Chapter 10 - Page 2

Fighting against Fate, OEdipus resolved to
leave Corinth and his parents, for he thought that Polybus and
Merope were meant by the oracle. Soon afterwards, Laius being on his way to Delphi, accompanied
only by one attendant, met in a narrow road a young man also
driving in a chariot. 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 high-road. It was called the Sphinx.
It had the body of a lion, and the upper part of a woman. It lay
crouched on the top of a rock, and stopped all travellers who
came that way, proposing to them a riddle, with the condition
that those who could solve it should pass safe, but those who
failed should be killed. Not one had yet succeeded in solving
it, and all had been slain. OEdipus was not daunted by these
alarming accounts, but boldly advanced to the trial. The Sphinx
asked him, "What animal is that which in the morning goes on four
feet, at noon on two, and in the evening upon three?" OEdipus
replied, "Man, who in childhood creeps on hands and knees, in
manhood walks erect, and in old age with the aid of a staff."
The Sphinx was so mortified at the solving of her riddle that she
cast herself down from the rock and perished. The gratitude of the people for their deliverance was so great
that they made OEdipus their king, giving him in marriage their
queen Jocasta. OEdipus, ignorant of his parentage, had already
become the slayer of his father; in marrying the queen he became
the husband of his mother. These horrors remained undiscovered,
till at length Thebes was afflicted with famine and pestilence,
and the oracle being consulted, the double crime of OEdipus came
to light. Jocasta put an end to her own life, and OEdipus,
seized with madness, tore out his eyes, and wandered away from
Thebes, dreaded and abandoned hy all except his daughters, who
faithfully adhered to him; till after a tedious period of
miserable wandering, he found the termination of his wretched
life.

PEGASUS AND THE CHIMAERA When Perseus cut off Medusa's head, the blood sinking into the
earth produced the winged horse Pegasus. Minerva caught and
tamed him, and presented him to the Muses. The fountain
Hippocrene, on the Muses' mountain Helicon, was opened by a kick
from his hoof. The Chimaera was a fearful monster, breathing fire. The fore
part of its body was a compound of the lion and the goat, and the
hind part a dragon's. It made great havoc in Lycia, so that the
king Iobates sought for some hero to destroy it.