Our direct evidence for the first play of the tetralogy is very scanty. There is a tiny scrap of a papyrus headnote (‘Hypothesis’) stating that Laius was the opening speaker; two one-word quotations, one of them (fr. 122) relating to the practice of exposing unwanted newborn infants in pots; a lexicon entry mentioning that in this play there was a reference to a murderer who tasted and spat out his victim’s blood (fr. 122a); and a three-line quotation (fr. 387a; see below) which looks like part of a messenger’s narrative of the murder of Laius – though it is also possible that this comes from the following play, Oedipus. The murder, if that is what is being related, took place, in Aeschylus’ treatment, not (as in Sophocles) in Phocis on the way to Delphi but at Potniae, a mile or two to the south of Thebes. In addition to this direct evidence, some further inferences can be made from what is said in Seven Against Thebes, especially in the choral song 720–91.
Since we know of no other murder but that of Laius to which fr. 122a could reasonably be taken to refer in a play that bore his name, we can safely assume that Laius’ death (off stage, of course) was the main event of the first play. Since he was killed while on a journey (fr. 387a), he must have been given some reason for leaving Thebes. In Euripides’ Phoenician Maidens (35–7) he is on his way to Delphi, and this version was not a new one, since Sophocles in Oedipus the King seems to presuppose it; but Aeschylus cannot have used it, since he makes Laius head southwards – towards Plataea, beyond which lie Megara and Corinth. We know that the exposure of Laius’ infant son was mentioned in the play (fr. 122) and so probably had some relevance to its plot: in Euripides, Laius went to Delphi to ask whether his son was still alive, and perhaps in Aeschylus the motive for his journey was the same, but he was making for Corinth, having maybe heard a rumour that his son had been rescued and taken there. Meanwhile that son was himself on the way from Corinth to Thebes; we do not know the reason for his journey, and we cannot be sure that Aeschylus troubled to provide him with one. And they met at Potniae.
Since Laius contained a reference to Laius’ killer tasting his blood (fr. 122a), it is more likely than not that there was a full narrative of his murder – in other words, that the messenger-speech from which fr. 387a comes belonged to this play rather than to the next. The news will have triggered lamentations, in the midst of which the body of Laius was probably brought back – much as in Seven the bodies of the two brothers are brought back from the battlefield at 848 after the Chorus have already begun singing laments for them.
According to Apollonius Rhodius (Argonautica 4.475–9), the tasting and spitting of a murder victim’s blood was particularly associated with treacherous killings such as the ambush-murder (as Apollonius tells it) of Medea’s brother Apsyrtus; and the same source that tells us that Aeschylus mentioned this custom in Laius tells us that he mentioned it also in The Perrhaebian Women, a play whose central event was the exceptionally treacherous murder by Ixion of his father-in-law. If Laius’ killer was indeed said to have tasted his blood, the murder must have been presented very differently from any other version known to us – unless, as we hear retrospectively in Sophocles (Oedipus the King 118–23, 836–50), the survivor’s tale of the murder was in crucial respects false (doubtless to exonerate himself for having failed to protect his master), and he pretended that Laius had been ambushed by a gang of brigands.
It is not likely that either the arrival of Oedipus at Thebes, or the menace of the Sphinx from which he saved the city (Seven 775–7), featured in Laius, since they provided the main plot features of the satyr drama The Sphinx (see below).
387a On our journey we were approaching the junction of three wagon tracks where the road forks, where we were passing the meeting of the three ways at Potniae.
From an account by a survivor of Laius’ last journey.
With the possible exception of fr. 387a (see above) and maybe of fr. 236 (see below), nothing survives of the text of this play. There are, however, several passages in Seven Against Thebes which seem to presuppose that the audience have been informed about certain previous events, notably the curse of Oedipus and its motivation, and a dream that Eteocles had about the division of his father’s property (Seven 710–11; cf. 727–33); It is also possible that when Sophocles – particularly in the earliest of his three Theban plays, Antigone – alludes to an episode of the story in a way that presupposes previous knowledge of it, he is assuming that his audience will fill in the gaps by recalling the fairly recent, and famous, production by Aeschylus.
From the Chorus of Seven (778–90) we hear the following account of the curse of Oedipus and what led up to it:
But when he became aware,
wretched man, of his appalling marriage,
enraged by grief,
with maddened heart,
he perpetrated two evils:
by his own father-slaying hand
he was robbed of his < > eyes,
and, angered with his sons
for their wretched maintenance of him, he let fly at them
(ah, ah!) the curses of a bitter tongue,
that they would actually one day
divide his property between them
with iron-wielding hand.
The statement that Oedipus perpetrated ‘two [literally “twin”] evils’ when he learned the truth about his marriage (and, presumably, learned more or less at the same time that he had killed his father) suggests that in Aeschylus’ imagining of the story, the discovery and the self-blinding were followed quite closely by Oedipus’ curse on his sons. Moreover, Eteocles’ dream, in which apparently a ‘Scythian stranger’ cast lots between the brothers (Seven 727–33; cf. 816–19, 906–9, 941–50), ought to precede the curse: coming at that stage, the dream would be enigmatic and ambiguous; coming after the curse it would tell Eteocles nothing that he had not been told already. This tends to suggest that dream, discovery, self-blinding and curse, probably in that sequence, all formed part of Oedipus, though the dream, like that of the Queen in The Persians or of Clytaemestra in The Libation-Bearers, will most likely have taken place shortly before the action of the play began. We may add that if Oedipus was angry with his sons ‘for their wretched maintenance of him’, he must already have been an old man who had ‘retired’ from active life and entrusted the management of his household and city to his sons; and they were failing to treat him with proper filial respect, even at a time when his reputation was still unblemished. We cannot tell how the discovery was effected, and we have no way of knowing what role, if any, Oedipus’ mother-wife played in the action.
If this outline reconstruction of Oedipus is correct, it leaves little if any space in the play for events subsequent to Oedipus’ curse. Rather, the death of Oedipus, the quarrel between Eteocles and Polyneices, the expulsion of the latter from Thebes, his arrival at Argos and the raising of Adrastus’ expedition against Thebes must all be taken to fall in the undramatized interval between the actions of Oedipus and of Seven.
The subject of this satyr drama will have been the defeat of the Sphinx by Oedipus, who must surely be the ‘stranger’ of fr. 235. A contemporary vase painting (the Fujita Hydria) probably throws light on the role of the satyrs in the play: it shows five of them, white-bearded, richly robed and carrying long sceptres, sitting on high-backed, cloth-draped chairs looking at, and apparently listening to, the Sphinx seated on a rock. They seem to have usurped the role of Theban councillors, perhaps in the hope of securing the reward offered by Creon to whoever should solve the Sphinx’s riddle and so save the Thebans from destruction; they will have failed to do so, and perhaps found themselves in danger of making a meal for the Sphinx, until rescued by Oedipus. A few other, later vase paintings also bring satyrs and the Sphinx together, but there is no particular reason to associate them specifically with Aeschylus’ play (the overcoming of a monster was a common theme of satyr drama).
235 And for the stranger a garland,1 the ancient <mark of honour (?)>, the best of bonds according to the tale of Prometheus.2
2363
The Sphinx, the bitch4 that presided over days of ill-fortune From a choral song.