wide intervals of time, yet, from their connexion with each other,
they may almost be said to form one poem. The "Antigone," which
concludes the story, was the one earliest written; and there are
passages in either "Oedipus" which seem composed to lead up, as it
were, to the catastrophe of the "Antigone," and form a harmonious link
between the several dramas. These three plays constitute, on the
whole, the greatest performance of Sophocles, though in detached parts
they are equalled by passages in the "Ajax" and the "Philoctetes."

V. The "Oedipus Tyrannus" opens thus. An awful pestilence devastates
Thebes. Oedipus, the king, is introduced to us, powerful and beloved;
to him whose wisdom had placed him on the throne, look up the priest
and the suppliants for a remedy even amid the terrors of the plague.
Oedipus informs them that he has despatched Creon (the brother of his
wife Jocasta) to the Pythian god to know by what expiatory deed the
city might be delivered from its curse. Scarce has he concluded, when
Creon himself enters, and announces "glad tidings" in the explicit
answer of the oracle. The god has declared--that a pollution had been
bred in the land, and must be expelled the city--that Laius, the
former king, had been murdered--and that his blood must be avenged.
Laius had left the city never to return; of his train but one man
escaped to announce his death by assassins. Oedipus instantly
resolves to prosecute the inquiry into the murder, and orders the
people to be summoned. The suppliants arise from the altar, and a
solemn chorus of the senators of Thebes (in one of the most splendid
lyrics of Sophocles) chant the terrors of the plague--"that unarmed
Mars"--and implore the protection of the divine averters of
destruction. Oedipus then, addressing the chorus, demands their aid
to discover the murderer, whom he solemnly excommunicates, and dooms,
deprived of aid and intercourse, to waste slowly out a miserable