Page:Sophocles' King Oedipus.pdf/33

Rh. What was it?

. Our land is vexed enough. Let the thing alone now that it is over.

[Exit leader of chorus.

. In the name of the gods, king, what put you in this anger?

. I will tell you; for I honour you more than these men do. The cause is Creon and his plots against me.

. Speak on, if you can tell clearly how this quarrel arose.

. He says that I am guilty of the blood of Laius.

. On his own knowledge, or on hearsay?

. He has made a rascal of a seer his mouthpiece.

. Do not fear that there is truth in what he says. Listen to me, and learn to your comfort that nothing born of woman can know what is to come. I will give you proof of that. An oracle came to Laius once, I will not say from Phoebus, but from his ministers, that he was doomed to die by the hand of his own child sprung from him and me. When his child was but three days old Laius bound its feet together and had it thrown by sure hands upon a trackless moun­tain; and when Laius was murdered at the place where three highways meet, it was, or so at least the rumour says, by foreign