Joc. Vain, vain oracles!

OEdip. But yet they frighted me;
I looked on Corinth as a place accurst,
Resolved my destiny should wait in vain,
And never catch me there.

Joc. Too nice a fear.

OEdip. Suspend your thoughts; and flatter not too soon. 
Just in the place you named, where three ways met. 
And near that time, five persons I encountered;
One was too like, (heaven grant it prove not him!)
Whom you describe for Laius:  insolent,
And fierce they were, as men who lived on spoil. 
I judged them robbers, and by force repelled
The force they used:  In short, four men I slew: 
The fifth upon his knees demanding life,
My mercy gave it;—­Bring me comfort now. 
If I slew Laius, what can be more wretched! 
From Thebes, and you, my curse has banished me: 
From Corinth, fate.

Joc. Perplex not thus your mind. 
My husband fell by multitudes opprest;
So Phorbas said:  This band you chanced to meet: 
And murdered not my Laius, but revenged him.

OEdip. There’s all my hope:  Let Phorbas tell me this,
And I shall live again.—­
To you, good gods, I make my last appeal;
Or clear my virtue, or my crime reveal: 
If wandering in the maze of fate I run,
And backward trod the paths I sought to shun,
Impute my errors to your own decree;
My hands are guilty, but my heart is free. [Exeunt.

ACT IV.  SCENE I.

  Enter PYRACMON and CREON.

Pyr. Some business of import, that triumph wears,
You seem to go with; nor is it hard to guess
When you are pleased, by a malicious joy,
Whose red and fiery beams cast through your visage
A glowing pleasure.  Sure you smile revenge,
And I could gladly hear.

Cre. Would’st thou believe! 
This giddy hair-brained king, whom old Tiresias
Has thunder-struck with heavy accusation,
Though conscious of no inward guilt, yet fears: 
He fears Jocasta, fears himself, his shadow;
He fears the multitude; and,—­which is worth
An age of laughter,—­out of all mankind,
He chuses me to be his orator;
Swears that Adrastus, and the lean-looked prophet[10],
Are joint conspirators; and wished me to
Appease the raving Thebans; which I swore
To do.

Pyr. A dangerous undertaking; Directly opposite to your own interest.

Cre. No, dull Pyracmon; when I left his presence
With all the wings, with which revenge could aid
My flight, I gained the midst o’the city;
There, standing on a pile of dead and dying,
I to the mad and sickly multitude,
With interrupting sobs, cry’d out,—­O Thebes! 
O wretched Thebes, thy king, thy OEdipus,
This barbarous stranger, this usurper, monster,
Is by the oracle, the wise Tiresias,
Proclaimed the murderer of thy royal Laius: 
Jocasta too, no longer now my sister,
Is found complotter in the horrid deed. 
Here I renounce all tie of blood and nature,
For thee, O Thebes, dear Thebes, poor bleeding Thebes!—­
And there I wept, and then the rabble howled. 
And roared, and with a thousand antic mouths
Gabbled revenge! revenge was all the cry.