Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Jebb 1917).djvu/41

705—731] . Nay, he hath made a rascal seer his mouthpiece; as for himself, he keeps his lips wholly pure.

. Then absolve thyself of the things whereof thou speakest; hearken to me, and learn for thy comfort that nought of mortal birth is a sharer in the science of the seer, I will give thee pithy proof of that.

An oracle came to Laïus once—I will not say from Phoebus himself, but from his ministers—that the doom should overtake him to die by the hand of his child, who should spring from him and me.

Now Laïus,—as, at least, the rumour saith,—was murdered one day by foreign robbers at a place where three highways meet. And the child's birth was not three days past, when Laïus pinned its ankles together, and had it thrown, by others' hands, on a trackless mountain.

So, in that case, Apollo brought it not to pass that the babe should become the slayer of his sire, or that Laïus should die—the dread thing which he feared—by his child's hand. Thus did the messages of seer-craft map out the future. Regard them, thou, not at all. Whatsoever needful things the god seeks, he himself will easily bring to light.

. What restlessness of soul, lady, what tumult of the mind hath just come upon me since I heard thee speak!

. What anxiety hath startled thee, that thou sayest this?

. Methought I heard this from thee,—that Laïus was slain where three highways meet.

. Yea, that was the story; nor hath it ceased yet.