marriage—plague ravages the city. Oedipus, King, not god but foremost of living men, seeing that when you first came to this town of Thebes you freed us from that harsh singer, the riddling sphinx, we beseech you, all we suppliants, to find some help. Whether you find it by your power as a man, or because, being near the gods, a god has whispered you. Uplift our State; think upon your fame; your coming brought us luck, be lucky to us still, remember that it is better to rule over men than over a waste place, since neither walled town nor ship is anything if it be empty and no man within it.
Oedipus. My unhappy children! I know well what need has brought you, what suffering you endure, yet sufferers though you be, there is not a single one whose suffering is as mine—each mourns himself, but my soul mourns the city, myself, and you. It is not therefore as if you came to arouse a sleeping man. No! Be certain that I have wept many tears and searched hither and thither for some remedy. I have already done the only thing that came in to my head for all my search. I have sent the son of Menoeceus, Creon, my own wife’s brother, to the Pythian House of Phoebus, to hear if deed or word of mine may yet deliver this town. I am troubled, for he is a long time
