combat slew each other, and their mother having found the corses of her sons laid violent hands on herself; and Creon her brother received the kingdom.  The Argives defeated in battle retired.  But Creon, being morose, would not give up those of the enemy who had fallen at Thebes, for sepulture, and exposed the body of Polynices without burial, and banished Oedipus from his country; in the one instance disregarding the laws of humanity, in the other giving way to passion, nor feeling pity for him after his calamity.

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THE PHOENICIAN VIRGINS.

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JOCASTA.

O thou that cuttest thy path through the constellations[1] of heaven, and art mounted on thy golden-joined seats, thou sun, whirling thy flame with[2] thy swift steeds, how inauspicious didst thou dart thy ray on that day when Cadmus came to this land having left the sea-washed coast of Phoenicia; who in former time having married Harmonia, daughter of Venus, begat Polydorus; from him they say sprung Labdacus, and from him Laius.  But I am[3] the daughter of Menoeceus, and Creon my brother was born of the same mother; me they call Jocasta (for this name[4] my father gave me), and Laius takes me for his wife; but after that he was childless, for a long time sharing my bed in the palace, he went and inquired of Apollo, and at the same time demands the mutual offspring of male children in his family; but the God said, “O king of Thebes renowned for its chariots, sow not for such a harvest of children against the will of the Gods, for if thou shalt beget a son, he that is born shall slay thee, and the whole of thy house shall wade through blood.”  But having yielded to pleasure, and having fallen into inebriety, he begot to us a son, and having begot him, feeling conscious of his error and the command of the God, gives the babe to some herdsmen to expose at the meads of Juno and the rock of Cithaeron, having bored sharp-pointed iron through the middle of his ankles, from which circumstance Greece gave him the name of Oedipus.  But him the grooms who attend the steeds of Polybus find and carry home, and placed him in the arms of their mistress.  But she rested beneath her bosom him that gave me a mother’s pangs, and persuades her husband that she had brought forth.  But now my son showing signs of manhood in his darkening cheek, either having suspected it by instinct, or having learned it from some one, went to the temple of Apollo, desirous of discovering his parents; at the same time went Laius my husband, seeking to gain intelligence of his son who had been exposed, if he were no longer living; and both met at the same point of the road at Phocis where it divides itself; and the charioteer of Laius commands him, “Stranger, withdraw out of the way of princes;” but he moved slowly, in silence, with haughty spirit; but the steeds with their hoof dyed with blood the tendons of his feet.  At this (but why need I relate each horrid