Laius

“ Whether at war or at peace, there we were, a standing menace to all earthly paradises of that kind, fatal underminers of the very credit on which the dividends were based, all the more hateful and terrible that our destructive agency was so insidious, working invisible in the elements, as it seemed, active while they slept, and coming upon them in the darkness like an armed man. Could Laius have the proper feelings of a father towards Œdipus, announced as his destined destroyer by infallible oracles, and felt to be such by every conscious fiber of his soul? ”

“ OEDIPUS
He points me out as Laius' murderer.
JOCASTA
Of his own knowledge or upon report?
OEDIPUS
He is too cunning to commit himself,
And makes a mouthpiece of a knavish seer.
JOCASTA
Then thou mayest ease thy conscience on that score.
Listen and I'll convince thee that no man
Hath scot or lot in the prophetic art.
Here is the proof in brief. An oracle
Once came to Laius (I will not say
'Twas from the Delphic god himself, but from
His ministers) declaring he was doomed
To perish by the hand of his own son,
A child that should be born to him by me. ”

“ Can it be to the marriage couch of the man he slew that he has ascended? No, his fears are too credulous! he clings to a straw; the herdsman who had escaped the slaughter of Laius and his attendants may prove that it was not the king whom he encountered. Jocasta sustains this hope—she cannot believe a prophecy—for it had been foretold that Laius should fall by the hand of his son, and that son had long since perished on the mountains. The queen and Oedipus retire within their palace; the chorus resume their strains ”

“ He therefore fled away from Corinth towards Thebes. On the road he was insulted by an old man in a chariot who thrust him rudely from his path; in anger he smote the man at the place where three ways met. If then this man was Laius, he had imprecated a curse on himself; his one hope is the solitary survivor whom he had sent for; perhaps more than one man had killed Laius after all.
An ominous ode about destiny and its workings is followed by the entry of the Queen who describes the mad terrors of Oedipus. She is come to pray to Apollo to solve their troubles. ”

“ Knowing no country but Corinth, he pursues his way to Bœotia, and meets Laius in a chariot drawn by mules. A quarrel ensues from the insolence of attendants, and Œdipus kills Laius. The brother of Laius, Creon, succeeds to the throne of Thebes. The country around is vexed with a terrible monster, with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a lion, called the Sphinx, who has learned from the Muses a riddle, which she proposed to the Thebans, and on every failure to resolve it one of them was devoured. ”

“ The tragic fate of this hero is more celebrated than that of any other legendary personage, on account of the frequent use which the tragic poets have made of it. In their hands it also underwent various changes and embellishments; but the common story is as follows. Laius, a son of Labdacus, was king of Thebes, and husband of Iocaste, a daughter of Menoeceus (or Creon, Diod. iv. 64) , and sister of Creon. As Laius had no issue, he consulted the oracle, which informed him that if a son should be born to him he would lose his life by the hand of his own child. ”

“ Œdipus tells her haughtily that he is accused of being the murderer of Laius. She begins her answer with a frivolous and impious assertion that all oracles are nonsense. The oracle uttered against Laius came to nothing, for his son died on Mount Cithæron, and robbers slew him near Thebes long afterwards, where three ways meet. These words, ἐν τριπλαῖς ἁμαξιτοῖς, stir suspicion in the mind of Œdipus. He asks at once: "Where was the spot?" "In Phokis, where one goes to Delphi and to Daulia." "What was Laius like?" "Not unlike you in shape," says Jocasta, "but white-haired." ”

“ And in answer to the Greeks we shall quote the following oracular response to Laius, as recorded by the tragic poet, either in the exact words of the oracle or in equivalent terms. Future events are thus made known to him by the oracle: “Do not try to beget children against the will of the gods. For if you beget a son, your son shall murder you; and all your household shall wade in blood.” ”

“ Resolved to frustrate so terrible a fate, he will not return to Corinth, but, as it happens, takes the road to Thebes, where he falls in accidentally with Laius, and, in ignorance of his person, quarrels with him and slays him. Now if Laius had not resisted the oracle by casting out the infant, it would have grown up like other sons, and every probability would have been against his committing so terrible a crime as parricide. ”

“ THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES ARGUMENT
Laius, king of the Cadmeans, was warned by the oracle of Delphi that he should not beget a child. But he disobeyed this command, and when a son was born to him, he cast the child away, that he might perish on Cithaeron. But a herdsman found the babe yet alive, and he was nourished in Corinth and grew to manhood, not knowing his true parentage, and was named Oedipus; and he slew, unknowingly, his father, Laius, and afterwards saved the town of the Cadmeans from a devouring monster, and married the widowed queen, Iocaste, and begat sons and daughters. ”

“ There the prince and the prophet dig a trench, light a fire, and offer a libation of wine and blood, accompanied by a solemn prayer, to Hecate and the Queen of Night. Then, amid the howling of dogs and the rolling of thunder, the earth heaves and is rent asunder, and the spirits of the legendary heroes of the house of Labdacus (father of Laius) rise from the lower world. Among this shadowy throng is the ghost of Laius, his grey hair still dabbled with blood; and, being conjured by Teiresias to declare the truth, he denounces Œdipus as his murderer. ↑ King Henry IV., P. I. Act iv. ”

“ Many persons had already been slain; for, although the bravest men had gone out to kill it, they had lost their lives in the attempt, as no one could harm it unless he guessed the mysterious riddle.
Laius, the king, hoping to learn from the oracle at Delphi the answer to the riddle, had ridden off in his chariot; but the people grew more excited still, when a messenger came running into the town, and said that the king and all his servants had been killed by robbers, and that their dead bodies had been found in the middle of the road. ”

