emboldened, nor yet prematurely alarmed, at least by thy present speech.

CR. If thou choosest to hear while these are by, I am ready to tell thee, or else to retire within doors.

ED. Speak out to all, for I endure more suffering for these my people than even for mine own life.

CR. I will say what I have heard from the god. King Phoebus openly enjoins us to expel from the country a1 pollution, as having been bred in this our land, nor to foster what is incurable.

ED. By what kind of purification? What is the manner of the evil?

CR. By banishing, or requiting death with death, since the following bloodshed troubles the state?.

ED. Why, of what manner of man does he indicate this fate?

CR. We had once, O king, Laïus as the sovereign of this land, ere thou didst regulate this state.

ED. I knew him by hearsay, for I never as yet saw him at least.

CR. This man having perished, Apollo now clearly gives one orders to punish his assassins3.

ED. But where on earth are these same? Where shall be discovered this track of an ancient crime, hard to conjecture?

CR. He said, in this land. But what is searched for, is to be got at, while that which is unregarded escapes.

This is much more correct than "the pollution." It was as yet unknown what the pollution was, as is evident from the enquiry of Edipus: τίς ὁ τρόπος τῆς ξυμφορᾶς; which has been wrongly taken to mean, "what is the method of averting the calamity?"

B.

2 τόδ' αἷμα χειμάζον πόλιν. Although the translator has not ventured to render this otherwise than Erfurdt, Hermann, and Elmsley have given it, i. e. as an accusative absolute, and with the word róde referring to something subsequent, he has still a doubt whether orí might not be understood, and the passage construed thus: "Since this is a case of bloodshed troubling the city." The answer of Edipus will then run thus: "How so? for of what manner of man," etc.: but it hardly seems natural that Edipus should interrupt one who indicated (as is done by Tóde, according to the critics) his purpose of immediately proceeding to specify the murder. TR.-Another translation has "since this blood is as pernicious as winter to the city." B.

ED. But is it in the house, or in the field, or in another land, that Laïus encounters this bloody death?

CR. Quitting home, as he told us, to consult the oracle, he never returned home, as he had departed.

ED. And was no messenger, nor partaker of his journey, a witness to this, from whom gaining intelligence one might have used it?

CR. No; for they are dead, except one individual, who having fled in terror, could tell for certain nothing he saw, but one fact.

ED. Of what nature that fact? for one thing might find means to learn many, could we lay hold of but a slender foundation of hope.

CR. He said that robbers, having encountered him, slew him, not by the valour of one arm, but with a number of hands.

ED. How then would the bandit, had there been no tamperings by bribes from hence, have reached such a pitch of audácity as this?

CR. This was suspected; but amid disasters there came forward no one as the avenger of Laïus now no more.

ED. But what kind of distress interfering, when the monarch' had thus fallen, checked you from sifting out this matter?

CR. The Sphinx, mysterious songstress, compelled us to look to that which was before our feet, having abandoned what was obscure.

ED. But from its first cause will I bring it to light again. For right worthily has Phoebus, and worthily hast thou set on foot this present examination in the cause of the deceased: so that deservedly ye will see me also your abettor, avenging at once my land here, and the god. For in behalf, not of my more distant friends, but myself of myself, shall I disperse this pollution. Since whoever it was that murdered him, he might perhaps wish to take vengeance on me too

I prefer taking rupavvídos as abstract for concrete, with the old translation. B.

This is certainly the usual sense of riμwpɛiv. But Wunder thinks the sense of "slaying" or "killing" more suitable, and thinks that in v. 105, xεipi Tiμwpεiv conveys the like idea. Granting, as I do, that this sense is more suitable (and I think defensible) in the present passage,

Archer.

with like hand. In supporting his cause, therefore, I advantage myself. But with what speed ye may, my children, do you on your part arise from off your seats1, taking up these branches of supplication; but let some one else assemble hither the people of Cadmus, since I purpose to take every step. For we will prove ourselves either with heaven's aid prosperous or undone.

PR. My children, let us rise; since even for the sake of those things this man promises, came we hither. But may Phoebus, who has sent us these divinations, come with them both a deliverer and as an healer to our sickness.

CHORUS.

O sweetly-speaking oracle of Jove, why canst thou have come from Pytho stored with gold, to illustrious Thebes? I am on the rack in my timorous spirit, quivering with dismay, O-healer, Delian, Pæan, awfully anxious about thee, as to what matter thou wilt bring to pass for me, either at once, or hereafter in the revolving seasons. Tell me, thou child of golden hope3, immortal Voice. First I invoke thee, daughter of Jove, immortal Minerva, and thy sister, protectress of our soil, Artemis, who sits enthroned on her glorious circling chair in the market-place, and far-darting Apollo: oh, be ye

I am even more certain of v. 140, where, in rous avтoέvтas xεipi Tiμwρεiv we have "death for death" implied in an almost proverbial manner. So Asch. Choeph. 312, ἀντὶ δὲ πληγῆς Φονίας Φονίαν Πληγὴν τινέτω. δράσαντι παθεῖν Τριγέρων μῦθος τάδε φωνεῖ. Cf. Eum. 264. B.

1 When the request was granted, the suppliants took up the boughs, which they had previously laid on the altar, and departed. See Wunder's 1st Excursus on v. 3. B.

2 For ἐξαγγέλλεται, “ promises," cf. Eurip. Heracl. 531. Kȧğayγέλλομαι θνήσκειν ἀδελφῶν τῶνδε κἀμαυτῆς ὕπερ. Β.

3 Dr. Spillan has rightly seen that Fame has nothing to do with the matter. Þáμa is the voice of the oracle here invoked. The construction of κεκλόμενος soon after (for which the translator read κεκλομένῳ) is well defended by Wunder. B.

