The royal family of Thebes runs into further troubles
Dionysus punishes Cadmus and Cadmus’s descendants suffer, as well
Cadmus of Thebes watched helplessly as his family, which had failed to ackowledge Dionysus’ divinity, was destroyed by the god. Cadmus’ grandson Pentheus was torn limb-from-limb by his own mother and aunts, whom Dionysus then ordered into exile.
Cadmus himself had honored Dionysus, but the god proclaimed that for him, retribution had finally come due on an older transgression: the slaughter of an enormous snake that was the son of Ares. In punishment, Cadmus and his wife, Harmonia, would be transformed into snakes themselves and banished not only from Thebes but from all of Greece until, one day, they returned leading hordes of barbarians to ravage the land.
As soon as Dionysus finished speaking, Cadmus began to change. His skin grew scaly and mottled; his legs fused together and he toppled forward. Harmonia picked her husband up from the ground and kissed his lips while they were still the lips she knew, yet even as she did so she felt her own legs dissolving. As the new snakes slithered away, they heard Dionysus promise that someday, after the gods had pardoned them, they would be conveyed to the Island of the Blessed, where they would live together in pleasure forevermore. This, however, was a reward too remote in time and too vague in its details to be of much comfort.
Amphion, a son of Zeus, became the next king of Thebes. He left no heir: all of his sons and daughters were killed by Artemis and Apollo after his wife, Niobe, boasted of being a better mother than Leto. The throne of Thebes passed to Polydorus, a son of Cadmus who had been an infant when Dionysus destroyed the rest of his family. Marrying the granddaughter of one of the five original settlers of Thebes, he begot a son, Labdacus, who inherited the kingdom. Labdacus begot Laius, who in turn inherited the kingdom.
Once, when Laius was competing at the Nemean Games, he caught sight of Chrysippus, the son of King Pelops of Elis. Chrysippus carried his youthful limbs with grace. His skin, kissed by the sun and rubbed sleek with oil, gleamed like gold. Desire gripped Laius; he kidnapped Chrysippus and violated him—the first time that a man raped a boy.
Pelops recovered Chrysippus and prayed to the gods to punish Laius for what he’d done. Zeus listened and contrived a trap that would slowly close around not only Laius himself but his entire family and city as well—a trap that Laius and his own son, Oedipus, would not only be caught within but unwittingly help to build.
Laius became betrothed to Jocasta, the daughter of a noble Theban family. Before the wedding, Laius travelled to Delphi to ask Apollo how he might ensure that his first child was a son. Apollo ignored that question and instead proclaimed,
‘Only by dying childless will you save your city!’
Obstinately, Laius returned to the Oracle twice again, but twice again he heard
‘Only by dying childless will you save your city!’
The marriage could not be called-off; too much political capital had been invested in its negotiation. For many nights after its celebration, Laius left it unconsummated, to the bewilderment of his bride, but there came an evening when Laius drank heavily at dinner and Jocasta saw her chance. Adorning herself in little more than translucent silks and the best Arabian perfumes, Jocasta drew Laius into her bed. Their son was conceived.
When Jocasta told Laius of her pregnancy, he was deeply alarmed. The next day he left for Delphi, hoping that Apollo might relent and give him a new, reassuring message. What the Pythia spoke forth, however, was even worse:
‘Your son shall kill his father and marry his mother.’
Aghast, Laius went home and told Jocasta what Apollo had said. He informed her that their son would be taken to the wilderness and abandoned as soon as he saw the light of day.
And so the squalling baby, still covered with the blood and vernix that he had worn into the world, was placed in a pot and handed to one of the royal shepherds. Although, formally, there would be no blood on Laius’ hands (the pot, once it had been covered, provided the pretense that he was protecting the child and it would be animals or the elements that brought an end to its short life) for good measure Laius had the hollows behind the child’s ankles pierced and tied together with a rawhide thong, to hobble its vengeful ghost.
‘Take this child to the highest ridge of Mount Cithaeron and leave him there,’ he ordered, as Jocasta wept inconsolably.
But the shepherd took pity on the child. Knowing that Polybus and Merope, the king and queen of Corinth, were barren, he smuggled the baby to another shepherd, who tended Polybus’ flocks. The baby was carried into the Corinthian palace after dark and the next day it was announced that the queen had finally given her husband an heir. Indulging in a private joke, Polybus and Merope named him ‘Oedipus,’ a word that could be interpreted to mean ‘swollen feet,’ for the piercing of the poor baby’s ankles had caused his feet to swell. Merope removed the thong and anointed the wounds with salve several times a day, until they healed.
