Messenger: If this is why thou dreadest to return.
Oedipus: Yea, lest the god’s word be fulfilled in me.
Messenger: Lest through thy parents thou shouldst be accursed?
Oedipus: This and none other is my constant dread.
Messenger: Dost thou not know thy fears are baseless all?
Oedipus: How baseless, if I am their very son?
Messenger: Since Polybus was naught to thee in blood.
Oedipus: What say’st thou? was not Polybus my sire?
Messenger: As much thy sire as I am, and no more.
Oedipus: My sire no more to me than one who is naught!
Messenger: Since I begat thee not, no more did he.
Oedipus: What reason had he then to call me son?
Messenger: Know that he took thee from my hands, a gift.
Oedipus: Yet, if no child of his, he loved me well.
Messenger: A childless man till then, he warmed to thee.
Oedipus: A foundling or a purchased slave, this child?
Messenger: I found thee in Cithaeron’s wooded glens.
Oedipus: What led thee to explore those upland glades?
Messenger: My business was to tend the mountain flocks.
Oedipus: A vagrant shepherd journeying for hire?
Messenger: True, but thy saviour in that hour, my son.
Oedipus: My saviour? from what harm? what ailed me then?
Messenger: Those ankle joints are evidence enow.
Oedipus: Ah, why remind me of that ancient sore?
Messenger: I loosed the pin that riveted thy feet.