Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

Armics INRAGE Dy

and boys as a religious ceremony has frequently lasted into most highly civilized times; but we likewise find everywhere that the rape must remain an apparent one, and that the employment of actual violence is equally condemned by public opinion and by the law. ‘That this view of the guilt of Laius is the correct one we are taught by a comparison of the usual form of abduction in Crete, of which we shall speak later.

Thus we may say that the tragedy of Aschylus found its special theme in the fact that the royal hero lLaius became a curse-laden man in consequence of an offence against conventional form; he thought he might be allowed to abduct the boy, when he could have sued for the beautiful prize freely and openly. The curse pronounced over his head contains a fearful irony : what in his youth formed his greatest delight, a lovely boy, is denied to him, the married man; his marriage remains childless, and when he nevertheless forces a son from fate, he is destined to fall, through disastrous links in the chain of destiny, by the hand of the son he had so eagerly longed for. The murderous hand of the son, led by blindly raging destiny, avenges the sinful encroachment which the father formerly permitted himself upon the free will of a free-born boy. But the murder by his own son has its beginning first of all with the appearance of the fearful Sphinx ; for Laius, in order to free the land from this plague, journeys to Delphi to implore help or advice from the god of light; on his return he is met by his son, unknown to him, to whom he falls a bloody victim. Suddenly light now also falls on the deeper meaning of the wellknown riddle of the Sphinx: ‘“ Man,” so ran the answer, “in the morning of life fresh and of joyful hope, in the evening a weak and broken creature.” Laius was the type of this pitiable creature, and the son, who has just slain his father, was the only man clever enough to solve the riddle. Anyone

as)