Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/302

 270 HISTORY OF GREECE. lock to be served to him in place of it. 1 He resented this as an insult, and prayed the gods that they might perish each by the hand of the other. Throughout the tragedians as well as in the old epic, the paternal curse, springing immediately from the mis- guided CEdipus himself, but remotely from the parricide and incest with which he has tainted his breed, is seen to domineer over the course of events the Erinnys who executes that curse being the irresistible, though concealed, agent. ./Eschylus not only preserves the fatal efficiency of the paternal curse, but even briefly glances at the causes assigned for it in the Thebaiis, with- out superadding any new motives. In the judgment of Sopho- kles, or of his audience, the conception of a father cursing his sons upon such apparently trifling grounds was odious ; and that great poet introduced many aggravating circumstances, describing the old blind father as having been barbarously turned out of doors by his sons to wander abroad in exile and poverty. Though by this change he rendered his poem more coherent and self- justifying, yet he departed, from the spirit of the old legend, 1 Fragm. of the Thebats, ap. Athenae. xii. p. 465, on ov-u TrapedrjKav /c7n.'>- utira u UTrriyopevKei, Jleyuv ovrwf. AiiTup 6 dioysvrjf ijpuf %av&bf lipura [iev Oldiirodi Kah 'Ap-yvpsijv K.aSfj.010 $e6povof avriip eiretTa Xpiiaeov e/z7r/l)?crev Kahdv denae jj6eof olvov AiiTup oy' uf pa. MTIJTI duaaivTO, Kev (5' d/LKJiQTepoif alel Tr6A.e/j,oi re fiaxai re. See Leutsch, Thebaid. Cycl. Reliq, p. 38. The other fragment frcm the same ThebaTs is cited by the Schol. ad Soph CKdip. Colon. 1378. svoijae, ^ayuai paXev, sine re [liidov aldef fj.oi oveideiovref eirefj.ijjav. EVKTO Ait 3aaikf]'i nal uA/loff udavdroiai, Xepaiv vir j i/lA^wv KaTO.fiiJii.Evai *Ai'<5of slau. Ta 81 Trapairhqata T(f) ITTOTTOM Kal Aiff^v/lof iv rolf "ETTTO km Qtjjiaf. In spite of the protest of Schatz, in his note, I think that the scholiast has un- derstood the words iriwrof rpotyus (Sept. ad Theb. 787) in their plain and lust meaning.