blood of murder, who will furnish expiation? who will purify them? Alas for the fresh troubles mingled with the ancient horrors of this family! for I speak of the ancient transgression with its speedy punishment; yet it abides unto the third generation; since Laïus, in spite of Apollo, who had thrice declared, in the central oracles of Pytho, that, dying without issue, he would save the state,159 did, notwithstanding, overcome by his friends, in his infatuation beget his own destruction, the parricide Œdipus, who dared to plant in an unhallowed 82field, where he had been reared, a bloody root.—'Twas frenzy linked the distracted pair; and as it were, a sea of troubles brings on one billow that subsides, and rears another triply cloven, which too dashes about the stern of our state. But between [it and us] there stretches a fence at a small interval, a tower in width alone.160 And I fear lest the city should be overcome along with its princes. For the execrations, that were uttered long ago, are finding their accomplishment: bitter is the settlement, and deadly things in their consummation pass not away. The wealth of enterprising merchants,161 too thickly stowed, brings with it a casting overboard from the stern. For whom of mortals did the gods, and his fellow-inmates in the city, and the many lives of herding men,162 admire so much as they then honored Œdipus, who had banished from the realm the baneful pest that made men her prey. But when he unhappy was apprised of his wretched marriage, despairing in his sorrow, with frenzied heart, he perpetrated a two-fold horror; he deprived himself with parricidal hand of the eyes that were more precious than his children. And indignant because of his scanty supply of food,163 he sent upon his sons, alas! alas! a curse horrible in utterance, even that they should some time or other share his substance between them with sword-wielding hand; and now I tremble lest the swift Erinnys should be on the point of fulfilling that prayer. Ch. 81 82 83 83 Re-enter Messenger.
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