Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (-429)

Thebes is dying, and its king vows before the whole city to hunt down the murderer whose unpunished crime has brought the plague. The terrible joke, which the audience has known all along, is that the hunter and the hunted are the same man, and Oedipus will run the investigation to its end with a clarity that becomes the instrument of his own ruin. Sophocles built the play out of pure dramatic irony, so the dread does not come from what will be revealed but from watching a brilliant, decent man refuse every chance to stop asking. Tiresias is blind and sees everything; Oedipus has his eyes and will not look. Aristotle took it as the very pattern of tragedy, and no one since has improved on it. Wait to see life's ending, the chorus warns, ere you count any mortal blessed.