What do the following lines reveal mainly about the situation in thebes?
oedipus: teiresias, seer who comprehendest all,

lore of the wise and hidden mysteries,

high things of heaven and low things of the earth

thou knowest, though thy blinded eyes see naught,

what plague infects our city; and we turn

to thee, o seer, our one defense and shield.

the purport of the answer that the god

returned to us who sought his oracle,

the messengers have doubtless told thee—how

one course alone could rid us of the pest,

to find the murderers of laius,

and slay them or expel them from the land.

therefore begrudging neither augury

nor other divination that is thine,

o save thyself, thy country, and thy king,

save all from this defilement of blood shed.

on thee we rest. this is man’s highest end,

to others’ service all his powers to lend.

teiresias: alas, alas, what misery to be wise

when wisdom profits nothing! this old lore

i had forgotten; else i were not here.

oedipus: what ails thee? why this melancholy mood?

teiresias: let me go home; prevent me not; ’twere best

that thou shouldst bear thy burden and i mine.

Read the passage, then answer the question that follows. no one could have seen it at the time, but the invention of beet sugar was not just a challenge to cane. it was a hint—just a glimpse, like a twist that comes about two thirds of the way through a movie—that the end of the age of sugar was in sight. for beet sugar showed that in order to create that perfect sweetness you did not need slaves, you did not need plantations, in fact you did not even need cane. beet sugar was a foreshadowing of what we have today: the age of science, in which sweetness is a product of chemistry, not whips. in 1854 only 11 percent of world sugar production came from beets. by 1899 the percentage had risen to about 65 percent. and beet sugar was just the first challenge to cane. by 1879 chemists discovered saccharine—a laboratory-created substance that is several hundred times sweeter than natural sugar. today the sweeteners used in the foods you eat may come from corn (high-fructose corn syrup), from fruit (fructose), or directly from the lab (for example, aspartame, invented in 1965, or sucralose—splenda—created in 1976). brazil is the land that imported more africans than any other to work on sugar plantations, and in brazil the soil is still perfect for sugar. cane grows in brazil today, but not always for sugar. instead, cane is often used to create ethanol, much as corn farmers in america now convert their harvest into fuel. –sugar changed the world, marc aronson and marina budhos how does this passage support the claim that sugar was tied to the struggle for freedom? it shows that the invention of beet sugar created competition for cane sugar. it shows that technology had a role in changing how we sweeten our foods. it shows that the beet sugar trade provided jobs for formerly enslaved workers. it shows that sweeteners did not need to be the product of sugar plantations and slavery.