A) Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 774-797
My father was Polybos of Corinth, 775 my mother the Dorian Merope. I was considered the greatest man among the townspeople there, until a chance befell me, worthy of wonder, though not worthy of my own haste regarding it. At a banquet, a man drunk with wine 780 cast it at me that I was not the true son of my father. And I, vexed, restrained myself for that day as best as I could, but on the next went to my mother and father and questioned them. They were angry at the one who had let this taunt fly. 785 So I had comfort about them, but the matter rankled in my heart, for such a rumor still spread widely. I went to Delphi without my parents' knowledge, and Phoebus sent me forth without giving me the tîmê of the knowledge for which I had come, 790 but in his response set forth other things, full of sorrow and terror and woe: that I was fated to defile my mother's bed, that I would reveal to men a brood which they could not endure to behold, and that I would slay the father that sired me. When I heard this, I turned in flight from the land of Corinth, 795 from then on thinking of it only by its position under the stars, to some spot where I should never see fulfillment [telos] of the infamies foretold in my evil doom.

B) Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 707-725
Then absolve yourself of the things about which you are speaking. Listen to me, and take comfort in learning that nothing of mortal birth is a partaker in the art of the mantis. 710 I will give you a pithy indication [sêmeia] of this: An oracle came to Laios once - I will not say from Phoebus himself, but from his ministers - saying that he would suffer his fate at the hands of the child to be born to him and me. 715 And he - as the rumor goes - was murdered one day by strange [xenoi] robbers at a place where the three highways meet. The child's birth was not yet three days past, when Laios pinned his ankles together and had it thrown, by others' hands, on a remote mountain. 720 So, in that case, Apollo did not bring it to pass that the child should become the slayer of his father, or that Laios should suffer [paskhô] that which he feared: death at the hands of his child; thus the messages of the seer's art had foretold. Pay them no regard. Whatever necessary event 725 the god seeks, he himself will easily bring to light.

C) Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 964-972
Alas, alas! Why indeed, my wife, should one look to the 965 hearth of the Pythian mantis, or to the birds that scream above our heads, who declared that I was doomed to slay my sire? But he is dead, and lies beneath the earth, and here I am, not having put my hand to any spear - unless, perhaps, he was killed by longing for me; 970 thus I would be the cause of his death. But the oracles as they stand Polybos has swept with him to his rest in Hades. They are worth nothing.

D) Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 1051-1064
Chorus: I think he speaks of no other than the peasant you already wanted to see. But Iocasta herself might best tell you that.

Oedipus: Wife, do you know in your noos the one whom we summoned lately? Is it of him that this man speaks?

Iocasta: Why ask of whom he spoke? Regard it not - waste not a thought on what he said - it would be vain.

Oedipus: It must not happen, with such clues [sêmeia] in my grasp, that I should fail to bring my origin [genos] to light.

Iocasta: For the gods' sake, if you have any care for your own life, forgo this search! My anguish is enough.

Oedipus: Be of good courage. Even if I should be found the son of a servile mother - a slave by three descents - you will not be proved base [kakê].

Iocasta: Hear me, I implore you: do not do this.

E) Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 390-426
Oedipus: Come, tell me, where have you proved yourself a seer [mantis]? Why, when the watchful dog who wove dark song was here, did you say nothing to free the people? Yet the riddle [ainigma] was not for the first comer to read: there was need for the help of a mantis, 395 and you were discovered not to have this art, either from birds, or as known from some god. But rather I, Oedipus the ignorant, stopped her, having attained the answer through my wit alone, untaught by birds. It is I whom you are trying to oust, thinking that 400 you will have great influence in Creon's court. But I think that you and the one who plotted these things will rue your zeal to purge the land; if you did not seem to be an old man, you would have learned at the cost of your suffering [pathos] what sort of phrenes you have…

Teiresias: Though you are turannos, the right of reply must be deemed the same for both; over that I have power [kratos]. 410 For I do not live as your slave, but as Loxias'. I will not stand enrolled under Creon for my patron. And I tell you, since you have taunted my blindness, that though you have sight, you do not see what evil you are in, nor where you dwell, nor with whom. 415 Do you know who your parents are? You have been an unwitting enemy to your own people, both in the Underworld and on the earth above. And the double lash of your mother's and your father's curse will one day drive you from this land in dreadful haste, with darkness upon those eyes of yours which now can see. 420 What place will be harbor to your cries, what part of all Kithairon will not ring with them soon, when you have learned the meaning of the nuptials in which, within that house, you found a fatal haven, after a voyage so fair? And you have not guessed a throng of other evils, 425 which will bring you level with you true self and with your own children.

F) Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 438-462
Teiresias: This day will reveal your birth and bring your ruin.

Oedipus: What riddles [ainigma pl.], what dark words you always say.

Teiresias: Are you not the best at unraveling mysteries? ...I will go when I have performed the errand for which I came, fearless to your frown; you can never destroy me. I tell you that the man whom you have been seeking this long while, 450 uttering threats and proclaiming a search into the murder of Laios, is here, apparently an emigrant stranger [xenos], but soon to be found a native of Thebes, unhappy about his fortune. A blind man, though now he sees, 455 a beggar, though now rich, he will make his way to a foreign land, feeling the ground before him with his staff. And he will be discovered to be at once brother and father of the children with whom he consorts; son and husband of the woman who bore him; 460 heir to his father's bed, shedder of his father's blood. So go in and evaluate this, and if you find that I am wrong, say then that I have no phrenes in the art of the mantis.

G) Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 1266-1279
And when the hapless woman was stretched out on the ground, then the sequel was horrible to see: for he tore from her raiment the golden brooches with which she had decorated herself, and lifting them struck his own eye-balls, uttering words like these: "No longer will you behold such evils as I was suffering [paskhô] and performing! Long enough have you looked on those whom you ought never to have seen, having failed in the knowledge of those whom I yearned to know - henceforth you shall be dark!" With such a dire refrain, he struck his eyes with raised hand not once but often. At each blow the bloody eye-balls bedewed his beard, and did not send forth sluggish drops of gore, but all at once a dark shower of blood came down like hail.

H) Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 376-377
Teiresias: No, it is not your fate to fall at my hands, since Apollo, to whom this matter is a concern, is sufficient.

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