torpor paralyses the helpless limbs,
The face is flushed, or lightly marked with spots;
A fiery vapour burns in the temple of the body
And causes the cheeks to swell with blood; eyes stare,
And the demon fire eats away the flesh.
There is ringing in the ears, dark blood
Breaking the veins and welling from the pinched nostrils;
Often a strident groan racking the body to its centre.
Sometimes they desperately clutch and embrace cold stones;
Yes, and some of you I have seen,
When your guardian himself has collapsed and the house is your own,
Rush out to a well to assuage your thirst with draughts of water.
Multitudes kneel at the altars, praying for death –
The only prayer the gods are quick to answer.
They crowd to the temples – not to pray for mercy,
But in very haste to offer up their lives
To feed the insatiable gods.
But who comes here, hurrying towards the palace?1
Is it the noble and gallant Creon? Or is it
Another delusion of our tormented minds?…
It is Creon, returned in answer to all our prayers.
ACT TWO
Oedipus, Creon, Tiresias, Manto
OEDIPUS: Fear makes me tremble; to what end does fate
Now point? Conflicting thoughts divide my heart.
When good and evil lie so close together,
The doubting mind must fear the truth it seeks.…
Brother of my wife, if you have help for us
In our afflictions, speak without delay.
CREON: Dark and uncertain is the oracle.
OEDIPUS: Uncertain help is none, to those in peril.
CREON: It is the custom of the Delphic god
To wrap his secrets up in dark enigmas.
OEDIPUS: Say what you heard; however dark it be,
Oedipus is the man for solving riddles.
CREON: The god’s instruction is that we avenge
The murdered king; let banishment atone
For Laius’s death; not until that is done
Will day once more ride brightly in the sky
Or the world’s air be clean and safe to breathe.
OEDIPUS: Who was he, then? Who killed the noble king?
Does Phoebus name him? Tell us, and he shall pay.
CREON: God grant it may not be a sin to tell
What dreadful things I have both seen and heard.
My blood runs cold; I am still numb with horror.…
Humbly I entered Phoebus’ holy shrine;
And as I raised my hands in the due rite
Of supplication to the deity,
The twin peaks of Parnassus, white with snow,
Gave out an angry roar. The laurel grove
Rustled its leaves, and swayed above my head;
The sacred spring Castalia ceased to flow.
Apollo’s priestess shook her flying hair,
Entranced in the possession of the god;
Before she had approached the cave, loud sounds
Had rent the air above us, and a voice,
Louder than any human voice, thus spoke:
‘Kind stars shall shine again on Cadmus’s city
When he that is her guest, the fugitive,
Is seen no more upon the banks of Dirce;
King’s murderer is he, known to Apollo
From the hour of his birth. Thy glory, murderer,
Shall not be long; with thee thou shalt bring war,
And war shalt leave to thy posterity,
In sin returning to thy mother’s womb.’
OEDIPUS: I am ready to obey the god’s command
And do what should already have been done
For the departed king’s remains; who knows
What treacherous hands might not have dared to touch
This holy sceptre? Who, if not a king,
Should guard a king? Dead men get no respect
From those who feared them in their lives.
CREON: Worse fears
Made us forget our duty to the dead.
OEDIPUS: What fear could keep you from your pious duties?
CREON: Fear of the Sphinx and her dread voice of doom.
OEDIPUS: Now for this crime atonement shall be made
As heaven commands. We pray to every god
That looks with favour upon royalty:
Thou, giver of laws to the high heavens, and Thou,
Great glory of the shining universe,
Thou ruler of the twelve signs in their courses,
Whose swiftly moving chariot measures out
The long procession of the centuries;
Thou, sister Phoebe, following by night
Thy brother’s footsteps; Thou, lord of the winds,
Driving thy sea-green steeds across the deep;
Thou, governor of the house of darkness – hear us!
