Jocasta. He has come from Corinth to tell you that your father, Polybius, is dead.
Oedipus. How, stranger? Let me have it from your own mouth.
Messenger. If I am to tell the story, the first thing is that he is dead and gone.
Oedipus. By some sickness or by treachery?
Messenger. A little thing can bring the aged to their rest.
Oedipus. Ah! He died, it seems, from sickness?
Messenger. Yes; and of old age.
Oedipus. Alas! Alas! Why, indeed, my wife, should one look to that Pythian seer, or to the birds that scream above our heads? For they would have it that I was doomed to kill my father. And now he is dead—hid already beneath the earth. And here am I—who had no part in it, unless indeed he died from longing for me. If that were so, I may have caused his death; but Polybius has carried the oracles with him into Hades—the oracles as men have understood them—and they are worth nothing.
Jocasta. Did I not tell you so, long since?
Oedipus. You did, but fear misled me.
Jocasta. Put this trouble from you.
Oedipus. Those bold words would sound better, were not my mother living. But as it is—I have some grounds for fear; yet you have said well.