4 There is much difficulty about the epithet εUKλéa, which, if considered as the Epic accusative for εvкλɛã, violates the metre. Respecting the epithet of Artemis, Εὔκλεια (whence Brunck and Elmsley read Εὔκλια), see Wunder, and Pausanias i. 14, and ix. 17. On the many meanings assigned to KKλoέvra, see Wunder. The most plausible seems to be Dr. Spillan's: "the seat encircled by the forum." B.

timely present to me, three several averters of destruction, if ever, in the case of a previous calamity also hovering over my country, ye thoroughly exterminated the flame of mischief, now too come; ye gods, for I suffer incalculable miseries; nay, my whole people to a man is sickening; nor is there amongst us a weapon of precaution, wherewith one shall defend himself; for neither do the productions of our celebrated1 soil thrive, nor in childbed do our women recover from their poignant throes2; but one upon another mightest thou see, even as a well-fledged bird, more fiercely than uncontrollable fire3, speeding towards the shore of the western god. In the uncounted hosts of whom the city is perishing, and the deadly generations of men unpitied are lying without a tear (to their memory) on the plain; while among them wives and greyhaired mothers withal, some from this, some from that quarter, along the rising altar-slope as suppliants, wail sadly because of their deplorable afflictions. And clear bursts forth

1 Brunck says that one codex reads кλvrά, but the plain of Boeotia is particularised by ancient writers, and, among others, by Thucydides in his preface, for its fertility. TR.-I should prefer taking kλurãc as an epithet of the earth simply. B.

2 ávexovoi, "bear up with." All the commentators seem to coincide in accepting Hesychius's interpretation of injios, as translated.

3 In the Hecuba of Euripides, the anarchy of a ship's crew is termed, кρεíσσшν πνρóç, in a similar sense to that given in this translation; yet the second interpretation of the scholiast, "too fast for the (funeral) fires though unquenched," derives plausibility from Thucydides' account of ἀναίσχυντοι θῆκαι, ii. 52.

4"Western god." Neminem præterea novi qui sic Plutonem vocaverit, πόρευ' Αχέροντος ἀκτά παρ' εὔσκιον habet Pindarus Pyth. ii. str. 2. Vide et Antig. 806, 7." Musgrave. In the peroration of Lysias' Oration against Andocides in this passage, "To expiate this pollution," (the mutilation of the Hermæ,) "the priestesses and priests, turning toward the setting sun, the dwelling of the infernal gods, devoted with curses the sacrilegious wretch, and shook their purple robes, in the manner prescribed by that law which has been transmitted from earliest times." Mitford, Hist. of Greece, c. xxii. sect. 2.

5 The reading Oavarnpópy was adopted by all the translators, except a recent one, who renders Oavarnpópa simply "dead." I have rendered it by "deadly," for, as Wunder well remarks, contagion rendered them so, and prevented them meeting with the customary mourning and funeral rites. Cf. Seneca, Edip. 62. "Quin luctu in ipso luctus exoritur novus, Suæque circa funus exequiæ cadunt. Deest terra tumulis, jam rogos silvæ negant." B.

the pæan anthem, and a sorrow-breathing voice chiming in. Wherefore, O golden daughter of Jove, send thine aid, fair of aspect, and make the ravening Mars, who now unarmed with brazen shield rushing on with loud roars, scorches me, to turn his back in homeward hurrying flight, an outlaw from my country, either to the vast grot1 of Amphitrite, or to that inhospitable harbourage the Thracian breakers; for, in fine, if night have spared a relic, day assails it. Which (Mars),

O thou that wieldest the sovereignty of the fiery lightning, O Jove our sire, blast by thy thunderbolt. Thine invincible arrows also, O lord of light, from the golden twisted horns of thy bow would I gladly celebrate as champions sent forth to our aid, and the fiery torches of Diana, wherewith she scours the Lycian mountains: him of the golden mitre, too, I call, surnamed of this our land Bacchus Evius, of aspect flushed with wine, fellow-rambler of the Mænadæ, to approach, flaming with beamy pine-torch, upon the god unhonoured amongst gods3.

ED. Thou petitionest; but for thy petition, if thou be willing to hear and receive these my words, and to give thy attention to the disease, thou mightest obtain succour and alleviation of thy miseries: which words I shall speak as a stranger to this tale before us, a stranger to the crime committed. For I by myself could not trace the matter far, unless I had some clue: but now, seeing that I am enrolled among our citizens a citizen of latest date, to all you Cadmæans I make proclamation thus: Whatsoever man of you

1 eáλapos I have rendered "grot," which seems more poetical than "bower," " bed," or "chamber," when applied to Amphitrite. B.

2 The old word λúkŋ or λvкóc, (whence, probably, the Latin lux,) forms λυκόφυς and λυκάβας. The latter word occurring in Apollonius Rhodius, Argon. i. 198, first suggested to the translator of this play an idea which he is happy to find sanctioned by Maltby's authority, (v. λύκειος,) that even the Sophoclean λυκοκτόνος is one, among many other fanciful substitutes, for the true origin of this epithet. TR. So also Muller, Dor. ii. 6, § 8; but I should prefer retaining "Lycian King." Cf. Esch. Sept. c. Th. 145. B.

3 άπóriμоs, Pindar, Pyth. ii. 80,

Γόνον ὑπερφίαλον,

Μόνα, καὶ μόνον, οὔτ' ἐν ἀν

δράσι γερασφόρον, οὔτ ̓ ἐν θεῶν νομοῖς.

4 Elmsley and Wunder read avròg for άoròs, which seems preferable. B. 5 VTEŽEλWV TOVTÍкλŋμa, “ crimen confitendo diluens." Elms.

"Con