what he asseverate be untrue. The belief in the fearful power of a curse, especially the curse of a father or a mother, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully adjured, works out its vengeance through the whole stock of kith and kin, involving in misfortunes and destruction, innocent and guilty alike, finds supreme illustration in the masterpieces of Greek tragedy. It is the mighty theme of the trilogy of the Oresteia, for from the very outset of the Agamemnon there is a brooding and oppressive sense of multitudinous crimes, of sins done long years ago which have swelled and accumulated their guilt like some black cloud of transgressions about to burst over the doomed race in a welter of tragedy and blood. The evil wrought by Thyestes, the crimes of his grandsire Tantalus, the atrocious banquet of Atreus, have yet to be expiated in misery, in anguish and affliction. When the weird Trojan woman approaches the threshold she scents the carnage of the shambles and horrors manifold, and as the pang of inspiration thrills her she shrieks aloud: “The Furies are in this house; blood-surfeited, but not assuaged, they hold perpetual revel here. It is the crime of Atreus and of Thyestes which they hunt, and woe will follow woe.”
τὴν γὰρ στέγην τήνδ᾿ ἐκείπει χορὸς
σύμφθογγος οὐκ εὔφωνος· οὐ γὰρ εὖ λέγει,
καὶ τὴν πεπωκώς γ᾿, ὡς θρασύνεσθαι πλέον,
βρότειον αἷμα κῶμος ἐν δόμοις μένει,
δύσπεμπτος ἔξω, συγγόνων Ἐρινύων.
Sophocles also no less fearfully shows us the tale of Oedipus and his children, the legend of the house of Laius, whose family was as equally famous among the Greeks as the stock of Atreus for its overwhelming disasters, the bitter fruit of an undying curse which destroyed the whole race. Laius, the son of Labdacus, had wrought a mighty evil. Lusting after the beauty of Chrysippus, the son of Pelops, with violence he raped the lad who belonged to another, and thus had sinned the sin of ὕβρις since he both betrayed another’s love and used brute force in doing so.[39] For this crime his whole progeny was involved in destruction. He married Jocasta, the sister of Creon of Thebes, and the oracle warned him that his son should kill him. When a boy was born to the royal pair they cruelly exposed their child, a helpless infant, to the
