Jocasta Some god with evil intent is destroying the race of Oedipus. So it began, my childbearing was unholy, and in an evil hour I married your father and you were born. But why repeat these horrors? What the gods send we have to bear. I am afraid to ask you what I would, for fear of stinging your heart; yet I long to.
Polyneices No, question me, leave out nothing; for your will, mother, is my pleasure too.
Jocasta Well then, first I ask you what I long to have answered. What is it, to be deprived of one’s country? Is it a great evil?
Polyneices The greatest; harder to bear than tell.
Jocasta What is it like? What annoys the exile?
Polyneices One thing most of all; he cannot speak his mind.
Jocasta This is a slave’s lot you speak of, not to say what one thinks.
Polyneices The follies of the rulers must be borne.
Jocasta That too is painful, to join in the folly of fools.
Polyneices Yet to gain our ends we must serve against our nature.
Jocasta Hope, they say, is the exile’s food.
Polyneices Yes, hope that looks so fair; but always in the future.
Jocasta But doesn’t time expose its emptiness?
Polyneices It has a certain winsome charm in misfortune.
Jocasta Where did you get your living, before your marriage found it for you?
Polyneices Sometimes I would have enough for the day, and sometimes not.
Jocasta Didn’t your father’s friends and guests assist you?
Polyneices Seek to be prosperous; friends are nothing in misfortune.
Jocasta Didn’t your noble breeding lead you to the heights?
Polyneices Poverty is a curse; breeding did not find me food.
Jocasta Man’s dearest treasure, it seems, is his country.
Polyneices You could not name how dear it is!
Jocasta How did you come to Argos? What was your scheme?
Polyneices Loxias gave Adrastus an oracle.
Jocasta What was it? What are you saying? I cannot guess.
Polyneices That he should marry his daughters to a boar and a lion.
Jocasta What did you, my son, have to do with the name of beasts?
Polyneices I don’t know; the deity summoned me there to my destiny.
Jocasta Yes, for the god is wise; but how did you win your wife?
Polyneices It was night when I reached the porch of Adrastus.
Jocasta In search of a resting-place, because you were in exile?
Polyneices Yes; and then another exile came there.
Jocasta Who was he? He too was in trouble, surely.
Polyneices Tydeus; they say that Oineus is his father.
Jocasta But why did Adrastus compare you to wild beasts?
Polyneices Because we came to blows about our bed.
Jocasta Was it then that the son of Talaus understood the oracle?
Polyneices Yes, and he gave the two of us his two daughters.
Jocasta Are you blessed or cursed in your marriage?
Polyneices As yet I have no fault to find with it.
Jocasta How did you persuade an army to follow you here?
Polyneices Adrastus swore an oath to his two sons-in-law, that he would restore us both to our country, me first. So many Danaan and Mycenaean chiefs have joined me, doing me a bitter though needful service, for it is against my own city I am marching. Now I call the gods to witness, that it is not willingly I have raised the spear against my willing friends. But it belongs to you, mother, to dissolve this unhappy feud, and, by reconciling loving brothers, to end the trouble for me and you and the whole city. It has been said for a long time, but I will say it anyway: wealth is most valued by men, and of all things in the world it has the greatest power. This I have come to secure at the head of my great army; for a man well-born but poor is worth nothing.
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