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Updated: May 18, 2025
It was not the disaster of Laius, as the poets imagine, that first gave rise to this form of attachment amongst the Thebans, but their law-givers, designing to soften, whilst they were young, their natural fierceness, brought, for example, the pipe into great esteem, both in serious and sportive occasions, and gave great encouragement to these friendships in the Palaestra, to temper the manners and characters of the youth.
It was in his reign that Dionysus appears as a god in Bœotia, the giver of the vine, and obtains divine honors in Thebes. Among the descendants of Cadmus was Laius. He is forewarned by an oracle that any son he should beget would destroy him, and hence he caused the infant Œdipus to be exposed on Mount Cithanon.
"That guilt of blood is blasting all the state;" that this guilt is connected with the death of Laius, and that "Now the god clearly bids us, he being dead, To take revenge on those who shed his blood," OEdipus engages earnestly in the business of unraveling the mystery connected with the death of Laius, the cause of all the Theban woes.
A quarrel arose, and in the fight that followed he slew the man to whom the chariot belonged, little knowing that it was Laius, his own father. He then went on through Bœotia. On the top of a hill near Thebes sat a monster called the Sphinx, with a women’s head, a lion’s body, and an eagle’s wings.
He inquires what train accompanied Laius learns that there were five persons; that but one escaped; that on his return to Thebes, seeing Oedipus on the throne, the surviver had besought the favour to retire from the city. Oedipus orders this witness of the murder to be sent for, and then proceeds to relate his own history.
But the audience was shocked by the characters of Maskwell and Lady Touchwood. And, indeed, there is something strangely revolting in the way in which a group that seems to belong to the House of Laius or of Pelops is introduced into the midst of the Brisks, Froths, Carelesses, and Plyants. The play was unfavourably received.
Of the legendary stories, three of the most famous are The Seven against Thebes The Argonautic Expedition, and The Trojan War. I. Laius, king of Thebes, was told by an oracle that he should be killed by his son. He exposed him, therefore, as soon as he was born, on Mount Cithaeron. Saved by a herdsman, Oedipus was brought up by Polybus, king of Corinth, as his own son.
Fate will take him out hunting, and there will be his steel: Adrastus will hurl his spear at the boar, miss the brute, and get Croesus's son; Fate's inflexible law directs his aim. The full absurdity of the thing is seen in the case of Laius: Seek not for offspring in the Gods' despite; Beget a child, and thou begett'st thy slayer. Was not this advice superfluous, seeing that the end must come?
Statius has also given us a long and characteristically elaborate account of the calling up of the shade of Laius by Eteocles and Tiresias. Apuleius, in his truly astounding account of Thessaly in his day, gives a detailed description of the process of calling back a corpse to life.
On his refusal to leave the way at their command the attendant killed one of his horses, and the stranger, filled with rage, slew both Laius and his attendant. The young man was OEdipus, who thus unknowingly became the slayer of his own father. Shortly after this event the city of Thebes was afflicted with a monster which infested the highroad. It was called the Sphinx.
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