Page:Lovers Legends - The Gay Greek Myths.pdf/49

Rh of my country," he commanded. And he was furious with his wife. Hippodamia trembled before her husband's wrath. She fled with her sons into exile and hung herself.

When king Pelops came to Laius, however, he remembered the love god's power to turn the heads of men, and spared his life. But the king laid upon Laius a father's curse, and called down the anger of the gods upon the royal house of Thebes. Disaster dogged the Thebans and horrors without end befell Laius and his kin: his own son murdered him, then fouled his own mother's bed, sowing his seed where himself had been sown—doomed Oedipus. 35