Opening Seven Against Thebes — Aeschylus in Plato Scroll…
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Aeschylus · Herbert Weir Smyth (Loeb Classical Library, 1926)
[Image: ]An early frieze depiction of Polynices and Eteocles IT HAD BEEN thrice foretold by Apollo, the lord of Delphi, unto Laïus, the King of the Cadmeans, that if he would save his kingdom he must die without offspring. But Laïus followed the perverse counsels of his nature and disobeyed the voice of god: he begat a son, whom he would have exposed to his death on Mount Cithaeron; but the babe was rescued by a shepherd who bore him to Corinth, where he grew to manhood, believing himself to be the son of the king of that land, although in fact he had only been adopted by him being childless. But coming to misdoubt his parentage, Oedipus journeyed to Delphi to seek the truth; and when the god declared that he should slay his own father and marry his own mother, he sought to flee such a fate and betake himself far from the land wherein he thought his father and his mother dwelt. But it …
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