land, unhurt. Or if any one knows an alien,230 from another land, as the assassin, let him not keep silence; for I will pay his guerdon, and my thanks shall rest with him besides.
But if ye keep silence—if any one, through fear, shall seek to screen friend or self from my behest—hear ye what I then shall do. I charge you that no one of this land, whereof I hold the empire and the throne, give shelter or speak word unto that murderer, whosoever he be,—make him partner of his prayer or sacrifice, or serve him with the lustral rite;240 but that all ban him their homes, knowing that this is our defiling thing, as the oracle of the Pythian god hath newly shown me. I then am on this wise the ally of the god and of the slain. And I pray solemnly that the slayer, whoso he be, whether his hidden guilt is lonely or hath partners, evilly, as he is evil, may wear out his unblest life. And for myself I pray that if, with my privity,250 he should become an inmate of my house, I may suffer the same things which even now I called down upon others. And on you I lay it to make all these words good, for my sake, and for the sake of the god, and for our land's, thus blasted with barrenness by angry heaven.
For even if the matter had not been urged on us by a god, it was not meet that ye should leave the guilt thus unpurged, when one so noble, and he your king, had perished ; rather were ye bound to search it out. And now, since 'tis I who hold the powers which once he held,260 who possess his bed and the wife who bare seed to him ; and since, had his hope of issue not been frustrate, children born of one mother would have made ties
