Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (1908) Morshead.djvu/19

Rh an earlier legend of the fortress of Cadmus. This being premised, we may adopt, under protest as it were, the Aristophanic name which has accrued to the play. It is the third part of a Trilogy which might have been called, collectively, The House of Laius. Sophocles and Euripides give us their versions of the legend, which we may epitomize, without, however, affirming that they followed exactly the lines of Aeschylus' Trilogy: they, for instance, speak freely of Thebes. Laius, King of Thebes, married Iokaste: he was warned by Apollo that if he had any children ruin would befall his house. But a child was born, and, to avoid the threatened catastrophe, without actually killing the child he exposed it on Mount Cithaeron, that it should die. Some herdsmen saved it and gave it over to the care of a neighbouring king and queen, who reared it. Later on, learning that there was a doubt of his parentage, this child, grown now to maturity, left his foster-parents and went to Delphi to consult the oracle, and received a mysterious and terrible warning, that he was fated to slay his father and wed his mother. To avoid this horror, he resolved never to approach the home of his supposed parents. Meantime his real father, Laius, on his way to consult the god at Delphi, met his unknown son returning from that shrine: a quarrel fell out, and the younger man slew the elder. Followed by his evil destiny, he wandered on, and found the now kingless Thebes in the grasp of the Sphinx-monster, over whom he triumphed, and was rewarded by the