The following is the lamentation of Antigone over OEdipus, when death has at last relieved him from his sufferings: 

    “Alas!  I only wished I might have died
     With my poor father; wherefore should I ask
     For longer life? 
     O, I was fond of misery with him;
     E’en what was most unlovely grew beloved
     When he was with me.  O my dearest father,
     Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid,
     Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still
     Wast dear, and shalt be ever.”

    —­Francklin’s Sophocles.

PENELOPE

Penelope is another of those mythic heroines whose beauties were rather those of character and conduct than of person.  She was the daughter of Icarius, a Spartan prince.  Ulysses, king of Ithaca, sought her in marriage, and won her, over all competitors.  When the moment came for the bride to leave her father’s house, Icarius, unable to bear the thoughts of parting with his daughter, tried to persuade her to remain with him, and not accompany her husband to Ithaca.  Ulysses gave Penelope her choice, to stay or go with him.  Penelope made no reply, but dropped her veil over her face.  Icarius urged her no further, but when she was gone erected a statue to Modesty on the spot where they parted.

Ulysses and Penelope had not enjoyed their union more than a year when it was interrupted by the events which called Ulysses to the Trojan war.  During his long absence, and when it was doubtful whether he still lived, and highly improbable that he would ever return, Penelope was importuned by numerous suitors, from whom there seemed no refuge but in choosing one of them for her husband.  Penelope, however, employed every art to gain time, still hoping for Ulysses’ return.  One of her arts of delay was engaging in the preparation of a robe for the funeral canopy of Laertes, her husband’s father.  She pledged herself to make her choice among the suitors when the robe was finished.  During the day she worked at the robe, but in the night she undid the work of the day.  This is the famous Penelope’s web, which is used as a proverbial expression for anything which is perpetually doing but never done.  The rest of Penelope’s history will be told when we give an account of her husband’s adventures.

CHAPTER XXIV

Orpheus and Eurydice—­a
ristaeus—­Amphion—­Linus—­Thamyris—­ Marsyas—­Melampus—­Musaeus

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope.  He was presented by his father with a Lyre and taught to play upon it, which he did to such perfection that nothing could withstand the charm of his music.  Not only his fellow-mortals but wild beasts were softened by his strains, and gathering round him laid by their fierceness, and stood entranced with his lay.  Nay, the very trees and rocks were sensible to the charm.  The former crowded round him and the latter relaxed somewhat of their hardness, softened by his notes.