to the sober course of the divine arrangements, in that way we are sure with our own hands to work our own destruction. This is inevitable. Accordingly, that the direct sanction of the gods might be added to the utterance of an aggrieved human heart, the legend represents the lustful offender as consulting the oracle of Delphi, whether he might not with safety disregard the imprecation of Pelops, and beget children by his wife Iocaste (called Epicaste in Homer, Od. XI. 271); and receiving the ominous answer-- Sow not the seed of children, in despite Of the gods: for if thou shalt beget a son, {259} Him who begat shall the begotten slay, And all thy house in bloody ruin perish.[f3] But the divine oracle, as was to have been expected from the character of the questioner, was given in vain. Laius had consulted the oracle not that he might know and obey the divine will, but that he might, if possible, escape from the terrible consequences of the curse of Pelops, and yet gratify his natural desire of having offspring. The result was natural. In a moment of forgetfulness, induced by the free use of that mother of many evils, wine, he neglected the divine warning; and, from his fatal embrace, a child was born, destined in the course of the accomplishment of the ancient curse, both to suffer many monstrous misfortunes in his own person, and to transmit guilt and misery to another generation. This child was Oedipus,[f4] so named from the piercing of his feet by nails, and subsequent exposure on Mount Cithaeron, a device contrived by his father, in order to escape the fulfilment of the divine oracle. But it is not possible, as Homer frequently inculcates, to deceive the mind of the gods. The helpless infant, the child of destiny, is found (like Romulus), by some shepherds, and by them taken to Polybus king of Corinth. Here the foundling is brought up as the son of that monarch; but, on one occasion, being taunted by some of his youthful comrades with the reproach that he is not really the son of Polybus, but a fatherless foundling, he goes forth to the oracle of Delphi, and to the wide world, to clear up what had been more wisely left in the dark; and here his god-sent misfortunes overtake him, and the evil genius of his father drives the innocent son blindfold into inevitable woe. The Pythoness, according to her wont, returned an answer more doubtful than the question. Oedipus was told not who his father was, but that a dark destiny hung over him, to kill his father, and to commit incest with his mother. Knowing no parents but those whom he had left at Corinth, he proceeded on his wanderings, in a direction the opposite of that by which he had come; and, on the road between Delphi and Daulis,[f5] met a person of consequence, with a charioteer and an attendant, in a car. The charioteer immediately ordered the foot traveller, somewhat insolently, after the manner of aristocratic satellites, to get out of