OEDIPUS REX BY SOPHOCLES


How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be
When there's no help in truth! I knew this well.
But did not act on it! Else I should not have come.

REFERENCE
(i) Drama: Oedipus Rex
(ii) Dramatist:  Sophocles
CONTEXT
(i) Occurrence: Scene I (Lines 101-103)
(ii) Content: Thebes is struck by a plague and the oracle of Apollo says the sickness is the result of injustice: the old king's murderer still walks free. The blind seer Tiresias tells Oedipus that he is the murderer and is living incestuously. Jocasta says an oracle said her husband, the old king, would be killed by his child, but that never happened since they abandoned the baby and her husband was killed by robbers. Oedipus begins to suspect that he was the abandoned baby. A messenger and a servant confirm the tale. Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus stabs out his own eyes. 
EXPLANATION
     These are the very first words spoken by blind Tiresias before Oedipus in which he confesses that he must not have come to Oedipus' palace when he knew that the disclosure of the secret concerning Oedipus' parentage would shatter the whole palace. When this blind seer entered the palace, Oedipus was happy to notice that his visitor was a prophet who knew the secrets of heaven and earth and could as such tell him who the murderer was. He told the Tiresias that Apollo had sent back his messenger with the word that the catastrophe of pestilence would not be lifted from Thebes until and unless the identity of those who murdered Laius was established clearly and unless they were killed or banished. Oedipus then requested Tiresias to use bird-flight or any other sleight of hand to purify Thebes from the devastating contagion. Tiresias' reply in these lines shows that he knew the secret of the murder but he realized it as well as that his disclosure of truth would prove ruinous than the plague infecting Thebes.

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