ABSTRACT
The scene opens, in Sophocles, with a chorus of Thebans prostrate at the foot of the altars; who, by their cries and tears, ask the gods for an end to their calamities. Oedipus, their liberator and king, appears in their midst. Sophocles was close to the time when the tragedy was invented; Aeschylus, contemporary with Sophocles, was the first who thought of putting several personages on the stage. M. Dacier, who has translated the Oedipus of Sophocles, claims the onlooker awaits with much impatience the part Jocasta will take, and the manner by which Oedipus will execute upon himself the curses he has pronounced against the murderer of Laius. Oedipus asks if nobody returned from Laius's retinue from whom one might ask for news of it; some one replies that 'one of those who accompanied this unfortunate king, having escaped, came to tell in Thebes that Laius had been assassinated by robbers, who were not in small but large numbers'.
