The conditions imposed upon him by Æetes were thus accomplished; but the king, who perceived that Jason had only succeeded through the aid of his daughter, made this a pretext for refusing to surrender the fleece. Jason then removed it by night from the grove of Ares, after Medea had, by means of her enchantments, lulled the watchful dragon to sleep. That same night the Argonauts embarked on board their ship and put to sea, Medea accompanying them as the future wife of Jason. The wrathful Æetes attempted to overtake the fugitives, but Medea succeeded in staying the pursuit by slaying her younger brother Apsyrtus, whom she had brought with her, and scattering his limbs in the sea.
The most diverse accounts exist as to the road taken by the Argonauts on their homeward journey. Some say that they sailed up the Phasis to the Eastern Sea, and then, passing through the Red Sea and Libyan desert, over which they had to carry the Argo twelve days’ journey, came to Lake Tritonis, and thence to the Mediterranean. According to another account, they sought to pass through the Ister (Danube) and Eridanus (Po) to the Western Ocean; but the object of this account was manifestly to subject them to the same vicissitudes and adventures as Odysseus and his companions.
At length Jason landed happily in Iolcus, and delivered the golden fleece into the hands of his uncle. Pelias, however, still refused to surrender the kingdom to Jason, and Medea therefore determined to make away with him by craft. Having persuaded the daughters of Pelias that she possessed a means of making the old man young again, she directed them to slay their father, cut him in pieces, and boil the limbs in a cauldron filled with all manner of herbs; this they did in the vain expectation of seeing him restored to youth. Jason now took possession of his father’s kingdom, but was soon afterwards expelled by Acastus, the son of Pelias, and took refuge in Corinth. His subsequent misfortunes are well known. Thinking to better his condition, he was about to marry Creüsa, the daughter of the king of Corinth, when he was arrested by the fearful vengeance of his first wife. Medea sent the bride a poisoned garment, which caused her to die an agonising death, and then slew her own children by Jason; after which she fled in her chariot drawn by winged dragons to Athens, where she long found protection at the court of Ægeus. Jason either put an end to his own life, or was killed by the fall of a rotten beam of the Argo.
In the history of the golden fleece we have one of the most widely spread myths of all, namely, that of the loss and recovery of a treasure. In Teutonic tradition we have the treasure of the Nibelungs, in which the very name is almost identical; and if we include the stories of women carried off and rescued, the list becomes endless. And the treasure of all those stories has been interpreted to be the golden clouds. The Dragon which guards the treasure again appears in the story of the apples of the Hesperides, and is closely allied to the Sphinx.
3. The Theban Cycle.—The highly tragic history of the Theban house of the Labdacidæ, teeming as it does with important characters and events, has at all times furnished subjects for Greek art and poetry, and has given birth to a whole series of epic and dramatic works. The former, which would have conduced far more to an exact acquaintance with the legend, have, unfortunately, perished, with the exception of a few unimportant fragments; although many important works of the great tragic poets, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, relating to the subject, still remain. The common account runs thus:—Laius, a great-grandson of Cadmus, was warned by the oracle to beget no children, as he was doomed to perish by the hands of his son, who would then marry his mother. When his wife Iocaste gave birth to a son, Laius accordingly exposed the child, with its feet pierced, on Mount Cithæron. The child, called Œdipus from the swelling of its feet, did not die, but was found by some Corinthian shepherds, who brought it to Polybus, king of Corinth. Polybus, having no children of his own, adopted Œdipus, who grew up in the belief that Polybus and Merope were his real parents, until one day a taunt of his companions as to his mysterious origin raised doubts in his mind. In order to solve his misgivings, he went to consult the oracle of Delphi, but he here received only the obscure direction not to return to his country, since, if he did, he would kill his father and marry his mother. Fearing on this account to return to Corinth, he took the road to Thebes, and thus, by his presumptuous prudence, brought about the very consequences he was so anxious to avoid. On the road he was met by Laius, who was on his way to the oracle to ask its advice concerning the Sphinx. A quarrel arose, in a narrow defile, between Laius and Œdipus; and Œdipus slew his father without knowing who he was. On arriving at Thebes he succeeded in delivering the country from the Sphinx. This monster, which had the combined form of a woman and a lion, had been sent by Hera, whom Laius had in some way offended, from Ethiopia to devastate the land of Thebes. Seated on a rock close to the town, she put to every one that passed by a riddle, and whoever was unable to solve it, she cast from the rock into a deep abyss. This calamity induced Creon, on the death of his brother-in-law Laius, to proclaim that whoever solved the riddle should obtain the crown and the hand of Iocaste. Œdipus succeeded in solving it, and thus delivered the country from the monster, who cast herself into the abyss.
