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Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew by Josephine Preston Peabody
page 55 of 105 (52%)
No one could tell whence these sisters were, but by some strange
necessity they spun the web of human life and made destinies without
knowing why. It was not for Clotho to decree whether the thread of a
life should be stout or fragile, nor for Lachesis to choose the fashion
of the web; and Atropos herself must sometimes have wept to cut a life
short with her shears, and let it fall unfinished. But they were like
spinners for some Power that said of life, as of a garment, _Thus it
must be_. That Power neither gods nor men could withstand.

There was once a king named Laius (a grandson of Cadmus himself), who
ruled over Thebes, with Jocasta his wife. To them an Oracle had
foretold that if a son of theirs lived to grow up, he would one day
kill his father and marry his own mother. The king and queen resolved
to escape such a doom, even at terrible cost. Accordingly Laius gave
his son, who was only a baby, to a certain herdsman, with instructions
to put him to death.

This was not to be. The herdsman carried the child to a lonely
mountain-side, but once there, his heart failed him. Hardly daring to
disobey the king's command, yet shrinking from murder, he hung the
little creature by his feet to the branches of a tree, and left him
there to die.

But there chanced to come that way with his flocks, a man who served
King Polybus of Corinth. He found the baby perishing in the tree, and,
touched with pity, took him home to his master. The king and queen of
Corinth were childless, and some power moved them to take this
mysterious child as a gift. They called him Oedipus (Swollen-Foot)
because of the wounds they had found upon him, and, knowing naught of
his parentage, they reared him as their own son. So the years went by.
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