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Antigone
[720] Land that is praised above all lands, now it is your task to make those bright praises seen in deeds! Oedipus
What strange new thing has happened, my daughter? Antigone
Creon there draws near us, and not without followers, father. Oedipus
Ah, dearest old men, now give me [725] the final proof of my salvation! Chorus
Courage! It will be yours. For even if I am aged, this country's strength has not grown old. Enter Creon, with attendants.
Creon
Gentlemen, noble dwellers in this land, I see from your eyes that a sudden fear has troubled you at my coming; [730] but do not shrink back from me, and let no evil word escape you. I am here with no thought of force; I am old, and I know that the city to which I have come is mighty, if any in Hellas has might. [735] No, I have been sent, aged as I am, to plead with this man to return with me to the land of Cadmus. I am not one man's envoy, but have a mandate from all our people; since it belonged to me, by family, beyond all other Thebans to mourn his woes. [740] Unhappy Oedipus, hear us, and come home! Justly are you summoned by all the Cadmeans, and most of all by me, since I—unless I am the worst of all men born—feel most sorrow for your woes, old man, [745] when I see you, unhappy as you are, a stranger and a wanderer evermore, roaming in beggary, with one handmaid for your support. Ah, me, I had not thought that she could fall to such a depth of misery as that to which she has fallen— [750] this poor girl!—as she tends forever your dark life amid poverty; in ripe youth, but unwed: a prize for the first passerby to seize. Is it not a cruel reproach—alas!—that I have cast at you, and me, and all our race? [755] But indeed an open shame cannot be hidden. Oedipus, in the name of your ancestral gods, listen to me! Hide it, and consent to return to the city and the house of your ancestors, after bidding a kind farewell to this city. Athens is worthy; yet your own city has the first claim on your reverence, [760] since it was Thebes that nurtured you long ago.
Sophocles. The Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1889.
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