Excerpt from Sophocles, Vol. 1: The Plays and Fragments; With Critical Notes, Commentary, and Translation in English Prose La'tus, king of Thebes, being childless, asked the oracle of Apollo at Delphi whether it was fated that a son should be born to him. The answer was, I will give thee a son, but it is doomed that thou leave the sunlight by the hands of thy child: for thus hath spoken Zeus, son of Cronus, moved by the dread curse of Pelops, 'whose own son (chrysippus) thou didst snatch from him and he prayed all this for thee.' When a son was indeed born to La'fus of Iocasta his wife, three days after the birth he caused it to be exposed in the wilds of Mount Cithaeron. An iron pin was driven through the feet of the babe, fastening them together - that, if perchance it should live to be found by a stranger, he might have the less mind to rear a child so maimed from which rnaiming the child was afterwards called Oedipusg. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.