Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Jebb 1917).djvu/31

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439—462]
OEDIPUS THE KING.
19

Oe. What riddles, what dark words thou always speakest!

Te. Nay, art not thou most skilled to unravel dark speech?440

Oe. Make that my reproach in which thou shalt find me great.

Te. Yet 'twas just that fortune that undid thee.

Oe. Nay, if I delivered this town, I care not.

Te. Then I will go: so do thou, boy, take me hence.

Oe. Aye, let him take thee: while here, thou art a hindrance, thou, a trouble: when thou hast vanished, thou wilt not vex me more.

Te. I will go when I have done mine errand, fearless of thy frown: for thou canst never destroy me. And I tell thee—the man of whom thou hast this long while been in quest, uttering threats,450 and proclaiming a search into the murder of Laïus—that man is here,—in seeming, an alien sojourner, but anon he shall be found a native Theban, and shall not be glad of his fortune. A blind man, he who now hath sight, a beggar, who now is rich, he shall make his way to a strange land, feeling the ground before him with his staff. And he shall be found at once brother and father of the children with whom he consorts; son and husband of the woman who bore him; heir to his father's bed, shedder of his father's blood.

So go thou in and think on that;460 and if thou find that I have been at fault, say thenceforth that I have no wit in prophecy.

[Teiresias is led out by the Boy.—Oedipus enters the palace.