Many years 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 highroad.  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 arrested 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 gees 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 by 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 him 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.  At that time there arrived at his court a gallant young warrior, whose name was Bellerophon.  He brought letters from Proetus, the son-in-law of Iobates, recommending Bellerophon in the warmest terms as an unconquerable hero, but added at the close a request to his father-in-law to put him to death.  The reason was that Proetus was jealous of him, suspecting that his wife Antea looked with too much admiration on the young warrior.  From this instance of Bellerophon being unconsciously the bearer of his own death warrant, the expression “Bellerophontic letters” arose, to describe any species of communication which a person is made the bearer of, containing matter prejudicial to himself.