Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus 1186–1296: Fourth stasimon; the Second Messenger reports the blinding

Alas, generations of mortals, how mere a shadow I count your life! Where, where is the mortal who attains a happiness which is more than apparent and doomed to fall away to nothing? Your fate warns me—yours, unhappy Oedipus—to call no earthly creature blessed.

For he, O Zeus, shot his shaft with peerless skill, and won the prize of an all-prosperous fortune, having slain the maiden with crooked talons, who sang darkly. He arose for our land like a tower against death. And from that time, Oedipus, you have been called our king, and have been honored supremely, holding power in great Thebes.

But now whose story is more grievous in men’s ears? Who is a more wretched slave to fierce plagues and troubles, with all his life reversed? Alas, renowned Oedipus! The same bounteous harbor was sufficient for you, both as child and as father, to make your nuptial couch in. Oh, how can the soil in which your father sowed, unhappy man, have endured you in silence for so long?

Time the all-seeing has found you out, against your will: he judges the monstrous marriage in which parent and child have long been one. Alas, child of Laius, would that I had never seen you. I wail as one who pours a dirge from his lips. It was you who gave me new life, to speak directly, and through you darkness has fallen upon my eyes.

Second Messenger You who are most honored in this land, what deeds you will hear, what deeds you will behold, what burden of sorrow will be yours, if, true to your race, you still care for the house of Labdacus. For I think that neither the Ister nor the Phasis could wash this house clean, so many are the ills that it shrouds, or will soon bring to light, ills wrought not unwittingly, but on purpose. And those griefs smart the most which are seen to be of our own choice.

Chorus Indeed the troubles which we knew before are far from being easy to bear. Besides them, what do you have to announce?

Second Messenger This is the shortest tale to tell and hear: our royal lady Iocasta is dead.

Chorus Alas, wretched lady! From what cause?

By her own hand. You will not suffer the worst part of the painful event, since you do not behold the events. Nevertheless, so far as my memory serves, you will learn that unhappy woman’s fate. When, frantic, she passed within the vestibule, she rushed straight towards her marriage couch, clutching her hair with the fingers of both hands. Once within the chamber, she dashed the doors together behind her, then called on the name of Laius, long since a corpse, thinking of that son, born long ago, by whose hand the father was slain, leaving the mother to breed accursed offspring with his own child. And she bewailed the marriage in which, wretched woman, she had given birth to a twofold brood, husband by husband, children by her child. And how she perished is more than I know. For with a shriek Oedipus burst in, and did not allow us to watch her woe until the end: on him, as he rushed around, our eyes were set. To and fro he went, asking us to give him a sword, asking where he could find the wife who was no wife, but a mother whose womb had borne both him and his children. And in his frenzy a power greater than mortal man was his guide, for it was none of us mortals who were near. With a dread cry, as though someone beckoned him on, he sprang at the double doors, forced the bending bolts from the sockets, and rushed into the room. There we beheld the woman hanging by the neck in a twisted noose of swinging cords. And when he saw her, with a dread deep cry he released the halter by which she hung. And when the hapless woman was stretched out on the ground, then the sequel was horrible to see: for he tore from her raiment the golden brooches with which she had decorated herself, and lifting them struck his own eye-balls, uttering words like these: No longer will you behold such horrors as I was suffering and performing! Long enough have you looked on those whom you ought never to have seen, having failed in the knowledge of those whom I yearned to know—henceforth you shall be dark! With such a dire refrain, he struck his eyes with raised hand not once but often. At each blow the bloody eye-balls bedewed his beard, and sent forth not sluggish drops of gore, but all at once a dark shower of blood came down like hail. From the deeds of the two of them such ills have broken forth, not on one alone, but with mingled woe for man and wife. The old happiness of their ancestral fortune was once happiness indeed. But now today lamentation, ruin, death, shame,

Second Messenger and every earthly ill that anyone could name are all theirs.

Chorus And does the sufferer have any respite from pain now?

Second Messenger He cries for some one to unbar the gates and show to all the Cadmeans his father’s slayer, his mother’s—the words must not pass my lips— in order to banish himself from the land and not to put the house under his own curse by waiting here. And yet he lacks strength, and one to guide his steps, for the anguish is more than he can bear. He will soon show this to you: look, the bars of the gates are withdrawn, and soon you will behold a sight which even he who abhors it must pity.