Laius, King of Thebes, the descendant of Labdacus, and representing the illustrious house of the Labdacidae, about the time when his wife, Jocasta, promised to present him with a child, had learned from various prophetic voices that this unborn child was destined to be his murderer. It is singular that in all such cases, which are many, spread through classical literature, the parties menaced by fate believe the menace; else why do they seek to evade it? and yet believe it not; else why do they fancy themselves able to evade it? This fatal child, who was the Œdipus of tragedy, being at length born, Laius committed the infant to a slave, with orders to expose it on Mount Cithæron. This was done; the infant was suspended, by thongs running through the fleshy parts of his feet, to the branches of a tree, and he was supposed to have perished by wild beasts. But a shepherd, who found him in this perishing state, pitied his helplessness, and carried him to his master and mistress, King and Queen of Corinth, who adopted and educated him as their own child. That he was _not_ their own child, and that in fact he was a foundling of unknown parentage, Œdipus was not slow of finding from the insults of his schoolfellows; and at length, with the determination of learning his origin and his fate, being now a full- grown young man, he strode off from Corinth to Delphi. The oracle at Delphi, being as usual in collusion with his evil destiny, sent him off to seek his parents at Thebes. On his journey thither, he met, in a narrow part of the road, a chariot proceeding in the counter direction from Thebes to Delphi. The charioteer, relying upon the grandeur of his master, insolently ordered the young stranger to clear the road; upon which, under the impulse of his youthful blood, Œdipus slew him on the spot. The haughty grandee who occupied the chariot rose up in fury to avenge this outrage, fought with the young stranger, and was himself killed. One attendant upon the chariot remained; but he, warned by the fate of his master and his fellow-servant, withdrew quietly into the forest that skirted the road, revealing no word of what had happened, but reserved, by the dark destiny of Œdipus, to that evil day on which _his_ evidence, concurring with other circumstantial exposures, should convict the young Corinthian emigrant of parricide. For the present, Œdipus viewed himself as no criminal, but much rather as an injured man, who had simply used his natural powers of self-defence against an insolent aggressor. This aggressor, as the reader will suppose, was Laius. The throne therefore was empty, on the arrival of Œdipus in Thebes; the king's death was known, but not the mode of it; and that Œdipus was the murderer could not reasonably be suspected either by the people of Thebes, or by Œdipus himself. The whole affair would have had no interest for the young stranger; but, through the accident of a public calamity then desolating the land, a mysterious