Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/99



''Laios, King of Thebes, married Jocasta, daughter of Menœkeus, and they had no child. And he, grieved thereat, sought counsel of the God at Delphi, and the God bade him cease to wish for children, for should a son be born to him, by that son he should surely die. And then it came to pass that Jocasta bare him a son. And they, fearing the God's word, gave the boy to a shepherd, that he might cast it out upon the hill Kithæron: and so they were comforted, and deemed that they by this device had turned the oracle into a thing of nought. And thirty years afterwards, when Laios was well stricken in years, he went again on a pilgrimage to Delphi; and thence he never came back again,—slain on the way, men knew not by whose hands. And at that time the Sphinx made havoc of Thebes and all the coasts thereof so that they had no heart nor power to search into the matter of the king's death, but sought only for some one to answer the monster's riddle, and save the city and its people. And a stranger came to the city, Œdipus of Corinth, son, as it was said, of Polybos and Merope, and answered the riddle aright, and slew the Sphinx. And then the people of the city in their joy chose Œdipus as their king, in''