Antigone
[1710]
Go to unhappy exile; stretch forth your dear hand, my old father, taking me to guide you, like a breeze that guides the ships.
Oedipus
[1715]
See, I am advancing; be my guide, my poor child.
Antigone
I am, I am! The saddest maiden of all in Thebes.
Oedipus
Where am I placing my aged step? Bring my staff, child.
Antigone
[1720]
This way, this way, come to me, place your steps here, like a dream in your strength.
Oedipus
Oh, oh, driving the old man in most wretched flight from the country!
[1725]
Oh, oh! the terrible sorrows I have endured!
Antigone
Why do you speak of enduring? Justice does not see the wicked, and does not requite follies.
Oedipus
I am the one who came into high songs of victory,
[1730]
because I guessed the baffling riddle of the girl, half-maiden.
Antigone
You are bringing up again the reproach of the Sphinx. Talk no more of past success. This misery was in store for you all the while,
[1735]
to become an exile from your country and die anywhere.
Leaving to my girlhood friends sad tears, I go forth from my native land, to roam as no maiden should. [1740] Ah! This dutiful resolve towards my father's suffering will make me famous. Alas for the insults heaped on you and on my brother, whose dead body goes from the house unburied, [1745] poor boy! I will bury him secretly, though I have to die for it, father.
Oedipus
Show yourself to your companions.
Antigone
My own laments suffice.
Oedipus
Go pray at the altars.
Antigone
[1750]
They have enough of my piteous tale.
Oedipus
At least go seek the Bromian god in his untrodden sanctuary among the Maenads' hills.
Antigone
Bromius, for whom I once dressed in the Theban fawn-skin and
[1755]
danced upon the hills in the holy choir of Semele—shall I now offer the gods homage that is not homage?