Tutor: I heard someone say, while I pretended not to listen, when I went up to the draughts players where the oldest men sit around the holy spring of Peirene, that Creon, the lord of this land, means to drive these children out of Corinth with their mother. Whether the story is true I don't know. I wish it were not.

Here is the news. The tutor overheard old men talking by the spring of Peirene, where they sit over their game of πεσσοί, draughts: Creon, king of the land, means to drive the children out of Corinth with their mother. He does not know if the story is true, and he wishes it were not. Peirene was the famous spring of Corinth, and the old men at their board game make the city ordinary for a moment. That is where the decree is first heard: as gossip, by a slave pretending not to listen.