 | Oedipus The King |  |
ARGUMENT.
Laios, King of Thebes, married Jocasta, daughter of Menœkeus, and
they had no child. And he, grieved thereat, sought counsel of the
God at Delphi, and the God bade him cease to wish for children, for
should a son be born to him, by that son he should surely die.
And
then it came to pass that Jocasta bare him a son. And they, fearing
the God's word, gave the boy to a shepherd, that he might cast it out
upon the hill Kithæron; and so they were comforted, and deemed
that they by this device had turned the oracle into a thing of nought.
And thirty years afterwards, when Laios was well stricken in years,
he went again on a pilgrimage to Delphi; and thence he never came
back again,—slain on the way, men knew not by whose hands. And
at that time the Sphinx made havoc of Thebes and all the coasts
thereof, so that they had no heart nor power to search into the matter
of the king's death, but sought only for some one to answer the monster's
riddle,
and save the city and its people. And a stranger came
to the city, Œdipus of Corinth, son, as it was said, of Polybos and
Merope, and answered the riddle aright,
and slew the Sphinx. And
then the people of the city in their joy chose Œdipus as their king, in
Lo! I will give thee a son, but know that Destiny orders
That thou by the boy's hand must die, for so to the curses of Pelops,
Whom of his son thou hast robbed, Zeus, son of Kronos, hath granted,
And he, in his trouble of heart, called all this sorrow upon thee.
Yea, and with three feet, too, yet his voice continues unchanging;
And, lo! of all things that move in earth, in heaven, or in ocean,
He only changes his nature, and yet when on most feet he walketh,
Then is the speed of his limbs most weak and utterly powerless.
Hear from my lips the end, bringing a close to thy crime;
Man is it thou hast described, who, when on earth he appeareth,
First as a babe from the womb, four-footed creeps on his way,
Then when old age cometh on, and the burden of years weighs full heavy,
Bending his shoulders and neck, as a third foot useth his staff.
The starting-point of the cycle of Œdipus' legends is found in the Odyssey, xi. 271, where Odysseus describes the spectres that he saw in Hades:—
Mother of Œdipus, who, knowing not,
Wrought greatest guilt, her own son marrying;
And he his father slew, and married her.
But soon the Gods disclosed it all to men,
And he, with many woes, in Thebes beloved,
Through fateful counsels of the Gods, ruled long
O'er the Cadmeians. She, with woe outworn,
To Hades went, strong warder of the dead,
A long noose letting down from lofty roof.
And many a woe she left behind to him,
Which the Erinnyes of his mother work.”
With this it will be interesting to compare Pindar, Olymp., ii. 35-42:—
The goodly fortune of an honoured race,
With prosperous years from God,
Leads it another while
Backward to bale and woe:
E'en when the fateful son of Laios killed
The father whom he met,
And so fulfilled
The Oracle in Pytho given of old,
And seeing it, she slew,
Erinnyes, clear of sight,
The warrior race, with fratricidal hand.”
Æschylos (B. C. 471) had made it the subject of a Trilogy, tracing the working of the curse in Laios, Œdipus, the Seven against Thebes, of which only the last is extant.
The date of composition is uncertain. Hypotheses, which connect the description of the plague at Thebes with that at Athens in B. C. 429, or the protests against impiety with the mutilation of the Hermæ in B. C. 415, are at best uncertain.
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