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Updated: May 18, 2025
A mysterious plague had broken out in Thebes; Creon had been sent to Delphi by Oedipus to learn the cause of the disaster. Apollo bade the Thebans cast out the murderer of the last King Laius, who was still lurking in Theban territory. Oedipus on inquiry learns that there are several murderers, but only one of Laius' attendants escaped alive.
And for this crown breaking into a thousand fragments the Seleucid princes continued perseveringly to quarrel with each other, as though it were their object to make royalty a jest and an offence to all; nay more, while this family, doomed like the house of Laius to perpetual discord, had its own subjects all in revolt, it even raised claims to the throne of Egypt vacant by the decease of king Alexander II without heirs.
And, indeed, all his earlier proceedings evince, in some measure, the same suspiciousness and violence of character; the former, in his refusing to be quieted by the assurances of Polybos, when taunted with being a suppositious child, and the latter, in his bloody quarrel with Laius. The latter character he seems to have inherited from both his parents.
This news filled the king's heart with horror; and when, a few months later, a son was born to him, he made up his mind to kill him rather than let him live to commit such fearful crimes. But Laius was too gentle to harm a babe, and so ordered a servant to carry the child out of the town and put him to death.
The king offers his crown and his sister Jocasta, wife of Laius, in marriage to any one who would explain the riddle. Œdipus solves it, and is made king of Thebes, and marries Jocasta. A fatal curse rests upon him. Jocasta, informed by the gods of her relationship, hangs herself in agony.
And the people, as soon as ever they heard the name of OEDIPUS, knew as well as the Poet, that he had killed his father by a mistake, and committed incest with his mother, before the Play; that they were now to hear of a great plague, an oracle, and the ghost of LAIUS: so that they sate, with a yawning kind of expectation, till he was to come, with his eyes pulled out, and speak a hundred or two of verses, in a tragic tone, in complaint of his misfortunes.
With great dignity he clears himself, warning the King of the pains which hasty temper brings upon itself. Their quarrel brings out Jocasta, the Queen and sister of Creon, who succeeds in settling the unseemly strife. She bids Oedipus take no notice of oracles; one such had declared that Laius would be slain by his own son, who would marry her, his mother.
Yet, in order to frustrate the prophecy, the only son of Laius had been exposed to perish upon solitary and untrodden mountains, while, in after years, Laius himself had fallen, in a spot where three roads met, by the hand of a stranger; so that the prophecy had not come to pass. At this declaration terror seizes upon Oedipus.
The god has declared that a pollution had been bred in the land, and must be expelled the city that Laius, the former king, had been murdered and that his blood must be avenged. Laius had left the city never to return; of his train but one man escaped to announce his death by assassins. Oedipus instantly resolves to prosecute the inquiry into the murder, and orders the people to be summoned.
"Great Zeus! what fate hast thou decreed for me? Woe! woe! 'tis all too clear." Yet there is one hope left. The man whom he slew in that same mountain pass fell by no robber band, and, therefore, could not have been Laius. Soon even this hope deserts him, when the story is truly told. He learns, moreover, that he is not the son of Polybus, the Corinthian king, but a foundling adopted by his queen.
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