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While in the house the old blind man, always possessed by his tearful longing for the pair of brothers estranged from the home,
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rushed to kill himself with the sword or by the noose suspended over his chamber-roof, moaning his curses on his sons;
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and now he hides himself in darkness, always weeping and lamenting. And you, my child, I hear you have married and are begetting children to your joy in a foreign home,
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and are courting a foreign alliance, a ceaseless woe to me your mother and to Laius your ancestor, ruin brought by your marriage. I was not the one who lit for you the marriage-torch,
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the custom in marriage for a happy mother; Ismenus had no part at your wedding in supplying the luxurious bath, and there was silence through the streets of Thebes, at the entrance of your bride.
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Curses on them! whether the sword or strife or your father that is to blame, or heaven's visitation that has burst riotously upon the house of Oedipus; for on me has come all the anguish of these evils.
Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 2. The Phoenissae, translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.
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