I will reward you now, I will thank you always.
But if you know the killer and don't speak,
out of fear, to shield kin or yourself,
listen to what that silence will cost you.
I order everyone in my land
where I hold power and sit as king:
290 don't let that man under your roof,
don't speak with him, no matter who he is.
Don't pray or sacrifice with him,
don't pour purifying water for him.
I say this to all my people:
drive him from your houses.
He is our sickness. He poisons us.
This the Pythian god has shown me.
Believe me, I am the ally in this
both of the god and the dead king.
300 I pray god that the unseen killer,
whoever he is, and whether he killed
alone or had help, be cursed with a life
as evil as he is, a life
of utter human deprivation.
I pray this, too: if he's found at my hearth,
inside my house, and I know that he's there,
may the curses I aimed at others punish me.
I charge you allgive my words force,
for my sake and the god's, for our dead land
310 stripped barren of its harvests,
forsaken by its gods.
Even if god had not forced the issue,
this crime should not have gone uncleansed.
You should have looked to it!the dead man
not only being noble, but your king.
But as my luck would have it,
I have his power, his beda wife
who shares our seed, and had she borne
the children of us both, she
320 might have linked us closer still. But Laius
had no luck fathering children, and fate
itself soon struck a blow at his head.
It's these concerns make me defend Laius
as I would my own father. There is nothing
I won't try, to trace his murder
back to the killer's hand.
I act in this for Labdacus and Polydorus,
for Kadmos and Agenorfor our whole line of kings.
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