Grant that the man whose hand slew Laius
May find no rest, no home, no friendly hearth,
No hospitable land to shield his exile;
Marriage unclean and misbegotten sons
Darken his days; may he with his own hand
Shed his own father’s blood; may he commit –
The worst that can be wished for him – the crimes
That I have fled from. He shall find no pardon;
I swear it by the throne to which, a stranger,
I have but now succeeded, and by that
Which I have left behind me; by the gods
With whom I dwelt; by Neptune’s parted seas
That lightly wash the two coasts of my country.
Be Thou my witness too, at whose command
The priestess speaks the oracles of Cirrha:1
As I for my own father make this prayer,
That peace be with him in his lengthening years,
That he may reign secure on his high throne
Until his life’s last day; that Merope
May ever be his wife and his alone;
So do I swear that no reprieve of mine
Shall ever save the culprit from my hands.
But do you know where the foul deed was done?
How was he slain? Was it in open fight
Or by some treacherous plot?
CREON: While on his way
Towards the groves of the Castalian shrine,
He rode along a thickly wooded path
Near to the place at which the road divides
Into three ways across the plain. The first
Runs into Phocis,1 land beloved by Bacchus,
From which Parnassus rises from the fields
Into a gentle slope, until it soars
Sky-high with double peak. The second road2
Leads to the land of Sisyphus that lies
The third winds through a pass by straggling pools
To ford the cold Ilissos.3 At this point,
Fearing no danger in a time of peace,
The king was ambushed by a band of thieves
Who did the deed, and left no witness to it.…
Here, opportunely, comes Tiresias,
Moved by the message of the oracle
To make what haste his aged feet can manage.
His daughter Manto guides the blind old man.…
OEDIPUS: Servant of gods, Apollo’s deputy,
Expound this oracle, and name the man
Whose punishment the avenging powers demand.
TIRESIAS: You must not think it strange, most noble king,
If I am slow to speak, or ask for time.
More things are true than a blind man can know.
But where my country, or where Phoebus, calls me,
There I will follow. Had I youth and strength,
I would receive the power of the god
In my own person; we must find a way
To probe Fate’s secrets. Let a snow-white bull
And heifer not yet broken to the yoke
Be brought before the altars. You, my child,
Guide to your sightless father, must report
The indications of the sacrifice
Which will reveal the future to our eyes.
[The sacrifice is supposed to proceed]
MANTO: A perfect victim stands before the altar.
TIRESIAS: Invoke the gods to witness, in due form;
Pour oriental incense on the altar.
MANTO: I have heaped incense on the sacred fire.
TIRESIAS: How is the flame? Does it consume the banquet?
MANTO: It blazed up quickly and as quickly died.
TIRESIAS: Did it stand clear and bright, a single tongue
Rising until its crest dissolved in air?
Or does it curl and waver to one side
Drifting into a scattered cloud of smoke?
MANTO: It was no single kind of flame, but varied,
As when a rainbow, shot with many colours,
Spans with its painted arch a tract of sky
To warn us of the rain. It would be hard
To say what colour is or is not there;
First with a touch of blue, mottled with gold,
Then red as blood; then dying into blackness.
But now I see the flame fighting again,
Dividing into two; one sacrifice
Becomes two warring fires. O horrible!
The wine-libation turning into blood.…
Dense clouds of smoke enveloping the king,
Settling around his face… the light of day
Lost in black fog. Father, what does it mean?
TIRESIAS: What can I say, so many troubled thoughts
Mazing my mind? I know not which to tell.
Evil is here, but deeply hidden yet.
When gods are angry, they are wont to show it
By no uncertain signs. What can we think
Of something which they wish to show and yet
Wish not to show? When they disguise their anger?
Something is here that shames the gods. Make haste,
Bring up the victims; let the salted meal
Be thrown upon their necks. How do they bear
The touch of hands, the sprinkling of the meal?
MANTO: The bull has raised its head, and when they placed it
Facing the east, it seemed to fear the daylight,
And shied at the sun’s rays.
