score of his unknown birth, and chance or destiny had brought him to Thebes. Corneille makes him tell his own story—how on his arrival at the foot of the fatal rock he sees the ground covered with the mangled limbs of former unlucky interpreters—how, in their despair, the perishing citizens make large proffers to the man who shall deliver them:—
"Le peuple offre le sceptre, et la reine son lit;
De cent cruelles morts cette offre est tôt suivie;
J'arrive, je l'apprens, j'y hazarde ma vie.
Au pied du roc affreux semé d'os blanchissants,
Je demande l'énigme, et j'en cherche la sens;
Et ce qu'aucun mortel n'avait encore pu faire,
J'en devoile l'image, et perce le mystère.
Le monstre, furieux de se voir entendu,
Venge aussitôt sur lui tout de sang répandu,
Du roc se lance en bas, et s'écrase lui-même,
La reine tint parole, et j'eus le diadême."
—Œdipe, Act i. sc. 4.
Both the riddle and the answer given have become matter of popular and well-known story; and it is difficult to understand the perplexity of the Thebans, for the enigma was of the simplest kind: "A being with four feet has two feet and three feet and only one voice; but its feet vary, and, when it has most, it is weakest." Professor Plumptre has thus translated the answer of Œdipus:—
"Hear thou against thy will, thou dark-winged Muse of the slaughtered;
Hear from my lips the end bringing a close to thy crime:
