Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX.
in all mouths, 1 and thus Oidipous becomes the counterpart
of the wise Medeia. With the death of the Sphinx ends the
terrible drought. Oidipous has understood and interpreted
the divine voices of Typhon, or the thunder, which the gods
alone can comprehend. 2 The sun appears once more in the
blue heaven, in which he sprang into life in the morning
in other words, Oidipous is wedded to his mother Iokaste,
and the long train of woes which had their root in this awful
union now began to fill the land with a misery as great as
that from which Oidipous had just delivered it. As told by
iEschylos and Sophokles, it is a fearful tale ; and yet if the
poets had but taken any other of the many versions in which
the myth has come down to us, it could never have come
into existence. They might, had they pleased, have made
Euryganeia, the broad shining dawn, the mother of Antigone
and Ismene, of Eteokles and Polyneikes, instead of Iokaste,
the violet light, which reappears in the names Iole, Iamos,
Iolaos, Iasion, and Iobates. Undoubtedly the mother of
Oidipous might be either Euryganeia, Iokaste or Asty-
medousa, who are all assigned to him as his wives ;
;
but only
by giving the same name to his mother and his wife could
the moral horrors of the story be developed, and the idea
once awakened took too strong a hold on their imagination
to be lightly dislodged.
Thus far the story resolves itself into a few simple phrases, The
which spoke of the thundercloud as looming over the city ^^s
from day to day, while the waters remained imprisoned in
its gloomy dungeons, like the rock which seemed ever going
to fall on Tantalos,—of the sun as alone being able to
understand her mysterious mutterings and so to defeat her
scheme, and of his union with the mother from whom he
had been parted in his infancy. The sequel is not less
transparent. Iokaste, on learning the sin of which she has
unwittingly been guilty, brings her life to an end, and
Oidipous tears out the eyes which he declares to be un-
worthy to look any longer on the things which had thus far
1 6 ^Sei/ etSws OIMttovs.—Soph. Old. Tyr. 397*
6 ivaat KXeivbs OiSiirovs Ka\ov/j.euos.— ib. 8.
2 Breal, Le mythe d'Edijx-, 17.