Steer us straight, againnow
with all your inspired luck.
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JOCASTA In god's name, King, tell me why
you've hardened your mind in this rage.
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LEADER I'll tell you, for it's you I respect, not the men.
Kreon caused my rage by his plots against me.
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JOCASTA Go on. Explain what provoked the quarrel.
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OEDIPUS He says I murdered Laius.
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830 JOCASTA Does he know this himself? Or did someone tell him?
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OEDIPUS Neither. He sent that vicious seer to make the charge
so he could keep his own mouth innocent.
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JOCASTA Then you can clear yourself of all his charges.
Listen to me, for I can make you believe
that no man, ever, has mastered prophecy.
This one incident will prove it.
A long time back, an oracle reached Laius
I don't say that Apollo himself sent it,
but the priests who interpret him did
840 which said that when Laius came to die
his killer would be a son born to him and me.
Yet, as we heard the story, foreign bandits
murdered Laius at a place where three roads meet.
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(Oedipus reacts with sudden intensity to her words.)
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But that son of ours was less than three days old
when Laius pierced and yoked its ankle joints,
and had it left, by someone else's hands,
on a mountain far from any roads. Apollo failed!
That time Apollo failed to make Laius die
the way he fearedat the hands of his own son.
850 Does that show you how much sense
prophetic voices make of our lives?
You can forget them. When god wants
something to happen, he makes it happen,
then he shows it to usall with ease.
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OEDIPUS Just now, as I listened to you, Lady, my heart raced,
something in my memory woke up terrified.
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JOCASTA What chilling thought turned you toward me like that?
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OEDIPUS I thought you said that Laius
was struck down where three roads meet.
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