Epeisodion 4
Oedipus
Iocasta, dearest wife, why have you summoned me forth from these doors?
950
Iocasta
Hear this man, and judge, as you listen, what the awful oracles have come to.
Oedipus
Who is he and what news does he have for me?
Iocasta
He comes from Corinth to tell you that your father Polybus lives no longer, but has perished.
955
Oedipus
How, stranger? Let me have it from your own mouth.
Messenger
If I must first make these tidings plain, know indeed that he is dead and gone.
Oedipus
By treachery, or from illness?
960
Messenger
A light tilt of the scale brings the aged to their rest.
Oedipus
Ah, he died, it seems, of sickness?
Messenger
Yes, and of the long years that he had lived.
Oedipus
Alas, alas! Why indeed, my wife, should one look to the
hearth of the Pythian seer, or to the birds that scream above our heads, who declared that I was doomed to slay my father? But he is dead, and lies beneath the earth, and here I am, not having put my hand to any spear—unless, perhaps, he died out of longing for me:
965
thus, indeed, I would be the cause of his death. But as the oracles stand, at least, Polybus has swept them with him to his rest in Hades. They are worth nothing.
970
Iocasta
Did I not long ago foretell this to you?
Oedipus
You did, but I was mislead by my fear.
Iocasta
Now no longer take any of those things to heart.
975
Oedipus
But surely I must fear my mother’s bed.
Iocasta
What should a mortal man fear, for whom the decrees of Fortune are supreme, and who has clear foresight of nothing? It is best to live at random, as one may.
But fear not that you will wed your mother. Many men before now have slept with their mothers in dreams. But he to whom these things are as though nothing bears his life most easily.
980
Oedipus
All these words of yours would have been well said,
