Creon Cease now your lamentations; it is time we thought of their burial. Hear what I have to say, Oedipus. Eteocles, your son, left me to rule this land, by giving it as a dowry to Haemon with his marriage to your daughter Antigone. Therefore I will no longer allow you to dwell in this land; for Teiresias clearly said that the city would never prosper as long as you made your home here. So begone! And I say this not in insult, nor because I am your enemy, but from fear that some calamity will come upon the land, through those avenging fiends of yours.
Oedipus O destiny! From the beginning, how you have created me wretched and unhappy, if any mortal ever was; for before I had left my mother’s womb and seen the light, Apollo foretold to Laius that I, then unborn, should become my father’s murderer; alas for me! So, as soon as I was born, the father who begot me tried to kill me, thinking me his enemy, for it was fated he should die at my hand; so he sent me unweaned to make a pitiful meal for beasts; I escaped from that— would that Cithaeron had sunk into hell’s yawning abyss, because it did not destroy me, but . . . Fate made me a slave in the service of Polybus. And I, poor wretch, after slaying my own father came to my mother’s bed, to her sorrow, and begot sons that were my brothers, whom I have destroyed, by bequeathing to them the legacy of curses I received from Laius. For I was not born so foolish, that I should have contrived these things against my own eyes and my children’s life, without some god. Let that pass. What am I, poor wretch, to do? Who now will be my guide and tend the blind man’s step? The one who is dead? If she were alive, I know well that she would. My pair of noble sons? But they are gone from me. But am I still so young myself that I can find a livelihood? Where? O Creon, why do you seek in this way to kill me utterly? For you will kill me, if you banish me from the land. Yet I will never twine my arms about your knees and seem a coward, for I would not betray my former nobility, no! not for all my ills.
Creon
You have spoken well, in refusing to touch my knees, but I could not allow you to dwell in the land. Of these dead, bear one at once to the palace; but the other, who came with strangers to sack his native town, the dead Polyneices, cast forth unburied beyond the borders of this land. To all the race of Cadmus shall this be proclaimed: Whoever is caught decking his corpse with wreaths or giving it burial, shall be requited with death. As for you, Antigone, leave your mourning for these lifeless three and go indoors, to lead your maiden life until to-morrow, when Haemon waits to marry you.
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