The Sphinx belongs to the same family as many of the monsters we have spoken of already; she is called by Hesiod the child of Orthros and Chimæra, whom we have seen to be the daughter of Typhon and Echidna. It would seem, therefore, probable that the contest between her and her opponent may be interpreted in the same way as that of Bellerophon and the Chimæra, or of Zeus and Typhon. In support of this, the following considerations may be adduced. Since we know that thunder was supposed to be a warning or encouragement to men, it is easy to see in it the mysterious voice of the cloud, only intelligible to the wisest of men. Hence the conqueror of the cloud was called the man who understood her language. (It would not a little help this idea, that Œdipus might seem derived from a word meaning “to know.”) Then the death of the Sphinx will be the cloud falling upon the earth in the shape of rain. Œdipus, on the other hand, will be the same antagonist as we have before seen victorious over the cloud dragons; the sun, born helpless, rising to take the kingdom after the slaughter of his enemies, yet at last sinking blinded into an unknown grave. This, however, does not cover the crimes laid to his charge. But they have been explained in this way: that when people lost consciousness of the real meaning of the misfortunes of Œdipus, they cast about for some adequate cause, and found one in the two great crimes of incest and parricide. We have seen something similar to this in the case of Ixion. Further, the names of the wives assigned by various writers to Œdipus are connected with the light, and the name Laius has been interpreted as “enemy” of the light. Sphinx itself signifies “throttler.”
In art, the Sphinx had the form of a lion, generally in a recumbent position, with the breast and upper part of a beautiful woman. When the Greeks saw similar figures in Egypt, they naturally gave them the name of Sphinx. But name, family, and meaning of the Sphinx are alike Greek, although the Egyptian statues have taken too firm possession of the name ever to lose it. Ancient Egyptian art revelled in the creation of colossal Sphinxes, which were carved out of granite. A notable example of this kind exists in the giant Sphinx near the Pyramids of Gizeh, which is eighty-nine feet long. From such monstrous figures as these, Greek art held aloof.
Œdipus was rewarded with the sovereignty of Thebes and the hand of Iocaste; and for several years he enjoyed uninterrupted happiness, surrounded by four blooming children, the fruit of his incestuous marriage. By the secret agency of the goddess, the dreadful truth was at length discovered. Iocaste hanged herself, and Œdipus, in despair, put out his own eyes. Not content with this voluntary penance, the hard-hearted Thebans compelled him besides to leave their city and country, while his sons Eteocles and Polynices, who were now grown up, refused to stir a foot in their father’s behalf. Œdipus, after invoking bitter curses on their heads, withdrew, and, guided by his faithful daughter Antigone, at last found an asylum in the grove of the Eumenides at Colonus, near Athens. His grave there was regarded, in consequence of an ancient response of the oracle, as a national treasure.
The curse of their father took effect on his unnatural sons. The elder, Eteocles, drove out his brother Polynices, who then sought the assistance of Adrastus, king of Argos. Adrastus was a grandson of Bias, of the race of the Amythaonidæ, and by his marriage with the daughter of the wealthy Polybus acquired the sovereignty of Sicyon. He not only hospitably received the fugitive Polynices, but gave him his daughter in marriage, and promised to assist him in recovering the crown of Thebes. In this expedition Adrastus sought to gain the aid of the other Argive heroes. They all declared their readiness to accompany him, with the exception of Amphiaraüs, his brother-in-law, who was equally renowned for his wisdom and courage. Amphiaraüs was a great-grandson of the celebrated seer Melampus, and inherited from him the gift of prophecy. He was thus enabled to perceive the disastrous termination of the war, and strove to hinder it. But Polynices and the fiery Tydeus—likewise a son-in-law of Adrastus—were so unceasing in their entreaties, that he at length sought to escape their importunity by flight. Polynices, however, bribed his wife Eriphyle, by the present of a magnificent necklace, which had formerly been given to Harmonia on the occasion of her marriage with Cadmus, to betray his place of concealment. Hereupon Amphiaraüs was obliged unwillingly to join the expedition, which ended as he had prophesied. The attack on Thebes was not only repulsed, but all the Argive leaders, with the exception of Adrastus, who was saved by the fleetness of his horse, were slain. Polynices and Eteocles fell in single combat with each other. The flight of Adrastus to Attica, where he procured the assistance of Theseus in compelling the Thebans to grant the fallen heroes a solemn burial, is a feature unknown to the original legend, and may be ascribed to the patriotic impulses of the Athenian dramatists. The celebrated tragedy of Sophocles, called Antigone, is based on the assumption that Creon, the new king of Thebes, allowed the burial of the other heroes, but left Polynices to lie unburied on the field like a dog, and condemned Antigone to death because she ventured to bury her brother in despite of his command. Creon was destined to meet with a dreadful retribution, for his own son, who was betrothed to Antigone, killed himself in grief at her fate.
Ten years later, the sons of the fallen heroes are said to have combined with Ægialeus, the son of Adrastus, to avenge their fathers’ defeat. This expedition has therefore been called the war of the Epigoni (descendants), and not being undertaken, like that of their fathers, in manifest opposition to the will of the gods, proved successful. Laodamas, the savage son of Eteocles, who was now king of Thebes, was defeated in a decisive battle near Thebes, and, after Ægialeus had fallen by his hands, was himself slain by Alcmæon, the son of Amphiaraüs. The Thebans were unable any longer to hold their city, and, following the advice of the blind seer Tiresias, they withdrew under the cover of darkness and mist. The aged Tiresias expired on the road, at the fountain of Tilphusa; of the rest, some took refuge in Thessalia, and some sought other lands. The victorious Argives, after plundering and partly destroying the city, dedicated a great portion of the booty—among which was Manto, the daughter of Tiresias—to the oracle of Delphi. They then made Thersander, the son of Polynices, king of Thebes; upon which many of the fugitive inhabitants returned. Thersander subsequently took part in the Trojan war, and there perished.