Page:Sophocles (Storr 1912) v1.djvu/263



O shameless railer, think’st thou this abuse

Defames my grey hairs rather than thine own?

Murder and incest, deeds of horror, all

Thou blurtest forth against me, all I have borne,

No willing sinner; so it pleased the gods

Wrath haply with my sinful race of old,

Since thou could’st find no sin in me myself

For which in retribution I was doomed

To trespass thus against myself and mine.

Answer me now, if by some oracle

My sire was destined to a bloody end

By a son’s hand, can this reflect on me,

Me then unborn, begotten by no sire,

Conceivèd in no mother's womb? And if

When born to misery, as born I was,

I met my sire, not knowing whom I met

Or what I did, and slew him, how canst thou

With justice blame the all-unconscious hand?

And for my mother, wretch, art not ashamed,

Seeing she was thy sister, to extort

From me the story of her marriage, such

A marriage as I straightway will proclaim.

For I will speak; thy lewd and impious speech

Has broken all the bonds of reticence.

She was, ah woe is me! she was my mother;

I knew it not, nor she; and she my mother

Bare children to the son whom she had borne,

A birth of shame. But this at least I know,

Wittingly thou aspersest her and me;

But I unwitting wed, unwilling speak.

Nay neither in this marriage nor this deed

Which thou art ever casting in my teeth—

A murdered sire—shall I be held to blame. 241