“ Once, while he was walking on the high-road, bewailing the cruel fat that drove him away from the people he loved, he was met by308 a chariot in which sat an old man and his servant. This was Laius, king of Thebes, who was journeying thus far from his native city to consult the oracle of Delphi. The servant who drove the king's chariot commanded Œdipus to move out of the road, and flourished his whip to enforce his demand. The young prince was not accustomed to be thus ordered about, and refused to move so that the king's chariot might pass. ”

“ In the Theban solar myth, Laius (derived from the same root as “Leto” and “Latmus”) is the emblem of darkness, who, after marrying Jocasta (like Iole, a personification of the violet-tinted clouds of dawn) , becomes the father of Œdipus, doomed by fate to be the murderer of his father. Early in life Œdipus is exposed on the barren hillside to perish,—an emblem of the horizontal rays of the rising sun, which [Pg 393] seem to lie for a while upon the mountain slopes, ere they rise to begin their journey. ”

“ It was not the disaster of Laius, as the poets imagine, that first gave rise to this form of attachment among the Thebans, but their lawgivers, designing to soften whilst they were young their natural fickleness, 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 manner and character of the youth. With a view to this, they did well again to make Harmony, the daughter of Mars and Venus, their tutelar deity ”

“ Never more will I return to far-famed Corinth and my home by the sounding sea, but to far-distant lands will I go and bring blessing to those who are not of my kin, since to mine own folk I must be a curse if ever I return."
So he went along the road from Delphi till he came to seven-gated Thebes. There he found all the people in deep distress and mourning, for their king Laius was dead, slain by robbers on the high road, and they had buried him far from his native land at a place where three roads meet. ”

“ Are you going to tell me that a man who finds out that he is to die by a steel point can escape the doom by shutting himself up? Not he. 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 ”

“ The old man, indignant at this deed of violence, stepped out of his chariot and attacked Œdipus. Now, the young man did not know that it was his father Laius whom he thus met for the first time, so he fell upon and killed him also. The servants too were all slain when they in turn attacked him; and then Œdipus calmly continued his journey, little suspecting that the first part of the oracle's prediction had been fulfilled.
Soon after this fight, Œdipus came to the city of Thebes. The streets were filled with excited people, all talking at once ”

“ The parents of Œdipus, King Laios and his queen, Jocaste, lived for a long time in childless wedlock. Laios, who is longing for an heir, asks the Delphic Apollo for advice. The oracle answers that he may have a son if he so desires; but fate has ordained that his own son will kill him. Fearing the fulfilment of the oracle, Laios refrains from conjugal relations, but being intoxicated one day, he nevertheless procreates a son, whom he causes to be exposed in the river Kithairon, barely three days after his birth. ”

“ Thebaid (The) , a Latin epic poem in twelve books, by Statius (about a century after Virgil) . Laïos, king of Thebes, was told by an oracle that he would have a son, but that his son would be his murderer. To prevent this, when the son was born he was hung on a tree by his feet, to be devoured by wild beasts. The child, however, was rescued by some of the royal servants, who brought him up, and called his name Œdĭpos or Club-foot, because his feet and ankles were swollen by the thongs. One day, going to Thebes, the chariot of Laïos nearly drove over the young Œdipos ”

“ Lucilius adopts many modes of bringing himself into relations with his reader. Sometimes he speaks of himself by name, and appears to be communing with himself on his own fortunes or feelings. Sometimes he carries on a controversy in the form of dialogue; at other times he addresses the reader directly; or again, he puts a discourse in the mouth of another, as that on the luxury of the table in the mouth of Laelius. He makes frequent use of the epistolary form—a form which in prose and verse became one of the happiest products of Roman literature. ”

“ He did not draw up his cohorts in close order, but each before their respective standards; placing the companies at some distance from each other, so as to leave a space through which the elephants of the enemy passing might not at all break their ranks. Laelius, whom he had employed before as lieutenant-general, but this year as quaestor, by special appointment, according to a decree of the senate, he posted with the Italian cavalry in the left wing, Masinissa and the Numidians in the right. ”

“ But such is the jealousy of mankind, that they will not allow the same person to be possessed of too many perfections. For as in military prowess they thought it impossible that any man could vie with Scipio, though Laelius had not a little distinguished himself in the war with Viriathus; so for learning, Eloquence, and wisdom, though each was allowed to be above the reach of any other competitor, they adjudged the preference to Laelius. ”

“ And that a great breach had been made in the political and military defences of Rome is again the burden of Laelius's complaint, "He has perished at a time when a mighty man is needed by you and by all who wish the safety of this commonwealth." ”

“ The age of Laelius had imbibed much of the humanity and wisdom of Greek speculation. But it was not till the age of Cicero and Catullus that the long process of education and the largely increased intercourse between the two nations had raised the Roman mind to a full sense and enjoyment of artistic excellence, as revealed both to the eye and to the mind. The men of that age, in the midst of all their active pursuits, were moved by this foreign influence as the men of the Renaissance were moved by the recovery of classical literature. ”

“ When they were arrayed with their good weapons, then spake soon Luces, the lord of Rome: "Quickly advance we to them; we all shall do well!" There were come with him five and twenty kings, heathen folk all, that held of Rome, earls and eke dukes, of the eastern world. "Lordings," quoth Luces then, "Mahoun be gracious to you! Ye are powerful kings, and obey unto Rome. Rome is my right, richest of all burghs; and I ought to be highest of all men alive. Ye see here on the field those who are our foes; they think to rule highly over our realm; hold us for base, and themselves become rich. ”