Stasimon 1
[Episode]
Maidens, I hear your Phoenician voice, and my old feet drag their tottering steps. O my son,
Jocasta
at last after countless days I see your face; throw your arms about your mother’s breast, stretch out to me your cheeks and the dark, curly locks of your hair, overshadowing my neck.
305
Hail to you! all hail! scarcely here in your mother’s arms, beyond hope and expectation. What can I say to you? How in every way, by hands, by words, in the mazy delight
310
of the dance, shall I find the pleasure of my former joy? Ah! my son, you left your father’s house desolate, when your brother’s outrage drove you away in exile.
315
Truly you were missed alike by your friends and Thebes. And so I cut my white hair and let it fall for grief, in tears, not clad in robes of white, my son,
320
but taking instead these dark rags.
325
While in the house the old blind man, always possessed by his tearful longing for the pair of brothers estranged from the home,
rushed to kill himself with the sword or by the noose suspended over his chamber-roof, moaning his curses on his sons;
330
and now he hides himself in darkness, always weeping and lamenting. And you, my child, I hear you have married and are begetting children to your joy in a foreign home,
335
and are courting a foreign alliance, a ceaseless regret to me your mother and to Laius your ancestor, ruin brought by your marriage. I was not the one who lit for you the marriage-torch,
340
the custom in marriage for a happy mother; Ismenus had no part at your wedding in supplying the luxurious bath, and there was silence through the streets of Thebes, at the entrance of your bride.
345
Curses on them! whether the sword or strife or your father that is to blame, or heaven’s visitation that has burst riotously upon the house of Oedipus; for on me has come all the anguish of these evils.
350
Chorus Leader
Their offspring are a wonderful thing to women; all of them have some love for their children.
355
Polyneices
Mother, I have come among enemies wisely or foolishly; but all men must love their native land; whoever says otherwise
is pleased to say so, but his thoughts are turned elsewhere. I was so fearful and in such terror, lest my brother should kill me by treachery, that I came through the city sword in hand, looking all round. I had one advantage,
360
the truce and your word, which brought me to to the paternal walls; and I arrived here weeping, to see after a long time my home and the altars of the gods, the training ground, scene of my childhood, and the water of Dirce, from which I was unjustly driven to live in a foreign city,
365
a stream of tears flowing from my eyes. Now, grief upon grief, I see you with hair cut short and in black robes, alas for my sorrows!
370
What a terrible thing, mother, is hatred between dear friends.
and how hard it makes reconciliation
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What is my old father doing within the house, looking on darkness? What of my two sisters? Surely the unhappy ones lament my exile?
Jocasta
Some god with evil intent is destroying the race of Oedipus.
So it began, my childbearing was unholy, and in an evil hour I married your father and you were born. But why repeat these horrors? What the gods send we have to bear. I am afraid to ask you what I would, for fear of stinging your heart; yet I long to.
380
Polyneices
No, question me, leave out nothing; for your will, mother, is my pleasure too.
385
Jocasta
Well then, first I ask you what I long to have answered. What is it, to be deprived of one’s country? Is it a great evil?
Polyneices
The greatest; harder to bear than tell.
Jocasta
What is it like? What annoys the exile?
390
Polyneices
One thing most of all; he cannot speak his mind.
Jocasta
This is a slave’s lot you speak of, not to say what one thinks.
Polyneices
The follies of the rulers must be borne.
Jocasta
That too is painful, to join in the folly of fools.
