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[Footnote: And when we are speaking of this subject, it may be proper to mention (as the very extreme anachronism which the case admits of) that Mr. Archdeacon W. has absolutely introduced the idea of sin into the “Iliad;” and, in a regular octavo volume, has represented it as the key to the whole movement of the fable. It was once made a reproach to Southey that his Don Roderick spoke, in his penitential moods, a language too much resembling that of Methodism; yet, after all, that prince was a Christian, and a Christian amongst Mussulmans. But what are we to think of Achilles and Patroclus, when described as being (or not being) “under convictions of sin”? ]

from Aristophanes, and from the Greek tragedians, embodying at intervals this word sin, are more extravagant than would be the word category introduced into the harangue of an Indian sachem amongst the Cherokees; and finally that the very nearest approach to the abysmal idea which we Christians attach to the word sin–(an approach, but to that which never can be touched–a writing as of palmistry upon each man’s hand, but a writing which “no man can read”)–lies in the Pagan idea of piacularity; which is an idea thus far like hereditary sin, that it expresses an evil to which the party affected has not consciously concurred; which is thus far not like hereditary sin, that it expresses an evil personal to the individual, and not extending itself to the race.

This was the evil exemplified in oedipus. He was loaded with an insupportable burthen of pariah participation in pollution and misery, to which his will had never consented. He seemed to have committed the most atrocious crimes; he was a murderer, he was a parricide, he was doubly incestuous, and yet how? In the case where he might be thought a murderer, he had stood upon his self-defence, not benefiting by any superior resources, but, on the contrary, fighting as one man against three, and under the provocation of insufferable insolence. Had he been a parricide? What matter, as regarded the moral guilt, if his father (and by the fault of that father) were utterly unknown to him? Incestuous had he been? but how, if the very oracles of fate, as expounded by events and by mysterious creatures such as the Sphinx, had stranded him, like a ship left by the tide, upon this dark unknown shore of a criminality unsuspected by himself? All these treasons against the sanctities of nature had oedipus committed; and yet was this oedipus a thoroughly good man, no more dreaming of the horrors in which he was entangled, than the eye at noonday in midsummer is conscious of the stars that lie far behind the daylight. Let us review rapidly the incidents of his life.

Laius, King of Thebes, the descendant of Labdacus, and representing the illustrious house of the Labdacidae, about the time when his wife, Jocasta, promised to present him with a child, had learned from various prophetic voices that this unborn child was destined to be his murderer. It is singular that in all such cases, which are many, spread through classical literature, the parties menaced by fate believe the menace; else why do they seek to evade it? and yet believe it not; else why do they fancy themselves able to evade it? This fatal child, who was the oedipus of tragedy, being at length born, Laius committed the infant to a slave, with orders to expose it on Mount Citheron. This was done; the infant was suspended, by thongs running through the fleshy parts of his feet, to the branches of a tree, and he was supposed to have perished by wild beasts. But a shepherd, who found him in this perishing state, pitied his helplessness, and carried him to his master and mistress, King and Queen of Corinth, who adopted and educated him as their own child. That he was not their own child, and that in fact he was a foundling of unknown parentage, oedipus was not slow of finding from the insults of his schoolfellows; and at length, with the determination of learning his origin and his fate, being now a full- grown young man, he strode off from Corinth to Delphi. The oracle at Delphi, being as usual in collusion with his evil destiny, sent him off to seek his parents at Thebes. On his journey thither, he met, in a narrow part of the road, a chariot proceeding in the counter direction from Thebes to Delphi. The charioteer, relying upon the grandeur of his master, insolently ordered the young stranger to clear the road; upon which, under the impulse of his youthful blood, oedipus slew him on the spot. The haughty grandee who occupied the chariot rose up in fury to avenge this outrage, fought with the young stranger, and was himself killed. One attendant upon the chariot remained; but he, warned by the fate of his master and his fellow-servant, withdrew quietly into the forest that skirted the road, revealing no word of what had happened, but reserved, by the dark destiny of oedipus, to that evil day on which his evidence, concurring with other circumstantial exposures, should convict the young Corinthian emigrant of parricide. For the present, oedipus viewed himself as no criminal, but much rather as an injured man, who had simply used his natural powers of self-defence against an insolent aggressor. This aggressor, as the reader will suppose, was Laius. The throne therefore was empty, on the arrival of oedipus in Thebes; the king’s death was known, but not the mode of it; and that oedipus was the murderer could not reasonably be suspected either by the people of Thebes, or by oedipus himself. The whole affair would have had no interest for the young stranger; but, through the accident of a public calamity then desolating the land, a mysterious monster, called the Sphinx, half woman and half lion, was at that time on the coast of Boeotia, and levying a daily tribute of human lives from the Boeotian territory. This tribute, it was understood, would continue to be levied from the territories attached to Thebes, until a riddle proposed by the monster should have been satisfactorily solved. By way of encouragement to all who might feel prompted to undertake so dangerous an adventure, the authorities of Thebes offered the throne and the hand of the widowed Jocasta as the prize of success; and oedipus, either on public or on selfish motives, entered the lists as a competitor.