Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/344

312 Poseidon against Odysseus : and these victims of the sun-god are all murky vapours which arise from the sea. The wrath of Athene and Poseidon added sorely to the length and weariness of the wanderings of Odysseus; nor could it leave Bellerophon at rest. Like Odysseus, he too must roam through many lands, and thus we find him wandering sadly along the Aleian plain, avoiding the paths of men, treading, in other words, that sea of pale light in which, after a day of storms, the sun sometimes goes down without a cloud to break its monotonous surface.

When at the close of his disastrous life Oidipous draws near to die pous. in the sacred grove of the Erinyes, it is Theseus who stands by his side to guide him, where no other mortal man might dare to tread ; and thus the Theban king is at once seen as a being of the same race with the son of Aigeus and Aithra. Nor does the connexion cease here. If Aigeus deserts his wife and leaves the infant Theseus to her sole care, Oidipous also suffers from the hatred of his father, who, like Akrisios and Astyages, has learnt from the Delphic oracle that if he has a son that son will be his destroyer. Hence no sooner is Oidipous born than the decree goes forth that the child must be slain ; but the servant to whom he is intrusted contents himself with exposing the babe on the slopes of Kithairon, where a shepherd finds him, and carries him, like Cyrus or Romulus, to his wife, who cherishes the child with a mother s care. After a while, Oidipous is taken to Corinth and brought up as the son of Polybos and Merope, and all things go smoothly until some one at a feast throws out a hint that he is not the son of his supposed parents. To the questions which he is thus driven to put to Merope the answers returned satisfy him for a time, but for a time only. The anxious doubts return ; and in his utter perplexity he hastens to Delphoi and there learns, as Laios had learnt already, that his doom would make him the destroyer of his father and the husband of his mother. Gloomy and sick at heart, he takes the way towards Thebes, being resolved not to run the risk of killing Polybos (whom he supposed to be his father), if he returned to Corinth, and as he journeys, he falls in with a chariot in which rides an old man. The servant insolently bids Oidipous to stand aside, and on his refusal the old man strikes at him with his staff. Oidipous, thoroughly angered, slays both, and goes on his way, unconscious that he has fulfilled the prediction of Phoibos, the murdered man being Laios the king of Thebes.

The career Laios is thus a being whose nature closely resembles that of Leto pous.*^' or of Leda, the night which is the parent of the sun, and which may be regarded with equal justice as hating its ofispring or loving it.