Oedipus grew up in Corinth surrounded by doting parents, attentive coaches and dedicated tutors who prepared him to rule the kingdom one day. But the people of Corinth had been neither so blind nor so gullible as the king and queen had hoped. One night at a banquet, when Oedipus was nearly grown, a drunken nobleman referred to him as a bastard. Polybus denied this, but Oedipus, made uneasy by the nobleman’s assuredness, set out the next morning to learn the truth.
Oedipus receives a terrible oracle
Oedipus walked to the harbor and arranged passage aboard a ship that was sailing to Cirrha, the port that served the Delphic Oracle. The next day he hiked a road that zigzagged up Mount Parnassus alongside mules that carried supplies to the town where the Oracle’s priests and their families lived. He paid an innkeeper for a meal and a place to sleep that night.
In the morning he took his place among those requesting an audience with the Pythia. His royal status accorded him preferential treatment; before the sun had reached its zenith he was escorted across the porch of Apollo’s temple and into its outer chamber. In the inner chamber, Oedipus knew, the Pythia sat upon her tripod, awaiting Apollo’s prophetic embrace. A fragrance wafted forth from it to meet his nose—sweet and musky, like peaches that in their ripeness have dropped to the grass, windfall for wasps. He knew then that the god was present.
The priest asked Oedipus for his question and Oedipus said, ‘Who are my real parents?’ The priest walked to the inner chamber and quietly repeated it to the Pythia. After a few moments of silence, Oedipus heard dissonant moans, punctuated by gasping, gulping noises, as if the Pythia was struggling to resign herself to the voice that demanded to speak through her. Finally, across the still air of the temple came Apollo’s dispassionate reply.
‘You will kill your father and marry your mother.’
The priests at Delphi had a practiced equanimity; over the centuries, they had heard Apollo say many remarkable things. They had learned to maintain their composure and escort the enquirer out in a dignified manner. The god’s pronouncement to Oedipus, however, left the priest bewildered. Before he could collect himself, Oedipus had unceremoniously run from the temple.
He fled the sanctuary and found himself on an eastward road, blindly scrambling to put as much distance as he could between himself and what the Pythia had said, and between himself and Corinth, to which he now knew he could never return. He kept moving until the sun began to set and then found lodging with a farmer. The next day he continued moving eastward, with a vague idea of eventually reaching a seaport and leaving Greece behind.
The road was curling through gnarled olive trees and knee-high grasses when he rounded a curve and reached a place where three roads met—the road he had just taken from Delphi, a road north to Daulia and a road east to Thebes. He saw a chariot approaching the intersection from the east, drawn by two horses. The crimson-dyed leather of the harness, gilded here and there to pick out its embossed acanthus leaves, and the purple cloak of the passenger who rode behind its driver announced that the passenger was of royal bearing. His grizzled hair and beard suggested a king. In front of the chariot walked a herald. Three more attendants walked behind.
They pulled up abruptly at the sight of Oedipus; the road was narrow, allowing little room for the travelers to pass one another.
‘Get off the road!’ commanded the herald. Oedipus, glancing at the thick tangle of grass that he would have to step into, did not relish the idea. He wasn’t looking for trouble, however; he moved as far to the margin of the road as he could.
The chariot began to move forward again. The horses passed so close to Oedipus that he could smell the oil with which the stable-boy had rubbed their coats that morning, mixed with the odors of dust and lathery sweat. Then came the chariot itself. As its driver drew even with Oedipus, he grinned and gave Oedipus’ shoulder a sharp push, hoping to send him toppling backwards into the grass. Oedipus shifted weight to keep his balance and then lashed out, striking the man with his fist. Suddenly, the grizzled man was there, too, beating Oedipus on the head with a two-pronged horse goad.
For doing that, the grizzled man paid in full. Oedipus shoved his walking stick into the man’s stomach and he tumbled backwards out of the chariot. White-hot with anger, Oedipus killed him then, right where he lay. Then he killed the driver, the herald and the other servants, who were cowering behind the motionless chariot.
Shocked by what he’d done, Oedipus sat down in the grass that had seemed so unappealing a moment before and drew a deep, shuddering breath. The emotions that washed over him were overwhelming; he struggled to figure out what to do next. After a while he stood up and brushed off his clothing. He approached each of the corpses in turn: first the lesser servants, then the driver, then the herald and finally the grizzled man in the purple cloak. He dipped his finger in the blood of each, licked it and then spat it out again, to avert their angry ghosts.
He looked first at the road to Daulia and then at the road to Thebes. Cities full of people lay at the end of either one, and people were the last thing he wanted to see at the moment. He strode into the grass and kept walking, vanishing into the grove of olive trees.