The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oedipus King of Thebes, by Sophocles

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Title: Oedipus King of Thebes
Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes

Author: Sophocles

Translator: Gilbert Murray

Release Date: December 31, 2008 [EBook #27673]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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OEDIPUS

KING OF THEBES

BY

SOPHOCLES

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE

WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY

GILBERT MURRAY

LL.D., D.LITT., F.B.A.

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

FOURTEENTH THOUSAND

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1

_First published_ _February 1911_
_Reprinted_ _January 1912_
" _ " 1912_
" _February 1912_
" _July 1917_

PREFACE

If I have turned aside from Euripides for a moment and attempted a
translation of the great stage masterpiece of Sophocles, my excuse must
be the fascination of this play, which has thrown its spell on me as on
many other translators. Yet I may plead also that as a rule every
diligent student of these great works can add something to the
discoveries of his predecessors, and I think I have been able to bring
out a few new points in the old and much-studied _Oedipus_, chiefly
points connected with the dramatic technique and the religious
atmosphere.

Mythologists tell us that Oedipus was originally a daemon haunting Mount
Kithairon, and Jocasta a form of that Earth-Mother who, as Aeschylus
puts it, "bringeth all things to being, and when she hath reared them
receiveth again their seed into her body" (_Choephori_, 127: cf.
Crusius, _Beitraege z. Gr. Myth_, 21). That stage of the story lies very
far behind the consciousness of Sophocles. But there does cling about
both his hero and his heroine a great deal of very primitive atmosphere.
There are traces in Oedipus of the pre-hellenic Medicine King, the
_Basileus