Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/298

 266 HISTORY OF GREECE. where the roads leading to these two countries forked, he met Laius in a chariot drawn by mules, when the insolence of one of the attendants brought on an angry quarrel, in which CEdipug killed Laius, not knowing him to be his father. The exact place where this event happened, called the Divided Way 1, was memorable in the eyes of all literary Greeks, and is specialty adverted to by Pausanias in his periegesis. On the death of Laius, Kreon, the brother of Jokasta, sue ceeded to the kingdom of Thebes. At this time the country was under the displeasure of the gods, and was vexed by a terrible monster, with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and th tail of a lion, called the Sphinx 2 sent by the wrath of Here and occupying the neighboring mountain of Phikium. The Sphinx had learned from the Muses a riddle, which she proposed to the Thebans to resolve : on every occasion of failure she took away one of the citizens and ate him up. Still no person could solve the riddle ; and so great was the suffering occasioned, that Kreon was obliged to offer both the crown and the nuptials of his sister Jokasta to any one who could achieve the salvation of the city. At this juncture CEdipus arrived and solved the rid- dle : upon which the Sphinx immediately threw herself from the acropolis and disappeared. As a recompense for this service, CEdipus was made king of Thebes, and married Jokasta, not aware that she was his mother. These main tragical circumstances that CEdipus had ig- norantly killed his father and married his mother belong to the oldest form of the legend as it stands in the Odyssey. The gods (it is added in that poem) quickly made the facts known to mankind. Epikasta (so Jokasta is here called) in an agony of sorrow hanged herself: CEdipus remained king of the Kad- meians, but underwent many and great miseries, such as the 1 See the description of the locality in K. 0. Miiller ( Orchomenos, c. i. p. 37). The tombs of Laius and his attendant were still seen there in the days of Pausanias (x. 5, 2). balca, ascribed this visitation to the anger of Dionysus (Schol. Hesiod, Theogon. 326). The Sphinx (or Phix, from the Baotian Mount Phikiam) is as old as the Hcsiodic Thcogony, 4>f' bhorjv TEKE, Kadfieioiair (Thcog. 326;.
 * Apollodor. iii. 5, 8. An author named Lykus, in his work entitled Tht-