The Play
About This Edition
The play is printed in the English translation of Richard Claverhouse Jebb, with material from his own edition of the play. The translation and that material are Jebb’s work; the site’s reference pages are kept separate from them.
The translation
The play is printed in the prose translation by R. C. Jebb (1841–1905), Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge. The translation belongs to The Tragedies of Sophocles, published by Cambridge University Press in 1904, which renders the seven surviving plays of Sophocles into English. The volume is in the public domain.
The edition uses this translation as an original public-domain rendering, not a modernized adaptation. Jebb also edited the Greek text of the play with a commentary, so the translation and his Introduction share one scholar’s terminology and name forms, for example Laïus and Iocasta.
Jebb’s edition of the play
Jebb’s edition of the Greek text, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, Part I, The Oedipus Tyrannus, appeared in a third edition from Cambridge University Press in 1893. From that edition come the Preface, the Introduction, and the notes on each scene and ode that stand at the head of the scenes.
The Introduction is divided into numbered sections. It sets out the earlier forms of the Oedipus story in epic, lyric and prose writers and in Aeschylus, and it reconstructs the events that precede the action of the play. It then gives an analysis of the plot, describes Aristotle’s comments on the play and discusses the characters. It goes on to treat the date of the play, the actor Polus, the later versions by Seneca, Corneille, Dryden and Voltaire, and the modern revivals of 1881 at Harvard and in Paris.
On the date, Jebb states that there is no external evidence for the time at which the play was first acted. He places its composition between roughly 439 and 412 BC on internal grounds.
How this edition was prepared
Jebb’s translation is the work of the leading English editor of Sophocles in his time, and it is in the public domain. It is presented here for readers of the play in English. The text is set as a script, speech by speech, with each speaker named and the Greek line numbers in the margin. Jebb’s introductions to the scenes and choral odes stand at the head of each part. His line-by-line commentary, written for readers of the Greek, is kept apart from the text: it is printed in full at the end of the complete edition, and as a separate free PDF.
The text was taken from scans of the 1904 volume, The Tragedies of Sophocles, whose margins carry the Greek line numbers. The translation was divided into its 441 speeches across all 1,530 lines of the Greek, each with its line range. Errors introduced by the optical character recognition of the scans were then corrected: stray digits and marginal numbers were removed, and misread words were changed only where an independent printing of the translation (Jebb’s 1893 edition) or the image of the printed page confirmed the reading. There were 95 corrections in all, and the name Laïus was restored to Jebb’s printed form throughout. The wording of the translation is otherwise unchanged.
Jebb’s Preface, Introduction and commentary were transcribed from page images of the third edition of his Oedipus Tyrannus (1893), and every page was compared word by word with the scan’s own text layer. In the notes printed with the scenes, his abbreviations are written out (cp., “compare”; O. C., Oedipus at Colonus); the complete commentary keeps them as printed.
The companion pages that follow the play were written for this edition from the ancient sources themselves and from standard reference works, not from Jebb’s edition. Every factual statement was recorded with the source it rests on and checked against it, and a statement no source confirmed was softened or removed. The pages were then reviewed and approved by the editors.
Conventions
The wording of Jebb’s translation is not changed. The only alterations are corrected transcription errors, restored paragraphing, and abbreviations written out in Jebb’s notes. Each alteration is recorded.
Line numbers are those of the Greek text, not of the English. Jebb’s translation is in prose, so each speech carries the range of Greek lines it renders. Where a Greek line is divided between speakers, the same number appears for both speeches. Jebb’s Introduction uses the same numbering.
Jebb’s divisions are followed: prologue (1–150), parodos, the entrance song of the Chorus (151–215), first episode (216–462), first stasimon (463–512), second episode (513–862), second stasimon (863–910), third episode (911–1085), third stasimon (1086–1109), fourth episode (1110–1185), fourth stasimon (1186–1222) and exodos (1223–1530). Within these, two passages of lyric exchange between actor and Chorus, each a kommos, are marked: the first within the second episode (649–697) and the second within the exodos (1297–1368). Jebb’s Introduction groups the divisions into six main parts.
The speaker is named before each speech. The Corinthian visitor is labeled Messenger (from Corinth) and the man who reports the death of Iocasta is labeled Second Messenger. Jebb’s stage directions are printed with the speeches, as in “Enter Teiresias, led by a Boy” and “Exit”.
The notes printed at the head of the scenes and choral odes are Jebb’s, from his edition of 1893, unless otherwise stated.
Jebb’s spellings of Greek names are kept: Laïus, Teiresias, Iocasta, Polybus and Merope. They follow the Greek forms Λάϊος, Τειρεσίας, Ἰοκάστη, Πόλυβος and Μερόπη closely, whereas later English usage commonly has Jocasta and Tiresias. The diaeresis in Laïus marks the a and the i as separate syllables. The Introduction prints the name of Polybus’s wife with a grave accent, Meropè, where the play text has none. The play text calls the god Apollo by the names Phoebus and Loxias as well as Apollo. The Introduction refers to the play by its Latin title, Oedipus Tyrannus, which the edition gives in English as Oedipus the King.
The translation is in the literary English of the late nineteenth century and keeps forms that have since dropped out of use: “thou”, “thee” and “thy” for the singular “you”, “ye” for the plural, and verb endings such as “hath” and “-est”. Examples include “well wot I that ye suffer, all”, where “wot” is an old form of the verb “to know”; “Sirrah, how camest thou here?”, where “sirrah” is a contemptuous form of address; and “avaunt thee from these doors!”, where “avaunt” is an archaic command to depart. Other words are “guerdon” (reward) and “wottest”. Contractions such as “’Twas” belong to the same register.
Oedipus the King is divided, as Greek tragedy is, into spoken scenes (the prologue, the episodes and the exodos) and the songs of the Chorus between them (the parodos and the stasima). The translation is Richard Claverhouse Jebb’s English prose, from his Tragedies of Sophocles (Cambridge, 1904). The numbers in the margin are the line numbers of the Greek text, by which the play is cited.
Jebb’s own introductions to several scenes and to the choral odes, from his edition of the play (1893), are printed at the head of those parts, behind the Notes button. The notes are Jebb’s unless otherwise stated.
The whole play is also available as a free PDF, a companion reader with Jebb’s Preface and Introduction and the reference pages of this site, and Jebb’s complete line-by-line commentary on the Greek text as a separate free PDF.
32 speeches
Choral song
69 speeches
Choral song
126 speeches
Choral song
101 speeches
Choral song
55 speeches
Choral song
53 speeches