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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Pilot who, in danger sought, To a quiet haven brought Our distracted State; and now Who can guide us right but thou? JOCASTA Let me too, I adjure thee, know, O king, What cause has stirred this unrelenting wrath. OEDIPUS I will, for thou art more to me than these. Lady, the cause is CREON and his plots. JOCASTA But what provoked the quarrel? make this clear. OEDIPUS He points me out as Laius' murderer. JOCASTA Of his own knowledge or upon report? OEDIPUS He is too cunning to commit himself, And makes a mouthpiece of a knavish seer. JOCASTA Then thou mayest ease thy conscience on that score. Listen and I'll convince thee that no man Hath scot or lot in the prophetic art. Here is the proof in brief. An oracle Once came to Laius (I will not say 'Twas from the Delphic god himself, but from His ministers) declaring he was doomed To perish by the hand of his own son, A child that should be born to him by me. Now Laius--so at least report affirmed-- Was murdered on a day by highwaymen, No natives, at a spot where three roads meet. As for the child, it was but three days old, When Laius, its ankles pierced and pinned Together, gave it to be cast away By others on the trackless mountain side. So then Apollo brought it not to pass The child should be his father's murderer, |
