Euripides, Phoenissae
E. P. Coleridge, Ed.

Antigone
[1710] Go to unhappy exile; stretch forth your dear hand, my old father, taking me to guide you, like a breeze that guides the ships.

Oedipus
[1715] See, I am advancing; be my guide, my poor child.

Antigone
I am, I am! The saddest maiden of all in Thebes.

Oedipus
Where am I placing my aged step? Bring my staff, child.

Antigone
[1720] This way, this way, come to me, place your steps here, like a dream in your strength.

Oedipus
Oh, oh, driving the old man in most wretched flight from the country! [1725] Oh, oh! the terrible sorrows I have endured!

Antigone
Why do you speak of enduring? Justice does not see the wicked, and does not requite follies.

Oedipus
I am the one who came into high songs of victory, [1730] because I guessed the baffling riddle of the girl, half-maiden.

Antigone
You are bringing up again the reproach of the Sphinx. Talk no more of past success. This misery was in store for you all the while, [1735] to become an exile from your country and die anywhere.

Leaving to my girlhood friends sad tears, I go forth from my native land, to roam as no maiden should. [1740] Ah! This dutiful resolve towards my father's suffering will make me famous. Alas for the insults heaped on you and on my brother, whose dead body goes from the house unburied, [1745] poor boy! I will bury him secretly, though I have to die for it, father.

Oedipus
Show yourself to your companions.

Antigone
My own laments suffice.

Oedipus
Go pray at the altars.

Antigone
[1750] They have enough of my piteous tale.

Oedipus
At least go seek the Bromian god in his untrodden sanctuary among the Maenads' hills.

Antigone
Bromius, for whom I once dressed in the Theban fawn-skin and [1755] danced upon the hills in the holy choir of Semele—shall I now offer the gods homage that is not homage?