First Episode

Oedipus comes back out before the city and makes his proclamation. Anyone who knows the killer of Laius must come forward; if the killer himself confesses, his only penalty will be exile. He then pronounces the curse — let no man in the land speak to the killer, share fire or water with him, give him any portion of the sacrifices; let his life waste away; let his house bear the same pollution. Oedipus binds himself to the curse. If the killer turns out to be in his own house, he says, he will accept the same penalty.

Tiresias is summoned. The blind prophet enters led by a boy, slow, reluctant. Oedipus greets him as Thebes's last hope. Tiresias asks to be allowed to leave; knowing the truth, he says, will help no one. Oedipus presses; Tiresias resists; Oedipus, enraged, accuses the prophet of complicity in Laius's murder. Only then does Tiresias speak. The man Oedipus is hunting, he says, is Oedipus himself. He repeats it. The king with two good eyes does not see what is around him; before the day is out he will be the one in the dark.

Oedipus refuses every word. He decides on the spot that Tiresias is a fraud bought by Creon, and that the two are plotting to seize the throne. He dismisses the prophet with insults. Tiresias, leaving, gives a parting riddle: the man you are hunting is here, a Theban native who thinks himself a foreigner, a man who is brother to his children and son to his wife. No one in the room understands it. The investigation has been delivered its answer in the third scene of the play, and the play has another eight to go.