Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/299

 ADVENTURES OF (EDIPUS. 267 Erinnyes, who avenge an injured mother, inflict. 1 A passage in the Iliad implies that he died at Thebes, since it mentions tl e funeral games which were celebrated there in honor of him. His misfortunes were recounted by Nestor, in the old Cyprian verses, among the stories of aforetime. 2 A fatal curse hun- both upon himself and upon his children, Eteokles, Polynikes, Anti- gone and Ismene. According to that narrative which the Attic tragedians have rendered universally current, they were his chil dren by Jokasta, the disclosure of her true relationship to him having been very long deferred. But the ancient epic called (Edipodia, treading more closely in the footsteps of Homer, rep- resented him as having after her death married* a second wife, Euryganeia, by whom the four children were born to him : and the painter Onatas adopted this story in preference to that of Sophokles. 3 1 Odyss. xi. 270. Odysseus, describing what he saw in the under-world. says, Mtjrepa r' Oidtnodao I6ov, Ka^v 'ETri "H (leya ep-yov lpel-ev aldpdyffi vooio, Trifj.afj.evri $ viel 6 6' ov iraTEp 1 i Tf/fiev ' utiap <5' uvurrvaTa i?eot fieaav a 'AA/l' 6 HEV ev Q?j,8ri TTO^VT/PUTU aXyea iru Kadjisiuv fivaaae, &etiv 6/loaf SiH fiovXa 'H d' f/?v eif A/Jao irvhuprao Kparepolo /3p6%ov a'nrvv u<p irfyrfho bmaaa Iliad, xxiii. 680, with the scholiast who cites Hesiod. Proclus, Argum ad Cypria, ap. DOntzer, Fragm. Epic. Gra;c. p. 10. Nt'orwp de ev KapeKpaaet 6tr;-yelTat ...... /cat ru. Trept Olditrovv, etc. 3 Pausan. ix. 5, 5. Compare the narrative from Peisander in Schol. ad Eurip. Phceniss. 1773; where, however, the blindness of CEdipus seems to be unconsciously interpolated out of the tragedians. In the old narrative of the Cyclic Thebats, CEdipus docs not seem to be represented as blind (Leutsch, Thebaidis Cyclici Reliquiae, Getting. 1830, p. 42). Pherekydes (ap. Schol. Eurip. Phceniss. 52) tells us that CEdipus had thre& children by Jokasta, who were all killed by Erginus and the Minyse (this must refer to incidents in the old poems which we cannot now recover) ; then the four celebrated children by Euryganeia ; lastly, that he married a third wife, Astymedusa. Apollodorus follows the narrative of the trage- dians, but alludes to the different version about Euryganeia, elat 6' ol aatv i etc. (iii. 5, 8). Hellanikus (ap. Schol. Eur. Phceniss. 59) mentioned the self-inflicted blind