Passages from Oedipus Rex

What stays unforgiven when a crime becomes the price of peace?

My lot be still to leadThe life of innocence and flyIrreverence in word or deed,To follow still those laws ordained on highWhose birthplace is the bright ethereal sky.No mortal birth they own,Olympus their progenitor alone:Ne’er shall they slumber in oblivion cold,The god in them is strong and grows not old.

A man refuses to let the truth about his birth stay buried.

Let the storm burst, my fixed resolve still holds,To learn my lineage, be it ne’er so low.It may be she with all a woman’s prideThinks scorn of my base parentage. But IWho rank myself as Fortune’s favorite child,The giver of good gifts, shall not be shamed.She is my mother and the changing moonsMy brethren, and with them I wax and wane.Thus sprung why should I fear to trace my birth?Nothing can make me other than I am.

The chorus watches a city’s confidence curdle into arrogance.

Of insolence is bredThe tyrant; insolence full blown,With empty riches surfeited,Scales the precipitous height and grasps the throne.Then topples o’er and lies in ruin prone;No foothold on that dizzy steep.But O may Heaven the true patriot keepWho burns with emulous zeal to serve the State.God is my help and hope, on him I wait.

The most patient argument in the play is also the one that will be overtaken by time.

And if thou doubt me, first to Delphi go,There ascertain if my report was trueOf the god’s answer; next investigateIf with the seer I plotted or conspired,And if it prove so, sentence me to death,Not by thy voice alone, but mine and thine.But O condemn me not, without appeal,On bare suspicion. ’Tis not right to adjudgeBad men at random good, or good men bad.I would as lief a man should cast awayThe thing he counts most precious, his own life,As spurn a true friend. Thou wilt learn in timeThe truth, for time alone reveals the just;A villain is detected in a day.

A ruler turns his own conscience into a public curse.

And of the children, inmates of his home,He shall be proved the brother and the sire,Of her who bare him son and husband both,Co-partner, and assassin of his sire.Go in and ponder this, and if thou findThat I have missed the mark, henceforth declareI have no wit nor skill in prophecy. Exeunt Teiresias and Oedipus.

The case against wanting power, made by a man who already has most of its benefits.

Not so, if thou wouldst reason with thyself,As I with myself. First, I bid thee think,Would any mortal choose a troubled reignOf terrors rather than secure repose,If the same power were given him? As for me,I have no natural craving for the nameOf king, preferring to do kingly deeds,And so thinks every sober-minded man.Now all my needs are satisfied through thee,And I have naught to fear; but were I king,My acts would oft run counter to my will.How could a title then have charms for meAbove the sweets of boundless influence?

The satisfaction of solving a problem no one else could—and the cost of never letting anyone forget it.

And yet the riddle was not to be solvedBy guess-work but required the prophet’s art;Wherein thou wast found lacking; neither birdsNor sign from heaven helped thee, but I came,The simple Oedipus; I stopped her mouthBy mother wit, untaught of auguries.