ing "as a king to a king." The Theban seer (he declares) is the only saviour to whom they can look in their hour of need. Let him therefore use all his powers of prophecy, and rescue the city from the curse which troubles it, by pointing out the murderer of Laius. But Teiresias, who knows but too well the horror of the actual truth, refuses to answer. Œdipus vainly protests and implores; and at last, imputing his silence to conscious guilt, angrily charges him with having himself instigated or actually committed the crime. Then the prophet is in his turn roused to anger; the fire kindles, and he speaks with his tongue. It is Nathan's denunciation of David: "Thou art the man." Œdipus is not only incredulous, but furious, to think that an augur can be at once so old and so vile a slanderer, since he can neither see the brightness of earthly sunshine nor the pure light of inward truth, and is blind at once in mind and body. And then he moralises on the envy that haunts greatness. It must be Creon, his own familiar friend, who has conspired with this "juggling mountebank," and has hired him thus to prophesy deceit.[1] His very art of
- ↑ Seneca, in his tragedy of 'Œdipus,' introduces a wild scene of incantation, in which both Creon and Teiresias take part. They repair at midnight to a valley outside the walls of Thebes, where a grove of oak and cypress overhangs a stagnant pool of water. There the prince and the prophet dig a trench, light a fire, and offer a libation of wine and blood, accompanied by a solemn prayer, to Hecate and the Queen of Night. Then, amid the howling of dogs and the rolling of thunder, the earth heaves and is rent asunder, and the spirits of the legendary heroes of the house of Labdacus (father of Laius) rise from the
