s laid in front of the palace in Boetian Thebes. The chorus
is composed of Theban old men. Oedipus speaks first. The managers
request all the spectators to remain sitting until the postlude is
ended. Immediately after the last chorus has been sung there will be a
pause for those who wish to go out. After this the doors will be
closed.

After the play, horse-cars ({hamaxai hipposiderodromikai}) will be
ready for those who want to go to the city.

Wilsons, printers. ({Oyilsones typois egapsan}.)

The story of the Theban hero, his ignorance of his own parentage, his
dismay at the revelation of the oracle that he would kill his father and
marry his mother, his quarrel with the former, resulting in the very
tragedy he was seeking to avoid, his solution of the riddle of the
sphinx, the reward of the Queen's hand which Creon had promised, leading
to the unfortunate marriage with his mother, Jocasta, thus completing the
revelation of the oracle, does not need description in detail. The
marriage was followed by a pestilence that wasted Thebes, and at this
point the plot of the drama begins. It concerns itself with the efforts
of Oedipus to unravel the mystery of the death of his father, Laius,
which lead to the discovery that he himself was the murderer, and that he
had been guilty of incest with his own mother. Jocasta hangs herself, and
Oedipus, rushing frantically into the palace, beholds her, and
overwhelmed with horror at the sight and the fulfilment of the oracle,
seizes her brooch-pin and blinds himself. In the Oedipus at Colonos the
sequel is told. The hero dies in the gardens of the Eumenides, happy in
the love of his daughters and the pardon which fate grants him.

The music to the tragedy is thoroughly classical in spirit, and has all
the nobility, breadth, dignity, and grace characteristic of the Greek
idea. The principal lyric movements of the chorus, the choral odes, of
which there are six, comprise the scheme of the composer. The
melodramatic practice of the orchestra accompanying spoken dialogue only
appears to a limited extent in the third ode; and the chorus, as
narrator, is accompanied by music only in the seven last lines of the
play, which form the postlude. The orchestral introduction, which is
treated in a very skilful and scholarly manner, epitomizes the spirit of
the work. The odes are divided as usual into strophes and antistrophes,
assigned alternately to a male chorus of fifteen a