What are your thoughts on Oedipus’s final words to his children? Why do you think he said this to them?

OEDIPUS

I wish you good fortune, and may God lead you on

a better path than he led me.

Children, where are you?

Come here, children, come to your brother’s and father’s hands: they have become his eyes, which used to be bright.

Not seeing, not knowing, he became your father through her from whom he also was born.

I cannot see you, but I weep for you. I know how bitter your life will be, the one that you now will be forced to lead.

What assembly, what feast, what parties will you not leave in tears, rather than in joy?

And when you grow up, when someone hears the story of your birth, who will risk marrying you?

Will they risk gossip about you and your parents? It’s all there. Your father killed his father; he had children from his mother, the source of his own life. Those are the insults you will hear;

so who would marry you?

No one.

You’ll die unmarried and childless.

Creon, son of Menoeceus, you are their father now.

Their own parents are dead.

Do not let them become beggars, or be unwed.

Do not let them suffer what I have had to suffer. Take pity on them: they have nothing except what you choose to give them. Say yes, you good man,

and touch them with your hand.

I could tell you a lot of things, children, if you were old enough.

But, now, pray that you live where you can, and that your life be better than your father’s.