TIRESIAS: There – did they fall,
Each at the first stroke, to the ground?
MANTO: The heifer
Breasted the coming stroke; the bull was wounded
Twice, and is staggering this way and that,
Weakened, and loth to lose its struggling life.
TIRESIAS: Does the blood spurt strongly from a little wound,
Or well up slowly from the deep-cut flesh?
MANTO: The first is bleeding freely where the wound
Is open at the breast; the other shows
Thin smears of blood around the injured parts.
As if receding from the wounds themselves,
Dark blood is pouring from the eyes and mouth.
TIRESIAS: Such evil portents in the sacrifice
Are greatly to be feared. Tell me what signs
You see in the entrails.
MANTO: Father, what is this?
Instead of gently quivering as they should,
Proceeding from the veins. The heart is shrunken,
Withered, and hardly to be seen; the veins
Are livid; part of the lungs is missing,
The liver putrid, oozing with black gall.
And here – always an omen boding ill
For monarchy – two heads of swollen flesh
In equal masses rise, each mass cut off
And covered with a fine transparent membrane,
As if refusing to conceal its secret.
On the ill-omened side the flesh is thick
And firm, with seven veins, whose backward course
Is stopped by an obstruction in their way.
The natural order of the parts is changed,
The organs all awry and out of place.
On the right side there is no breathing lung
Alive with blood, no heart upon the left;
I find no folds of fat gently enclosing
The inner organs; womb and genitals
Are twisted and deformed. And what is this –
This hard protuberance in the belly? Monstrous!
A foetus in a virgin heifer’s womb,
And out of place – a swelling in the body
Where none should be. It moves its limbs and whimpers
Twitching convulsively its feeble frame.
The flesh is blackened with the livid gore.…
And now the grossly mutilated beasts
Are trying to move; a gaping trunk rears up
As if to attack the servers with its horns.…
The entrails seem to run out
of my hands.
That sound you hear is not the bellowing
Of cattle, not the cry of frightened beasts;
It is the fire that roars upon the altars,
The hearth itself that quakes.
OEDIPUS: Now, prophet, tell
The meaning of the signs that have appeared
In this most ominous sacrifice; your words
Will have no terror for my ears.
In his worst hour a man can be most calm.
TIRESIAS: You may in time wish to call back again
This evil hour from which you seek escape.
OEDIPUS: Tell me the thing the gods would have me know;
Tell me upon whose hands the king’s blood lies.
TIRESIAS: Neither the birds which soar into the sky,
Nor any entrails plucked from living flesh,
Can now reveal that name. Another way
Remains for us to try. The king himself
Must be evoked from everlasting night;
He must be summoned up from Erebus
To name his slayer. Earth must be unlocked,
The unforgiving ruler of the dead
Must hear our prayers, the people of the Styx
Must be fetched hither. You must name a man
To whom this sacred task can be entrusted;
That you, holding the office of a king,
Should look upon the dead, our law forbids.
OEDIPUS: Creon, this task is yours; you are the next,
After myself, to whom our country turns.
TIRESIAS: Now, while we go to unlock the prison-gates
Of the infernal Styx, let all the people sing
Their hymns of praise to Bacchus.
CHORUS
Women, shake loose your hair; let the dangling ivy bind
Your brows; let the wand of Bacchus wave in your dancing hands.
Bacchus, bright star of heaven, come,
Come to your chosen city Thebes,
Come to the worshippers
Who lift their suppliant hands to you.
Show us the light of your pure face;
Break with your starbright eyes the clouds
That cover us; banish grim death
And menacing fate.
We love your hair with spring flowers crowned,
Your head with Tyrian turban bound,
Your smooth brow wreathed with ivy berries,
Loosed be your locks and flying free
Or in a knot confined.
This was the guise in which you grew
To manhood, when you had to hide
From Juno’s wrath, with golden hair